Life, the Universe and Everything

So I keep feeling like I need to have something substantial to say and can't just dump random passing thoughts here. But if tumblr's going to make itself stressful then I should get back in the habit.

So Simler says (somewhat dubiously, if I parse correctly) that Theophrastus says that "spruce (abies), pine (pinaster), pitch-pine [Scots pine?] (picea), holly (aquifolia), lime (tilia), maple (caprinus), box (buxus), purslane (portulaca), yew (taxus), juniper (juniperus), terebinth aka terpentine tree (terebinthus), wild fig (caprificus), buckthorn (philyca), madrone (apharca), walnut (nux juglans), chestnut (castanea), and oak (ilex)" only grow in the mountains. (bracketed names are from the Latin text because tree-names between German and English get wobbly sometimes).

I think, anyway; anyone with useful Latin is welcome to correct me, the German is a paper copy.

Also, mostly because I want to see if (spite-)hotlinking works, one of the illustrations is a woodcut from Hanz Foltz' "Baderegeln", Strassburg 1504 and like, ok apparently healing baths are a tits-out-hats-on experience?)
( It feels polite to put the image behind a cut though )

I did indeed get the quilt pinned on Sunday, and finished by about Wednesday, and Teddy's new clothes finished yesterday, with . Photos on Tumblr. Nibling #1 has seen a photo and says he looks cool.

Also van repair news - my van has been out of action for quite a while because the tailgate would not latch - the opposite of the usual T5 tailgate-latch problem, which is it not un-latching; various forums are full of people whose tailgates have a lot more trim than mine (read: any; it may be a little silly to still call it a builders’ van when I’ve owned it longer than the builders did, but hey ho) bemoaning the difficulty in getting to the mechanism to unjam it.

Of course it did this on a freezing cold afternoon as it was starting to rain, and no-one seemed to have any ready answers (or even be having this problem), and I could not for the life of me find the tailgate section in the workshop manual, so we ratchet-strapped it down to the internal tie-downs and put the kettle on. And after that, the evenings were dark and frequently rainy, and frankly, I did not want to.

But yesterday I finally got somewhere; firstly, it turns out that the workshop manual refers to the tailgate as the ‘rear lid’ which is a new one on me. And secondly, when I went out, armed with a bit more knowledge of what I was looking at, I discovered this was not some arcane problem inside the lock mechanism, it was the fact that a small piece of broken tail-light plastic was lodged behind the catch. Thumb for scale (also on Tumblr).

Writing-wise, I got a bit stalled on the not-actually-concussion scene (my last note:"ohhhh he is actually having a meltdown about his loop 1 experiences in this regard") realised it probably wasn't flowing because I'd skimmed over Guaeth's reaction to the previous scene (mostly that reaction is 'trying very hard not to think about it' - but still.) So, not much progress there.

Otherwise, eh, I don't know. Plodding along, singing a song.