The Mandelbear's Musings

08:46 am - A pleasant weekend

We spent a delightful, relaxing weekend with the jenkitty. She got up at some ridiculous hour to fly down from Seattle Saturday morning, and left Sunday evening. We (me, the flower_cat, and the chaoswolf -- the Y.D. wasn't interested in the kinds of things we had partially planned) piled into the van with Colleen's wheelchair and spent all day Saturday driving back from the Oakland airport (which has been extensively renovated since I was last there, and had surprisingly little traffic) by way of San Francisco.

The entire weekend was an exercise in real-time scheduling. We drove along the waterfront, passing up the food paradise of the Ferry Building because of large crowds and a lack of parking, past the tourist traps of Fisherman's Wharf, South on Van Ness, West on Geary past Japantown, and had a late breakfast at the Cliff House. Crab is a house specialty. Yum.

South on the Great Highway to Golden Gate Park, and parked under the de Young Museum. We need more museum time. The textile gallery was showing Turkmen weaving -- wow! The pace and interaction are vastly different when I'm wheeling Colleen around, but it wasn't unpleasant by any means.

After the museum we went next door to the Japanese Tea Garden. This was mostly a matter of Jen and Kat exploring widely while I tried to figure out how to get around with Colleen and the chair. On occasion I failed miserably; fortunately the Cat is still fairly mobile under her own power. No disasters.

Finally, we drove down to San Jose via Skyline Boulevard (as far as Woodside), took a turn past $WORK on Sand Hill Road, and tried to figure out where to have dinner. We'd originally identified a couple of places in Menlo Park and Palo Alto, but it was still too early and the Wolfling really didn't want her sister to be entirely left out, so we went home, let the Kitty take a nap, and headed out to Kobe, our favorite sushi boat place.

The evening was a combination of filking, conversation, and looking at the proofs of the wedding pictures, which artbeco brought over for us to sort through.

Sunday the Kitty slept in while I went out for bagels and Scottish lox, then a walk to the Rose Garden. There was time for Jen to have a bagel before going out "silly food shopping" to Cosentino's with Colleen. Colleen's been shopping there for nearly three decades; most of the staff are old friends. Dinner was huge pieces of lamb (which Colleen pan-broiled with Greek seasoning) with saffron rice and caprese (which I made). Quick, simple, and delicious.

All too soon it was time for Jen to leave. I combined the trip to the airport with dropping the kids off at their gaming session a couple of blocks down Coleman Avenue. All-in-all a delightful weekend; I just wish there was some way to do it more often.

Capped the weekend with a pleasant drive with the Cat.

05:51 pm - Other than that, ...

Took the car in for an oil change this morning. They told me it would take 45 minutes to an hour, so I went out for a walk rather than sitting around. Beautiful day for it; it was just starting to get uncomfortably hot by the time the car was finished.

We'll go out for a drive after dinner. We don't say much, usually; it's just a good way of getting out of the house and spending some quiet time together. At home, there are always too many distractions: kids, computers, books... Even with gas near $4/gallon, it's a cheap evening out.

08:00 pm - Taxes, but apart from that...

This post seems to be written in blog order: most recent events first. Seems appropriate.

Just finished off the data-entry for the checkbooks. That leaves the paper receipts, which are a bit more work but also more interesting, and the Amex and Paypal reports.

Tasty dinner: scalloped potatoes, pork ribs with spicy peanut sauce, and carrot-and-raisin salad.

Went for a nice drive with the Cat this afternoon. Good to get out of the house and hang out together. We don't usually talk much; it's all about good company and comfortable silences. Spent some time working on a song -- still marinating.

Did a little shopping. Mostly Office Max for white business card stock for mini-fliers, little colored dots to mark ripped albums, 9V batteries for the travel guitar, and a package-opener. Fry's for a 2GB micro-SD card and a little USB reader that's no more than a 250%-longer plug. Came with a little plastic cover threaded onto a little lanyard of the sort usually used for cell phone charms, but it seemed unnecessary and I took it off.

Did the 4-mile walk by Los Gatos Creek this morning. Felt good. It always does. The weather was cool but a little too humid after last night's rain.

