Overall, things worked out rather well.  I tried new recipes, all of which turned out delicious (though not necessarily pretty).  Nothing was wasted, and I have an empty refrigerator ready to receive my veggies tomorrow.  It’s all going according to plan.

In any case, I’m really looking forward to Friday.  A friend of a friend is having a Christmas party.  She’s Greek, so apparently all the food and everything is, too.  Sounds delicious.

h/t E. McPan.

This week's least pleasant news--I lost my little mp3 player that I used to listen to podcasts.  That's a major bummer.  It's worse because my headphones were with it, and for the last week I've been using my iPod headphones.  They're terrible.  They actually make my ears hurt.  The Inquisition would love them.  Anyway, I've got a 20% discount from the Creative store (I was a class plaintiff in a lawsuit.  Score!), so I ordered some new in-ear headphones.  They're hopefully better than my old ones, though I really loved them.

Anyway, this week you get a "convenience shot."  This is Sebastian in my lap about 2 minutes ago.

In other news, I'm excited to say that I finally got some more parts for my home server.  Until today, I'd been using the trial version.  It worked fine, but it was obvious that it had to be replaced if I was going to keep a server on hand.  Yesterday, I got the new software and it's up and running.  Almost better, I put in a 1 Terabyte hard drive, so I actually have plenty of space for backups, to store my 150 GB of music, and my many gigabytes of videos (my movies, basically).  Given all the space that I'll be using for media storage, it's very possible that I'll need another TB drive around February, but I'll deal with that when necessary.

In any case:

I'm Currently Reading:

The House of Mirth

Have a great weekend!

I’ve been relatively slow to adopt a lot of the newer web innovations.  I have a MySpace page, but I don’t really go there, and I don’t like MySpace very much.  I only recently created a Twitter account, and I post infrequently.  (Election night was an exception.)  Even then, I only allow people I know and am friends with in real life to access my Twitter feed.  Even Facebook isn’t something I’ve really bothered with.

But now, I may find myself using it a bit more often.  I had a few friends, basically people I knew in Laramie and one or two people (ok, one—you know who you are!) in New Orleans.  One high school acquaintance, however, started a Facebook page for our class (1995, if you must know).  Since then, I’ve been besieged with people I went to high school with.  I haven’t thought much about these people in 13 or so years, and I’m sure they haven’t thought about me.  Overall, I’d say it’s a very cool experience, though quite, quite weird.  Unlike the cliché, I had a pretty good high school experience, and knew quite a few really nice people.  They weren’t all friends, and I’ve fallen out of touch with even those I did count as friends.  Seeing what everyone is up to has been nice.  Most seem to be doing well (there may be some selection bias—they’re obviously doing well enough to have steady internet access).

We’ll see what happens.  I don’t know to what extent I’ll end up reconnecting.  Even if this is it, though, it’s fun.

Anyway, this week we have the cats looking on from their new bed that I set up.

In other news, I finished the third Dexter book.  The writing was a bit better, but the plot wasn't.  My only consolation is that the show is so good that it feels like this great character isn't going to waste.

Have a great weekend!

Or go to http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/watchmen.html?showVideo=1.  Again, I can’t wait.

In other news, the goodies from the CSA are starting to taper off a bit.  Most of the vegetables are cold-weather crops like spinach, kale, carrots, and potatoes (which is really just more of an end-of-season crop, but you get the point).  Plus, the number of winter squashes grows.  I have quite a few in my pantry as we speak.  Overall, we have about a month left to go, and I expect things to be tilted a bit in the winter squash direction.  That suits me fine—I prefer things that will keep for a while, especially considering my freezers are mostly full from the long season.  If I were trying to make this all last all year around, of course, I’d have a lot more.  But even so, I estimate that I could live for at least a month without going to the grocery store at all.

I also ordered some of their meat.  I don’t have enough room in my freezers for goat or lamb, but I picked up a few chickens and, of course, a heritage turkey for Thanksgiving.  I’ll be brining it, and I can’t wait!  I may even need to pick up a new roasting pan—I usually only cook turkey breasts.

Especially given the cost of heating energy in the winter, and add in the fact that I’m considering a trip abroad next summer, I’m quite pleased that I’m heading into winter with a fully-stocked pantry.

And just for fun, here’s a hilarious edition of one of my favorite comics, xkcd.  I may get in a game of Sins of a Solar Empire today, but the trouble is that usually even the small, short games take hours.  I’d be immersed in Fallout 3 except that it’s a stunningly huge game, and even though I’ve already played for something like 30 hours, I’ve just barely scratched the surface.  That’s one to stretch out and consume gradually over time, I think.

Hopefully the recent changes in the show’s producers will get some results.

In case you're wondering, that's Jupiter requesting some food, and Sebastian is wondering what all the fuss is about.

Have a great weekend!

I have to say, I thought a great deal of both candidates’ speeches.  McCain was graceful and professional.  His crowd was a bit unruly, but McCain himself did an excellent job.  Obama’s speech was everything we’ve come to expect—inspiring.

Now let’s move our country forward and get some hard work done.