Category Archives: Food

Is it Tuesday yet?

This has been a frustrating day.

It began when the power went out around midnight last night. Well, it didn’t go off, exactly; it fluctuated in various stages of brownout, setting all the sensitive electric sensors for emergency lights and alarms in the building off at irregular intervals.

By this morning, neither HRH or I had had really decent sleep, and the apartment was stone-cold once again. At various times through the night we had each arisen to unplug power bars and sensitive electronic devices in an effort to protect ourselves from frying expensive stuff. Of course the digital alarm clock wasn’t functioning, due to the lack of continuous power, so we sort of awoke later than we normally do. HRH had begun developing a nasty cold last night, and he was in no shape to squire our goddaugher off to daycare this morning, so I went instead. Of course, the single battery-powered clock we had in the house was half an hour fast, so I discovered on the way to pick her up that I had thirty minutes to kill. I did, with a doughnut and hot chocolate.

After dropping her and her dad off at various places, and having checked the prices on small filing cabinets, I returned home and discovered that the power had still not come back up to any level of useful application. Trusting my intuition, I booted up my laptop on battery power and found an urgent edit sitting in my inbox. This, paired with the book reviews due today, meant that I had to cancel my lunch date with MLG.

The edit’s done, and the book reviews are almost there too; I’ve done longhand work and now that the power is finally back on, I’ve been transferring them to the desktop computer. I took a break earlier to go pick up that parcel which I missed on Friday, only to discover that it hadn’t reached the post office yet.

Yes, it’s been frustrating.

On top of it all, my Owldaughter domain seems to have fallen between the cracks in accounting with my old web host. Skippy came over Friday night and we set up a new hosting space, but my domain still seems to be in limbo – technically still held by my old host, but not paid for (long story, which involves hosting as a gift from someone else whose payment info expired, requiring the substitution of my own info to renew service). I’ve been having problems extracting any sort of useful information from the support team for the last three months, in an attempt to avoid a snarl-up somewhat like this. My efforts have been in vain. (And yes, the lack of return communication was the key reason I chose to take my business elsewhere.) So this has resulted in more frustration.

Now, however, the sun has reached an angle to shine in through the back window, which means that spring is nearly here. I managed to finally get through to my doctor’s office, and as a result I not only have a renewal of my medication, but I also have an appointment to discuss these headaches and worrisome sensitivity to light with her next week.

Perhaps Monday has seemed worse than it actually is simply because it came right after a fantastic Sunday. The class I taught on Norse and Druidic methods of magic was great; the healing ritual I participated in was phenomenal; and on top of it all, I got to game last night too.

Today is just such a… Monday. You know?

Fnyeah. Perhaps Ginger‘s right; we should just declare all of February a holiday.

Ash

Happy Ash Day!

Yes, today marks the first day of the Celtic tree month of Ash.

“It feels more like my birthday today than it did on Monday,” HRH said when he woke me up this morning. “I’m in a great mood.”

That likely has more to do with the thought of cider and Brie than Ash Day, but it tickles him nonetheless.

Concerts, Colds, Camembert

When it it get to be two in the afternoon? Ten to two, to be perfectly specific?

I woke up at six this morning and decided that it was evidently fate. So I got up, appreciated the nice warm sun pouring in the front window for a few minutes, and began editing/writing this damn chapter right away. I think I’m finished. I want to walk away from it for a while, then go back and read it objectively as possible, to see if I can tell what I wrote from what the original author wrote. (I tried to imitate their style of writing. No point in showing them up, right?)

So I’m now going to go huddle under the afghan and a pile of cats with more hot herbal tea. I’ve been drinking bouillon and elderflower tea since I woke up, fighting this dratted cold. I’ve had the shivers even though I turned all the heaters on as high as they’ll go, have two sweaters on, socks and slippers, with the space heater pointed right at me. I did acknowledge before I fell asleep last night that playing the cello whilst in the throes of Early Cold is easier than singing, which I’ve done before as well. It’s less stressful on the throat.

Thanks to everyone for your support regarding yesterday’s concert. Ceri even gave me a generic-string-instrument-shaped box of delicious Mozartkugeln marzipan and hazelnut chocolates as a congratulatory gift, with apologies for not being able to find a Beethoven-themed one. (t! and Paze suggested drawing a scowl and messy hair on the picture of Mozart to make it more Beethoven-y.) Gifts always surprise me. I don’t mean to sound like HRH, but really, people coming to enjoy my concerts are more than enough of a gift for me. I didn’t even get to see my in-laws; I thought they’d rushed off because I’d been grumpy after last week’s concert, but HRH assured me that they just didn’t want to be in the way. Over three hundred people were at this concert; that’s a lot of folks milling about afterwards, so I can understand.

I had a terrific time with my parents afterwards as well. They took us back to their hotel room where they had a bottle of both red wine and white wine, Camembert, mushroom pate, and crackers. (My parents always travel in style.) Then we went out to an Italian restaurant that my family’s been going to as long as I can remember. It’s grown from a tiny one-room little house to a huge multi-room establishment, and they’re in the process of expanding yet again. The house wine, which I remember being nice, just wasn’t as good as my dad’s pinot noir. Apparently my taste is ruined now, and I’ve been hopelessly spoiled.

