Der Feuervogel aufersteht.

Poker night was fun. I won/tied for first (I took my first hand with a full house). It was all people I already know, including two of my tai chi teachers (they're married). There wasn't a whole lot of Deep Conversation or anything, but it was nice.

Game night went well. We had 6 RSVPs, then one of them broke her leg, so we went down to 4 (+ me & Ben). We played Lego pictionary for a while, then switched to a ridiculous game called King's Blood, which is sort of like Uno x dominoes with anime-style drawings of people. Not a whole lot of Deep Conversation, though we had some "OMGWTF TRUMP" with our pizza. Some of the people I invited couldn't make it this month but wanted me to let them know about next month etc, so I'll call it a success. (Also it makes us clean the house, which otherwise wouldn't get done.)

We didn't get to SF as planned very late Monday night because our plane had a maintenance flag, which resulted in a 2-hour delay. We could have gone home and rebooked for a Tuesday AM flight, but going to Atlanta (and staying in a hotel on Delta's dime) meant we could get an earlier flight to SF. So we did that.

Tuesday we went to lunch with Mo & Enne, and we went shoe shopping, where I tried on the Vivs at the Fluevog shop, and now I really hope Santa brings me some shoe money. Then we BARTed over to Oakland, got dinner with Robynne & Starchy, then I tried on about a million bras at Robynne's shop (bought one). After that, we thought about going out to a tiki bar, but sitting down felt really good, so we had mixed drinks at home instead. I had a de la Louisienne, which is rye, Benedictine, vermouth, and Peychaud's. It was pretty awesome.

Wednesday I met several of my VP classmates for lunch, which was nice. I hadn't seen any of them since VP, and I missed them. I miss talking about writer stuff. After that, we went back to R's for our stuff, then took BART to a station where Ben's parents picked us up & dropped us off at our B&B. Dinner was at a Vietnamese place called Tamarine. I had a squash & sweet potato curry which was lovely.

Thursday we didn't do much until dinner, which was around 3:30 or 4. Ben's brother & his wife (and her parents--this was a packed house) made dinner. Ben's mom had Christmas, which was a bit excessive IMO. (Too many presents. Too many stocking stuffers. I don't need more Stuff! I need LESS!)

Friday we went for a walk at a nature preserve in Mountain View then had lunch. Ben and I went to Adam, Alexander, and Rachel's. We played a round of Sentinels of the Universe (where we ALMOST WON but the environment killed us a lot) then went up to Vynce's to hang out and play more games.

Our trip home was entirely uneventful.

Luna is sick and not really getting better. She doesn't have much of an appetite, and trying to convince her to eat is difficult. She's lost more weight since we were gone. She still loves Cheetos, though. IDK. CATS.

I went to the doctor yesterday for these weird pink bumps on my toes that hurt and itch sometimes. Chilblains. Caused by excessive vasoconstriction in the capillaries at the extremities. Not much you can do about it other than wear multiple pairs of socks and wait for the weather to get warmer. Can be related to Raynaud's, which I've suspected I have for a while now.

Since I've been feeling a bit off and have had more migraines recently, I brought that up, as well as this feeling of swelling on the front of my neck. She said if it's still bothering me next week, I should call & she'll refer me for an ultrasound. She also had me give some blood for a thyroid test, since my last one was 10 months ago.

(I haven't been feeling up for exercising, which I don't like. I like exercising. I felt too fatigued this morning to do my lifting, and I wasn't happy.)

I've got 3 stories on submission (20, 7, and 1 days) right now, and a fourth I intend to get out soon, once I remember where the next place I wanted to send it was. (I also want to give it a read-over in a few days to see if the revisions I just made work or are clunky.)

I finished the last exam in my certificate course, which means I should be getting my certificate in the next month or so. I don't know if I need to do anything else, like say "hi, I finished everything, do I need to do anything else?" I read the syllabus-like thing, and it didn't really help.