09:08 am - Weekend wrap-up

It's been a moderately productive weekend, though not in the ways I'd originally had in mind. The bedroom computer workstation is up and running. I found an old but mostly-servicable office chair in the garage yesterday (it had been sitting under a box of old lighting fixtures and swing-arm lamps for a decade or two), and audio is up and running as well. Kat's kitchen-gadget box is done except for the latches. She put on the hinges yesterday

Our drive yesterday took us about halfway to Gilroy (some 40 miles south along US101), so Colleen decided to go the rest of the way and hit the outlet mall. Didn't find everything we needed, but got some additional Corelle bowls in the Corning store to replace the ones that have gotten broken over the years, plus a couple more of the medium and large serving bowls. We opted for plain white 20 years ago (when we remodeled the kitchen and discovered that our stoneware didn't fit the new cabinets) figuring that plain white would never go out of style. I'm glad we did. They're elegant enough for company, practically indestructable (though it can be done), and light enough that Colleen can easily handle them even when feeling arthritic.

In addition, I've finally gotten around to fixing my daily mirroring script so that it works even if, as in the current setup, the mirror drive is on another machine from the fileserver. This requires calling it from a login session with ssh-agent running; since I usually stay permanently logged-in on one workstation or the other, that's rarely a problem. I'll add the upload to my hosting service later today, since it's easy now.

07:03 pm - Nice drive

Went out for a walk this morning around the Rose Garden. The garden itself is rather sad-looking at the moment: it was pruned a week or two ago, and although there are lots of leaf-buds and a couple of flowers that presumably were left on from before the pruning, there are no new blossoms yet. Or even buds. The Wolfling had been talking about wanting wedding pictures in the Rose Garden, but in addition to being logistically difficult it looks as though the season will be wrong as well. We'll see.

Came back and had bacon and eggs for a late breakfast, then went out at about noon for a long drive with the flower_cat. I love our drives. They're one of the few times we're by ourselves with no tempting distractions or annoying -- or even welcome -- interruptions. Usually we talk; sometimes we just sit and enjoy each other's company. This time, not surprisingly, we mostly talked about wedding and travel plans. The long drive is about 4:30 -- over to the coast via State Highway 9, up 1 from Santa Cruz to Half Moon Bay, then back via 92 and I280. The coast route takes us past a big produce stand (closed, alas!) and a fishmonger's. Tonight's dinner will be red snapper.

After dropping by the house for a pit stop and to get the snapper into the fridge, we went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond for curtain rods and curtains. At vast expense, but they're pretty and we've been needing them for a long time. The general idea is to be able to curtain off the portion of the living room that used to be the master bedroom, so we can give guests sleeping there a little privacy. As a practical matter, the sewing room (originally a kid's bedroom and small even for that) only handles one person, or a couple with very little luggage.

We decided to head home rather than going to Barnes and Noble to pick up some books that Colleen had ordered. It had been a longish day, and the Cat was getting tired.

10:56 pm - The rest of the day

Not to be confused with the day of rest, which it wasn't particularly.

A pleasant walk drive, a pleasant talk, along the briny beach... Went for a long drive with the flower_cat; we spent almost all of it talking about furniture. The plan is to swap the positions of the couch (moving it from the living room to the "dining room" portion of our L-shaped living/dining room) and the dining table. This will free up a bit of space in both places; the dining table and its six chairs will eventually go to the chaoswolf.

The real advantage of this move is that we can install curtains to close off the "dining room" area when guests want to sleep on the couch (which turns into two single beds or one king-size, as needed). The Cat also wants to clean out the sewing room and put in a single-bed-size chaise lounge/futon. The sewing room is tiny -- we should have made it bigger, but it's too late now. It was fine for the kids when they were babies, so it seemed like a good idea at the time...

After coming back to a delicious lamb stew that the Cat had set to cooking (in a cast-iron pot in the oven, at 300 degrees) before we left, I spent a couple of hours printing up the final batch of About Bleeding Time inserts, and putting together another 15 two-disk sets. Because I foolishly ordered only 250 blanks, and have turned a few of those into coasters, I'm going to end up a bit short of the run of 256. But since I'm unlikely to sell out any time soon, I'm not going to worry about it much.

Public Service Announcement: Anyone who wants to place an order (for $20 sets, or a wholesale order) to be delivered at OVFF, just comment. Most of the range between C8 and FE is available; the interfilk set will be CO and DE. If you just want a disk or three, order from CD Baby -- it's much more convenient. They have 10 in stock, last time I checked. I've been very lazy about contacting dealers. Stupid bear.

