I promise to quit smacking people for being ignorant asshats if they stop walking up to me and declaring themselves as such.

One of the issues surrounding my karate classes has been dinner.

How is dinner an issue? Well, I am the one who usually cooks dinner, and dinner is usually eaten at about the time I'm at karate. Karate is at 6 or 7 depending on the day, and that is approximately dinner time.

Now, that's not too big a deal. I usually try to have a pre-karate snack an hour or more before (often fruit, sometimes fruit & nuts if I'm feeling protein deprived), so I'm basically good to go. But I still come home sweaty and exhausted and often with low blood sugar, which is not the time for me to be handling sharp or hot things. Plus, really, I just want a shower.

This past week or so, though, sinthrex has been prepping dinner. I've been doing the pre-prep stuff and leaving him with whatever instructions I feel are necessary and the recipe. I come home to dinner being about ready. Since I work from home half the time anyway, I usually have time to do the dishes sometime during the day, so he isn't stuck with significantly extra kitchen duty, and it's all happy and good.

Plus, I think he feels like he has a lot more say as to what happens with dinner. For a while there, it seemed (to me) like he's forgotten that he too knows how to cook and that I own close to a million cookbooks (if by close to a million we mean double digits), out of which he is welcome to select anything that looks even remotely interesting to cook. (Or, y'know, the entire internet.)

On a somewhat related note: I think I have pimped Lord Krishna's Cuisine here before, but I would like to repeat the recommendation. Almost everything we've made from it has been delicious (and the one not-delicious item I recall was more strange than bad--anything containing bananas, yogurt, and mint should be sweet not salty IMO) and most of it is surprisingly simple. Also, extra firm tofu makes a nice substitute for paneer.

When:
Saturday, September 6 (10 a.m. - 6 p.m.) and
Sunday, September 7 (11 a.m. - 5 p.m.), 2008

Place:
Bellevue Community College Main Campus
3000 Landerholm Circle SE, Bellevue, WA 98007

Japan comes to the Bellevue Community College (BCC) for a weekend! A two-day program of Japanese cultural and educational events for all ages! Now, the ENMA Board and Aki Matsuri Team members are putting the 2008 programs together. More information with an ever-increasing level of detail will be forthcoming as the program and plans develop. Please check our website from time to time to follow our progress.

http://www.enma.org/2008/overview.htm

Anyone interested?

Not so much w/ the bento, seeing as I was working from home today, but that also made it a good day to experiment with the miso soup ball concept.

1 rounded teaspoon white (shiro) miso (probably about 2 tsp total)
a pinch of "seaweed soup mix" (wakame and some other dehydrated veggies)
1 cup hot water

I kneaded the seaweed into the miso and formed into a ball. My miso may be a little dry, but I don't see any need to put it in plastic wrap unless you're carrying it with moist things in the same compartment. (And I *think* a slightly smaller ball would fit in one of my sauce containers if that were the case...) Placed in bowl. Added hot water. Stirred.

I had a little bit of an issue with some the miso not all dissolving, to which I think the solution is "use less miso". Other than that, largely successful.

Two things have been banging around inside my head yesterday and so far this morning.


The first one starts with a little story from Film School. We had an assignment to determine the core question and core conflict of ourselves and one of our classmates. The lady who picked me as her subject got the question right ("Is it safe?") but my conflict all wrong. And I feel okay saying that because... well, you know how when someone says something that strikes home for you, you have an emotional reaction? You may want to deny it, but you do have that instant reaction. Yeah, not so much here. She said what she thought it was and I... was really curious as to how she got there, because I was really hoping she'd gotten to some deep insight.

The answer was that she had thought she had me down when we started the exercise. Once we started the exercise, she just went looking for proof of her opinions. So she missed some important things and she found some interesting but false themes in the selection of "art that affected me". Added bonus: Art that affected you when you were 12 may remain important and give useful clues as to who you are but is not the same as art that affects you at 22 or 32, and all three ages showed up on my list. Countess Cathleen is the most important play I read in college (as an age-bracket; I didn't read it for class). I'm not sure it would have been important to me if I'd read it in high school or if I read it for the first time now. But it was important then and therefore remains important.

(I'm not saying I did much better, but for different reasons. It's a tough exercise and I don't blame her for not getting closer.)

