I'm the chaperone teacher from hell.

grrm has been selling lesser-known books of his off his overstuffed bookshelves, and since I CANNOT RESIST such things I've been buying them to put into my own overflowing bookshelves. However, he signs each book and I enjoy reading his little inscriptions. :D Plus it doesn't appear that I will ever get to meet him in person to get my silver first of A Game of Thrones signed. Sigh.

I'm still not much in a reading mood, but I finally finished Lisa See's Peony in Love. That one took me months and months. Right now I've started the first Dresden Files book, Fevre Dream by GRRM (one of the books from see above), and The Grand Tour, sequel to Sorcery & Cecelia.

My mom is staying with me right now, which is wonderful because she's made such an amazing recovery. But on the other hand, she is DRIVING ME UP THE WALL. I thought that given everything that's happened, I'd somehow turn into a saint and have endless amounts of patience for her. I don't. Somehow, my mom is able to push my buttons like no one else, and she still does it. This has always been our dynamic and I guess it always will be.

Restaurant Week is over at last. This is the most I have ever participated in a single RW -- I believe I went to 12 places -- and it was too much, especially because half the dinners weren't all that great. Next time I'm going to restrict it to only 2-3 dinners, with no restriction on lunch, because RW lunch is always worthwhile. ( The final RW outings. )

Then today we went to Bellevue to eat at Boiling Point, which is a Taiwanese hot pot place that specializes in stinky (fermented) tofu. If you're not Chinese or totally immersed in Chinese culture, you won't like it. In fact, it'll be completely heinous. But my mom and I love it, LOL. Then I actually made dinner tonight! I made Jamie Oliver's vegetable lasagne. I so could not do it in 30 minutes, but then I made a different version than he did so it's not really a good test. It was really, really good but my version was too soupy; we had to use bread to mop up the sauce. To go with it I made a simple salad of butter lettuce and radicchio, with olive oil and lemon juice dressing. For some bizarre reason I had it in my head to make another dressing -- a sesame vinaigrette -- that I ended up having to save in the fridge.

jade_okelani and I have started Vampire Diaries S3! ( Spoilers for 3x01 'The Birthday.' )