09:03 pm - The rest of the day

After lunch (which consisted of half-a-dozen potstickers and half a block of tofu to use up the rest of the dipping sauce) I went out for a drive with the flower_cat. On the way home we stopped at Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy a new quilt for our bed. Most of what they had was appallingly expensive, but they had a nice black, king-sized comforter on sale for $55. Less a 20%-off coupon. Win.

After that we stopped at Cosentino's -- the Cat's favorite upscale grocery store -- to get ingredients for dinner. Which chaoswolf cooked! It was delicious -- a tomato, mozzerella, and basil salad (which the Wolf ate!), and an odd but tasty concoction of kielbasa, hot and mild Italian sausage, potatoes, sweet onion, and garlic baked in a big package of crimped Aluminum foil. So basically steamed. Yummy.

Found my missing arch support, so I won't have to buy another pair. Found it in the trash, where I had tossed it along with a couple of genuinely dead insoles from other shoes.

Got my lab results back from Kaiser -- or at least, on the web. Their website sucks. The results weren't all that great. LDL low (35, should be >40), triglicerides high (292, should be <199; still, a third of what they were 6 months ago, so the new statin is working). The disturbing one was creatine kinase: 437, should be <200. Could mean heart problems, though there are other possible explanations. The shoulder problems? We'll see; I'll probably hear from my doctor next week.

Made a little progress on clutter in the bedroom, mainly triage on footgear. Tossed some shoes that were clearly dead, and packed a bag of old-but-useable pairs for Goodwill. Swapped quilts.

Some more progress on re-organizing the fileserver; things are pretty much all in the right places now, except for moving a couple of CVS modules around. CVS, unfortunately, doesn't handle this kind of thing very well, which is why I'm looking at replacing it with git or svk. Anyway, things are ready for tomorrow morning's backup snapshot. Which will be archived, seeing as it's the first Sunday in the month.

06:06 pm - Equinox weekend wrap-up

The flower_cat wanted to go for a drive this afternoon, so I took my walk at about 10am around the Rose Garden. Always a nice walk; the only thing I don't like is that it's dead flat.

We left for our drive at about 12:45; our usual "all-afternoon drive" goes up Leigh Avenue to Blossom Hill, jogs over to CA Highway 9 in Los Gatos, North on Highway 1 along the coast. We often take 92 in Half Moon Bay and cut over to I-280; this time we went further up 1 past Pacifica to where it joins Skyline Blvd, and went South to 280 from there. In all, about 150 miles and four hours.

Dinner involves corn from the produce stand we always stop at, a few miles South of Half Moon Bay. The Cat is now making scalloped potatoes, using the potatoes from our Organic Express shipment, left-over cheese sauce from the fridge, and left-over ham from the freezer.

11:13 pm - Saturday wrap-up

Finished the tax data-entry about 8:30pm and went out for a drive with the flower_cat. I'll probably want to go over a few things in the morning, but between my usual prep and TaxCut's interview mode it all went very smoothly. Had to put up with tiny fonts and the Mac's horrible UI (and TaxCut's slightly botched implementation of it), but it's done now.

Looked at the disk usage on the fileserver and saw that I had somehow crept up to 99% on the main partition. Went into the directory where I keep downloaded CD images and deleted a few, mainly from 2005 plus the Debian beta installers, and got it down to 94%. It'll keep until I upgrade the drives, anyway. Could maybe do that tomorrow, even, or at least get started. Shouldn't actually do it until after I've printed the tax forms, at least, though I can start copying data earlier.

No walkies -- it rained most of the day, right up until dinner time. Grump. We need the rain, but grump anyway.

10:45 pm - Today at the Starport

Took a walk today along Los Gatos Creek, which is where I usually go when I'm home and not pressed for time. Didn't walk yesterday; it wasn't raining but the wind was impressive. Judging from the number of dark traffic lights along the way home from taking chaoswolf to work, and the downed tree alongside the creek trail, it's probably just as well that I didn't go out in it.

I also seem to have lost a couple of pounds since last week; may just be random fluctuations, but I'm not complaining.

Went for a drive with the flower_cat, mostly figuring out how we're going to celebrate our anniversary a week from yesterday. Nice to have an opportunity to just hang out and talk. Drove all the way down to Gilroy this time, and back along Monterey Expressway through parts of Gilroy and Morgan Hill that we don't usually get to see. A lot of new construction, and we spotted two microbreweries along the way.

Mostly worked on "About Bleeding Time", though there's comparatively little in the way of actual tracks to show for it. Almost all of the text is done; I still have some work to do to pull the audio out of one of the concerts, which was recorded to DVD.

