If you had invoked me before you began this journey,

Sous-vide in a beer cooler.

This makes it actually cheap to experiment. *woot!*

So, Monday at work was special.

We've got movable shelving, and K asked me if it had worked last week, to which I said yeah, even though I didn't use it. Apparently something was weird with it, and it wasn't working, and they needed to get stuff from there for the GRTE crew here scanning.

Needless to say, chaos broke out about 20 minutes later when they succeeded in opening the shelves. Seems that water got into the repository over the weekend. Lots of it.

Yesterday was spent moving maps, boxes, and other materials *out* of the repository - the worst things into the freezers and the rest to be laid out and drying (we took up a big conference room, a small one, a workroom, and at least one storage room) with things. To make things even better, the water is between the map cabinets, so a number of us took turns soaking it up as it welled up between the cabinets.

Today, I spent a few hours helping to repack the materials up in boxes and then lay out the ones from the freezer - which were cold and damp and a mess.


In other news, I have a presentation to finish (read: to actually make the PowerPoint) and I am feeling a little like death warmed over.

This does not bode well for the rest of the week.

Practice last night was really good, actually. Worked with Carys and Wyllym on things and ended up feeling a bit better overall by the end of things. I feel like, and am, utter neophyte, but I'm looking forward to getting better. I kind of feel like I need to be told things over and over, but it's starting to sink in. Slowly, but surely.

And I *really* need to work on things at home. Especially footwork, because that's likely going to be my doom.

Picked up (finally) Elizabeth Bear's By The Mountain Bound, which is the second book in her Edda of Burdens series. For everyone who heard me rave about the first one (All The Windwracked Stars), this really should have been published first. I admit, I didn't totally finish ATWS, but this one makes everything in that make more sense. Norse mythology is a favorite of mine, and this, well, takes the mythology and runs with it. Totally. Her style's a little funky, rather dense and sometimes plodding, but I really like it. Suits what I tend to read.


I've also been actually cooking a bit more. Instead of making our CSA share's produce an addition to what I've been cooking, it instead is the focus. The kale that I made on Thursday was particularly tasty, as was Sunday night's spinach. Granted, I've also been reading lots of cooking blogs, which are giving me far too many ideas. Oh yes, and I recently acquired both volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which should be used very soon.

And finally, some of the shirts here amuse me far too much.

A shitty start to the weekend - which can be summed up by two words "water pipe." And prompting this question - Anyone recommend a good plumber? We've got one, but having a few more to call wouldn't hurt. However, after that, things got so much better, I really think.

Went up to Crown, had a good time, and was just *happy*.

Saturday was a good tournament. We ended up hanging out under the water bearing tent with snotblossom and Co, and taking lots of photos (well, Dom mostly). Some of them are even really good. I'll make sure to get them up on Flickr, as well as the ones from Estrella, that are *still* not posted.

What can I say, I've been a bit busy...

Today, well, today was *wonderful*. Seeing Blossom getting her Pelican was great, and utterly worth coming up for, hands down, without a doubt. Dom got video of it, and we'll post it this week as well. We took Icka back to Tucson as well (and we got to meet Megs' new husband Mike, who seems quite nice), so yay! fun! And then there was a last-minute invitation from Carys to stop by his place, hang out, and have coffee.

Well, who were we to say no? And besides, it meant that I could play with the My Pressi. Mmmm... latte. Tasty, tasty, wonderful latte, you will soon be mine. And there were friends, and people to goof off with, and it was a wonderful way to spend a few hours on a rainy Sunday afternoon.


This week? School work. Quiet. Doing stuff. Pippa comes in on Friday, and we've got things to do this week so the place is habitable for her. Other than that, pretty much the usual stuff, I think.

*Finally* ordered chest protection.

Currently debating hitting practice tonight. Tempting, but also... hrmmm...


Looking forward to the weekend, at least.

Well, let's start with 50 Books, shall we? In no particular order:

1) Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper - I then lent it to my dad whose first comment was "I want to buy a cleaver now." I, already being in possession of a cleaver, bought two of her cookbooks, both for
specific regions. Land of Plenty, which is Sichuanese, and Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, which is Hunan. There's a bunch of really good stuff in them, and I'm really looking forward to cooking out of it.

