After what seems like weeks and weeks of house guests, visits to family, and best friends leaving (I already miss you, (e:flacidness)), I am finally sitting here typing in an otherwise empty house. Very nice.

Today I did what seems to be my favorite thing to do. I leisurely woke up, had a nice cup of really strong coffee, and surfed the web as I slowly came to life. Next was a bit of cleaning, the dishes, followed by the creation of egg salad. I'm in the process of eating the newly-cooled goop right now...yummy.

I decided I should try out my Christmas gift from (e:paul)'s momma: a big ole crock pot. I looked for a likely recipe in the slow-cook cookbook which was also from mother maria. Then I headed down to the coop for the ingredients. I learned what herb de provincal is from a nice lady there, I think she might have been a volunteer, but alas they didn't have any. She suggested I use a combination of marjoram, thyme, and maybe a dash of tarragon, since garlic and pepper were already ingredients. Hope it works. Then I tramped all the way to the Hodge liquor store for the requisite dry white wine. Not a bad day for a walk at all.

My Chicken Stew Provencal is currently crocking away. It smells good so far.

Now I just need to convincce my sugar daddy that this is what I should do everyday! :)

Haruki Murakamii.

Good read. Just read what I believe is his first novel, A Wild Sheep Chase. I've read a couple others, maybe even posted about them...Wind-up Bird Chronicles was also very good. So far his protagonists are without names. Not that they don't have one in their world, just that it's not ever shared with us. How important is a name anyway? In the Wild Sheep Chase, I don't think anyone has a name: just her, me, he, etc... A world where everyone is a pronoun (it's interesting that even at this level, we still can tell who's a boy and who's a girl).

His main characters are almost always normal, even übernormal. Then somehow through seemingly coincidental events become involved in very strange happenenings indeed. Through it all the main character stumbles, generally using his ordinariness to good advantage. It's the adventure that we all want to have, the once in a lifetime complete removal from mundania (anyone ever read Piers Anthony?).

If you're still not interested then I'll give you one final thought to get excited about: whale penis.

Enjoy, gentle readers, enjoy!