Went to Fry's and bought a couple of Gigabit ethernet cards (on sale for $8/each) and a Linksys travel router (which I'll probably be needing at Mom's and will be useful other places as well).

04:49 pm - Under the weather and through the woods...

Not a terribly productive day. I crashed early last night with a bit of a headache, mild muscle aches, and a slightly-scratchy throat. Hoping to head off an attack of the Martian Death Flu, I went to bed around 10:30. The last of the guests left around 11:00, I think. The flower_cat tells me she had trouble sleeping; I didn't, but got up at 6:30 to make coffee, rouse the chaoswolf, take her to work, make breakfast, and do the dishes.

The Cat got out of bed somewhere around 9:30, and we decided to go out for a drive about 10am. By that time it had started to drizzle, but it was a pleasant drive anyway. We stopped at Bed, Bath, and Beyond for some last-minute shopping, came home, and had leftovers for lunch.

I've been spending the afternoon reading and feeling slightly out of it, though not nearly as bad as last night. No walk, I'm afraid.

Gift packages arrived simultaneously from my Mom (a huge picnic basket full of yummies) and my brother (a country-cured ham). We've been exchanging food gifts for years -- always welcome, and you don't have to find a place to store them.

09:01 pm - Loscon: Saturday, Sunday, and the road home

I was in two panels on Saturday, both in the filk room. The first was on songwriting, with Lee Gold (and Lynn Maudlin, who we later found out hadn't gotten her correct schedule). The second was on "The Media of Filk", with Lee and Eric Gerds (filk.com). Both went off OK, though it was touch and go whether we'd have an audience for the first one.

The remainder of the afternoon was taken up by a pair of concerts: Lynn Maudlin, who has a lovely voice, and Emmet Chapman, inventor of the stick. No, I am not lusting after a stick -- the technique is so different from that of a guitar that I'd have to pick one or the other, and I'm good at guitar.

The flower_cat and I had dinner at the "good" restaurant again; filet for her and ahi for me. Expensive, and vaguely disappointing.

Sunday I went to no programming at all -- it was all packing up and getting ready to go. Probably the easiest pack-out in several years -- the kids helped. We staged in the lobby (with the flower_cat watching over the growing pile) and left a little before noon.

We almost made it home before the rain started. But it was at least an hour of soggy stop-and-go from Salinas to San Jose. Well, we'd made good time up until then. It was about 7:30 when we rolled into the parking lot at Black Angus, having decided that we were all hungry enough to postpone unloading until after dinner. About half the price of the Marriott, four times the selection, and significantly better food.

09:24 pm - Thanksgiving Day

Well, we made it down to Loscon. The flower_cat and I ended up not eating turkey -- the claim is that it's high enough in tryptophan to make you sleepy. She had the prime rib dinner, and I had roast leg of lamb. Both were excellent. The kids split a plate of fettuccini Alfredo, which left super_star_girl enough room for pumpkin pie for desert.

Dinner in the hotel was a bit problematic -- we both opted for appetizers. Colleen had the butternut squash soup off their Thanksgiving dinner menu and it was excellent, and my spicy chicken lettuce wraps were OK but not what I was expecting. Colleen's "satay", though, was plain chicken on skewers with a teriyaki-like dipping sauce, which she loaths, and my "Szechuan ravioli" where leathery and, though hot, basically lacking in flavor. Look, folks -- if you're going to put a well-known dish on the menu, that's what you're supposed to serve.

After dinner I came back up to the room and practiced a little, then paid for a net connection -- at $10/day it's a little pricey, but that's the going rate and it's fast enough. I'm actually writing this on my home system over SSH. Went downstairs briefly with the guitar, hoping to serenade the Cat, but the muzak was annoyingly loud, so I came back upstairs and practiced some more. I'm getting happier with "The Last Train" now that I've figured out good fingerings for all the chords in drop-D tuning. I'm wondering how it would sound with a soprano singing open fifths over it.

07:47 pm - Sunday wrap-up

Got up at 9:30 after a very restless night. So much for getting an early start. Took a short walk around the Rose Garden, with my usual quick backtrack through the southeast corner to look at the Royal Amethyst, which is blooming. Works out to about 45 minutes.

At a few minutes to 1pm we took off for a drive. It was the "long afternoon" variant: South on 9 to Santa Cruz, North on Highway 1 to Half Moon Bay, East on 92, and South on I280. The main reason was to stop at Don Quixote's in Felton to figure out where it was, and pick up tickets for Tuesday's Janis Ian concert. Figured out that we ought to get there between 6 and 6:30 for dinner.

