addendum

A Letter of Mary happens to be the one where she runs into peter wimsey. i'd been shown the section before by a roommate and when i happened across it, i said to myself, "wait a minute..."

it helps, occasionally, if you look things up. the book is also (c) 1996. i just happen to have obtained an apparently barely read hardback library copy.

>_<

current reading.

A Letter of Mary

by Laurie R. King

this is the...latest? well, fairly recent installment in her series that began with The Beekeeper's Apprentice. i didn't particularily enjoy that book, and i'm not really enjoying this one, but i am chez mes parents, and i need something to read, as all my books are packed away.

the books follow an ageing sherlock holmes and his much younger non-conan-doyle-canon wife. the author is self-conciously attempting to write about britain in the 1920s and 30s. the books are peppered with little "look at me, aren't i clever" comments about "the war" and "the earthquake in san francisco" and so on, until i want to scream. it just distracts from the story. and her character, Mary Russel Holmes, is anachronistically feminist, spending most of her time making snide comments about the ignorance and gullibility of men. which is fairly sad, because on its own, it's a fairly good mystery.

if you want to get a real feel of early 20th century england, or an authentic version of educated feminism, go get Dorothy L. Sayers. she actually was writing in the 20s and 30s, and was in one of the first groups of women to be admitted to Oxford University. instead of having to self-conciously and insecurely maintain her feminism, she managed it by pure dint of scholarship. reading Gaudy Night is like a breath of fresh air compared to ms. king's books (her mysteries are better too. IM(NS:)HO)

(side note: i believe the second book actually brings ms russel holmes in contact with dorothy sayers' detective, lord peter wimsey. it's cute, but to my ear, she gets both holmes (sherlock) and wimsey wrong).

(further side note: how do i justify dorothy sayers as a feminist when she has a male detective? well, there's also harriet vane, who is the focus of perhaps 1/3 of the wimsey books. although she doesn't come in until the 5th one, Strong Poison. i still recommend them most heartily).

moving

ugh. move (mostly) completed. i am now typing this from my parents' kitchen table. mmm...wireless ^_^

shockingly, we managed to actually fit all of our stuff into the storage container. just goes to show what you can accomplish with visual thinking. except for the bedframe, which we couldn't get apart because no one remembered to bring a toolkit. my kingdom for a 7/16ths socket wrench?

now we just have to go back and finish up little odds and ends...get the rest of our clothing, mostly. and paint the place. "it has to be white when you move out." *grumble*

the cat seems to be resigned to his new home. he's in a little glassed-in outside storage room-thingy (it's not quite a room...it's between the house proper and the garage). at least there's lots to look at and smell. we forgot his bed last night too, so that will have to come up as well. all the comforts of home for our kitty ^_^

i will go finish breakfast now. and then take a shower. and do laundry. and ...urgh.

cat!

get out of the damn box! i need to put stuff in there!

i feel so...so...

dot-commie, i think. i've got my desktop in front of me, and a laptop to the left with a nice, happy 802.11 card in it. the glowing red optical mouses only add to the effect. and the wireless router is talking to the wired one. communication! so much communication!

and of course, the cat's asleep, missing all the action. on the other hand, that means he's also not chewing on the (now disconnected) cables. such a hard life. sleep...eat...sleep...play...sleep...eat...sleep...geez. we should all be so lucky.

mid-week crisis.

we need boxes. does anyone have any boxes?

also, could you fix my phone here at work?

gmail is being weird. i hope it doesn't bleed over to blogger.

the autumnal equinox is occurring right now. wow.

more yay.

our mortgage has been approved. we lock rates tomorrow.

of course, the fed meets tomorrow. grumble.

happy birthday

my little brother turns 18 today. PH34R.

monday night, revisited.

