Five Things Friday Vol. 64

Five Things Friday: just five things I’m thinking about or things that made my week, or things that I otherwise feel like sharing.

I had a little bit of a breakthrough with a work task this week. Do you know that feeling of working on something and constantly running into roadblocks? I’ve been trying to bring two datasets together (3D models from two different time frames) and they just didn’t want to snap together, but I finally figured it out this week! I finally have results that I can show to my colleague (and the project cooperator) and I am so thrilled.

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I went to the gardening center and got some plants for our backyard last weekend. I got some flowers – cosmos (I love them), dianthus, and a seed mix for California wildflowers (I am so curious about what will grow!) – and also some crop plants – strawberries, tomatoes, zucchini, and herbs. I am trying to keep it simple this year and focus on keeping everything alive during our summer heat. That was a challenge last year when we traveled with my family for a few weeks.  Do you plant a garden?

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I tried out a new bread recipe last weekend (a pure rye bread) and it turned out so, so good. Pure rye usually means it only consists of rye flour (+starter), water, and salt. In this case, there was one little helper – buttermilk – which I think contributed largely to the fact that the bread didn’t dry out as quickly as rye bread usually tends to do. It’s darker and denser than wheat bread and very filling. I baked it on Sunday, had my first slice on Monday, and did not see much of a deterioration in quality over the last few days. I am a big fan.

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Tech hack of the week: did you know that your iPhone can pull text out of a picture or screenshot? I shared this little trick with Elisabeth recently but thought you guys might benefit from it too. If you took a picture of something that has text on it or if you want to extract a phrase or paragraph from an article or book page (that is not digital), you can take a picture or screenshot and pull the text out of the image. No manual jotting down is needed.

To use Live Text, you need an iPhone XS, iPhone XR, or later with iOS 15 or later.) It’s so convenient, I use it all the time. 

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Kitchen tile update! I wonder if that is going to become a weekly thing and for how long this is going to go on – but here is this week’s scoop. 

Nerd that I am, I did some research last weekend. I found out that the kitchen tiles had a company engraved on the bottom – Ladrillera Mecanizada, Mexico –  and putting that into Google, I found the company’s website and – lo and behold – found what I think are our exact tiles. The catch (or good thing – you decide!) is: the tiles are only available in Mexico. Some further digging online revealed that once upon a time (10+ years ago), Home Depot seemed to have carried these tiles, but they don’t carry them anymore. I wasn’t able to find them anywhere else (on any other US site) either. I forwarded this information to my landlords. 

(On a side note and as a reminder: our landlords are a couple, but the duplex belongs to the landlady’s parents who live overseas and the couple just “manages” the rental. The landlord is pretty handy and does a lot of general repair work around the duplex and I think he realizes that the floor should be redone completely. However, the decision maker is the landlady (and her parents), who seems to think that just replacing some tiles will do. It’s a very interesting dynamic to watch as a sideshow. Haha.)

The landlady thanked me for the research and said her husband would come by on Tuesday with another sample tile that they had picked up somewhere to see if it was a match (it was not!). The color was off and what’s more, the tile was thicker than our current tiles and therefore it would be impossible to create an even surface. When he left, he said he’d talk things over again with his wife and they’d get back to us.

To be continued…

What’s been going on in your world this week?

  1. Aw the tile saga! Please keep us updated! I’m invested.

    1. Haha, thank you. I will ;)

  2. i totally get the feeling of a work breakthrough, especially when I was doing research. What a feeling!
    I’ve wanted to buy plants for our balcony since we moved but haven’t managed to. maybe I’ll do it soon when I go back. it’s great to start the day with greens in sight right?
    that bread looks so good. perfect post-run fuel.

    1. Yes. Research can be tedious and it can feel like “two steps forward one step back”, but if you have a breakthrough, it really is a great feeling.

      As you can tell, I don’t subscribe to “carbs are the enemy” – I love a good slice of bread after a workout! :)

  3. I am rooting for a great resolution to your tile story and can’t wait for the grand finale!!!! Way to go with tracking things down.

    That Live Text hack is incredible. Lately, I’ve been using the triple-click to go grayscale a lot.

    We have a lot of plants inside (10+), but no outside garden. I don’t have the time or inclination. I love looking at beautiful gardens, but stop short of wanting one myself! Maybe post-kids, ina retirement era?

    1. Thanks friend. I am also hoping for a satisfying solution with the tile story ;)

      That’s wonderful that you have so many indoor plants… I put more effort into my garden, because indoor plants don’t have much of a chance in our house (it doesn’t get a lot of natural light).

  4. I love rye bread. I’m basically drooling on my keyboard over here. My husband can’t have rye, so it’s been a long time since I’ve had some. Yum!

    1. Oh, that’s such a bummer that your husband can’t have rye. It’s the best (IMHO)… can you also not have it around, or is it that you just don’t buy stuff that he can’t eat?

  5. The tile thing – this sounds like they are doing so much work to not do much work, if that makes sense. It sounds like instead of constantly trying to match a tile, to jackhammer out the broken tiles, etc., it would be easier just to do the whole damn thing.
    Anyway, I’m glad you got your garden started! I love cosmos, I haven’t planted them for an age. We are moving in the summer so I only have planted kale in my garden, as it’s the only thing I can harvest that early. I have very large perennial gardens, and I planted annuals in my containers, and I hope that the new house owners will love the garden like I do.

    1. You’re SO RIGHT. Instead of just getting it done, the landlords are doing “work to no do much work”… we haven’t heard back in 11 days. Sigh.

      I can imagine you’re sad to leave your garden behind, but I am sure you’ll get right to work at your next place. I am excited to see :)

  6. Oh my gosh! I wish you could get the exact tiles to use! It’s hard to match – replace hard with impossible.

    I am excited to see how your garden does!!! Do you have much travel this summer that’ll take you away from it?

    1. Thank you. We don’t have much travel planned for this summer, so I hope to be on top of my garden this year :)

  7. Ugh and the tile saga continues! I’m still catching up on posts but I hope by now they’ve made the right decision and will replace all of the tiles! Sheesh.

    Congrats on your breakthrough at work! That is such a good feeling!!

    1. No news yet! LOL I’ll keep you all posted on the tiles!

  8. That tile story starts to become a comedy bit, doesn’t it? I hope you. keep the humor while it’s all just annoying.
    The bread looks really good. I am having a tiny garden. My herbs from last year more or less survived only the mint is a bit slow. I wanted some redfishes and also plan on doing some spinach but ran out of space for now.

  9. Good grief, really? The continuing tile saga? Sigghhh… They need to just do the d*** thing, for the love of Pete.
    Also? I love (LOVE) rye bread and that bread looks fantastic. Limitations: I went to the recipe and found out it was in German (which totally makes sense, but LOL), and also I am afraid of sourdough starter so don’t have any and kind of don’t want to take one on because… one person, and I don’t eat a lot of bread. So. Hm. Ponder, ponder. :)
    I’m so glad you have a garden! I hope it does well this summer.

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