It Started with a Journal

Should we be picking out china patterns or what?

2010-09-16T22:13:34Z

OK all you people who live in Seattle and enjoy food: Restaurant Week is back again! Oct. 17-28 (minus Fri. & Sat.). WHO'S WITH ME?? $25, 3-course meal, awesome restaurants! You know you want to go! I am keeping that entire week+ open so I can go to as many as possible. <g> So let me know if you're interested and we shall plan to go. There are a few restaurants I want to hit for sure -- Dahlia Lounge, Mistral Kitchen, Spring Hill -- but am also open to anything.

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Speaking of food, I've actually been cooking quite a bit, and have just posted a big roundup about it here.

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Dealing with some work insanity the past couple of days. Sigh. And I so tried to avoid having this happen. I wish my work didn't so often consist of making sure other people do their jobs. You're not in control of your own destiny when that's the case, and there's a lot of sitting around worrying about how other things are going so that your bigger picture can fall into place. The good news is that everything went well, despite Murphy's Law coming into play.

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Did someone recommend Patricia Gaffney's To Have and To Hold to me? Was it maybe when I was talking about Laura Kinsale's Seize the Fire and that novel's bastard of an anti-hero? I ask because it was apparently in my library queue so I picked it up yesterday. But what I found odd was that it was an "inter-library loan" (meaning not one of the 16ish libraries in the Sno-Isle library system that basically share a catalogue) -- it's from Harvard-Westlake School in California. O.o How random is that? For that reason it cannot be renewed, so I pretty much have to read it right away (there is a serious back up in my reading queue).

The problem is that there's another one I also have to read right away -- I just got Tongues of Serpents! I think there's a big waiting list for it right now, so I probably won't be able to renew and if I wanted it again would have to wait in the queue all over. It always takes me a page or two to get back into reading a Temeraire novel, because of the language. But it's cool because once I'm back in it, it reads like any other book.

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I finally caved and bought the BSG series on Blu-Ray. There's conflicting reports on exactly what's included (The Plan y/n?), so I'll have to see when it gets here if it's missing anything.

Finally on S6 of XF. I know a lot of people didn't like that season... but I don't know why. It's hands down my favorite season. Almost every episode is totally rewatchable (unlike the second half of S5, after Bad Blood). I guess I like the lighter fare, though I will admit that the lighter fare wouldn't be as good if all the dark stuff hadn't happened to them before that. Still, just last night I saw Triangle, the two Dreamlands, and How the Ghosts Stole Christmas, and I'm only on disc 2! I LOVE YOU SEASON 6, I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYONE ELSE SAYS.

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And the VERY LAST TV Show Meme!! I started this way back in June. Wow. O.o I took my sweet time with it, didn't I?

Day 30 - Saddest character death

Since this is potentially spoilery, ( my answer behind a cut. )

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Have you ever eaten a burger cooked in an airstream trailer? I have!

2009-09-13T05:30:52Z

Today I went to the Seattle Tilth Festival. Because it was an usually warm September day, people came out in droves. My cousin said that it was usually a pretty empty festival, but today it was packed. You could tell the vendors were totally unprepared for the crowds because everyone kept running out of everything super early.

I didn't do anything but walk around in the sun, but it was exhausting. I'm glad summer's not over, but it doesn't need to be in the 80s. Mid-to-upper 70s will do. I also ate a huge hamburger. In reality it probably wasn't that huge, but I had already eaten other things by then and I couldn't finish. It's too bad, too, because it was a great burger. I got it from Skillet, which is a traveling restaurant. It's an airstream trailer that travels around and you have to go to their site to see where they're going to be next. They're famous for their burgers (using seasonal/locally sourced ingredients) and their bacon jam (tasted like pulled pork to me). I took pictures: here is the airstream trailer w/ people waiting to place their order, and here was today's lunch menu, which is written on the side of the trailer.

