A Nothing Kind Of Day

The weather has been lovely here this past week, and the weekend looks to hold about the same. Warm and sunny, it's the kind of weather that makes you want to just go somewhere or be outside to enjoy it.

And, as luck would have it, we have nothing to do and nowhere to go.

Okay, so we didn't spend all our time indoors. We went out yesterday to run a few errands, and this morning I went out to replace the wiper blades and reattach the rear-view mirror on the truck. Tomorrow, we have yet another journey to make in the morning and coming up this weekend is our regular journey in search of our weekly comestibles ... but besides that, nothing.

The job called me yesterday and booked me for this coming Monday for a 12-hour shift (could be more but I have no way of knowing that until I get word on Monday), so at least that's something. I am still looking for something more full-time, however.

I do not know what else to do, so I think I'll watch a DVD or something. Good night everyone.

Sunday Coffee: Comfort Zones and How To Step Out Of Them

It's another beautiful and warm Sunday morning as I type this at the coffeehouse, prior to our weekly shopping excursion. We were lucky to find a coffeehouse close to where we now do our shopping and finally had the time to take advantage of this.

In a revelation which I'm sure will come as a big surprise (to no one), I have led a very sheltered life for the most part. My upbringing was nothing unusual, filled with safe foods, safe places to go, and by "safe" I meant things that were within the comfort zone of my parents. The most exotic restaurants I went to as a kid were the full-service (as that's all there was back in The Day) Chinese places. No weird spicy food for me, oh no. My early life was one big church supper -- same old thing over and over again.

I didn't have my first real forays into the larger world until I met Ms. Darkstar. What followed were a whirlwind of wonderful and new tastes -- Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican (yes, Mexican, and NOT the stuff from a box!), all opening new doors to me and I thoroughly enjoyed each and every journey ... except for the one dish I ordered that was so heavily laden with cilantro that I remarked that it smelled and tasted like feet. I had wonderful sushi and sashimi with friends in Washington state. New tastes and new experiences were opening to me. And I loved it.

This past Friday, however, Ms. Darkstar and I took a trip far outside either of our comfort zones ... with a trip to a nearby supermercado. There are places that, as soon as you pull into the parking lot, you automatically know you're the outsider. I think ours were the only Anglo faces in the entire store. Salsa music played from the loudspeakers, All the signage and even the food labels were in Spanish first. It was a little bit of a challenge for me to use what little food-related Spanish I knew to navigate our way through and get what we came for. But, you know what?

I loved it. And I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.

I've waited far too long to experience the new, the bold, the daring in my life, and short of anything that will cause me grievous bodily harm, I'm more than willing to give it a try. It may take a while for me to get the courage to actually do so, but what the hell ... I'm not getting any younger.

And, on that happy note, I'll close this edition of Sunday Coffee, and bid you all well until next time.

More video stuff and general ramblings

I got a new piece of hardware and some peripheral attachments on Monday, and shot a video as I unboxed them. You can see it here.

I finally got the motivation (and the money) to go do the laundry today, getting me out of the house long enough for Ms. Darkstar to get some stuff done. The place I went to this time was a lot better than the one we went to a few Sundays ago. I think it's better on weekday days in general; there's less people, less kids running around, and it's much quieter. So, we once again have clean laundry and Ms. Darkstar was able to get stuff done around the house without me being underfoot. Yay!

It's been two weeks since I got that driving job, and in that span of time I've only worked one day. If I don't get anything this week, I have no choice but to start searching again. I can't live like this.

Until next time, take care.

Don't know what's wrong with me (besides the obvious)

I had today all planned out, sort of. There were things that needed to get done and I had every intention of doing them. I had everything organized to make tonight's dinner (did a pot of stew, Ms. Darkstar made the biscuits) and it was just going to be a day of relaxing and being lazy.

Naturally, I had to wake up feeling sick today and have it get worse by dinnertime.

So, right now, it's very late and I don't know what else to write about so I'll close this and wish you all a great week.

**Author's Note: This post was supposed to go up last night, but Blogger decided to crash and crash hard, so it had to wait until this morning because there was no way I was sitting up past 2 am to get this online. Thank you. **


When I woke up Thursday morning -- no, let me rephrase that, because I woke up when a certain little white bitey thing started chomping on my foot. When I finally got out of bed Thursday morning, I was expecting another humdrum, dull, boring day at the start. I knew I had at least one package coming, that much was fairly certain, but the rest of the day was in serious doubt.

Well, as it turned out, it was a lovely day. First of all, my shipment of Portuguese sausages from Gaspar's arrived. I hadn't had this since I left New England, and it tasted as good as I remembered it. I even made a fan out of Ms. Darkstar, who until today had never had the wonder that is linguica. And, truly, your day can be made infinitely brighter by a delivery of wonderfully spiced meat.

I also got my combination birthday/Christmas gift from Mom in the mail. I foresee a Kitchen-Aid mixer in my future (yay!) so I can make even more yummy things for Ms. Darkstar.

And to round out the day in a special way, we took a trip to Penzey's to restock my spice cabinet, which was getting woefully low, mainly because of the move. We picked up some things I was low on, some new things that looked interesting to try, and I did my very best to restrain myself from backing the pickup truck up to the doors and just shoveling stuff into the truckbed. It would have been the best-smelling heist in history.

I'm not sure what's in store for today, but I do know I'll be making some treats with some of the spices I picked up yesterday. We have our weekly shopping trip to accomplish as well, and we will need to seek out a laundromat this weekend. I don't know what you'll be doing, but I hope it goes well for you.