It Started with a Journal

A disgusting story ahead: My dog is old (he'll be 15 in August) and he has diabetes. I give him insulin shots twice a day, but whereas it used to be well controlled, it seems to be less so now. I'm supposed to do a blood curve for him, and have the kit to do it and everything, but I haven't gotten around to it. The last time the vet did a blood curve, his blood sugar didn't drop down to where it should've been, so she increased his dosage from 4 units to 5. It seems to have helped a bit, but the problem is that he seems to be hungry all the time. When he's not looking for food, he sleeps. This is a dog who, when he was younger, refused to even eat burgers that my dad bought for him from Burger King, or the pork chop rice that my mom gave him. Now he's after anything and everything, including the cat food. Usually my mom takes him out for a walk twice a day. But because it's been snowy and rainy, we've just been letting him go out in the backyard. Yesterday, TWICE, he ate his own poo. Like, it is so disgusting!!!!!! I ran out to stop him the second time, but he had already consumed some. I looked it up online, and "nutrition deficiency" seems to be a commonly listed cause, but there are also reports that there's no proof that this is actually the case. I think he is just hungry. :/ It breaks my heart that he would be that hungry, but there's nothing we can do! He's fed a normal amount of dog food, and in any case we can't overfeed him because his insulin has to be able to control the spike in blood sugar. At this point I just don't know what to do.

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I have purchased a domed cast-iron grill pan. My plan is to put it over a portable gas stove, so that I can do Korean BBQ at home. Can't wait to try it out.


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For B.'s visit, we're going to go to Snoqualmie Falls first thing in the morning (he's going to be at my house at 7 a.m. -- what is WRONG with people who get up that early on the weekends?!), then will have a late breakfast at Dough Zone, which opens at 9:30. We will then head back to my place and he and his wife will hang out a bit, then they'll probably set off for downtown and walk around Pike Place Market or whatever, and my mom and I will meet them for a late lunch at Etta's before they head off to the airport.

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Jade and I finished ep 11 of Answer Me 1997 last night. She's confident about the ending, and it's all my fault. :)) She knows my preferences, and she knows I wouldn't recommend or want to rewatch a story that didn't have a good ending for my ship, so unlike me (and all the people who watched it the first time around), she's not feeling angsty about who Shi-won might choose in the end. Sigh. I feel bad, because the uncertainty is part of the fun! I mean, sure, I was 80 percent sure they would end the way I wanted them to -- all the promotional materials, the duets the lead actors did, etc., all pointed to it -- but it was also fun to have to fear they wouldn't. It made the reveal more satisfying! Le sigh.

Also, she finds the second lead attractive. When watching I found him OK, but after reading all the comments on Viki about his "duck lips," I can't unsee them, and no longer find him very attractive. :))))

Omggggg you guys, yesterday was SO HOT. ( Mostly a recap of me being really hot and sweaty. And not in a sexy way. )

On Saturday, I met up with adelagia and we did our usual thing. It's so usual, in fact, that I got an email from my mom asking me what I was doing over the weekend and she guessed that T. and I were going to have hotpot and play games. >.> I LIKE ROUTINE OK. ( Why do people feel they can talk to us just because we are in public. )

I've gotten caught up in the Olympics. Every time the Olympics happen I have zero interest in it, but then the headlines and highlights and what not get me into it. I basically like swimming, gymnastics, and anything that creates a controversy. :)) I was/am so sick of hearing about Michael Phelps (I really hope he sticks to his word about retiring), but at least he seems like a decent human being. Unlike that douchebag Ryan Lochte. ( More rumination on a select part of the Olympics and my newfound crush on Nathan Adrian. )

Okay, as if this post weren't long enough -- seriously, if you actually clicked into the cuts and read all that, I commend you -- I'm going to talk about TV now.

( I'm nearly done with Psych S2. )

( Breaking Baaaaaaaaad 5x04 'Fifty-One' )

In writing news... there is very little writing news. I'm working on two promptathon stories, but there's no way on earth either of them will be done by whenever the promptathon is supposed to end (though I just checked and it looks like the deadline's been extended, so we'll see if I can make the new cutoff date or not).

I think I'll try to catch The Bourne Legacy (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee) this weekend, and pair it with Total Recall, which isn't doing well at the box office or in reviews, but which is GP enough that I'll see it.