The new strings on the cello performed wonderfully. One always forgets how good new strings sound: fresh, rich, and mellow. I think it was one of the reasons I enjoyed playing the symphony so much in performance (apart from the fact that a live audience always boosts the quality); the sound issuing from the instrument was so much better than the dull sounds I’d been making up to that point.

Right. Hot tisane and cats, ho.

*sniff*

It hasn’t been an easy week. Today’s “I-can’t-believe-this” moments included the discovery that the author of this MS left out about fifteen pages of text and rituals here and there — just never wrote them. Guess who picks up the slack?

The good news is that they extended my deadline to Tuesday (because Monday is President’s Day!), and thank goodness, because I had no idea I’d have to get this creative. Someone’s evidently looking out for me on this project, because I have all Monday to do it now. All the impressive work I’ve been pulling off has garnered me a nice break. (Look — karma in action!)

Anyways, HRH just came home and handed me a Kim Possible valentine and a box of hand-made chocolates with a big grin. “You didn’t have to do that,” I said, melting completely. (First over the Kim Possible Valentine – you have no idea how much of a kick I got out of it — and then the chocolate.) “I know,” said HRH. “But you’ve had a hard week.” He knows how disgusted I feel about artificial celebrations like Valentine’s Day, which are pushed by commercial operators and socialise people to think that being part of a relationship is the Right Thing and expected of everyone. Spending money doesn’t make you any more special to someone. Sure, it’s nice to be spoiled sometimes, but I’d prefer to be spoiled on an occasion of HRH’s choosing. Although the laugh’s on me this year – apparently it’s fun to give me stuff when I don’t expect it, and since I don’t expect anything on Valentine’s Day, well…

In fact, I got two Valentines today. The first was from my goddaughter, which was simply adorable. I have both of them pinned up on my bulletin board.

Dress rehearsal for the Beethoven tonight. Let’s hope all goes well.

Fragile But Functional

After a migraine which removed me from the end of our weekly afternoon writing jam, and prevented me from the much-anticipated Changeling game last evening, I feel bruised all over this morning. Migraines creep up on me; they masquerade as regular headaches until about four hours later I realise that the multiples of Advil I’ve taken have done absolutely no good, sound is bothering me, and light is hurting my eyes. At that point there’s nothing to do but curl up in a dark, dark, quiet room and sleep it off.

Ceri, your pizza was fabulous, and just what I needed when I woke up from a nightmare of being attacked and unable to breathe or swallow. It seems that I fell asleep on my stomach and turned my face into the pillow at some point.

I had a warm bath with lavendar oil after I ate, and that helped a bit too. (That and drinking over a liter of water; but I digress.) Cricket ended up walking around the edge of the tub when I got out. She made one careful tour, and I complimented her on her elegance and dexterity and told her to get down. Naturally, being a cat, she ignored me, and started round again. Three-quarters of the way through, she slipped and fell into the four inches of water left in the draining tub. Being quick of mind, I slammed the bathroom door shut and grabbed her with a towel. I started to dry her, but she was a squirmit and insisted on being let down. I set her on the bathmat where she calmly licked all the wet parts I hadn’t dried off. She wasn’t freaked out, which makes sense; Cricket’s the one who flips the drinking dish to play in the water on the kitchen floor. She was probably more annoyed at breaking her tub-walking record than anything else.

So I’m fragile but functional this morning, which is a good thing because I only got thirty pages into the set of chapters I have to have edited by this afternoon, and there’s still ninety-six pages to go. I don’t know what it is with this author — it almost seems as if this is an old draft, because I know we’ve fixed some of this stuff before…

Foiled!

The high-speed package arrived. Yay! said I.

There were a couple of issues. Namely, the fact that all the manuals were in French, and that even though the salesguy had been told that we already had Sympatico service and wished to keep our e-mail address, we were assigned a new address, and a new user ID. I know how bureaucracy works. We’re likely to lose our current e-mail for a time, if not forever, while they sort things out.

Despite all this, I tried to install it this morning.

The operative word being “tried”, of course.

I wasn’t home when the salesperson originally came to our door. My husband therefore handled the transaction, with the best of intentions. The salesguy took a look at the back of our computer and checked off certain things on the contract, like the fact that we have a USB port.

“We don’t have a USB port,” I said when my husband told me this.

“Sure we do!” HRH said. “The salesguy checked!”

Yeah, well, guess what. The installation software ran a diagnostic on the computer and told me that I couldn’t install my new high speed kit because of two reasons: my hard drive wasn’t big enough, and I had no USB port.

The software doesn’t allow you to choose what hard drive to direct it to. My C drive was partitioned when Skippy constructed my machine, so of course it says it’s smaller than it actually is. I use my new second hard drive for programs now.

So: Sympatico gets called tomorrow. The high speed thing gets cancelled, and I’ll return this useless kit. When I’m ready, I’ll call and upgrade my service myself. I have been promised a new/old computer by the end of February (thank you, Ceri and Scott!); I’ll try again then.

My technical frustration has been assuaged by the production of an entire short story (which means I can take one of my story assignment postcards off my bulletin board), and eleven hundred words of a second new story. And a new version of the anthology proposal. And a glass of champagne celebrating t!‘s 100,000th word of Baker’s 12.

Plus t! said that the whole idea of being a gutsy author was nonsensical, since he had solid support from fellow writing-type friends which filled him with confidence.

Still, I’m vaguely frustrated, for some reason. There’s a warm bath in my future.