I've almost finished reading this book about Berlin 1961, and, somewhat annoyingly, it's given me ideas that would make my novel better but require more extensive rewriting than I did during NaNo. -_- But now that I've finished the course, I can spend several hours every day reworking it. (And I also have a white board where I can make notes and outline things that happen off screen.)

This weekend should involve hanging out with people I haven't seen in entirely too long, games, pizza, beer, and cupcakes, so I'm pretty excited about that. (There was a red velvet cupcake mix at the store, which I couldn't pass up. It included a frosting packet! Not that cream cheese frosting is particularly difficult, mind you.)

I think for my next baking trick I'm going to make chocolate chip cookies with dark chocolate M&Ms instead. Though I might hunt down an oatmeal chip recipe for that for texture purposes...

Um, still teaching & planning to apply to grad school, which means I need to revise the paper I wrote in Marburg and contact people about writing LORs and prepare for the GRE ugh.

I volunteered to read a Swiss friend's 25-page seminar paper on the South African Constitutional Court. (It's in English; his native language is French.)

I'm on page 6. It's hard, really; the register, as academic writing, is formal, then there's the weird word choices and sentence structuring because of French. I'd like to get halfway through it today, but I don't think that'll happen.

I am grumpy.

I am chronically undersocialized.

I can't afford to host parties as often as I did when I was actually getting paid.

I am an extravert (ESTJ).

I am also apparently a horrible unpleasant person that no one wants to spend time with because I'm mean and horrible. (No really, I've gotten emails detailing exactly how I am a horrible person and that's why no one wants to invite me to things.)

These things are all related.

But apparently when I throw a party, people come (probably because they know I make good food, because I'm a Heinrich, dammit, and we like food*).

But finding time when people are all free is tricky, because, you know, grown-ups and work and other standing plans and whatever.

But regardless, I'm going to try to have people over once a month on a standing basis because if I don't start seeing and interacting with humans other than my husband on a regular basis, I am going to go insane.

*digression: when I was a kid, I used to love these hors d'ouevres my mom would make that are dill pickles (not spears) coated in cream cheese and wrapped in corned beef. I hadn't thought about them until the Xmas party, when mom brought them. I made Ben eat one to feed my nostalgia. If anyone knows of a vegetarian corned-beef-like substance, please let me know.

Yesterday involved sleeping in a bit, eating gingerbread cake with lemon curd whipped cream (and I had to make the lemon curd myself, because the store was apparently having trouble with the supplier and I didn't feel like going to Harris Teeter; it really says something about me when I'd rather make custard from scratch than drive 15 minutes each way to the store.), opening the one gift on the table (a framed picture from Ben's aunt), and generally lazing about until we went to see Sherlock Holmes with Laura & Paul then get Chinese food for dinner.

I read all of Dragon Bones (because I betaed a fic in that universe and had a very vague memory of enjoying the books when I read them; it's odd that the only part of the book I remembered was the subplot about the twins...). I started it after breakfast & present (around 11, I think?) and finished it around 2. Ben was astonished, as usual. I can read 100 pages an hour (in English, if it isn't dense). That's how I roll...

Sherlock Holmes was fun and fanservicey and actiony. Holmes' German (and Moriarty's) was atrocious. Mostly they were quoting Schubert's "Die Forelle." (Thematic!) Their accents were horrid and unintelligible. Also, Moriarty sang "Vorüber wie UN Pfeil." Nein, nyet, non. Un is French.

We got to Jade Palace later than we've gone on Christmas before, around 6:30, and it was packed. We got a table at 6:45, which wasn't awful, but we had to flag down a waitress to take our order, and she didn't bring our drinks for a while. But she was running around in circles, so we couldn't really blame her. Next year if we go out for a movie rather than watch one on video, we should time it better. If that means dinner at 5 for a 7 pm movie, so be it...