so by this time, i'm probably sober enough to recount our dinner from monday night at Vetri, a craig-laban-four-bell restaurant, and called by some "the best italian food in philadelphia." now, this is not spaghetti-and-meatballs, red gravy sicialian famers' fare that most people associate with italian food. this was unusual, creative food from all over italy.

we went with my parents, and two friends, who were treating us. one of them was italian, and i will say right here that he was highly, highly impressed.

we decided on ordering the chef's 5-course tasting menu, which must be ordered by everyone at the table. the sommelier, informed by the chef as to what would be on the menu, guided our host to an unusual white wine, and then a red to complement the meatier dishes. they had made their transition to their autumn menu, so the dishes were perhaps richer and earthier than could be entirely enjoyed on an 80 degree evening in september, but the food was still certainly excellent.

we started off with an "amuse-bouche" of warm beet salad with a lemon vinaigrette and mini arugula. then came ripe olives in oil, and brick-oven-baked bread.

the first course was "foie gras fantasia," which was foie gras done 3 different ways: seared over brioche, as a soup with corn mousse, and as "pastrami", smoked and pepper encrusted over another brioche. yum. foie gras is an acquired taste, but it's definitely one i've acquired ^_^

the second course was one i should have bowed out of early on when the waiter asked if there was anything on the menu that we didn't particularily want to eat. it was peach slices and porcini mushrooms in a chicken-broth-and-cream reduction. i don't like mushrooms. i just don't. they're musty, even porcini. everything else was good, though.

the pasta course consisted of 3 different pastas and a saffron-licorice risotto. by this time we'd switched to the red, which better accompanied chestnut linguine with wild boar ragu, spinach gnocchi with shaved romano, and sweet cow's-milk ravioli with crunchy basil leaves. it was all very good.

(do keep in mind this was the "tasting" menu...for instance, there were 6 ravioli total, one for each of us).

the main course was roasted baby goat. now, i've had goat before, but that was in the caribbean, in a pumpkin stew. a chunk of roast goat over polenta tastes a lot different than cubes of goat stewed in broth, pumpkin, and spices. it had also been smoked slightly, to mask its gamey taste, but it was still...gamey. and fatty. i ate about 1/3 of it, because by that time i was very full and mildly drunk as well (my father finished my portion). probably if i had been sober, and had had it a la carte, instead of as a 4th course, i would have enjoyed it a lot more.

the last course was, of course, dessert. like the pasta course, this was a mixture of different things: peach panna cotta (mmm!), fallen chocolate polenta souffle', intriguing butternut squash gnocchi in maple and cinnamon cream, and peach-huckleberry "cobbler" (more like crisp) with "double cream gelato." the gelato was more like eating sweet butter. it was all amazing. then assorted petit fours.

wow. just...amazing. really. definitely great food, creative, great service...the sommelier was fantastic. we won't be able to afford to go back probably for another 10 years, but i'm glad i had the experience at least once :)

yay

kitty's eating again.

current reading.

Paladin of Souls

by Lois McMaster Bujold

sequel to The Curse of Chalion

i highly recommend both of them. i think i shall attempt to acquire them, in fact ^_^

friday.

guh. been a hectic week. packing is beginning in earnest. a storage container has been rented, and a lock must be obtained. the kitchen is slowly filling with boxes and crates and suitcases.

and i'm worried about the cat. we took him to the vet clinic for an ear infection. the vet forcibly cleaned out his ear, which i guess was good for him, but he threw up when he came home. i don't particularily want to have to take him back...i just hope it was because he ate something out of the trash, or licked medicine off his fur (it went all over the place when he shook his head).

my brother came down and hung out with us yesterday, which was cool. mom and dad say he's lonely now that he's the only kid left in the house. and i got my next book from the library. very excited to read it.

oh, and happy 5765. have a sweet year.

wine.

i was going to post something, but i can't remember anymore. apparently, i had a leeetle too much to drink last night. or didn't get enough sleep. one or the other.

bad foot day.

