"Rewritten Scripture."

I have to say, "Rewritten Scripture" is overall one of the most miserable genres that I've ever encountered in my life.

It's basically like they take massive books of the Bible, but tweak it here and there, where so much is just repetition, with only every great once in a while something that's kind of new and interesting thrown in.

And, it's just soooo looooooooonng.

I had heard of this genre for years, but it's only been as part of my "living my best life" schtick that includes me reading vast collections of Jewish and Christian apocrypha that I've really sat down and gone and plowed through some of it it.

Jubilees wasn't too bad -- and it's kind of cool to think that I've now read Jubilees! (in translation) -- but the Biblical Antiquities of pseudo-Philo was really rough going for a lot of it.

And, I think that Josephus's Antiquities are worst of all, if I ever get around to trying to read his entire oeuvre.

The worst part is that a lot of this stuff is just curiosities from Antiquity, and it's not even that culturally influential.

The struggles of being a completist. Sigh.

Dry (British) humor.

The local public library in the (college) town where I now live has pretty good children's books that they resell for $2 -- they're all high-quality ones that people donate and they pick through them for the best, to put those ones out to sell to support the library -- and so I often find myself looking through them and getting some very good ones occasionally, to give to the kids of my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair).

And, her kids are like two and five or six, and one of the books had flaps that you opened up to reveal sea animals, and after I gave them those and she gave me a report that the kids read them and liked them, especially since the sea animal book was "genius" and had two flaps on each page, which meant that each kid got their own to open up every time and wouldn't argue, I was like, "That's good, I was worried it was too young for [her five or six-year old daughter's name]."

"Oh yes, [her five or six-year old daughter's name] is reading novellas, now," she was like.

Then, there was a pause, and then the conversation continued.

Vaccination chit-chat.

So, when I got my COVID booster last month -- I had to wait 2-3 months after my COVID infection -- I went to a local chain pharmacy, since that's what my GP recommended as an option when I messaged them online to set up an appointment for the booster.

And, it was surprisingly convenient to schedule online, and there was a (younger) (black) woman who did intake for me and then there were two (younger) (lightly hijabbed) (kind of light-to-slightly-middle-toned brown-skinned) women also working there, one of whom who was the person who went and actually gave me the COVID booster, not to mention the flu vaccine, too, since I had also requested that.

And so, since I had been reading about a shortage of pharm techs -- low wages, no mobility -- as well as the effects of that in the area -- closure of many pharmacies on weekends, or consolidation of locations -- I made sure to ask her how stuff was, and if that was all really still going on.

"I say," one of the (lightly hihabbed) women was like, "that this is the greatest job in the world, but, I need more people to join me."

. . .

(Yes, it really was still going on, the staff shortage, though it seemed to have stabilized a bit, she said.)

. . .

(I'm still kind of in shock how eldercare fell apart after I put in 4-5 years there and established myself where I could begin to move around in the sector...  I had gone there because the pay wasn't the best, but it was better than normal, and there was good mobility and growing demand, and the job agreed with me if you were at a good place, and it seemed resistant to getting hacked up by the internet. But, wage compression did a number that is only starting to get paid attention to like with the California differential minimum wage for healthcare jobs, and then temp staffing was able to even invade there, too, destabilizing entire workplaces to the point where everything starts to smell like lawsuits, even if you're in a different facet of the organization from where that sh*t goes down. I mean, why would you want to deal with stuff like that, if you can get another job without all that that pays similar, like at a restaurant?)

"The Meat Lab."

In the college town that I now live in, one of the things that locals gush over if you're "in the know" is what everyone calls "the Meat Lab," which is basically like a university-run butcher shop that's open like once a week and is staffed by students and sells what they've learned to slaughter as part of their study of agronomy, and as part of their extracurricular activities like the "Meat Judging Club" and whatnot.

