The Dangerous Existence of Madame Lee

This has been the Week from Hell, culminating in seven hours at work today. On the plus side: it's Presidents Day weekend, so I don't have to work Monday, meaning I actually have a two-day weekend!!!! omg, and tomorrow I dine wherever is reasonably priced in Bloomington.

("Tomorrow" is secret code for "Sunday", due to this weird mental quirk I have whereby if I haven't been to bed yet, it's still the same day, regardless of what time it is.)

Also, I got my labwork back from my doctor. My blood sugar is 93, so if you consider that the mid-90s are the start of the prediabetes danger zone, I am well and truly out of it. (For now.) Plus: no girlbits cancer! RESULT.

On Tuesday, I call Dr Gynecologist about Essure, and hopefully that will be the start of never having to worry about reproducing again.

I am tired and stressed and just really, really want a cigarette, but I know if I have one, it'll turn into two, which will turn into the rest of the pack, which will turn into my quitting when the overtime is over, which will mean I quit sometime in 2014 and I just don't know that I want to go down that road.

So: I went to Bloomington! Books were had! YAAAAAAY. (Some jerk has Giving Up the Gun in his or her carrel, meaning it will disappear into the ether and never be heard of again. Why can grad students recall books from everyone else but we're not allowed to recall them from grad students? Seriously, I've nothing against grad students other than JUST BEING JEALOUS, which I admit, but I want that book more than they do.) Some other jerk borrowed and lost Samurai. And somebody else, unbeknownst to me, decided that A Study of Samurai Income and Entrepreneurship should go to the auxiliary facility, which is not insurmountable because it can be ordered, but which still is annoying because had I KNOWN this I could order it. So no samurai for Lee this time out, sadly. (And her flist breathed a sigh of relief.)

It started to rain when I left the library (and it apparently had been raining for some time before I got there, because the grounds were a sea of mud), so I went to Turkuaz Café, which I'd been wanting to visit for some time. The ambience is ttly awesome, and perfect for a rainy Saturday when all you want is some tea and a nice hot meal. Also, I made the acquaintance of pide, which is a wonderful miracle of Turkish cuisine and, when stuffed with eggplant which has been flavored with garlic and paprika, is so delicious that it causes me to forget that I don't like eggplant. (Or maybe I do like eggplant and I just didn't realize it all this time. The mind boggles. All I know is, I've eaten a lot of stuff in the past year that I wouldn't have touched earlier.) I saved half of it and brought it home for the lolmom, who enjoyed it.

In conclusion: The weather was okay to drive in (not optimal, but I can handle regular rain; it's the freezing variety I don't enjoy), and I got to be home and get books, and it was The Best Day Ever. I hope your Saturday was, if not The Best Day Ever, a good day.

(pixelation: As soon as the fig bars come out of the oven, I'll put them on the treatcopter and send them over to you :D)

Mom was right. People around here like their booze way too sweet. Ugh.

I have many elderly LJ entries that I really need to get to posting, and I shall endeavor to do so in a reasoned and controlled fashion so that nobody's friends page is spammed. More than usual, I mean, because I can be one with the spam if I'm bored enough. Anyway, "highlights" (put loosely) of the weekend, more because I am amused by them than for any other reason. I've thoughtfully placed them under a ( lj-cut. )

Also, I got a job. It's just part-time at the House of Wal, so I figure it'll be some income and an opportunity to engage in some rabble-rousing in the best Red tradition hone my customer-service skills. Plus, they have now required the dowdiest outfit EVAR for all employees: khakis and a navy blue polo shirt. The khakis don't bug me 'cause I like them, but I have to pull a navy blue polo shirt out of my ass (I own very little in navy blue and no polo shirts whatsoever) at some point in the duration, because I can't keep wearing the lolmom's forever, especially since it has her company logo on it. A navy blue polo shirt that I will in all probability never wear again after I quit this job.

My ultimate plan is to get a full-time job in addition to the Wal-Minionage, because I need insurance, my bills aren't paying themselves, and my move to Bloomington isn't financing itself either, so once this happens, batten the hatches and prepare for a lot of me being tired and bitchy and cursing myself all the time. Oh hot damn I am going to be so fucked when Christmas rolls around D:

At least it's a job and I'm not out of work for six months like I was last time, as those of you who were around in 2005 may recall.

Also, ( we are experiencing some technical difficulties! )

H wrote, which I may or may not talk about, and I'm tired, so I'm going to bed. forgottensanity, I'll try to get to you sometime this week, but as ever I make no promises.