Ben & I drove down Friday, picked his family up at the airport, and checked in to the Lion and Rose, the B&B we stayed at when we went there for our anniversary a couple years ago. The breakfast is still awesome. Saturday we had eggs scrambled with veggies in a wheat shell, Sunday was blueberry pancakes with bourbon-pecan syrup, and Monday was a variant of eggs Benedict (with foccacia, spinach, ham for the meat-eaters, a poached egg, and a Hollandaise-like sauce made with goat cheese). Yeah, it was awesome. If you go to Asheville, look it up.

After we got settled in, we went to Nine Mile for dinner, which is just up the street from the B&B. It's Jamaican-pasta fusion. I had a tuna dish with perfectly-seared tuna and a coconut curry sauce; Ben got a dish called Soon Come, which was cheese tortellini with pineapple, apples, bananas, and currants in a cinnamon syrup. It was awesome. We split a piece of their Chocolate Spliff Cake, which included black pepper in the cake and had a lemon-thyme cream filling. It was awesome, and I wonder if it got the name because they were high when they thought of it. After that, we went back and Ben opened his birthday presents from his family, and we drank port and talked. (They have port and sherry you can drink.)

Before I talk about Saturday, I need to mention the cold front that just came through the state. Thursday it was 80 degrees. Friday's high was 60, and it was windy as hell.

So, Saturday morning we went hiking in the Blue Ridge. We walked up Craggy Gardens. When we parked, the car's thermometer told us it was 32 degrees, and it snowed a little bit. The trail was in a cloud, except a brief moment at the end when it cleared just enough to see the view for a few minutes. There was hoarfrost on the ground, and the grasses looked like they'd been covered in ice. It was pretty miserable. I packed for cold, but not for wind. We went back to the B&B, changed, and went downtown to see the sights (and eat food). We planned to go to the French Broad Chocolate Lounge, but we got sidetracked by a crepes shop. Then we walked up Haywood, stopped in Malaprop's, and eventually made it to the chocolate lounge, after which we went to the Grove Arcade, then back into town a bit. Ben's parents went to Sante (a wine bar and used book shop) while we went to the Chocolate Fetish (and where Beth dropped off our free Biltmore tickets). We were heading to meet them and got sidetracked by a game shop which had just reopened after renovation. We picked up Trans Europa (a game about building railroads) for half price: $15. Dinner was at Laughing Seed. Their vegan sloppy joe is amazing, and the red cabbage sauerkraut is pretty good, too.

Sunday was the Biltmore. We toured the house, walked through the gardens, saw the smithy and woodworking shop, and this time we went to the winery. Ben & I aren't wine drinkers, but his parents are. Then we went to dinner with Beth at Tupelo Honey (and didn't get seated until after 8 because the 6-person tables were filled with people who just kept hanging out after they finished eating; so they sat us at two neighboring 3-person tables instead). Peach-ginger cornbread ftw. I ordered a side veggie combo with sweet potato fries, tofu, and the cornbread, all of which was awesome. (I was tempted by a tuna dish, but I had my monthly-ish tuna on Friday.)

Monday we drove back, and ranyart and picklish went out to the Wooden Nickel with me, Ben, and his brother. His brother can't come into our house because he's highly allergic to cats, so he stayed at a nearby hotel. The other 4 of us hung out and talked. It didn't feel like I hadn't seen them in a year since they moved to California; it felt like any of the dozens of nights we all just hung out at our house and talked (sometimes with alcohol, sometimes not). They'd planned to stay here Saturday after the beer festival as well, and they're probably coming Friday night because their other plans may be falling through. So we get to see them a lot, which is awesome.

Now I'm trying to get back into my usual routine, and it's hard. I finished building the 00 Raiser yesterday afternoon, so I don't have that distraction. I need to schedule a couple appointments today and call in Claire's refill. I need to finish revisions on The Novel, though I haven't figured out how to change the things I need to fix yet. Joy.

Thursday evening, the lovely skogkatt got here, so she and Ben and I went out to the Wooden Nickel for beer and food (dinner for her, tater tots for us, and some AMAZING pear bundt cake). I love the Nickel.

