Done with the pig.

with the pig picking. I tell you what, that is a sucky job - and of course we forgot a bunch of little stuff (spoons being the main thing) and a bunch of little things went wrong. But overall, it turned out great - exactly how we hoped it would. Beautiful day, good food, lots of people, relaxed and relaxing - all we could have hoped. Notes to self: next time DO NOT volunteer to spend the coldest night so far camped out in the back of the minivan. That played a large part in my woes. Another note to self: Todd and Jill were AWESOME hosts. We really didn't want them to have to do any work at all, but they did tons and made it so much better than it otherwise would have been. They were amazing, and they made us feel so comfortable having to spend practically the entire weekend over there (that could have been REALLY awkward with another professor.)

Overall: A. But I am TIRED. And I found out that I have a gift for cooking the pig. (EIther that, or it's just really really easy.)

mph.

I never thought I would get sick of "Buddha Buddha". But I've been listening to the SAME SNIP of it over and over and over and over for about 5 days now, and I am.

Sorry, Rick Rock.

ugh.

that's all, just ugh.

pig picking planning. paper writing. teaching. reading for classes. doing this presentation. ACK. can't hang.

Vacation?

Back from Nags Head, and the week from hell stretches before me. We spent a LOT of money at the beach (mainly on boarding the dogs! it was $250!!) and now we're going to scrimp even more than normal to make up for it - plus Christmas is coming soon.

So, I volunteered my James paper for the new writing group thing on Friday, which is really funny, because I've written exactly 1 page of it. But i have to send it out on Monday anyway, and I figure I'll get good feedback, and also I want to give myself ANOTHER artificial deadline. (I love artificial deadlines.)

The cat was so lonely while we were gone - he won't leave us alone now. he's trying to sneak up and cuddle with Robert, who's trying to finish his book and keeps pushing him away. last night I had to literally kick him out from between my legs in order to turn over. Pitiful kitty.

Hey, I guess I should probably get to work there instead of fucking around on the interweb.

type.

I love the word type, for some reason. (Especially in Courier.)

type type type type type. typing. typewriter.

Conjures up an image, doesn't it? It even sounds like typing.

Type.

Linus is my idol.

I just made up my own meme (of sorts). It is "which character from Charlie Brown would you be?" and I choose Linus, because he's earnest and nerdy and empathetic and somewhat naive and has many hiddent talents (think blanket-snapping).

If you say I'm Lucy, I'll slug you.

Not sick - not yet, at least.

I *was* getting sick, and R has been miserably sick (thanks to my students and his mom, he was irresistably bombarded by germs.) But I didn't get sick! I found this medicine called "Airborne" that's a fizzy tablet with vitamins and herbs and stuff that you dissolve in water and drink, and I also drank a shitload of water, and didn't eat sugar or dairy, and took a couple of easy little walks (to and from farther bus stops) and all is well!

I'm reading about Emerson. I'm not sure what I think of him, to be honest - he's very unsettling (and I think he would like that.) So epigrammatic - it's hard to keep yourself from underlining every sentence - in that he's very Carlylean. But there are moments (especially in "Self-Reliance" when the universality of the divine principle threatens to tip over into borderline sociopathy, the imposition of the ascendant self on the other. But he has a beautiful rhythm to his prose that is so Whitman-like - it's poetic (I guess it's the full, round phrasing of preaching, actually - those sort of rolling rhythms that MLK had.) (Although apparently he preached from a written text, not extempore.)

I'm not sick, but I sure do have to pee a lot from all that water.

The emporer's new clothes.

I just got a bunch of new clothes in the mail! They're teacher clothes (comfy, long skirts and non-skanky t-shirts to be worn with cardigans - NOT the kind with holiday motifs!) but they're new and cheap and comfy and now I have lots more teacherly choices so I don't have to creep my kids out by wearing the same shit over and over.

Also, today we ran around like chickens with our heads cut off - but we own the house now!! AND we sold the truck! I'm proud of us - R is sick as a monkey but he soldiered on through all day without complaints (with a little crankiness, but that's to be expected with a rotten cold) and got it all done. Yay Robert! And *I* didn't put anything off! Yay me!

Robotic maid.

Okay, so it's worth it. I've made a couple different things in it so far - regular white bread was meh, a little dry, a little tough maybe. The whole wheat bread (100%) that R tried to make for his parents didn't rise, but there were other factors in play (he left it in there overnight before mixing it, so maybe....something bad happened.)

But today - ah, today. Made buttermilk bread and is it ever tender and good! Used the new Costco flour, which may have been part of it, but I think that the acid in the buttermilk had more to do with it. Note to self: add vinegar or lemon to dough from now on, or the dough conditioner that's taking up space in the fridge.

Yesterday the washing machine was going, the dishwasher was going, and the bread machine was cranking away as I sat in luxurious splendor on the couch and listened to the machines doing my bidding. I felt like I lived in a Jetson house. Now I just need a robotic maid to mop the floors.

Black Bean Dip

Mmm. I want to write this one down so I remember it.

About 2 cups leftover cooked black beans (cooked with onion and a little bit of shaky pepper)
About 4 oz cream cheese
1/3 bunch cilantro
1 hot red pepper, seeds and all (I'm pretty sure it was a habanero)
Um...was there raw onion involved?

Whirl it alll in the food processer - it looks excrementitious, but it's good. Then mix in about 1 cup grated cheddar and bake for about 20 minutes. Yes.

Sitting here in the dark.

Well, not exactly in the dark - I'm in a little pool of light in the midst of the dark of our living room. It's dark outside (b/c, well, you know, it's getting on towards winter) and I've been up since 4:45 grading. Robert is snoring on the couch (he came out to keep me company - if snoring is company, he's killin' it.)

Yesterday was weird. R's parents came and hung out, which was nice - but there was a weird thing with my dad, which was unexpected and not-nice. I had a bad dream last night that Dad and F. confessed to secretly hating Robert and working to sabotage him - it was like a gulf opened up under my feet in a place where I thought the ground was solid.

In my dream we lived with my folks (!) here in this house, and were in negotiations to buy it - they were staying here during renovations to their place. We decided to move to a crappy little apartment with no back yard to get away from them. I can't remember anything else about it (except something about bathroom stalls with no TP and no doors...) but I've been sad all morning (thus the morose and somewhat goth-y nature of this post.)

Lots of good food yesterday but I'm not really in the mood to talk about it.

Sigh.

We bought a bread machine.

I'm not sure how I feel about that. I have been a home bread-baker for a long time now (my mom always made all our bread by hand, and I learned from her in junior high) - but I'm often far too lazy to go through the process, and end up buying supermarket bread. Additives, corn syrup, preservatives - lots of yucky stuff. So I'm thinking it will be nice to dump everything in at night and wake up to bread.

But then again, my parents got a bread machine a few years ago (same reason) and it never was as good as handmade loaves. And they're funny shaped. With the weird little hole in the bottom where the dough hook goes.

I guess it's good to have it - I mean, I can still make it by hand whenever I feel like it, right? (Also - we bought a 50 lb bag of bread flour at Costco for under $10. HELL YEAH. It's like $2.39 for a 5 lb bag of bread flour [something good like King Arthur] from the grocery. Now THAT I can get behind.)

We're going to try it out tonight - I'll let you know how it goes.

And also, I want to figure out how to post pictures on this mug. Anybody reading this? if so, do you know how?