Plat du Jour.

It's been awhile since I've done this.

It's Thyme and Lemon Linguine with Mushrooms.

I spent a portion of last night trying to coach John through a recipe - it usually calls for Mushrooms and Parmesan Cheese in addition to the Thyme, Garlic, and Lemon-Juice he had, but I told him to chuck in an onion so it wasn't just plain pasta.

It would seem that it was good, but got progressively worse as he ate it.

He said my punishment was to make it at eat it. I was supposed to make it with the ingredients he had lying around, but I hoofed it to the store and made it "Right" per se...

I'm cheating to avoid eating last night's flavor-anomaly. Here's the recipe I crappily swapped around to accomodate what he had.

My apologies to your taste-buds, John.

Also, I found this white kerchief. I've taken to wearing it.
Very Cooking Mama.

Inadvertant Green Thumb.

About a year and a half ago - perhaps two years, even - I'd been on a bit of a gardening kick after roleplay chat had me sitting in Sunflower Fields on a regular bases. I'd hoofed it to Wal-Mart and paced around the Home and Gardening area. Amid my beloved but typical Gerberas and my filigree Nemesias, I saw these very unassuming and curiously-named flowers, Feverfew.

I picked them up, and worked very hard to till the soil, as below the topsoil in most parts of this state you meet clay. I carved this neat little cupcake-pan into the spot near this log and carefully lay them out. Later that night, it rained.
The next day, I ran out eager to see if they'd grown any only to see that the rain had pooled into the little clay spots and killed them at the roots.

Today, I walked into that far corner to paint the underside of the house. A few sprigs of Feverfew stood tall from beneath that log, having split through it's right corner. What an lovely and beautiful accident.

They smell like oranges.

I once told Hjalmar about having planted them, and that trait about them stuck out to both of us. Andy said he'd try growing them and succeeding where I failed...

Odd fact, they're used as fever-reducers and sleep-aids.

I'm tickled pink by the sheer coincidence of it all. I guess that was a regret of mine, having those plants die. What a lovely thing to find out they were simply incubating.

Food Waifu.

The glass is very small, and the savoiardi are rather large, but this is actually a Tiramisu Trifle.

Mascapone cream, over coffee-soaked ladyfingers, topped with a strawberry.


It's actually rather unflattering. I should have piped it in.

I'm also making White Chocolate and Cranberry oatmeal cookies. The secret ingredients are love and nutmeg.

Woes of the Barnacle.

On occasion, I don't mind confessing to be a bit of envious of L’Étranger's Meursault, and his utter mental isolation from others. On evenings like this, I am greeted by the Woes of the Barnacle.

While they are free-swimming in their youth, the mature barnacle doesn't move. It finds someplace it feels sturdy, and it anchors its entirely little barnacley existence there.

I don't know why I invest so much into the approval of others; it's a very unhealthy little addiction. My time and money is perpetually stretched thin. Last evening, while cropping sprays for Zoot Suit Riot himself, Konpaku goes, "Hmm. So you've fallen into that thinking again?"

I'd laughed it off, and told her I was having fun, but looking back, I was just looking for a headpat.

People come and go - they have free will like that, so I don't neccesarily know why I pick them to anchor all of that sort of thing into.

For all of my thinking, I really should re-read Anthem. That blazing individualism is fading with the months.

I need to speak with The Good Witch. She'd know what to do.

...No, maybe I'll meditate on it. That seems like the logical first step before consulting.

Work out, Meditate, Sleep.
I'll seek out advice later.

Writing this all out, I feel a little better already. I suppose it just seems very stupid of me, now, to have so much invested. The only problem is, I crave action and wonder how to cull the problem as a whole through the people I associate with it.

Truly, I think it is more of a personal issue. I need to solidify this independence in sort of creed or dogma. I keep straying and relapsing into the seeking of praise.

Meursault. Meursault. Meursault.

By the by, I've broken my SD Port. Pictures may be few and far-between.

Plat du Jour.

Ziti with Stewed Tomatoes.

I'll write more later, I'm tired.

Hula-Hooping Nuns and Abrupt Steamwhistles.