(Warning: May not actually contain excitement or adventure.)

( Long post is long. )

Also, a minor rant:

( My Fandom, Let Me Show You It )

Also also, ♥ for forgottensanity, because she didn't say I couldn't give her a heart. Callice has expressed a desire to be sent to Denmark, there to sit on Cat's lap and purr.

H wrote. I'd better get cracking.

I was on Epicurious, looking for something to make that I have not yet made, and they happen to have a St. Pat's feature. Okay, I was curious to see what food that entailed, since one doesn't really go out for Irish cuisine (...at least not in the Midwest), so I clicked on it. In fairness, it was an interesting read, though I maintain that soda bread should not be all pimped out to contain anything but flour, baking soda, sugar, buttermilk, and raisins.

And Google AdSense happened to have some ads up. Okay, no big deal. That happens sometimes. I've even clicked on a few, if they seem interesting enough.

( In which Google AdSense spectacularly falls down on the job. WARNING: It's gross. )

In totally unrelated news, it's MAAAARCH, yay, it's MAAAARCH, and I didn't go to Bloomington (I'll try to go next weekend) but I did order a pizza and tonight I think I'm going to see Be Kind, Rewind, largely so I can tell H how it is. (H gets the movies some months behind me, and apparently stupid comedy is not a popular genre in Japan.)

♥ j00 4ll.

So teh m0mmy and I went to Madison for Chautauqua Weekend Saturday yesterday. :D Mom hadn't been there since probably the mid-to-late '70s (two of my aunts went to Hanover, which is in Hanover, IN, just a few miles away). It's a pretty little town, and we like street fairs, so I twisted her arm into going with me. (We were going to go on the historic home walking tour, but that was a 5-and-a-half-hour commitment, which was really more than we wanted to make; plus Mom had to get home in order to sleep at a decent hour because it's Religious Ed season.)

I navigated, though I didn't drive (look, I drive around all day during the week, and driving on the weekends is not a treat). We stopped at Adrienne & Co. for lunch--I've become a regular over the past month or so, and the girl behind the counter was all, "OMG, you brought a visitor! Awesome!" Mom bought a loaf of day-old bread, and carbs were had by all.

Madison was gorgeous, if congested. Due to the drought earlier this year, the fall foliage really hasn't been what it should be, which is disappointing, but Madison has some great houses along the main drag and environs. (I don't even get into the whole home and garden thing, and looking at the little houses with their pretty gardens and wrought-iron gates made me jealous. Then we looked at a prospectus for one that happened to be up for sale, and realized it was way more than either of us will ever afford unless t3h n0v3l is some kind of big success.)

Mom had read in Midwest Traveler about a chocolate shop in downtown Madison, so of course we had to go; chocolate really leaves me cold for the most part, and the only chocolate-bearing dessert I absolutely can't pass up is tiramisu (and Napoleons), but the place smelled divine. I was impressed that Mom left without buying anything; I wasn't so strong-willed and wound up caving and buying fudge at the fudge shop.

A lot of artisanal types come and set up shop at the Chautauqua; we meandered in and out, and I'm impressed by the dedication that people have to their craft, but on the whole I'm not willing to spend a bazillion dollars on it, alas. (That, and I'm just not the kind of person who displays stuff, partially because I'm indifferent to interior decorating, and partially because I don't have a lot of tolerance for stuff that needs to be dusted.) Still, I got a little of my early Christmas shopping done, and I might have accidentally bought something for duokinneas, who no doubt will receive a conglomeration of items with a card saying HAPPY OCTOBER!!!! or something. Or she will as soon as I find a bigger box.

(I did look for seahorses, and Pond Scum Inc.'s booth had some really cute sea creatures and suchlike in bright colors, but their seahorses weren't cute enough. Or pink.)

I suspect that it is a measure of our priorities that Mom and I were totally willing to spend $23 for a handcrafted rolling pin and not $80 for a rug knitted from old socks. Those were some damn fine rolling pins, though. Mom pointed out that they didn't have the central rolling mechanism and would require elbow grease on the part of the cook, but we're pretty h4rdk0r3 about cooking anyway--I mean, for God's sake, as much as I'd like to make some of the kwik-and-e-z meals in Cooking Light every month, a lot of them require convenience foods that we just don't keep on hand.

We sat by the fountain, which is just beautiful--it's on a peripherally classical theme, and so old that it's now mostly verdigrised. I always want to climb into fountains and splash around, but I am informed that this causes people to stare. And then around 5 or 6, we headed back home after a stop in Corydon for something to eat.