Friday Julia and I headed off to Atlanta, stopping at Cup a Joe for breakfast and arabica and Weaver Street for picnic comestibles (tabouli and hummus on seven grain, omg yum). There wasn't much traffic, which was great, and we stopped at the welcome to South Carolina to eat our sandwiches. I took over driving somewhere in SC (and probably did horrible things to the clutch because the Honda isn't my Mini and I had trouble hitting the release point right, and reverse managed to elude me consistently), and we rolled into the hotel around 3:30, checked in, and got badges.

Julia's weekend consisted of being the point person for the Outer Alliance and interviewing people, and mine either of trying not to look like a lost puppy following her around or trying to talk to strangers. But with Julia, I managed to actually meet some people and not feel quite as out of place.

The ratio of men to women was REALLY HIGH, so I ended up mostly hanging out with gay guys (three of whom complimented my awesome swirly shirt which, as promised, looks better on a person than being held up), though I got hit on by a (straight, not even bi) guy. Figures.*

Between panels, I thought it would be nice to get a breath of fresh air, or at least not over-air-conditioned extra-dry air, so Julia and I went outside. I saw a person walking toward the hotel in a brown outfit with goggles on the head (which I initially thought was steampunk), then as they got closer and I could see the outfit better, I realized it was America (from Hetalia). I bounced a little bit and said "awesome costume" or something to that effect and got a picture and chatted briefly.

Then I was getting a drink in the con suite and making small talk about Cheerwine (it's good...), and my head was going, man, she looks familiar... and then I realized it was the America cosplayer from the previous day! *waves to narroch*

What all did I do? Went to the Match Game panel, which was funnier than I'd expected, went to a few readings, a few socials, the Hellebore and Rue launch party, the Outworlders party (where I got to talk about hot soccer players with one of the guys, because eventually everything with me will turn toward soccer briefly), shared cat photos (queer nerds are cat people. I know, shocker, right?), had a little to drink, bought a couple books, and met some people.

The con is small (150ish), so it's a good size to be able to get to know people a little bit, without feeling too sparse (though panels had 5-10 people at them usually). Unlike something massive like D*C, where I've never managed to actually MEET anyone (and half the time I can never find the people I know are there and am nominally travelling with**), I met a few people who I'm adding on facebook and will be seeing at future cons, and I met Steve Berman who gave me a free book when I said I was broke (since I'm unemployed and Ben's income is marginally sufficient...). Meeting other writers and businessy people is important if you're a growing writer. Networking. I am terrified of it.

So we drove back Sunday afternoon, slightly later than intended because someone grabbed Julia to interview them. Traffic is much nicer than during Labor Day weekend, and we made good time. Stayed up way too late hanging out, but that happens.

And as I wrote this, I realized she left this morning without me giving her money for the room. At least she's not far yet, visiting friends in Durham. *facepalm*

All caught up on my corners of the internet and contemplating lunch. I should contemplate a nap at some point, so I don't spend the next few days too brain-fuzzy to get my editing done. I'd love caffeine, but I had some yesterday to be able to drive. Stupid migraines.

Depending on a variety of factors, I might go again next year. Gaylaxicon is in October in Minneapolis, which I can't afford to get to. (Hello, airfare.) I didn't see anything about pre-reg for next year's Outlantacon, so I don't know when it is. We'll see, I guess.

* And "I'm married" didn't deter him >:[ I'm bi and poly, but that doesn't mean I want to sleep with YOU, dammit. I know there's a button with a pithy version of that in existence; anyone know where to find it? Also, having a conversation with you doesn't mean I want to sleep with you. It means I am performing the skill "Social Interaction" which humans learn as they age. Fucking patriarchy.