Jack Kevorkian died four days ago. What a guy. I don't know what to say. I'm saddened. My father loves pistachios, and I remember that the first thing Jack Kevorkian wanted after his sentence was a sandwich and some pistachios, so I always tell him about how Kevorkian wanted some after jail to back his statements of "They're good".

I like Jazz, and when I found that Kevorkian released a Jazz Album called, "A Very Still Life", I promptly sat back with the address he'd put on his ballot while running for office in Michigan, and wrote him a letter asking him if he liked Art Blakey or Dizzy Gillespie, and how A Night In Tunisia was pretty good stuff. I ended off asking him if he had a favorite. The postcard I sent him was of nuns hula-hooping, and I remember, as I was in high-school at the time, my TAG-Supervisor going, "If you know anything about Jack Kevorkian's personality, you know he's got a good sense of humor right? I think he'll appreciate that card in particular more than anyone you'd send it to."

It was one of those "What If" things. I didn't want to sit in bed and wonder if Jack Kevorkian would have written me back if I'd had the courage to write him, so I wound up doing it.
He never wrote me back, but I'd like to think he read it.

I hope Nirvana, or Heaven, or Jannah has pistachios and turkey sandwiches, Jack.
I know they have Dizzy Gillespie.

Awhile back, I'd found one of my old wallets checking for the pieces in a box of LIFE. I was short eighty bucks or so - it was presumably stolen by a girl staying with us who'd likely hidden it there. Inside of it was also a fortune-cookie's fortune, the number of someone who'd hated my guts, and a call-card.

It said: "Now is a good time to finish up old tasks - 2 3 24 28 31 43"

I took it to heart. I don't know why - it seemed pretty profound, so I called up Rigel and apologized for being young and stupid, and he did the same.

That day I prepped the house for a tour, worked out, and did everything else I'd had to do. I settled a lot of old grudges. I settled Liam's age-old concerns, and I hadn't even known they were there. I'd treated a few friends to gifts long overdue, and I punctuated it all with something I'd enjoyed immensely.

Ages ago, I did a post about Watashinokoko, and writing Yosu, and how it was easily one of the cooler moments in my rather tapioca life. Yosu is the sole member of digital-band Watashinokoko, and after talking to Rigel, he revealed he'd been quite a fan since meeting me.

Liam hates Yosu for the same reason Rigel had brought him up - he works dilligently and brilliantly, and then deletes all of his work when he wants to take it in a new direction. As such, I've worked rather hard over the past few years to dilligently save his work.

He asked me for it, and I uploaded everything Watashinokoko I'd had. Even short little replies from writing Yosu.

If you're interested, everything's still up. It's got all his albums, including a later-scrapped and impossible-to-find release of his titular album 'Watashinokoko', and some unreleased stuff that he'd uploaded to his Artist's Page, and then removed.

You can get it by clicking: Here

I apologize for the "Unreleased" folder, as while it features many rough-draft, brainstorming versions of his music, and a few unreleased tracks, it also features a few that weren't on an album at the time that I'd collected them and have since been released.

And, to my regret, I confess there are gaps. A few spots where the Media site I'd been stealing his music from had changed scripting, and I was unable to steal them. A few times I missed pictures he'd uploaded. Probably more than a couple videos I'd missed since he's created a Nico-Nico Douga page that I'd never checked.

But, it's..."Mostly Complete" if such a standard existed.

In the video for "Heart, Soul, and Memories", you'll find why the Watashinokoko section of this is called "Abrupt Steamwhistles". It's in the .RAR titled "Videos".

Unnerving Dream.

On my way to drop off my paycheck and pick up stamps, my mother relayed an unnerving dream I was the centerpiece to.

She said she'd had a dream where we'd been visiting an aunt, and we'd for some reason payed to have an apartment there.

I'd been enlisted as the pack-mule I usually volunteer to be, and was carting up a chest of drawers. My mother said she remembers distinctly that I'd put the bottom shelf in crooked, and that made it wobble when I carried it in.

There was a break of time in the dream, she said, and after moving everything in the Police had called her. They kept asking if she knew that I were involved in an incident, and she kept saying she didn't know what they were talking about. Eventually they told her to come pick me up.