And, I guess a ton of land-grant institutions have this and the regular name for it everywhere really is "the meat lab," though now that probably causes confusion, as when I've begun telling other people about it, sometimes they initially think that I'm talking about lab-grown meat.

Anyhow, though, I found out about it this summer, but only right after it had closed for a few months and they were doing a "fire sale" of different value packages combining everything they had left, and then this fall I wasn't able to go for a while because I had stuff going on and then I had COVID, but then I finally went, and I impulse-bought like almost forty dollars of sausage (like, it freezes, so why not?).

Most of it was solid but nothing to write home about, but one kind was exceptionally good, so I ended up going back the very next week to stock up on stuff that I could freeze and give out as gifts to people when I was traveling around the holidays, since that was the only time that I could make it there to get stuff, since their hours became erratic with school vacations and whatnot and I just couldn't make it back there, otherwise.

("Nice to see you again," the [fatter] [young] [blonde] woman manning the register told me, amidst the cinder blocks and cement floor and industrial lights and various coolers.)

Interestingly, the second time that I went back, I was talking with a(n older) (white) woman who was manning the door while I was waiting to get in -- because of lingering COVID precautions, they only let so many people in at one time -- and so I asked her about the extraordinary number of women working there, since it was really prominent everywhere you turned, whether at the door or at the register or behind the butcher-counter or just milling around, everyone in their clinical white smocks.

And, it turns out that she was one of the professors who was just happening to be working that day, and she said it's actually a male-dominated field, but yes, they do have an incredible number of women in this particular program.

Later, I was telling about all of this to a (lawyer) friend from undergraduate who also has become obsessed with "the Meat Lab," and I said something about how I felt compelled to almost make some kind of joke about there being so many women, and something involving how they cut sausage.

And, she was like, "Well, women are good at judging meat."

But, I told her that that wasn't true, and it erased the experience of lesbian butchers.

My one (professor) friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature, too, was also somewhat aghast that student can take classes on how to make cheesy bratwurst

"They call that a liberal arts university?", she was like.

So, I pointed out to her that many students from top schools are protesting in support of Hamas, so if I had to guess, the students who are making sausages are probably more well-adjusted.

("Very true, that is a good response," the [Romanian] wife of my one [Romanian] colleague said, when I told them that story later.)

I also gave some of the sausages to my one (Romanian) colleague, who likes to be a contrarian and b*tch about Democrats.

So, since the state I'm in is blue, I made sure to point out to him that our taxes subsidize that Meat Lab, and that I never wanted to hear him b*tch about Democrats again.

He didn't have much to say about that.

Plant problems.

With the one sprouted avocado seed that I potted, it seems that fruit flies were using the top of the soil to breed, since ungodly amounts were swarming on the top, and once when I poked around in the soil, it even turned up little grubs everywhere.

So, I just took rubbing alcohol and sprayed the top of the plants a few times, and I've done that occasionally since.

I think it eventually evaporates without hitting the plant roots, so that's good, but I really should research essential oils, or some sh*t like that.

So far, I've been doing that for several weeks, and the flies are mostly gone and the plant seems unharmed, though there's dried-out grubs thoroughly dotting the soil surface, as what looks like small white specks from a distance.

A great hope of mine for the (Thai) restaurant where I work now.

At the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, we serve miso soup -- it's in little bowls, and we put dry seaweed and chopped tofu and green onions into it, before we ladle out some broth from a counter-top soup warmer -- and it comes and it goes but we do tend to serve it very regularly.

But, what I really, really want to happen is, is that when a customer wants it, they put a very plaintive look on their face, place their hand over their distended belly, and look up at me sadly and be like, "Me so hungry."

Overheard conversation at the (Thai) restaurant...

 ...when I was filling water at a table of two normal-seeming (lower middle-class) (middle middle-aged) (white couples):

"...and he had them live in the barn."

"Like a furnished barn?"

"No, just in the barn..."

. . .

(I really wanted to interrupt and find out what the story was there.)