I bought a big bag of Bartlett pears, a pint of sun gold tomatoes (they were SO juicy and sweet it was like eating candy. Almost), and most excitingly of all, German Butterball potatoes! Why is this exciting, I pretend you ask? Because those are supposedly the best kind of potatoes to make mashed potatoes from, according to the Zuni Cafe Cookbook. But I've never been able to find them, so I always end up using Yukon Gold (which are good too). Now I have to make those buttermilk mashed potatoes again with these potatoes, to see if there's actually a difference. :D

And now, time for a meme, gacked from jade_okelani.

Pick five of your favorite shows, in no particular order, before you read the below questions, then answer them!

My shows:

1. Alias
2. House
3. Lost
4. Angel
5. Sex and the City

They were almost all one-worders until I got to S&tC, but I couldn't bring myself to exclude it.

( Now we play 20 questions. )

Edit: And since I'm bored, here's another meme, gacked from ceilidh.

( All about my journal personalization. )

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ice cream, buffy s8, and more hp pondering

2009-08-11T05:44:13Z

Ugh. I hate it when I do this. I manage all my bills online, as I imagine many do, and I pay off my credit cards every month. I am not a religious person, but if I were, it would be the religion of paying off my debt every month on time. However, every once in a blue moon some weird thing happens, the planets are aligned in discord, and the payment doesn't get made. And then an astronomical late fee is charged, and my brain just won't let it go. I keep thinking things like, I could have paid for a really nice meal with that! Or, I could have bought this, or this, or this! And instead it's just going to make the credit card company richer! Arrrrghhh. It's on my list of top 5 pet peeves, I'll tell you that.

So I'm trying out GoogleVoice, and I'm digging it so far. It's sort of like having my own personal secretary. One who's kind of bad at transcribing (jade_okelani tried to leave me a voicemail, and the written transcript I got of it was rather garbled), but hey, I'm not paying him anything, so I guess I'll live with it. The best thing though is getting free texts, in that I can SMS someone from the account and it won't count toward my cell phone text plan.

Got my ice cream maker and made ice cream for the first time the other day. Yes, as I predicted, the heat wave is long gone, it's been in the upper 60s lately, and right now it's pouring rain. Perfect ice cream weather. Not. Luckily ice cream is pretty yummy whenever you make it. Posted allll about the experience at my food blog, here. With pictures! ropo mentioned once that she saw a recipe for Pinkberry-style frozen yogurt, did you ever find that again?

Okay, I have another HP text gripe that I'm hoping you guys can help me with. From what I've read/understand, Voldemort decided that Harry was who the prophecy was talking about, and thus went to take him out. Right? Right. My problem with this is ... if you were Lord Voldemort, and there was a prophecy saying some boy was gonna take you out, and there were two possibilities of who exactly that boy is, aren't you going to, I don't know, plan to take them BOTH out? I mean, it's not like he knew he'd only have one shot, that AK would backfire on him, yadda yadda. His plans so should have been, OK, Imma take out this Potter tyke first, then head on over to the Longbottoms and AK me some Neville too. And yet we're in his thoughts (I think in HBP?), and we hear Dumbledore talk about it later with Harry, and not once do either of them mention any possibility that Neville was ever in any danger, because Voldemort had got a bee in his bonnet that the prophecy had to mean Harry. That was sort of Dumbledore's whole point, that that's why it was so kismet or whatever, that Voldemort chose his own fate by choosing Harry, etc. When in fact, isn't it more believable that it's just that he chose to kill Harry first? Is it really realistic to have us believe that had he succeeded in that mission, he would have gone happily on his way and left Neville alone? Or that he hadn't planned to kill them both from the get go? That just makes no sense to me.

In other fandomy news, I'm reading the Buffy "Official" Season 8 comics, and I'm digging them so far, even though it is like, so out of whack, some of it. I'm enjoying myself so much that I've ordered the Angel: After the Fall volumes, and have just finished reading Spike: After the Fall. It was really, really good. Very good Spike voice. And Spike/Illyria? So digging that.

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