She said she arrived there, and I seemed really distraught. She said I had kind of gone off on my own, as I have a tendency to do in real life, and that I'd met-up with an acquaintance online.

She said he was distinctly a homosexual, and we'd gone back to his apartment where he promptly killed himself in front of me.

She said "You really wanted to help him, and you were just crushed because it turned out the way it did."

I'm not certain how I am to feel about this. I'm most certain unnerved.
It hits a little close to home.

An Evening Spent with Sparrow and my Sister.

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Plat du "Every Damned Day".

For the past couple awhiles now, I've been living off these noodles. They've got lime leaves in them, and they taste very nice. They cost a startling thirty-six cents, too. I was walking around in the Hispanic Foods section, and even though they say "Product of Thailand - Diversity and Refinement" on the front, all the instructions are in Spanish. They're odd, and when given Healthy, Convenient, and Cheap you kind of have to check one box, as the good Witch puts it.

I've been following it with a glass of V8 to make up for the pretty-much-everything it lacks, and then following all that with one-hundred twenty-eight fluid ounces of water to hack down that sodium. By the by? That's three meals a day for one dollar and eight cents.

I've been having these frequent nightmares. The first one had something to do with a tailor's shop, and I don't remember much about it beyond someone being strangled. The second one was much more vivid and about a man being tortured in Yemen. He was thin and wearing only tan boxers and sandals, and couldn't speak English. These U.S. Soldiers were beating him against his bed, which he was trying to hide in. I don't recall what they were trying to get him do, but they eventually tried to mentally break him by showing him all these photos of dead and tortured people.
The first one was a video of a man fleeing naked, before promptly being lit aflame. They then showed him a picture of a man who's mouth was being held open by two gloved fingers to show that they'd drilled all of his teeth. The final one was a picture the inmate didn't understand, but as it was my dream, I knew what it was. It looked like a snail, but was actually a human head with the eyes pulled high out of the face like two red exclamation-points.
They stopped showing him these things, and one said "My friend has a shotgun. You will do whatever the fuck I say", but he didn't understand, he just knew he was being threatened.
It kind of panned out, and this woman was telling a crowd that these things tend to perpetuate themselves because Yemen is poor and the incidents go unreported. I woke up after she finished speaking, kind of terrified.

A friend said, "I think the guy's supposed to be you", and I said "It seems really stupid to picture myself as a victim of any sort". She had this perfectly deadpan reply of, "Your subconsciousness doesn't care."

I've been throwing a bit of a pity-party for myself, lately. I'm taking a bit of a break from Steam to enjoy myself. Everyone's been on this perpetual Terraria binge anyways. Usually, I get a little generous or something, trying to feel better. I can be this really awful White Knight figure sometimes, but it's usually a little self-serving, because I'm typically trying to build myself up off someone's gratitude.
Lately, people have been more than eager to accept help, or assistance, or gifts, but I'm not getting the gratitude I repair my social chips and cracks with.

It's a lot like performing very hard for an empty room.

As such, I think I'm going to take a bit to focus on me, and maybe a couple dear friends.

Give Sparrow a call.

Get the Judge a kinky gift.

Write Pyon a letter or something - I actually need to write a lot of letters to relatives, but I don't have stamps. I think the local Sam's has it, and I need the excercise regardless, so I'll probably hoof it and call it good as it's pretty far away.

I should write Steve, too. He's surprised me with a bottle of Vinegar that he didn't need to.

Gibby's actually leaving with some friends to catch up out-of-town, and I've been invited. Sounds like a nice opportunity to play Mini-Golf and eat something other than noodles, so I might bum it to Savannah or wherever they're headed.

We've listen the house in the Newspaper - the Realtor thing isn't working out, and trying to sell it alone wasn't getting too much done.

Got to pick up my transcripts to have a final application sent to Pace.

In closing, I've been on a bit of a Cake binge, lately.

You should give Frank Sinatra or Never There a listen - Humor me.

Also, sorry for the poor quality picture. Someone liberally used the Camera without charging it, and it promptly died after one photo.