Bourbon, a Comfy Armchair and a Sinfully Good Book

Work may be best attempted on drugs
I’m thinking of changing my job title to professional Cat Herder and Tilter at Windmills. Don’t think the bosses will go for it though. Part of my job is corralling incredibly creative, free spirited technophobes and teaching them to use our company’s technology. On the up side, I am dealing with absolutely lovely people most of the time. On the down side, it’s a challenge, an impossible dream of sorts, in fact.

I gave Thursday’s training sessions completely loopy on migraine meds, a fact I confessed going in – honest, I’m not usually this spacey, I’m just a bit drugged, you see – and they were very sweet about it. In fact, as it turns out, I didn’t do that badly. And, hey, there is an unexpected benefit to running a training session a wee bit drugged out: I didn’t get twitchy afterwards, not that I intend to make this a regular thing. Ugh.

My medicinal situation did me no favors later when the Education team began loudly going over a new product they’re teaching in the salon end of our business – express facials. At my best, part of my humor will always be about 13 years old and any innuendo, no matter how juvenile is no end of hilarious. So, oh yes, by the time they got to the discussion of the salt scrub and making sure our students received specific instructions on proper application, I was on the verge of dying. Thank Bob for high cubicle walls.

Unclear on the concept of tease
I’m a bit of a connoisseur of TV and movie trailers, which is weird I realize, but I love the puzzle of how to tease a story to draw an audience in without mischaracterizing the story or giving too much away. Some do this exceptionally well, others quite terribly and, yes, sometimes the terrible ones are the most interesting.

BBCA’s trailer choices for Musketeers, however, are just on the bad end of strange. I’m in the odd position of having watched the series on DVD before watching for a second time on BBCA (Thank you, thank you, no end of thank you, for airing each episode uncut at least the one time.) and they give away entirely too much in the trailers. The trailer for Commodities, for example (last week’s episode, and I’m just quoting the trailer, so no additional spoilers here), shows Porthos growling, “He’s a slaver!” 9 seconds in and Aramis summing things up, “You were the Comte de la Fère, a son of the nobility?” 15 seconds in and there’s still 15 more seconds of trailer. I believe they are unclear on the concept of tease.

It all started with dime novels…
It was doubly funny for me when Tom Burke mentioned Lonesome Dove (the mini series) fondly in an interview. I’ve been thinking about another of my favorite McMurtry books all week, Anything for Billy. The imaginative version of Billy the Kid’s adventures is narrated by Ben Sippy, a wealthy ‘Back East’ dandy in search of the real ‘Wild West’. The impetus for this search is an addiction to dime novel westerns, which he read so voraciously that he tore through the publishing companies’ entire back catalogs and then swiftly outpaced their publishing schedule. When his favorite writers couldn’t possibly feed his habit quickly enough, he started to write his own…

My own relationship with fanfiction, much? Why, yes, as a matter of fact it is, though I tend to stop writing for a bit whenever someone posts something new. It’s usually more relaxing to just curl up and read someone else’s better written creation…but then what I read is inspiring and there isn’t any more for a while, and the whole cycle starts all over again… *grins* Oh well, there are far worse obsessions hobbies? Nah, I got it right the first time.

‘Dostoevsky is dead.’ ‘I protest! Dostoevsky is immortal.’
Last week a fellow Russian lit fiend friend sent me the image above and absolutely made my week. Sometimes I honestly am just that ridiculously easy. But, but, it’s a The Master and Margarita inspired prank street sign. So what if it happened in 2012 and I’m only just hearing about it now? At the time it happened, at least, the city council apparently decided the sign and the prank were a worthy tribute to Bulgakov and allowed it to remain up. For me, this qualifies as one of those ‘suddenly one more thing is right with the world than I gave it credit for’ moments.

All for…well, anyway.
We finally got a real preview for the Musketeers on BBCA last week. I’d decided not to buy the DVD because they’ve been saying April for months now and, hey, it’s April. Why not save a little cash? However, at the end of the preview they said June. June? Really? Oh, no, no, no, June is simply unacceptable. Soooo, the DVD should be here in a few days and I shall be spending some time unearthing the old multi-region DVD player from the garage. Problem solved.

Curse of the drinking writing classes
I usually define a good week at work as one packed with a lot of variety. By that barometer, these past few weeks have been stellar, which definitely keeps my interest levels high but, holy crap, am I ever busy. Websites and audits and a multitude of eclectic copy assignments, oh my!