Today was uneventful: did some laundry, read some Balzac, heard from X-chan. She had been worried about possible dire health issues, but the worries turned out to be unfounded, thankfully, and the pain that precipitated them is going away. Made corn muffins with green onions and cheese for dinner, also ham steak.

I'll mail t3h n0v3l out in a few minutes, to those whackjobs who wanted to read it. You people are all masochists, but I love you anyway.

Life is good. ♥

Five more days until Chautauqua Weekend. We're going to Madison. SQUEE!

Callice had her shots on Saturday, which she bravely dealt with by heroically hunkering in the back of the Kitty Taxi, averting her eyes, and going limp. She's a much easier patient than Lotus ever was. (Lotus had to be tranquilized to even get her near the Kitty Taxi.) I was forgiven for the indignities perpetrated upon her after about forty-five minutes elapsed.

Next weekend, the hunt for the Son of Bachelor Pad begins. I hope I can find a decent place that has everything I want and won't cost too much. The realization that I'm going to have to replace most of my furniture is pretty sobering; hopefully, I'll at least have something decent for H to crash on when he's here next year (or possibly in '09).

I was going to make corn muffins with cheese and green onions for dinner tonight, but I forgot that t3h m0mmy used all the sour cream making a coffee cake for the parents' meeting on Sunday morning. (The wheel in the sky keeps on turning, and so does the Confirmation-go-round.) Needless to say, I discovered this only AFTER I returned home from the store. Using the gifts of the Spirit or whatever one receives during Confirmation, m0mmy immediately felt bad, despite repeated entreaties not to.

It's pretty sad when one feels that the high point of one's day was lunch. I had a turkey sandwich with tomatoes and lettuce and chipotle mayo on tomato bread at Adrienne's in Jeffersonville, one of my favorite lunch spots, and it was tasty. :9

The second installment of t3h n0v3l omg will go out on Sunday to those masochists persons who have indicated a desire to read it. If you, too, long for the sweet relief that rapidly sporking your eyes out at top speed will bring--IT'S NOT TOO LATE! Just leave a comment, and you too will receive some eye-charring crap in your e-mailbox on an infrequent basis. :D

I apologize for the subject line. I just really needed to scream.

The week is finally 0V4R and I have a headache and my legs ache from sitting in the goddamn car pretty much all day, and I'm going to compound this by going to dinner with Joy. If she makes me pick (even though I picked last time), I'm going to pick someplace with a liquor license. And I have to get up early tomorrow to get the proverbial feet worked on, and I sort of really just want to work on t3h n0v3l. Except I haven't seen Joy in a while, and I need to schlep the produce into the house before it goes bad; it's been riding around in my car all day too. (Don't ask, unless you really want a dissertation on southern Indiana geography.)

Other plans for the weekend involve "seeing The Last Legion" and possibly "seeing The Last Legion and complaining about it here" if it turns out to ping the Bad-History-O-Meter. Also I want to finally finish the disappointment that has been The Dream Thief by Shana Abé. (I read The Smoke Thief last summer, and was also disappointed in it. See under "Really Cool Premise Ruined by Crummy Romance". However, my covenant with reading way the fuck too much requires that I finish it, or I am a moral failure. Plus, if I finish it, I can mock the ending.) And then I want to read a bunch of other stuff.

My point here is that, as of right this very instant, it is the freakin' weekend and I'm gonna go have me some fun. Back later.

This post is pre-recorded for your convenience, and has been cobbled together from Friday and also from stuff that happened today. Thus, it is the Post That Ate Suburbia and contains all kinds of boring minutiae about my boring life.

( Like, for instance, this. )

East0r r00lz. :D We watched the tail end of The Ten Commandments last night (of course it wasn't shown today or anything). Mom observed that Charlton Heston had a great voice for Biblical words such as "iniquity" and "smite" and all that, which is fair enough when you see him as Moses; she said, "He could be a lector!" To which I said that if Chuck Heston was a lector, I would totally come to church (albeit for all the wrong reasons).

Dinner was ham and potato loaf and green beans--nothing that took too long to make, but tasty all the same. Oh, and we actually found strawberries (not yet in season, alas), so we had shortcake for dessert. Huzzah!

I suspect I may be coming down with something; I feel that vague kind of offness that suggests something is coming, but I'm not outright sick. Still, my throat is raspy for no real reason, and I've been sneezing all day today. If this is allergies, it's almost a good sign; the pollen means the weather is getting warmer, which would be great.

Bed now.