(no subject)
Feb. 10th, 2003 12:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckThe afghan is finally done. I spent Thursday evening weaving in the last of the ends and cursing the size and weight of the thing (aspects of its character that I'm sure I'll approve of strongly when I start using it to keep warm). My brother-in-law and his wife used it both of the nights that they stayed with us, and it seems to fit a double bed admirably. I'm now moving on to trying to crochet some coasters in order to learn to make round things with mixed types of stitches (learning to follow a pattern, really). I haven't gotten very far yet, but I'm hopeful.
Our guests arrived Thursday afternoon, dropped off by my mother-in-law. Scott wasn't quite home at the time since he'd been off taking the last of those Linux systems administration tests (Which he passed. Yea!), but he arrived while his mother was still present which we all considered a Good Thing. She had to rush off to get to a dental appointment, or we'd probably have sat her down to watch the videotape from the ultrasound (we keep forgetting to take it with us when we're going up to see her).
We didn't do all that much. Scott and his brother played games. My sister-in-law read (She saw the copy of Laurel K. Hamilton's latest that LunarGeography had lent me and pounced on it). I poked around online. I decided against asking my sister-in-law if she'd like to go to Alessar's to watch anime that evening since she seemed to be so occupied with the book.
We ended up ordering pizza for dinner that night, and I have now confirmed that the odor of garlic currently REALLY repels me. The in-laws ordered garlic butter crust, and the smell alone made me reluctant even to enter the kitchen. I actually ate a piece of pizza without problems, leading me to conclude that it's just the odor that makes me sick. Hopefully, this is not something that will endure past the end of the pregnancy. (I did eventually have to come out and tell Scott that he'd better put away the leftovers and do something about the smell because I was starving. He was startled, having missed all of the earlier signs that I was being bothered.)
We took time that evening to watch the most recent Angel episode and rewatched the week's Buffy since our guests had missed it (We'd actually taped it because we weren't sure whether or not LunarGeography was going to be able to catch it and then discovered that she had in fact seen it). Afterward, I suggested that Gale and I might watch something else, but she was in the middle of yet another book and when she wasn't reading she hung out with the guys and commented on the progress of their games. (Oh, and it appears that we gave Jeff not a LotR computer game but a board game. Just the sort of thing I don't pay attention to, I'm afraid.)
Friday went pretty much the same way with the guys playing games, Gale reading, and me feeling rather bored. I did a little bit of work on the rewrite of part 4 of the fic, but I felt a bit rude working on that when I wasn't willing to answer Gale's questions about what I was working on. It's not so much that I care whether or not she reads the stupid thing as that I'd rather she not do it when in proximity to me because if she doesn't like it I'd really rather not know. And I really do think that she won't like it.
We had dinner with Gale's parents at Lai Lai, a local Chinese restaurant. They ordered everything in consultation with the waitress and a woman who I think had to be the manager. The conversation was in Chinese, so I followed none of it, but the resulting meal was excellent. I felt a little out of place since the real purpose of the meal was to give Gale's parents a bit more time with their daughter, but they were quite welcoming. Gale's mother even asked questions about the progress of my pregnancy.
When we got home, Gale spotted my Lilo & Stitch DVD and suggested we watch it. That's how we spent the evening (Scott and I taped the shows we'd normally watch since we didn't think our guests would be interested). Afterward, the guys set up to do some more networked computer games. I put in another DVD eventually, Shamanic Princess this time, and got Gale to watch the first episode. It was late by the time that ended, so she simply asked for a synopsis of what happens in the other five and then headed for bed.
I intended to do the same, but the battery backup for our desktop machine (and router and...) started shrieking every few minutes to warn us that we were losing power. At this point, Scott suspects that we were having a bit of a brown out, but at the time he couldn't figure out what was happening. I simply stayed up until he disconnected the backup because I knew there was no way I'd sleep with that thing going off every 5-10 minutes. It sounds rather like an annoyed alarm clock, one of the ones that increases its volume the longer it's been going off after about 15 minutes of being ignored.
I slept poorly that night and more or less dragged all day Saturday. For lunch, we did carry out from Steve's Lunch, a diner that does Korean food which Gale loves. (She used to live a few blocks away, back in our college days.) Scott didn't know what to order and so simply got what Gale did without stopping to think about his allergies. This left him with a meal that he couldn't eat due to the beef and that I couldn't eat due to the egg. Jeff ate some, and the rest got pitched. Scott ate the Lai Lai leftovers. I was rather annoyed at Scott over the whole thing because he really should have thought about it (well, at least he didn't eat it. That would have really been stupid). His beef allergy's severe, to the point that he can get sick from eating food that's been on the same plate with beef products.