Drouble, Dribble, Toil and Scribble
I am an addict! Many, many thanks to the TGS mods for the Spring Challenge. I am having so much fun playing with any crazy idea that pops into my head – something I am perhaps a little too loathe to try in a longer format. I was only going to tackle a few of the prompts but, yeah, see the first sentence of this paragraph.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town…
You know that thing, where you write something at least in part to work on things you know you’re bad at and then you read over what you’ve written and, yup, you’re still bad at them? Okay, maybe this is just a me thing, but ugh! Dialog. Multiple POV. Pacing. Better, I guess, but still not good. Frustrating.

(Okay, okay, to the very, very short layer cake. AKA, I generally only post food pics when it’s funny. Roger Rabbit rules, and all that.)


Because doesn’t everyone decide, ‘it’s after 10, it’s pouring rain and wow do I want cake’? Real cake. With many layers and perfect oozing icing and, well, you get the general idea. The you have to bake it yourself kind.

Lately, Friday nights at our place have been up late, both writing (him with annoyingly more productivity than I, *sigh*) and listening to music sorts of nights anyway so, hey, why not start something that I won’t finish until 1 am or so? No, that’s not sarcasm. That is actually my logic. *nods* And even if the cake isn’t absolutely perfect – it was a thrown together pantry sort of affair, necessitating several substitutions – it works.

Moment of Zen from the baking:

I only use milk to bake. I don’t drink it. It doesn’t really like me. At times I will, however, drink soy milk, so I got confused and was shaking the non-soy milk before I measured it out for the cake. Enter my husband, looking to help…

Him: You don’t have to shake the milk.
Me: *laugh at myself, facepalm, finish measuring the milk into the bowl and start whisking*
Him, laughing: Stirred, not shaken?
Me: Ha, ha. No, Mr. Bond. Whisked, not stirred.
Him: Right. Whisked. Milk should be neither shaken nor stirred….unless you’re making a martini for Alex Rider.
Me: *Sporfle*


Oh, and none of this should be construed as me procrastinating from writing one bit. Nooooooooooo. (Okay, yeeeeeeeeeeees). Because it’s not like I’m stuck or any…*mumbles* Mmmmm…you know, this cake is pretty good. *nods, looks around searching for train of thought* Was I typing something? ;)

I have done battle with countless pots of molten sugar and steaming vats of pickling liquid this past weekend-plus-a-day and emerged victorious!


Christmas, I am ready for you!! Of course, this is all somewhat less than impressive with Christmas being, well, basically now and all that. Oh well. Still, prepared is prepared and at one point I didn’t think I’d be anywhere near that this year - I was away for work the first weekend of the month and then ill for the second and several days on either side, so all the holiday cooking was condensed into last weekend only.

Instead of the traditional cookie baking, my husband and I make candy for gifts. Well, candy and pickles – not for consuming together, naturally. Different gifts for different people. It started when he made me a homemade batch of salted caramel (for which I am a mad, mad fiend) for my birthday that disappeared long before the end of the party and when the in-laws starting asking for my pickled carrots.

Now the caramel has become this absolutely sinful brown butter, sea salt caramel of his own devising and our confectionary endeavors have branched out into homemade marshmallow (Aztec hot chocolate – because if the spice must flow, I’d prefer it be into my mouth), cranberry orange bark, cherry pistachio brittle and whatever else makes us say, ‘You know, I’ve always wanted to try…’ Also now I pickle onions too. And sometimes fruit. And I’m working on a good recipe for bread and butter pickles. Oh, and this year, bitters as well... Yeah. Project bunnies. Much like their cousin the plot bunny, they have a tendency to multiply when you’re not paying attention.

Anyway, it’s all done and wrapped now. I feel terribly accomplished and the kitchen needs to be destroyed by fire, which is really about par for the course when it comes to playing with molten sugar. It doesn’t matter how thoroughly you scour, you’re going to have to do it a few more times…and then a few more times again. Sugar is sneaky like that. Oh well.

Merry Christmas to all out there in LJ-land! I hope your holidays are enjoyable!

As for me, I love the crush of family that is about to come my way with all my heart and should have a very nice time. But when it’s all done, wonderful though it will be, I’m going to need some serious snark to cut all that sweet and heartfelt. I see my December 26th and it is full of fic writing (because this is turning into a monster and still is nowhere near done – yikes!) and some of my favorite non-cloying Christmas movies: The Ref, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Long Kiss Goodnight. Maybe even some Die Hard if I’m in the mood for mind numbing but fun.