you know how people usually have bad hair days? i'm having a bad foot day. only a few hours after pulling a piece of glass out of it, it is assualted by a pair of mosquitoes. bah.

it was fun while it lasted

i went back to a right-handed cursor this morning. i'm not sure if it's me, or if it actually was the software, but the left-handed one tracked funny. either way, it just goes to prove that my brain has to work harder to do boring, inane things. depressing, wot?

headache. i shall now meander off to find something with which i can take drugs.

suburban cops

we got pulled over last night at 11:48pm by a cop who apparently had nothing else to do. got a warning card for having a taillight out. honestly, you see so many freaking people driving with taillights out, i didn't even know they could pull you over for it. oh, also we had run a stop sign. so they'd appreciate it if we, you know, stopped at the stop signs. it was kind of funny, actually. now we have 5 days to replace the taillight and take the car to a police station and have them check it. which is totally silly, because we need to get the car inspected anyway, and would have fixed it then. oh well. i guess there's little difference whether we do it now or in 2 weeks. except if you're a bored cop at midnight.

current reading.

The Professor and the Madman
A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

by Simon Winchester

who, me? a geek?

note to self

when making chicken fried rice, remember to thaw the chicken >_<

what was it someone called me once...oh yes. doof.

all's fair...?

this is...almost cute.
Singles look right or left for mate

although what's interesting to me is how i reacted to the descriptions of the dating sites. ActForLove's "Take Action. Get Action." seemed much funnier and attractive to me than Republican Singles' "images of the U.S. flag and the Statue of Liberty"...this makes me hope i'll never become a republican ;)

freak!

so i started using a left-handed mouse cursor at work yesterday. so far, it doesn't seem to be impairing my 1337 mousing ski11z (read: i'm still fucking up at about the same ratio in minesweeper). no one has commented on it, which i take to mean no one has decided to help themselves to my computer recently.

like that one guy. so, we're supposed to be working on the same project, right? and i'm doing something that he can't. and i come in to work one morning, and there he is trying to use my computer. and he gives me some kind of garbled explanation, which is basically a redux of what i told him the night before. and i really, really want to say, "you have no idea what you're doing, do you?" but i don't. i just mumble something about working on it and shove him out of my office. grr.

deep breath. he's in another sub-department now, so i (hopefully) will never have to work with him again. geez. a company of 15, and i talk about "sub-departments." probably because the whole company is basically one department: engineering. oh well. in the meantime, i'll still use my left mouse cursor and see what happens. i can't say that it's helping my headache right now, but it's not hurting either, so...

testing, testing...

this is only a test. it should not hurt.

zzz

i've been trying to think of something to post, but, like, the most exciting thing has been that we bought aster (the cat) a new carrier because he outgrew his old one. it's not a bad cat carrier, either. it has a door in the top so we can just drop him in. and it's big enough that he can lay down and sprawl out (as cats are wont to do), which is a good thing, because he'll probably spend several hours in there as we move all the crap out of the apartment.

comfort

took a long shower this morning. i've come to believe that the more time you spend pampering your skin, the better you'll feel in it. which will translate to a better body image.

well, it worked for me, at least ^_^

i mean, ok, shampoo, conditioner, moisturizing body soap, facial cream wash, cocoa-butter based saving lotion, and 2 separate lotions afterwards. mmm...comfortable.

er.

apparently i deleted a comment today. remind me not to click on little icons that make me think, "is that a trashcan or some kind of weird hat?" because, inevitably, it's a trashcan. and of course there's no "are you sure you want to do that?" dialogue. hmf.

>_<
apologies all round.

cat

my kitty got huge, btw. he's 12.5lbs. o.O

i just hope he's not going to mind having to move twice in six weeks. i mean, i know i'm going to mind it, and i at least can understand what's going on.

hurricane

i remain glued to updates on hurricane frances. i don't know why; i'm not even in florida.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

http://www.goes.noaa.gov/ECIR4.html