Last night, I was craving artichokes and mashed potatoes (not combined, as my parents/sister are fond of making--I find the artichoke leaves leave a nasty texture in my mashed potatoes). Katherine had never seen anyone cook whole artichokes before. Or, apparently, had ever seen me make mashed potatoes before. As I was adding things and mashing, she said "did you just put butter, sour cream and milk in there?" Me, "Well, yeah. And salt." Katherine: "Wow. That's like dairy, bairly held together with potatoes."

I make awesome mashed pototatoes. The artichokes could have been better, but I wanted them enough to be willing to buy them from the scetchy Giant behind my office when I was buying fabric softener. And while I could have scoured Trader Joe's for decent artichokes, Trader Joe's rarely has good produce, and doesn't sell Downy. And I didn't feel like travelling terribly far to buy either, so I got the best of the mediocre artichokes they were selling at Giant.

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I walked into the house today to the Matthew Passion blasting. I don't think I've listened to it really since sophomore year. I'd forgotten how lovely it is.

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Maybe I could get a nerf soccer ball, cut it in half, and block my hat over that.

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I love oranges. I forget, sometimes, how much I love oranges, and then I have a naval orange (I hate dealing with seeds) that is sweet and juicy (but also firm) and perfect.

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I was going to blog about how relieved I was to have finished the book I was reading (why didn't I just stop? It wasn't like I had any inclination to think that the author would get over "how clever he is" or clothe the heroine) and have started Strong Poison, but I am all shocked by the new blog adding page, and I'm just sitting here staring at it thinking I would probably have known about this if I blogged more often.

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Why I dislike the book I'm in the middle of:

1) Let's say, somewhere about senior year at St. John's you and your friends suddenly discovered that you had magical powers and that there were people trying to kill you. (Or that you were Titans and the Olympians were trying to kill you.) While you run away trying to avoid both your own death and the destruction of the world, all you really seem able to do is talk. In that really annoying way that we all did when we didn't understand what was going on with something like Kant or Einstein or Hegel (I found the Talk more noticeably annoying after we had left behind the Greeks). Okay, so, maybe the conversational style is remotely realistic, because you probably would talk like that. Doesn't make it not annoying.

2) It's gone all sort of dirty old many, with the girls running naked/in their underwear/kissing guys at random. It's dirty like Xanth. And pointless.

But I will keep on reading, because the books I don't have the books that I actually want to be reading right now. _

After yesterday's happy story about dolphins, I find Athis story about ants particularly amusing. _

My nails are just cracking and falling to bits. _

Dolphins rock. _

Katherine came out of her room this morning with a "I thought I was awake, but then I thought I was hearing Tracy and Tori discussing sports and steak." "Oh," said we, "We were. We were discussing how long we thought it would take Obama and Clinton to start going on about how much they love cheesesteaks and the Steelers." "And then," I went on, "I got all offended in the way that you only can if you are vaguely from Philadelphia, and the Eagles are being ignored." _

I gave Brianne the Kings Quest collection for Christmas, to go with her brand spanking new Dell running Vista. She played through them in order, and I started playing through them backwards the other weekend. I remember being so incredibly stuck at various points in KQ7, it took me weeks and weeks to get through each step. It took me like half an hour to get through the first bit. And then it was cold, and I went back upstairs. _

((snorts)) Aeneas' second wife, Lavinia

Are we ignoring poor dead Creusa at Troy, or disregarding all the marriage symbolism in Carthage and making Dido a mistress, then? _

My DVD player has gone kaput. It could very well be argued that buying cheap refurbished DVD players off woot is a bad idea, particularly as this has happened to me twice now. I need a new one; I should let Brianne take hers back downstairs. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm not buying a Toshiba. _

I have just taken pictures of a lot of my yarn. (Not all. That would be rather an ambitious project, and it would also involve me owning up to the novelty yarn I like to forget that I own.) I have to stop buying lace yarn. I know some knitters who compulsively buy sock yarn, I buy lace. _

Given that I clearly have thing about kitchen gadgets, Katherine and I were discussing them the other day. She asked if there are any kitchen gadgets that I have a prejiduce against since I didn't grow up with them. After a pause, I said that crock-pots make me wary (I find the idea of leaving food unattended all day highly suspect). And then I remembered toasters. I despise toasters. We always had a toaster oven growing up, which is spectacular for breads of all thickness (and bagels), for making the best cinnamon toast in the world, for reheating pizza. Hell, in Philadelphia when our oven didn't work, I made bread and cupcakes in a toaster oven until our landlords gave us a new stove (they were awesome). Toasters are stupid. What kitchen appliance prejiduces do you have? _

Greedy horrid woman. _

I feel absurdly productive about getting stuff taken care of. I had this pair of wooden knitting needles snap in like January. I called Knitpicks, and they said "oh, we'll send those right out." Two weeks go by. I called back to a "uh...okay, NOW we'll send those right out." And, apparently, they did, but the postal system in Alexandria is crappy, and they never showed up. So I called last night, it had been more than their estimated time to make a delivery, and they are shipping them out again. All this headache for a pair of needles that I had gotten impatient about them replacing and I bought a pair of metal needles from Knit Happens, cause I wanted to finish my project already. On a matter that involved more money, the lab that my doctor sent my blood off to submitted my claim using the wrong insurance ID number. So I was supposedly going to owe something absurd like $500, cause I had "no coverage". I called the insurance company and they helped me figure it all out, but I had to get the lab to resubmit the claim. After a headache trying to get to the billing department at my doctor's, I called them, and they were totally awesome. I was half expecting to wind up having a fight with them, but they just took my name, and correct insurance number and said "oh, of course we'll resubmit, and you can disregard the bill we mailed to you yesterday." _

I have just put the absurdly decadant chocolate cake from Baking With Julia into the oven. I have made the cake several times in the past, but always at my mother's, and her food processor is much larger than mine, and can handle the batter. I felt very much like the girl in Julie and Julia and stood in the kitchen and screamed "why cut the butter into ten chunks? Why not eight? Or twelve?" And then we realized the whole concoction was cooling too quickly and stuck the butter in the microwave, thus thoroughly defeating Ms. Child's absurdly detailed instructions. _

I enjoy dying things. I like taking something, be it yarn or my hair, and turning it into a new color. It becomes something new. I have this yarn that I turned a spectacular shade of red using Fruit Punch KoolAid (Fruit Punch Kool Aid smells really nasty). And I just dyed my hair with henna, which smells even worse than Fruit Punch KoolAid. _

I bought butternut squash (all peeled and cut up) like a week ago thinking I would make the Barefoot Contessa's caramelized butternut squash. And maybe risotto. But I have yet to feel truly inspired to cook. I thought I would do it tonight, but I started craving Thai at lunch, and I really really want Thai. _