Thursday, February 28, 2008

Few people know what grapefruit actually tastes like. They know what grapefruit peel and membranes taste like. Very bitter. No wonder people think grapefruits need sugar sprinkled on them. Well, they don't. And that's coming from someone who puts three and a half spoons of sugar in her tea. (Two and a half if it's herbal.)

There is only one correct way to eat a grapefruit. First peel it, then remove the membrane from every section, so that you eat only the actual fruit. Ideally, the sections should be eaten one at a time as they're peeled. For bonus points, they should be fed directly into the waiting mouth of an eager, barely patient child.

This process is one of the best things I learned from my dad. And, today, for the first time, I got to do it right. Thank goodness my daughter likes grapefruit.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

A happy scream from the kitchen. Followed by, "That's how I wash the ice cream scoop." And that's before she's ever tried ice cream.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Nutella in Hawaiian sweet rolls makes for a fairly good dessert. It has a certain chocolate croissant vibe going for it, and it's a lot easier than actually making cookies.
Good morning. There is a tiny tyrant in my life who decided this week, after seven months of sleeping in until noon or 2pm, that we should start rising at 9am. So here I am, before ten in the morning. Bizarrely, I'm beginning to get a taste for mornings.

Now, I've kept journals before -- but only ever online -- and it's been a few years. I discovered online journaling in the wild and crazy days when people thought they could post every thought they had on the internet and no one they actually knew would ever find it. That lasted, what, a few months? What can I say? I was young and stupid. Hey, a lot of people were. At any rate, after more than five years away, I think I'm ready to try journaling again. So here we are.

One chapter into editing my first novel; one chapter into writing my second; and seven months into raising my tiny tyrant. Let's see where this takes us...
After keeping this journal somewhat regularly updated for almost a year, I may have actually proved to myself that I'm now mature enough to have one. This is very exciting.

Monday, February 4, 2008

Having a corporeal aspect to my existence feels a little like living in a giant mecha with a limited, not very good, but sort of functional AI. As long as nothing goes too wrong, I can let the AI be in charge. Sure, the mecha will bump into things and be kind of stupid and clumsy, but it will basically work. Of course, there are also panels and panels of controls, and, if anything goes wrong -- or I get tired of bumping into things -- I'm free to take over manual control. The catch is that I haven't taken any training courses on how to run the mecha and there's not much of an instruction manual and it's really, really complicated. So, chances are, I'll do a worse job than the limited AI. With practice and a great deal of concentration I may improve, but, even then, I don't do a whole lot better than the AI because I just don't seem to have an aptitude for driving this thing. (This is all a very fancy way to say that I'm clumsy.)