naturespirit made me socks, and they are... wow. I've never had socks made to my measure before. It feels so... luxurious!

Plus, they are warm and soft and brightly-colored, and they make both me and the Wigglet giggle. They are most awesome socks. Thank you, naturespirit!!


Also, dnellin, your card made me laugh! (And I've had that bacon chocolate bar, by the way... it's... interesting. O_O). Thank you for thinking of me. :)


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Current Mood: hee!
Current Music: John Williams medley on NPR

Talking to myself mostly. I'd like to do a language post, maybe tomorrow. I'll have to keep that in mind.

The Aphorisms of Kherishdar — Has already sold more copies than I planned... it won't be long before I'll be needing to buy two cups of celebratory drinking chocolate, and I haven't even had a chance to go buy the first...! o_O And there are three reviews!! (Thank you for those!) My plan was to wait for the Search Inside data to populate and for my review copies to arrive so I could send them out, and then do the big "It's available" marketing push. I'm still planning on doing that, but... wow, you all are getting the word out for me already! I'm grateful!

The Admonishments of Kherishdar — I'm thinking of pushing this up to twice a week, mostly because I want to get this one out the door so I can work on the novel that I started before I embarked on the Aphorisms and the Admonishments. I don't want to linger on this project too much because... well, it's depressing. Black Blossom is about Shame and the Calligrapher meeting because they needed to, for their own health. Which means by the end of both these collections, they're not in great shape. I want to deliver them to their appointed place of "Everything works out." :)

The Worth of a Shell — I want this to be my "novel of the year," which shouldn't be hard since it's already written; I just have to revise it and add some B&W illustrations/back- and front-matter. With that and the two Ai-Naidari collections, I think I'll call it a year in terms of making books available for you all to buy. I have to be careful not to just publish everything at once because that would be counter-productive. For everyone!

The Website — Going pretty well, given that I'm starting the design from scratch.

Art — My only hope for art this year is to finish four paintings. That's it. They're already chosen. If I get through those four, then I'll keep going. Um, this is four paintings in addition to the Admonishments illustrations. I guess I should count those. :P


So: The Admonishments in the first half of 2008. Shell in the second half. Two paintings in the first half of the year and two in the last. With Black Blossom planned for the first half of 2009. That should be do-able for a new mom without being too much of a stretch.


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Current Mood: sleepy but coffeenated
Current Music: Baby Beethoven

I really enjoy cooking, and one of the perks of my life right now is that I have plenty of time to do so (elusivetiger bravely eats everything I make, too). What consistently amazes me about it is how much method matters. You'd think I would have internalized this lesson from baking, where how you do things matters just as much as what you do it with... but there's so many more ingredients in cooking that it's easy to lose sight of the big picture.

Today I made mushrooms with the same stuff I usually make mushrooms with, but with a slightly different method, and they were... tremendous. Seriously, I rolled a natural FUNGUS twenty on these things. (My Skill at Mushroom Cooking has gone up 1 point.)

As usual with methodological epiphanies, the revelation seems kind of obvious when you look at it in retrospect. But I am still chuffed. So here you are: haikujaguar's Critical Success Mushroom Method:

You are sauteeing these things. Dump them in a hot pan. Add a lot of water-soluable liquid (I used a dry, sweet white wine). Add your salt and pepper and a touch of some herb you like (oregano for me, or parsley).

When I say a lot of liquid, by the way, I mean... at least half a cup. They'll be swimming in it. You'll wonder briefly if you're making mushrooms or mushroom stew.

And then, you turn the burner on high and you boil the living liquid out of those things until they are steaming and the wine sugars have started to caramelize and the bottom of the pan is threatening to brown.

Take it off the burner and then add a pat of butter. Toss to coat.

So simple: you really need to put the heat on very high and add the fat last. Then you get a sweet toasted note, with a rich mouthfeel. But it makes a huge difference between 'sort of edible' and 'wow, how did I do this??'

Next up: fifty ways to cook a flounder. -_-


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Current Mood: tired! but well-fed