Long Day

Up with the 7:30 alarm, just wanted to be up for the events de jour. Once again Spot made it tricky to get out of bed.

Last night Spook jumped onto the bed for cheese, but on her second piece Spot attacked. I was not pleased. Spook hid under the linen rack, and they stayed there on either side of the door till I was asleep.

Finished The Fifth Season. It took until the final chapter to be sure Jemisen was pulling a Bridge on the River Kwai. When all the characters came together at the end, it was clear she did a ham-fisted job. And the final line of the book was just the punch line to a shaggy dog story. No spoilers, but it was as if the whole 400-page trudge was wasted on her personal fantasy theory to "explain" a mildly unsettled scientific theory. Kind of like ending a book about the life and struggles of Thor by saying he threw his hammer too far and that's how Orion's belt came to be. Kind of.

So now I am starting on Variable Star, which was co-authored by Spider Robinson and Robert Heinlein. At Worldcon Spider asked for a show of hands for who had read it, and mine was one of the few which did not go up. His interviewer tossed out the idea that most people who read it are wildly wrong about which author wrote which parts. So far it's pretty clear, Spider is a lot more flippant than Heinlein and some of the references are to post-Heinlein events.

It's an easy read, which was not true [for me] of the latter RAH books.

Photo shoot at noon, the model knocked my socks off. My favorite kind of body. Ballerina/Aerobics trainer. The first set was in a Daisy Duke outfit. Next set was nude. She looked better nude. Unfortunately the rest of the sets were in a black bra and a relatively tame thong. While she has a spectacular figure, her face is rather plain, so I didn't do many close-ups. The sets are all on Flickr, my handle there is how3ird. You have to be a Flickr friend to see them, I think.

5 pm coffee with Janice, I had time to stop off at Whole Foods, which had nothing on my shopping list, so for milk I went to the Walmart grocery by the Mercado. Milk was cheap, also got chicken livers (time to make another batch of chopped liver) and more nectarines.

Home, delivered were three Kaiser prescriptions, and a box of Kind bars.

On to MV and Janice.

Back home, watched the UW/Utah game, we won, but I hate that a huge part of that win was from bad calls - penalties/ejections for Utah. 

Also caught one episode of Cat From Hell. I need to get a disrupter or two for the coach. And maybe for the guest room futon. Not sure I really want to open up the guest room again, except the window sill is a great place for cats. Disrupters might keep Spook off the futon and out from under it. In related news, I pulled out all the pheromone dispensers, they were starting to melt (something I was aware of from Amazon reviews). They may have done their job, or maybe time has done its job. While I was watching, Spot walked up to the TV and watched cats. When people came on screen he walked away.

Cooked up two batches of 2 cups of rice, bagged and frozen now, but some was for dinner, under some cooked lamb found in the freezer. Nectarine for dessert (from a week ago Safeway tip) and 1 egg cream and 1 chocolate milk.

Processing the photos took a long time. For the model shoots, I run them through some macros I put together, crop them and then another batch routine puts my signature in the lower right corner.

Then uploading them to Flickr and setting the copyright level and hiding them from random searches.

Spot jumped onto my lap while I was watching football.


Plans for tomorrow:
Print out a recipe for chopped liver
Grocery Outlet for anything I need for the recipe
Maybe Ranch 99 for Asian fruit, Ha gow and good egg rolls
Write an article for an online zine about Weird Romance my favorite obscure musical.
Watch football

Disappointments galore. And some wins, too.

Took me a while to get my butt in gear, was up reading Variable Star until 3 am. It's mostly Spider Robinson, what I see of Heinlein is just brief passages. I have issues with Spider's priorities, and more issues with his sexism, which I am sure he would say is Being A Gentleman, but his writing style sucks me in. After his YA books, RAH was a chore to read.

My head bump has been bothering me all day.

Looked up chopped liver recipes. I don't know what happened to the big container of paprika I bought in bulk years ago, so that went on my list. HB eggs. Need more onions. The schmaltz on hand was probably not enough.

Ranch 99, they had chicken thighs with lots of skin. I bought about 15 lbs. Produce department had Ngaw, and it had lamyay in a new package - instead of bundled on the branch, they had pretty gold plastic net bags, with only the fruit inside, no wood. A vast improvement. Mongkhuts were too small, but it was nice they had them at all.  I have enough peaches, but almost gave in at $1.89/lb.

HaGow was only available in combo packs with dim sum I don't like, but I compromised and bought the rose shaped ones. Forgot to look for shrimp egg rolls. Ignored the roast duck/BBQ pork stand, and the fat bombs. I have too much food in the house already.

The only HB eggs they had were fancy Chinese ones, so I went next door to Nob Hill for those. Struck out on frozen matzo balls, but got a couple of sticks of halvah. And a container of beef gravy (small, plastic-coated paper, pouring spout). Spent a lot of time in their poorly laid out store not finding things.

Home, ate some lamyay and watched the 49ers try to give the game away. Yanked the skin off 8 chicken thighs, took an hour or so to render them in the cast iron skillet - poor choice, should have used a non-stick. That came out well, I plopped in some onions and shallots and fried those up for half an hour, nice & crispy.

Poured the schmaltz into a pyrex measuring cup, there wasn't much. switched to a non-stick skillet, dumped in two containers of livers, 3 minutes on a side, then repeat with two more. Made the mistake of following the recipe which said to keep the liquid. Chopped up 3 big onions, added paprika, tossed in 6 eggs, blended in the food processor in two batches. Way too much liquid, got liver soup. Freezing ought to help make it thicker on defrosting. Used all the new plastic containers. And most of the freezer space. All that work and it was not suitable for dinner. :-(

The chicken skin & fried onions are good but there isn't much.

I can salvage the mix by frying up more livers without the liquid, and re-blending. But not any time soon, I don't think.

So dinner was reheated pizza.

Took out the garbage, Spot escaped and ran out of sight. Spook seems nervous.

Dessert was a root beer float with chocolate ice cream.

Watched the Raiders give away their game.

Also watched one more episode of My Cat From Hell. There were clues about Spook's peeing on the sofa issue. Unfortunately, nothing I can do about it if the reason is cats outside the window. She doesn't pee outside the box hardly at all anymore.


Painting with light

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
whatever.