But the thing I noticed most was that I didn't have any urge to argue or defend. She was far enough off that we really were just discussing her perception of who a person she barely knew was, rather than who I am.

The second thing is about who people are vs. who they say they are. And that ties into the above because most people want to tell you things about themselves that are false. I think we've all heard the bit about any time a person says "I'm the sort who..." whatever comes out next just ain't true. And while *that* isn't always true (e.g.,I am the sort of person who tracks metrics because it helps keep me honest - true), it is often true. So saying that she was wrong would be pretty pointless and only verify her impressions for her.

And really, I wasn't that interested in her impressions of me as a reflection of me once I figured out that she'd missed the boat.

But I then ran into someone online who says in their profile that they say what they are thinking and that's that. Except, of course, that they are apparently able to be offended by random internet strangers saying things that are true. And that aren't even particularly aimed at them. (Trust me, if I wanted to say things about this person, I would have a while ago. But saying unkind things about strangers seems pointless.)

Because when we want to defend is when someone has struck a chord with us, and what we want to say next is often untrue.

~150 words
15_minute_fic Word #76
Original Fiction


Ren doesn't recognize the sound coming from her throat when she--only she's not Ren anymore, really, is she?--sees Daiki. She doesn't even really recognize him, and he doesn't recognize her at all, but her throat knows him.

It's only when he tosses a look to Mike and says, "Your girlfriend is growling," that she knows what the sound is and what it means.

Mike looks to her and back to Daiki, nervous. She can smell his starting to sweat, with those strange preternatural senses she's developed since...

Best not to think about that. She cuts the growl off in her throat and smiles. Daiki can't see behind the smile, to the face under the human mask, to know just what sort of trouble he's in. And, fortunately, he doesn't even really see her, or he would remember her and know precisely why she's snarling at him.

(1) I don't need a new bento box. Not larger, not sectioned, not with bunnies, not donburi-shaped. Do. Not. Need. (Want! But don't need.)

(2) The diet has survived the first chocolate craving. Droste cocoa & soy milk to the rescue.

(3) I saw instructions for miso soup balls in a book recently, but the linked online instructions look better.

It's come to my attention that an old and dear friend, the man who was there the first time I dyed my hair blue, has been diagnosed with Polycystic Kidney Disease.

He's looking for donations for the Northeast Ohio Walk for PKD. I don't usually believe in begging for money and I usually hate any version of Perform Unrelated Task X for The Cure, but... maybe I'm feeling hormonal or something today. Anyway, if you want to donate, you have a link and I'd appreciate it. I'm sure he'll appreciate it more.

There's also a Seattle Walk on September 20. If there's interest, I'll form a team.

Feel free to forward.

[public despite my misgivings]

Last time I stopped at Great Wall, I picked up a melon. It was labeled "Hami" which I took to mean "melon with which you are unfamiliar, round-eyed girl".

Of course, what it actually means is "strangely shaped cantaloupe".

Fortunately, Sinthrex likes cantaloupe. And I'm pretty sure the Tofu God is amused.

(I also did not buy a much larger statue of Guan Gong while I was there. He was on horseback. He looked very fierce. It was really cool! And someone else will get more joy out of owning it than I will.)

I have no idea what I did yesterday to be so sore today, but I sure am. Weird thing is, much of yesterday was stance work which typically kills the thighs & groin. Only I am sore upper body & core (abs & mid-back). The core makes some sense: I can see where I might have been working those muscles more than usual to maintain stance correctly. Upper body, not so much. And I'm sore out of all proportion with the actual level of work I did in class. So no clue.

Time on the elliptical this morning did help some. (Also, Enell still happy-making.) Just not as much as I'd have liked.

Of interest primarily to locals: As we were going through our primary ballots this evening, I googled the "No Preference" candidate for state Insurance Commisioner. Guess what?

He's got a preference.

That preference is Republican, though that's not actually the big issue for me. The issue for me is that he basically lied to me. Yes, it's possible to be nonpartisan and all that. But he's not a Republican at the level I'm a Democrat (meaning that certainly people who know me would say as much). He's the chairman of the Spokane County Republican Party.

Dear Candidate: Don't be an idiot. We'll notice that you're lying to us. We'll tell our friends.