Sunday, April 25 2021

2019-04-14 Sunday

Hey Journal,

Today while cleaning up my sister's old laptop I discovered the ruins of an ambition project I started to write one thousand words a day. The funny thing is I remember telling everyone that I wanted to do this, but I didn't remember I only made it five days. Well today I set out on the same venture. Accept hopefully I'm older, wiser, and just a little more patient. Plus I have a better system now. I have to admit, the writing got a little whiney, which is perhaps why I tweaked the rules to just let me write as much as I want. Short and sweet.

Tonight I tried making gnocchi. Damn Gordon Ramsey makes everything look so easy, I think it might be witchcraft. Eh, I'm going to rally, I'm bound for a gnocchi redemption this week. I'll let you know how it goes.

2019-06-19 Wednesday college, computers, and tv

Good Morning Journal!

Well the strangeness of yesterday wore off pretty quickly, and the routine took over. It felt so good to work, drink coffee, come home, and cook - even if the meal didn't go so well. I tried making chicken parm last night. I wasn't exactly prepared to be challenged by such a simple Italian American dish, but alas, it just about kicked my ass. I burned one of the cutlets, the marinara was too watery, and the cheese seemed to curdle instead of melt. It was edible, but I wasn't going to save any leftovers. For being comfort food, it's sure a complicated meal.

After dinner, I put Rod to bed and Marissa and I got to our chores, then we indulged in a new show that we fell head over heels for. It's called "Sex Education" - it's about this 16 year old boy who, drawing from his mom's experience as a sex therapist, starts his own sex advice business at high school. It's very raunchy, so we haven't actually recommended the show to anyone else, but we've been blown away at the subtlety and character development. Man, I love the feeling you get when a new show sweeps you away.

Today should be pretty low key. I'm home alone with Rod pretty much all day while working. I'm on ticket duty, which is easy to keep up with while I get caught up on the week I missed. We're making stamppot tonight, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to bed early. Ugh, we should not have watched that second episode of Sex Education, but it was a real tear-jerker and we were hoping the next episode would be much happier, and it was, but it ended around 1AM. I'll be clinging to this pot of coffee all morning until I feel ready to attack the day.

Right now I'm working on Kelly's computer. Yesterday, I came up with like five interesting tech projects to take on, and I was ready to fire them up. But then I shamefully remembered that fixing my sister's laptop has been on my to-do list for... I'm afraid to find the exact number, but it feels like at least two months. Yesterday after some blood, sweat, and cussing, I managed to get El Capitan installed on the machine, and it's humming along quite nicely! It's not exactly a powerhouse, but it's far from being a metal paperweight. This work was pretty nostalgic. In college I used to stay up into the wee hours of the night dicking around with restoring old laptops. Really I'd just open them up, clean them, do little things like reset the PRAM and blow the dust out, then just get them on the latest software possible. And that's usually all it took to prevent someone from throwing a computer in the garbage.

Well it's almost time I kick Marissa. She needs to get to dog class, and I think she may have forgot that the car needs gas, so I better have a cup of coffee in hand for her.

Let's have a great Tuesday! And for the love of God, let's go to bed earlier than 1:30 AM this time.

2019-06-22 Saturday ribs and french toast

Good Morning Journal!

I have a feeling it's going to be a wonderful day today. It's a beautiful Saturday morning, and even though I'm up a little earlier than usual, I still got some great sleep. Marissa and I finished Sex Education yesterday, and we were reeling at how good it was, so maybe just having a good TV show to watch has put me in a good mood this morning.

Here's the plan today: I'm going to write my journal entry, clean the dog puke behind me, then make Marissa and Rodney up with French toast. Afterwards, I get to jump right to smoking a slab of ribs. Something about this batch of ribs already feels so right. I put the rub on yesterday, and instead of just throwing things into it and absolutely drowning it in spices, I used a lot more moderation and common sense. Before I took out a spice to be used in the rub, I just tried to imagine if it would taste good with pork, and I didn't start combining spices until I had selected all of them. At any rate, today I'm going with paprika, smoked paprika, cumin, garlic, cinnamon, pepper, brown sugar, and white sugar. I also prepped a batch of cornbread last night, I'm trying that recipe again, only with added pieces of sweet corn I tried with a paper towel.

So that's what I got going on today, just a lot of cooking and hanging out outside. I wish I had an extra cigar, it would be a really nice day to sit outside and have a stogie.

Patience update: haven't put much more thought into it yet, unfortunately. I guess I'm still just kind of celebrating my progress. Maybe I'll pick it up again this Monday. Something tells me what I need right now is to deeply fall into this weekend and maybe do something productive around the house.

Well, I had better clean up that dog puke, it looks like that's going to take some elbow grease.

Let's have a wonderful, relaxing, productive Saturday today! Oh, and happy summer solstice.