Update on Talis's eye situation: So we went to see the specialist, who was super nice -- loved her. The good news is that it's not serious. ( Details, plus a couple of photos. )

I didn't even know there was a new Temeraire book out until yesterday! And I've even got naominovik on my flist! Guess she's not as good at updating as grrm is. Then again, since she publishes more regularly, maybe it's good that she spends less of her time LJing and more of her time actually writing. Go Naomi! If you guys haven't read the Temeraire series, it's fabulous. Don't wait for Peter Jackson's TV series or whatever it is he's doing. I thought I'd be the last person who would be interested in a fantasy series about a man and his dragon, but I WAS WRONG. The general premise of the series is a reimagining of the Napoleonic Wars with an air force of dragons. Trust me, it's awesome.

When I was in SoCal, in my sick bed, I perused the shelf of books in "my" room, which doesn't really have much of my stuff in it anymore. I noticed a very old cookbook from 1968: Marguerite Patten's Every Day Cookbook. I assumed it was my mom's, but she doesn't have much interest in cooking and certainly not from recipes; she denied all knowledge of the cookbook. I have no idea where this book came from. I flipped through it, assuming it'd be outdated and irrelevant, but found myself actually pretty impressed with it. I did a search for it on the internets, and it came up at Amazon UK with seven 5-star reviews. Those people like it because it's so sensible and easy to use, and still extremely useful for cooking today, and I have to say that I feel similarly about the content, just having read through a bit of it. It's very comprehensive, with tips and tricks on common things (like gravy) that people either get way too complex with in modern cookbooks, or leave out entirely, assuming you know how to do it. It's not just 1960s casseroles and what not (though the CorningWare blue cornflower dishes do make an appearance!); it has recipes for beurre blanc and gnocchi and more complex dishes, though very matter-of-factly detailed. It's pretty darn awesome. The photos are horrendous; it's amazing how far food photography has come. But the content, the recipes, are still extremely relevant -- it really drives home that all of the cool technique and what not that's admired today isn't really all that different from what it was 43 years ago. In fact, what struck me is that apparently, this all used to be fairly well-known stuff to home cooks; what changed is that people stopped knowing how to cook, so when all that stuff came back, it seemed like some amazing thing. Another interesting detail is that people used to eat a lot more offal than we do today -- there are recipes for preparing tongue, sweetbreads, hearts, etc. You'd be hard pressed to find that in a modern cookbook unless it was a cookbook specifically about offal. So that's definitely disappeared from the modern table (unless you're in the gourmet food world, where offal is prized). But what was scarce back then that's incredibly common today -- avocados! In fact, the cookbook refers to them as "avocado pears." I had to read through a few recipes to make sure that it was, in fact, just an avocado and not some special other fruit that used to be eaten. I giggled when I read that we should be careful if serving it, because they're "an acquired taste." So yeah, I love the cookbook because it's practical and useful, but also kind of like a history book!

Life is short. I've purchased a meat slicer and an indoor smoker. REAL HOMEMADE SMOKED BACON, HERE I COME.

Did anyone watch Extras with Ricky Gervais? I don't know why it took me so long. It's BRILLIANT! Everyone on the show makes an asshole of themselves, including the big celebrities who guest star. Kate Winslet is obsessed with winning an Oscar, Patrick Stewart just wants to see tits, Orlando Bloom is in love with his own looks, Chris Martin tackily promotes Coldplay everywhere. I'm so sad that there were only two seasons of the show.

Now that I'm caught up on The Walking Dead, I've finally started watching Caprica. Again, don't know what took me so long since I love BSG. It's so good! I've only seen three episodes, but I LOVE the origin story of the Cylons and Zoe Graystone. Now I'm sad it was canceled.

I also attempted to watch the first episode of Babylon 5, which is a show Jade loves. For the first five minutes of the pilot I kept waiting for the screen to zoom out and show the 'real' characters watching this silly sitcom-like show about space/aliens... and then I realized that it WAS the show. I don't know how/if I can go on. I mean, other than looking like a sitcom, it also does that thing that I hate about so many fantasy shows/novels -- it totally throws you into the deep end of the pool with regard to the alien 'verse and the politics like you're supposed to know what's going on. Maybe if I just have it on in the background while reading my 1968 cookbook, I'll eventually get into it. O.o