Going home on 92 took us past a produce stand, where we picked up a couple of bunches of fresh broccoli for dinner. The astute reader will notice that our route contains no component labled "West" -- I won't go so far as to rename our locale the "San Francisco R'lyeh Area", but the geometry is a little strange, due to the fact that the whole state is laid out on a diagonal from Northwest to Southeast. And let's not even mention the fact that if you go far enough South on 280 it makes a U-turn at the bottom of the bay and turns into 680 North.

Spent some time looking at the current state of "Little Computing Machine". It's pretty marginal; I think it may be easier to redo it than to fix it. My throat is improving, but it's not all the way there yet.

I damaged my throat last Thursday with a coughing fit; it finally occurred to me yesterday that, since the symptoms were basically those of laryngitis, I should treat it as an inflamation. So I switched from one aspirin per day (my usual blood-thinner dose) to two naproxen. It seems to be working.

09:39 pm - A day at the Zoo

I'm not sure how the chaoswolf managed to get out of bed so early; I think she slept badly if at all last night. In any case, we headed up to the San Francisco Zoo at 9am sharp so as to be there when the Zoo Parent Day activities started at 10. It was the kind of cold, grey day Mark Twain had in mind when he complained that "The coldest winter I ever spent was one summer in San Francisco" -- though I strongly suspect he had never visited Minnesota at that point. Still, I was glad of a fuzzy, warm jacket.

The Wolfling was good company. Without an arthritic flower_cat we were able to cover almost the entire zoo by the time we left around 3pm. Since the Wolfling's adopted animal was a Siberian tiger named Tony, we did most of our wandering around before lunch, to be sure of being at the lion house by 1:45.

Our morning rambles brought us past the African savannah exhibit, the gorillas, the bears, the hippos, the rhinos, the wart hogs, and of course the big cats. I'm particularly fond of the spectacled bears and the rhinos, the latter perhaps because I feel a great sympathy for animals that are nearsighted and inclined to be peevish. The hippos always make me think of the dancing hippos in Fantasia, managing to be both silly and graceful at the same time.

We rode the "Little Puffer" steam train, had lunch (where we ran into lisa_marli and her son H, who had adopted a penguin), and spent some time with the river otters, who were being fed at 1:15 and were conveniently close to the lion house.

Our "zoo parent" stickers got us in to the lion house 15 minutes before it opened to the general public for feeding time. This not only got us a pleasant and informative talk from the keeper, but got us in before the crowd. Even on a cold afternoon in October it got pretty crowded, but the Wolf got a front-row position in front of "her" cat. I stood two cages down in front of his "companion" Tatiana; she was brought in a year or so ago to keep Tony company after his long-time mate died of cancer. Tony is 15 years old; Tatiana is 8. Tatiana is big. Tony is huge -- at 400 pounds and 7 feet long, he's the biggest of their cats. Impressive. He seemed to be enjoying himself, too.

After the tigers we visited the koalas, kangaroos, and wallabies, spent a few minutes in gift shops, and finally headed home. I was more tired than I expected to be, and probably more than I should have been for safe driving. I felt much better after dinner -- the Wolfling cut through the usual tedious negotiations about which restaurant to go to by taking us all out for sushi again. Ran into some other friends on the way out.

Went out for a short drive with the flower_cat and I'm now back at home, sipping on a glass of The Glenlivet and updating my LJ, feeling tired, happy, and somewhat decadent. Think I'll go to bed early tonight.

07:07 pm - Back from a nice drive

The flower_cat and I left about 11:15 this morning for a nice drive, over Highway 9 to Santa Cruz, up the coast to Pacifica, and back via 35 and I 280. We'd originally intended to take 92 back from Half Moon Bay, which would have been about 30 miles shorter, but all the pumpkin farms were having their opening weekend sales, and it looked to be backed up for miles. About a 175-mile round trip; even at today's gas prices, it's cheaper than many other forms of weekend entertainment, and gets us out of the house. We got back almost exactly at 5pm.

We ate lunch a few miles north of Half Moon Bay, at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company. Good place. I had grilled salmon; the Cat had an appetizer (fried squash blossoms stuffed with cheese) and a cup of pumpkin (of course) bisque. We shared an apple crisp for desert. They had real coffee! Another keeper.

