(no subject)

I've sort of stalled out on my Yuletide fic. I keep writing a paragraph or two and then deleting it because it goes nowhwere. I'm hoping to spend some focused time on writing today in order to get past that. If I can't, I'll take the time and go back and edit what I've got so far. I need details of the place where the characters are and of the appearance of one character which is different than in canon.

Yesterday, I made banana bread, fudge, and Chex mix. I'm not sure how the banana bread tastes because I bagged it and put it in the freezer for later this month. I suspect, though, that it tastes rather too strongly of ginger to appeal to Cordelia. I accidentally put in three or four times the usual amount of ginger.

The fudge isn't properly fudge. I think the ratio of chocolate chips to marshmallow creme was off rather badly. I needed more chocolate chips. The resulting 'fudge' is the color of coffee that's about half cream, and it oozes. It reminds me rather of nougat but with less structural integrity. At least it's tasty.

The Chex mix came out okay. We have our own variant on the recipe. I use half again as much Worcestershire sauce as called for, and I add ginger. Scott couldn't find Wheat Chex at the store, so I didn't use any. He's also having trouble digesting straight up corn, so I had to limit how much Corn Chex I put in. I ended up using seven cups of Rice Chex and two cups of Corn Chex. That means I need a new box of Rice Chex before I make more. I like to keep some on hand this time of year because Scott loves it so. There aren't many little nice things I can do for him.

We made our library trip in the middle of the afternoon instead of right at noon the way we usually do. This was because both Cordelia and I had holds 'in transit' that we expected would arrive some time during the afternoon. Both had arrived by 3:00, but I had an additional hold suddenly labeled as in transit, so I hesitated. I ended up figuring that the new hold wasn't likely to actually arrive yesterday (and I was right). As long as it didn't arrive yesterday, it could safely wait until next Sunday's library run.

Cordelia returned two books she had finished, the latest Dork Diaries book and Wednesdays in the Tower (the cliffhanger in that one annoyed her), and got out one, The Fault in Our Stars. She's heard good things about The Fault in Our Stars but isn't sure she'll like it. I tried to talk her into browsing for more books, but she refused.

I got three books, a CD, and a DVD set. I'm now about a third of the way into Randall Munroe's What If? and enjoying it a great deal. The DVD set was the hold that I was waiting to have come in. I would rather that it had come in for next Sunday because I don't expect to have a lot of time for watching stuff this week and because I have so many other things I ought to watch first. I've got two weeks to watch it (as opposed to the usual one week for most DVDs). I don't know if I'll make it through. There are about thirteen episodes of (I'm guessing) forty five minutes each. I can't renew the dratted thing because there's a waitlist. Of course, I may decide this show isn't for me. That's happened before. This the recent The Musketeers, and I don't always enjoy stuff that doesn't have SF or fantasy elements.

(no subject)

Do you read comic books? Why or why not? (for silverr)

I don't generally read comic books. I used to, but Scott fell out of the habit of buying them when his various titles (X-Men and spinoffs of various flavors plus Captain America) were going through bad spells, and he hasn't gotten back to them. Finding time to go in every week to pick up whatever had come in was a real challenge (he had pulls, so, at least in theory, he could go in any time and get them), and I think we were trying to save money and space at the time. I had a few titles on the pull list myself, but none of them came out regularly, and I think most if not all of them just stopped coming out.

We've both gotten compilation trade paperbacks to read from time to time, both by purchase and from the library. The library's holdings are sporadic. I think they mainly pick things up when somebody requests them. That means they have very popular things but may have odd gaps in their holdings (I'm thinking of their Doctor Who compilations at the moment). The main barrier to picking up compilations is that we don't look for them.

I used to read a lot of manga. There were quite a few titles I collected and still own (though I'm not sure where all of them are. I put some stuff in boxes in the basement because I thought Cordelia might start going through the shelves and find them scary. She never has touched the shelves, so I needn't have bothered), but I've stopped buying for the most part because it's so expensive. I read a lot of series from the library, but keeping track of what I had read and wanted to read was hard. Also, the library didn't necessarily replace missing volumes. For some series, that didn't matter so much. For others, it was critical. Recently, I've purchased a handful of yaoi volumes, but I haven't been really happy with them, so I don't think I'll do that again.

I've been getting a lot of graphic novels out of the library recently. I'm trying to stick with things where the library owns the entire run or where there's no volume to volume continuity. Getting things from the library is a little difficult if the volumes are catalogued under volume titles rather than under the series name because the library stopped tracking volume numbers on such titles. Sometimes, I have to guess which book comes next. Publication date usually helps, but it's harder than it needs to be.