Jeff took time to help Scott move the last large piece of furniture from the spare bedroom to the basement. It's a rough cabinet sort of thing with a particle board case (well, the bottom third has doors, the upper two thirds are open) that we've been using to hold our spare blankets. I'd rather not give up the storage space, but I didn't want it in the baby's room (that and it stood right where I expect the crib is going to have to go since all the other options would place it fully along an exterior wall or even along two). The monstrosity was originally built by one of Gale's roommates as a bookshelf with vertical boxes of shelves that would pull in and out. Sadly, the original builder was still experimenting and didn't take the weight of the books into account. It was highly useful for storing books one never wanted to look at again, but the shelves tended to fall on top of anyone who was foolish enough to pull them out. We'd converted it into a sort of pseudo wardrobe when Cass lived with us so he'd have somewhere to hang his suits, but after he moved out blanket storage seemed like a more efficient use of space.
Scott drove Jeff and Gale to the airport in plenty of time for them to catch their flight. We'd intended to have a session of my White Wolf game that evening, but it ended up not working out. Lewis was on call, which he'd warned me about several days in advance, and Sandra e-mailed me to say that she wasn't feeling well. That left me with three players, Scott, LunarGeography and Wheloc. I tried calling Wheloc to confirm that he was coming but got no answer, not even a machine. He didn't show for the game, and I have no idea what happened to him. He may simply have forgotten.
LunarGeography came over anyway and showed us another three episodes of Lain. That series does not become more comprehensible as it goes along. I do still have the sense that there is a master plan of some sort that the creators are following; I'm just not sure I'll ever know what it was.
Sunday was a day for sleeping and recovery. Scott baked bread, a potato whole wheat recipe that actually worked out fairly well. I think that that's largely because something disrupted the bread machine in the middle of the knead/rise cycle so that we had to restart it from the beginning. I think doing that worked the whole wheat flour much better than the standard whole wheat cycle usually manages. He also did the grocery shopping while I napped.
Well, now I'd better get back to working on that one bit of part 4 that's been giving me trouble. I hate writing visual description. Absolutely hate it.
Our guests arrived Thursday afternoon, dropped off by my mother-in-law. Scott wasn't quite home at the time since he'd been off taking the last of those Linux systems administration tests (Which he passed. Yea!), but he arrived while his mother was still present which we all considered a Good Thing. She had to rush off to get to a dental appointment, or we'd probably have sat her down to watch the videotape from the ultrasound (we keep forgetting to take it with us when we're going up to see her).
We didn't do all that much. Scott and his brother played games. My sister-in-law read (She saw the copy of Laurel K. Hamilton's latest that LunarGeography had lent me and pounced on it). I poked around online. I decided against asking my sister-in-law if she'd like to go to Alessar's to watch anime that evening since she seemed to be so occupied with the book.
We ended up ordering pizza for dinner that night, and I have now confirmed that the odor of garlic currently REALLY repels me. The in-laws ordered garlic butter crust, and the smell alone made me reluctant even to enter the kitchen. I actually ate a piece of pizza without problems, leading me to conclude that it's just the odor that makes me sick. Hopefully, this is not something that will endure past the end of the pregnancy. (I did eventually have to come out and tell Scott that he'd better put away the leftovers and do something about the smell because I was starving. He was startled, having missed all of the earlier signs that I was being bothered.)
We took time that evening to watch the most recent Angel episode and rewatched the week's Buffy since our guests had missed it (We'd actually taped it because we weren't sure whether or not LunarGeography was going to be able to catch it and then discovered that she had in fact seen it). Afterward, I suggested that Gale and I might watch something else, but she was in the middle of yet another book and when she wasn't reading she hung out with the guys and commented on the progress of their games. (Oh, and it appears that we gave Jeff not a LotR computer game but a board game. Just the sort of thing I don't pay attention to, I'm afraid.)
Friday went pretty much the same way with the guys playing games, Gale reading, and me feeling rather bored. I did a little bit of work on the rewrite of part 4 of the fic, but I felt a bit rude working on that when I wasn't willing to answer Gale's questions about what I was working on. It's not so much that I care whether or not she reads the stupid thing as that I'd rather she not do it when in proximity to me because if she doesn't like it I'd really rather not know. And I really do think that she won't like it.
