It Started with a Journal

This weekend, adelagia and I made kimchi! :D We are totes ready for when we're dating and/or married to Onew and Seo In-guk, respectively. LOL. (Links go to pics of said celebs, in case you're curious.)

Here's adelagia mixing up our batch. I had a HUGE tub, so there's more kimchi there than it might seem. More than six pounds worth!



I also made buchu (Asian chive) kimchi and dwaejigogi-bokkeum (spicy stir-fried pork), both of which were AMAZING. Soooooooo delicious. I only have a pic of the pork pre-cooking because I was too hungry to remember to take a picture of it after it was cooked. >< Also, I didn't have a pound's worth of pork belly, so subbed some shrimp instead. ALSO DELICIOUS. I think you could easily substitute with firm tofu for a more healthy version... which I may try in the near future. The buchu kimchi is a little too salty, which may or may not be because I didn't have enough chives... I halved the recipe, but I was using older chives, so I had to weed out a lot not-so-good ones. Anyway, I will probably use less fish sauce next time.



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One of my Christmas gifts to myself arrived today, and I'm soooooooooo happy. I love American Giant's stuff, especially their Essential Full-Zip Hoodie. I have several of the Classic, as well, but I like the lighter weight and softer feel of the Essential.

ANYWAY... Recently, they came out with a new product, a stadium blanket. I saw the email about it, but wasn't able to actually take a look until two hours later... and they were all sold out already! GRRRRR. A few days later, they said they'd made a limited quantity available again, and I was able to nab two in the only color that remained at that point, a heather navy. I would link it, but it looks like they're totally sold out now, and have even deleted those webpages. Sheesh. Like all their stuff, the blanket is really well made, heavy with quality material, and very warm. <333333

(I was going to link a promo code for 15% off, but it looks like it can only be sent through email. So let me know if you want it! And of course, I get something out of it as well, natch.)

I'm a big blanket person, kind of like Linus. Even when I'm not cold, I like having a blanket on me. It just feels so much cozier! Anyway, I have a lot of blankets.

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Watched another episode of Descendants of the Sun. I'm actually still OK with the show, despite the fact that, as expected, the two leads are already "broken up." It helps that I like the male lead, and the female lead isn't super annoying.

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I wasn't going to take any time off during the holidays -- other than the days off that everyone gets -- because it's a super quiet time anyway, and I was thinking I'd save my vacation days. Only... it turns out that I have so much vacation saved up (I can only carry over a year's worth, which for me at this point is 200 hours/5 weeks) that I would be forfeiting over 43 hours if I didn't take it! Which would be intolerable. So now I'm going to take Wed/Thu off, as well as all of next week. I still might be sacrificing a few hours, but that's better than 43. I don't work for free, yo.

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Speaking of work, we did a white elephant gift exchange... only I had my annual physical during that time so I couldn't actually participate. I contributed a set of R2D2/R2Q5 salt and pepper shakers and an R2D2 measuring cup set. (I may have little use for Star Wars, but I know other people love it, so that stuff makes for good anonymous gifts.) My manager played for me, and he had told me ahead of time what he'd gotten for the exchange (a cast-iron fondue set). Since they were going to allow "me" to go last, thus being able to nab whatever I wanted, I told him that that's what I wanted. I figured it was a safe bet -- I didn't know what random crap other people were going to bring, and I don't really trust my manager to know what I'd really want, so it seemed the most prudent course of action. I still need to get it from him, though.

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My December beauty boxes have arrived! I know, it's once a month but seems so much more frequent, doesn't it?

( What this month brought! )

Hmm. I was doing okay with the updates for a little while there, and then... that stopped. Sigh. Okay, so what have I been doing since my last real post? Lots of things!

1) Stressing about work. What else is new, right? Yeah, so that's happening.

2) Over winter break I played the Portal 2 co-op game with my brother, and it was so fun. So I finally played the original Portal and the single-player campaign of Portal 2 and had a blast. It is amazing how much longer the second game is. It's like 3 games in one. But really I love it because Wheatley is so funny. And because puzzle games are my favorite kind.

3) Caught up on a few TV shows: Dexter... The Mindy Project... New Girl. jade_okelani and I also just finished the first season of Nikita. We've been trying to watch Revenge but it's slow going; we want to like it more than we actually do. ( Spoilery comments on all the mentioned shows. )

4) Finally finished The Twelve. I am so looking forward to the final book in the trilogy, City of Mirrors. Also, Ridley Scott better hurry up with the film adaptation of this series. ( Spoilery talk. )

5) My new bed has finally been delivered! It's soooooooooooo woooooooonderfuuuuuuulllllllll, I LOVE MY NEW BED. I had them move my old bed into the guest room, and it's now there taking up basically the entire room, but my guests are going to have a great night's sleep, lol. I mean, that's basically what a guest room is for, anyway! The Salvation Army is coming this weekend to take away the bed that was in there previously. It's practically brand new.

6) Bought these awesome drinking glasses. A couple of years ago, I realized that I really like drinking out of thin glasses. I'd never really thought about it before one way or another, and then I was at dinner somewhere, and they had super thin glasses, and I was enjoying drinking out of my glass so much! There's something about drinking out of thin glass that is very satisfying; it's like the perfect mouthful every time. LOL, I don't know how to explain it. Those of you who've had the same epiphany, you understand. Or maybe I'm just a messy drinker and thin glasses make it enjoyably foolproof, I don't know. In any case, Riedel makes super thin glasses -- it almost feels like you could cut yourself on the edge (though of course, you can't) -- and I'm loving them. They look spectacular, too. Of course, they also feel pretty fragile, so they're probably not recommended for households with young children. (Aside: Riedel also makes specific glasses for water/juice, but I got those too and they're basically just shorter versions of the whiskey glasses, and I prefer the taller ones.)

7) Saw a play! J. and I stuffed ourselves with delicious Italian food, then went to the Green Lake Bathhouse theater and saw "The Understudy." Synopsis: A slick comedy where High Concept meets the down-and-dirty of the entertainment business when Jake, a grossly overpaid Action Movie star, decides to turn an undiscovered Franz Kafka play into Broadway hit. Things begin to implode when Harry, an embittered and idealistic understudy, arrives for rehearsal and discovers the stage manager is his ex-fiancée. I enjoyed it a surprising amount. I normally don't like plays very much -- there's always this stilted play language that from the first moment a character speaks, it's like, "Oh God, play-speak." It starts out like that, but quickly fades into one of the most enjoyable plays I've ever seen. J. and I agreed that the actor who played Jake was particularly good.