2) The Fortune Cookie Chronicles - short, easy, read on take-out Chinese in the US. I'm fairly convinced it's related to an article in the Times a few years ago about the origins of fortune cookies, but damned if I totally know.

3) The Umbrella Academy, Volume 1 - Surprisingly good. I nabbed in on the cheap for the iPhone (Dark Horse is putting out a bunch of trades in such a format) and got sucked in. The James Jean cover art may or may not have been partially responsible.

4) Percy Jackson and the Olympians - The Lightning Thief - I... don't know. I'll probably read the rest, but I don't think it was absolutely wonderful. The characters and the characteristics of their immortal parents were well-done, and the idea was good, but I felt it was... a bit lacking somehow.

The next books sitting on the to-read list are mostly partially-read. Likely, they'll get tossed aside in favor of a history of the Custer Battlefield since 1876 (work reading, title is Striken Field) and You Are Not A Gadget, which I think, based on some skimming, I will both love and hate. Expected reaction shouldn't be as violent as the one to Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which is one of the few books where I've wanted to kill the writer.




Other than that, I went out to fighter practice tonight. I'm not a newbie, I am uber!noob! But, on the bright side, I practiced some simple things with Bryan and am feeling a bit better with stuff overall. With luck, enough friends will be willing to put up with me poking at them for a bit of time once a week, and all shall be good. Did discover I need to retape my tip though - red on black... not so good for my sight. Definitely need to get in better shape, but this is a good reason.

Also working on cleaning the house, which is a slow process. Translation - getting the library and spare bedroom to actually *be* such things. It's working out though, which is a nice thing. It's also rather overdue. (If you can consider it a few months to be overdue.) In the end, jut happy to be getting the house together and everything settled. After Crown - and btw, we'll be there Saturday and a bit of Sunday - we're going to get the yard in order.

Tomorrow, between work and CSA pickup, my plans involve, quite simply, homework. I feel like I'm running a little behind, but really I know I'm ok. Need to finish something for last week, but I should be alright, I think, as it's kind of not too much.

About the only downside to all of this is that one of my eyes seems to be a bit sore/painful. I actually think it may be a stye, but that doesn't make things any less annoying. Combined with the fact that I spent all morning being very sniffly, it's not been a good day in Willa!health.

It was deemed that yesterday's mild bleck became medium bleck today, and as I don't want full-fledged bleck tomorrow, home it would be.

Pretty much I'm taking it easy and relaxing. Will be working on homework in a little while.

I am pleased with myself, I got out to fighter practice last night. I think it won't end up being too hard to start doing it regularly, and actually, I really want to.


There was a longer post planned/thought of/etc, but I find my mind has completely wandered off.

So yesterday, I watched all 13 episodes of Kitchen Confidential on Hulu.

I was utterly pleased and surprised with it.


Montana is... errrmmm... Montana!

So... 4 working days in, 6 to go.

I should probably update, right? Besides, it'll keep me from my homework...

Montana's pretty. That's about the best I can say about it. Apparently the snow hasn't fully left the ground since Thanksgiving. I've gotten some photos uploaded to Flickr and there will be more, I promise. Including the Sage Grouse from this morning. We've seen a bunch of them, some Pronghorn, and a Bald Eagle. (And normal rabbits and a jackrabbit.) I don't have photos of any of them though, which is a pity.

The work - otherwise known as why I'm here - is interesting. We're here to scan a large number of images related to Custer and the Seventh Cavalry and Little Bighorn and associated stuff. It's pretty much all fascinating, and we've gotten to poke around the collections a little bit as well. (Native American artifacts! Custer clothes! Including some buckskin stuff and uniforms. It's pretty cool, actually.)

But the stuff we've been handling is probably the best. My coworker was working on some of his personal photo albums - one from when he at West Point (completely with annotations) and one mainly of photos of his wife, Libby. One of them had "My Darling" written on the back, which pleased all of us far more than it likely should have.

Today was a very on-off day though. We thought the external hard drives were, well, completely lost to us. Several hours later all was fine and restored and much better. However, it made for a wretched morning wherein I was far more grouchy and pissed off than I should be. It was... less than amusing for likely more people than it should have been.

But, things were recovered and all was right with the world.

And then we got a record number of photos done and things were even better with the universe.