(no subject)

Sorry I've been so uncommunicative and all... I seem to be in one of those slumps as far as writing and commenting, and believe me it's not that I'm not reading you all. There's been several things I've wanted to say and not got around to, and then some of the comments I made because I really felt I should be involved in a conversation ended up feeling flat and probably self-centered, not to mention possibly contradictory and negative-sounding to the recipient.* Or sometimes I've realized it came off as a complete non-sequiter. (a word my spellchecker does not know.)

I was looking at this one woman's ID on Saturday - well, trying to, because she'd laid it down on the desk and I couldn't pick it up, because my nails are too short. I thought it must be tremendously obvious that I was chasing it all over the desk, but it must not have been to her, because I said, "I cut my nails off because I decided to learn to play the mandolin" and she responded with, "When I was out on the bay, yesterday, my camera broke." I waited to see if there was more to that story, some connection, but apparently she thought she was countering randomness with other randomness.

So, yeah, mandolin. I haven't mentioned that because it's just a whim, brought on by reading the Eastport Pirate Days site, where they said they were looking for buskers. I don't imagine I'll be able to play even a few simple tunes by September, not well enough to hang about and inflict them on an unsuspecting public, but I have been trying hard to at least tenderize the tips of my fingers almost every night for the past week, in an attempt to harden them up so I have a chance of holding the strings down correctly. The tips of the first two fingers of my left hand feel as though they're asleep from my session last night. I think I've got the simple versions of G, C, and D chords down, so hypothetically I can play almost anything by Adam Brodsky (who's trying to be hip and timely with a picture of an underwear-covered salami, apparently), though I think it might be tough passing them off as sea shanties. (Although according to that sea shanty book on Gutenberg the verses were often quite crass - and I'm still pissed that his publishers wouldn't let him put the actual words in.)

And now I'm completely derailed, already - not that I was really staying on the rails at all, in this post. I think I'd better shower and go do the grocery shopping.

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*So of course, since I'm being so crap at communicating, it fell to me to write an email to all the condo tenants that someone had left a mattress teetering atop the dumpster - like, seriously? The dumpster guy might not come on the Fourth, but even if he does he probably can't dump the damned thing in his truck with a mattress on top of the lids. So I had to compose something nice and not say "Who's the fucking idiot?" only because Eor trusted his own powers of composition even less. :)

grocery shopping, always exciting

I got some of this Kraken Rum, mainly because the bottle is cool. :)

(It is superior for making a Dark and Stormy.)

Maybe an hour longer to dinner

I started cooking at 11am, about... didn't get it on the heat until 1pm, because A) I'm slow and B) It's a new recipe to me and I was making adjustments and substitutions. But I noticed that it's a chicken dish, you put the chicken in the sauce and then cook the chicken in the sauce, according to the text "for 7 to 10 minutes," stir in cilantro (one of the things I'm not doing), add the cream, bring to boil, and then your done. Er, didn't you leave something out? Like, this is a curry, and it's raw chicken... shouldn't there be three hours of simmering in there? Well, there's gonna be for mine. No damn raw chicken on my plate.

I love summer - we've been out in the garden while we've been waiting for this curry to cook, and we now have three bouquets on our counters: garlic scapes (which have been there for a bout a two weeks, I think, and just get curlier and a little paler, but still fresh and nice), wildflowers (which got pulled up by accident while we were pulling weeds) and two bok choys (which I pulled up by the roots and just crammed into a pint glass figuring I'd clean them properly, later, so I could have time to change out of my dirty clothes).

About time to go make some rice, though I think I'll wash my face and neck again, and brush my hair, I'm still dropping dirt. I may have mentioned before that I seem to always make gardening a full contact sport. ;)

Today (or day before yesterday? I can't remember when it started) we pretty much redesigned what we want to do with the garden, it's going to be quite different by next spring. Though I guess it's always different every spring, that's what's so fun about it. :) I should really write an email to the couple upstairs, because she just moved in and might want to do things with the garden, too. And if we put the condo on the market next spring she'll be the only one who cares what happens with that space, most likely, so if I want to put in a bunch more fiddlehead ferns, well, it would be cool if I could get her to buy them, since she'll likely be the one to harvest them.