Did I mention that pumpkins are a major crop in the Half Moon Bay area? Did I mention that the Pumpkin Festival is in two weeks? No more drives up the coast until November.

The kids were barely getting out of bed when we left; they appear to have spent all afternoon gaming. Together. Without violence. This is a Good Thing. (Later... actually, the Wolfling appears to have been up all night, and fell asleep mid-afternoon. But it's still OK.) They seem to be getting along a lot better now that the chaoswolf has a job and the YD is back in school. Maybe that's just because they're spending less time in the house, but I'm still not complaining.

10:35 pm - Weekend Wrap-up

Now, let's see. Where was I? Home, mostly: there were no trips, parties, or events planned for the weekend.

Managed to get in a fair amount of walking: about 4 miles yesterday, and 5 miles today. There's a nice trail along Los Gatos Creek that intersects Leigh about a block north of Hamilton. I usually walk up a little past the little park on Campbell Avenue; today I added the loop up to the new bridge just north of San Thomas/Camden. I used to do that every weekend, but slacked off considerably the last two years. Good to get back to it. Hopefully I'll lose a little weight.

Stopped off at REI yesterday and bought a computer sleeve for the new laptop -- they have a good one that opens on two sides, so you can position it vertically or horizontally, and has rings for attaching a shoulder strap. I had a Targus sleeve that was nice and thin and had a bigger accessory pocket, but didn't have a strap attachment. Didn't work out.

After noon yesterday the flower_cat asked to go for a drive, so of course we did. There's a nice 50-mile round trip down to Morgan Hill via Blossom Hill and Santa Theresa that's become one of our usual routes when we don't have time for the coast.

And today I scouted out the route to the chaoswolf's new job. I had originally thought I could save her about 1/2 hour on her commute by dropping her off at the point downtown where she would normally change busses. Turns out it's faster to take her all the way to work by freeway. She's on her own getting back, of course.

08:20 pm - Of cars, and crabs, and music stands...

...and tuna fish, and sings.

Altogether a good couple of days. Finished off the little logging utility I've been working on at work (little Perl script; each log entry is an RFC822-format file that contains its serial number and the hash of the previous entry in its headers). After dinner, had another good practice session with Joyce. It's going to work.

Today, after a good walk (about an hour and a quarter, ~4mi) I stopped in at Guitar Showcase and bought a couple of mic stand drink holders (coiled, black-vinyl-coated wire -- very cool-looking) and a very respectably solid music holder that clamps onto a mic stand. Both were items I've been looking for for months; I'd first seen the drink holders in a catalog, forgot which one, and couldn't find them again when I wanted to order a couple. Both were on sale. Had leftover chili for lunch; by this time the chaoswolf had already left for a Furcon picnic.

Then the flower_cat and I went out for a drive. Up Saratoga Ave.; 236 (IIRC) through Big Basin Park (I'd last driven it over 30 years ago with my parents; not nearly as scary now that I've driven the highway to Hana on Maui), then up State Highway 1 to Half Moon Bay, 92 to I280, and home. The route takes us past a produce stand on Highway 1, and a fish market just past the corner of 92.

Which brings us to dinner. The fish market had some gorgeous Dungeness crabs, cooked and cold (cleaned at no extra cost), at a very reasonable price ($6/lb), and some beautiful-looking Ahi tuna at $13/lb. We got three crabs, half a pound of Ahi, and a sourdough baguette. Crabs are usually about 1.5 lbs, and three or four is plenty for a meal. These were something over 2.5. Nobody complained (though my wallet was heard to mutter under its breath); there will be crab-stuffed chili peppers tomorrow for lunch. The tuna, BTW, was sashimi quality, so that's how we ate it; all but the flower_cat, who's allergic to fish but not molluscs or crustaceans. The baguette became garlic bread. The wine was Kriter, a German Méthode Champagnoise.

I learned something, too: super_star_girl and I eat our crab as soon as we get it out of the shell, while the chaoswolf and flower_cat start by making a big pile of crabmeat on their plate and then eat it with a fork. Weird. Something else: Ahi tuna should be cut in one direction using a long, very sharp knife. If you saw back and forth, it comes apart in flakes. Fortunately, we have a long, very sharp knife, part of the set we bought ourselves for our anniversary last year. edit: Oh, and a traditional woodcarver's mallet does a pretty good job cracking crab legs, though there's a slight tendency to spatter out the sides.

Can I go to sleep now? (No, it's too early.)

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