We had dinner with Gale's parents at Lai Lai, a local Chinese restaurant. They ordered everything in consultation with the waitress and a woman who I think had to be the manager. The conversation was in Chinese, so I followed none of it, but the resulting meal was excellent. I felt a little out of place since the real purpose of the meal was to give Gale's parents a bit more time with their daughter, but they were quite welcoming. Gale's mother even asked questions about the progress of my pregnancy.
When we got home, Gale spotted my Lilo & Stitch DVD and suggested we watch it. That's how we spent the evening (Scott and I taped the shows we'd normally watch since we didn't think our guests would be interested). Afterward, the guys set up to do some more networked computer games. I put in another DVD eventually, Shamanic Princess this time, and got Gale to watch the first episode. It was late by the time that ended, so she simply asked for a synopsis of what happens in the other five and then headed for bed.
I intended to do the same, but the battery backup for our desktop machine (and router and...) started shrieking every few minutes to warn us that we were losing power. At this point, Scott suspects that we were having a bit of a brown out, but at the time he couldn't figure out what was happening. I simply stayed up until he disconnected the backup because I knew there was no way I'd sleep with that thing going off every 5-10 minutes. It sounds rather like an annoyed alarm clock, one of the ones that increases its volume the longer it's been going off after about 15 minutes of being ignored.
I slept poorly that night and more or less dragged all day Saturday. For lunch, we did carry out from Steve's Lunch, a diner that does Korean food which Gale loves. (She used to live a few blocks away, back in our college days.) Scott didn't know what to order and so simply got what Gale did without stopping to think about his allergies. This left him with a meal that he couldn't eat due to the beef and that I couldn't eat due to the egg. Jeff ate some, and the rest got pitched. Scott ate the Lai Lai leftovers. I was rather annoyed at Scott over the whole thing because he really should have thought about it (well, at least he didn't eat it. That would have really been stupid). His beef allergy's severe, to the point that he can get sick from eating food that's been on the same plate with beef products.
Jeff took time to help Scott move the last large piece of furniture from the spare bedroom to the basement. It's a rough cabinet sort of thing with a particle board case (well, the bottom third has doors, the upper two thirds are open) that we've been using to hold our spare blankets. I'd rather not give up the storage space, but I didn't want it in the baby's room (that and it stood right where I expect the crib is going to have to go since all the other options would place it fully along an exterior wall or even along two). The monstrosity was originally built by one of Gale's roommates as a bookshelf with vertical boxes of shelves that would pull in and out. Sadly, the original builder was still experimenting and didn't take the weight of the books into account. It was highly useful for storing books one never wanted to look at again, but the shelves tended to fall on top of anyone who was foolish enough to pull them out. We'd converted it into a sort of pseudo wardrobe when Cass lived with us so he'd have somewhere to hang his suits, but after he moved out blanket storage seemed like a more efficient use of space.
Scott drove Jeff and Gale to the airport in plenty of time for them to catch their flight. We'd intended to have a session of my White Wolf game that evening, but it ended up not working out. Lewis was on call, which he'd warned me about several days in advance, and Sandra e-mailed me to say that she wasn't feeling well. That left me with three players, Scott, LunarGeography and Wheloc. I tried calling Wheloc to confirm that he was coming but got no answer, not even a machine. He didn't show for the game, and I have no idea what happened to him. He may simply have forgotten.
LunarGeography came over anyway and showed us another three episodes of Lain. That series does not become more comprehensible as it goes along. I do still have the sense that there is a master plan of some sort that the creators are following; I'm just not sure I'll ever know what it was.
Sunday was a day for sleeping and recovery. Scott baked bread, a potato whole wheat recipe that actually worked out fairly well. I think that that's largely because something disrupted the bread machine in the middle of the knead/rise cycle so that we had to restart it from the beginning. I think doing that worked the whole wheat flour much better than the standard whole wheat cycle usually manages. He also did the grocery shopping while I napped.
Well, now I'd better get back to working on that one bit of part 4 that's been giving me trouble. I hate writing visual description. Absolutely hate it.
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no subject
Date: 2003-02-10 09:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-02-10 10:29 am (UTC)The whole gluten thing is also why, when baking pastry, you aren't supposed to overwork the dough. With yeast, gluten and cooperative flour, you get bread. Without the yeast, you get shoe leather pie crust.
And now I'm sure someone who knows more about the whole thing than I do will step in... (At least I hope so.)
no subject
Date: 2003-02-10 01:25 pm (UTC)Nope, you won't.
Lain
Date: 2003-02-10 07:52 pm (UTC)