Laughter Through Tears

For pasta, when tomato sauce isn't to be found, or you're just bored of it, and you need something quick and tasty, from ingredients usually on hand. 1 tbsp butter, salt, plus ground black pepper and a little lemon juice.

Salt, lemon and pepper are all things I'm definitely likely to have in the kitchen, pretty much always. I usually have a bag of pasta lying around, and some butter. Good for Saturdays like today, because I don't have to decide in advance what to cook. And I can make as much as suits, based on my appetite at the time.

Apparently that's what they call it when you're sick with some shit you can't do anything about except "fluids and rest". Ugh. I don't even want to go to a doctor because it's not of any use, except I probably have to because of sick leave. Bluh. I've only just gone to a doctor to pick up prescriptions on Tuesday. And I told myself, maybe I should ask her about the fatigue and the backache and all. But then I didn't.

Yesterday I had to go in because of some things that needed doing that no one else can do. Figures the only time I have actual work to do is when I can hardly get myself out of bed in the morning. I slept most of yesterday afternoon and slept until after ten this morning. I let my alarm go, because I thought I might wake up feeling better and go in, which would be simpler all in all. But instead I felt like crap? So I slept another four hours and then took a long hot shower.

And, uh, did a laundry or two and cleaned the kitchen counter. And now I'm cooking lunch/supper because I have food in the house that I'd meant to cook days if not weeks ago, but I've been awful instead. Even though I know having cooked food in the house makes my quality of life immeasurably higher. I even dropped in some fresh mushrooms, before they get limp like the carrots I had planned to cook with on, oh, Friday?

There was some other thing that I wanted to write before I went to check on my dinnerlunchmeal. Whatever. If it's important, it'll come to me later.

Apartment business I just about over and done with. At the end of the day, everything that needed to get done was done, with much help from certain quarters (and significantly less from others). I have a few loose ends to wrap, but I feel I can take a much deserved break into more low-key shore activity.

Which means now is as good a time as any to establish a good grocery shopping routine, and corresponding menu. Maybe I'll get myself on a decent meal schedule, finally.

I wrote a tiny bit just now, only to try to get myself feeling back on track. This week I was preoccupied with the open university, and family business, and baking bread. And getting sucked into a game update for hours on end. I did do well with the programming work, and it was satisfying.

What I really want is to fuse the fanfic mentality with the original fic mentality somehow, until they form a big oozing ball of creativity.

Today I seemed to have some sort of minor cold, or perhaps an early allergy attack. I was wiped out, so I cut myself a little more slack than usual and didn't even try to write. I think I might have had a bit of a fever.

I did get a call from a recruiter who might have a job offer for me.

Now I'm trying to figure out whether I should make myself a sandwich as a light supper or opt for something more substantial. If I'm ambitious I could make some brown rice.

1 small-medium potato, cubed small
1 small red-orange sweet pepper, cut into short strips
1 egg

Fry in olive oil on a hot flame, stirring constantly. Start with the potato, add in the pepper. When the potato cubes start to soften (poke with fork) make a hollow in the vegetable pile to scramble the egg in. Top with salt to taste.

If the question is, "Can you freeze a ripe mango, then defrost it a week or so later and eta it to your delight?" then the answer must surely be, "Yes, but only with a spoon, for it will have turned to gooey sweet mush."

So I hear some Hunger Games fans have gone all Blaise Zabini on the fandom's ass after watching the film.

How fucking depressing.

Anyway I totally want to watch the movie because it sounds fluffy and fun. I do have that damn neuro lab tomorrow, though, so I don't know if I'll have the energy to go out on Thursday night. Bluh. Tomorrow will be bad, I have ten straight hours of class with only one free period. Also I cooked food for the whole week but it's already almost run out, I have to do some cooking tonight or something. Which means I have to stop for groceries on the way back from the library.

And I will apparently need to buy the Cognitive Neuroscience book, because checking it out from the library every time I need it simply won't work.

So September was opened with a very long flight and closed with a quite severe asthma outbreak. In fact I would say the asthma situation defined this month more than Dragon*Con did, although I may feel differently, looking back, once I've gotten some beta agonists and such in my system. Health-wise I am doing quite poorly and I have only one month before classes start to get it fixed. Sunday morning I have to open the week by being assertive with several doctors to the point that, yes, this is an emergency. It is actually impossible for me to sleep more than 4-5 hours in a row, I get tired from standing for too long, and I am using quantities of salbutamol that are starting to make me nervous.

The new year, on the other hand, started very pleasantly indeed. On Wednesday I summoned the strength to make Challah from scratch out of the recipe book my brother bought me for my birthday. The recipe made three large challahs. They were delicious and comforting, and disappeared at a speed I hadn't counted on.

In book news, I finished Robin Hobb's Dragon Haven the first week I was sick, after tearing through it pretty ravenously. I found it much better than Dragon Keeper in just about every way, although I still have a number of philosophical disagreements to raise. The dragons themselves are very vexatious, but this book stresses more than the previous one that they also differ in temperament and values. This makes the dragon-keeper relationships pretty fascinating to follow. The greatest achievement of this book is that it made me look forward to the rest of the series, which the first installment certainly didn't. Now I'm reading Lev Grossman's The Magicians, having set aside Perdido Street Station indefinitely on grounds that it's too interesting for my flagging energies.

Why are the internets collapsing? LJ is down so I can't access captchalogue or homestuck1000, and Twitter is now down too. I'm almost afraid to check Facebook.

In school news, my group (actually a pair) managed to get a grip on our experimental psychology assignments, which were proving to be an enormous pain in the general rear vicinity.

In writing news, junetide! So many delicious prompts. Mine were pretty cracky and I suspect someone who knows me moderately well could guess them easily. But, that's not the point of the challenge, and then again neither is hiding my identity? I guess? Anyway, it will all be super cool and there are some really creative people on board. Plus I've already encountered about five things I forgot/had no idea I might want to request. Like this.

In food news, I want to make a post about ptitim because I just made some. They came out not like my mother's and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Also they are a weird Israeli thing.

Anyway, I need like a mini-program, an HTML page or something, that can take a list of names and compute all possible pairings out of them. That way I can turn my desire to write every Homestuck femmeslash pairing from a cracktastic dream into potential reality. Except this fandom has the only femmeslash pairing ever that I might not be able to bring myself to write. Dammit LJ, grar rar, I need my anonymous prompt memes!