**most common phone/sms conversation at D*C: "Where are you?"

1. Saturday, a few friends and I went on the Big Boss Brewery's tour for my birthday. It was extremely popular, but the weather was nice - 70 degrees or so - so after it was over, there was a big open-air festival almost in their parking lot. There were two food trucks (OnlyBurger (the veggie burger was pretty good, but the fries were meh) and KoKyuBBQ (Ben enjoyed the duck bratwurst sandwich and tater tots fried in duck fat)).

I tried their new Dunkelweizen, D'Icer, and it was pretty good. It wasn't Weihenstephaner or anything, but it was drinkable. (Speaking of Dunkelweizen, I tried New Belgium's in their Lips of Faith series; it was black as Coke and about half as sweet.)

After digesting the beers and food, Ben and I went out to Sage for dinner, where I boringly got the fesen joon. The jokey waiter must have cut his hair since New Year's, because I didn't recognize him until he started talking.

2. I haven't gotten anything productive done on my writing in a while. I fixed the plot issue I think; I still need to propagate some of the changes, but I can do that while I'm doing the hardest part of the revision process: getting into the characters' heads and adding descriptions. What do they see/hear/smell/feel/etc? What can I say other than "he narrowed his eyes" (eg)?

3. SCHEISST EUCH IN DIE HOSEN, WIR STEHEN GANZ AM OBEN, UND WIR STEIGEN WIEDER AUF. HIER KOMMT HERTHA! Yesterday's match pitted the best offense (us) against the best defense (Fürth), and we got a 2:0 win out of it, extending our lead over our next competitor to 4 points. Unless we lose the rest of our matches (which is, of course, technically possible, but not terribly likely), we'll get promoted back to the first league. HA HO HE!

4. I got the results from my bloodwork last week. I'm currently overmedicated for my thyroid, so I get to take half the Cytomel for a while and see what happens. (My TSH was undetectable, and my T3 was above normal limits, but T4 was fine.) Hopefully this won't lead to a return of The Nausea. Inability to concentrate is one of the symptoms of hyperthyroidism, so that helps explain #2.

5. Reading one of the free books I got, Darkship Thieves. I'm not very far into it yet, but so far, our heroine has ripped her nightshirt in half to stop the men attempting to abduct her in their tracks and commented on how she knows the man whose spaceship she ends up in is a "real man" (I paraphrase) because he responds to the sight of her breasts. Said real man (who's got cat's eyes, which is actually kind of nifty tech) is from an anarcho-individualist culture (barf), and on p 87, there's this bit about "those wacky 21st century folks, thinking there aren't really gender differences in brains" which made me want to hurl the book across the room.

Frustratingly, Persecution of the Other (and the people the cat-guy is descended from are basically bioengineered to be smarter/faster/stronger/fit better in X situation and were, of course, persecuted and wiped out on Earth, except those who fled) is very frequently a liberal/progressive motif, where The Other stands in for queers or racial/ethnic minorities or other real-life disprivileged groups. I don't get the impression Ms Hoyt has any truck with that librul pansy nonsense.

At least I didn't pay money for it. (I did buy Mark Van Name's omnibus Jump Gate Twist, and I feel OK about that, because Mark admits to being Baen's token liberal. Also, it features a beefcake/emo shot of Jon on the cover.)

6. Still taking tai chi. I'm taking a break from weapons to go back to Dr Jay's 9th Street Dance Chen class for the current session. I can't take both, because they meet at the same time. I may go back to weapons over summer, because it doesn't look like he's teaching Chen over summer. (I could be wrong; it happens on occasion.) I'm also taking Nina's Tuesday evening class, which may ALSO be going on hiatus over summer.

So I'm going to have to self-motivate if I want to get my yellow sash this year. I'm awful at that.

7. Cats are evil.

Those of you who live in North Carolina know exactly what I'm talking about, I bet, before I even say it. For everyone else, March Madness is the college basketball tournament season, starting off with regional tournaments and culminating with the national tournament.

There are many major basketball schools where I live, including my alma mater, UNC, its arch-rival Dook, NC State, and Wake Forest. There may be more, but idgaf about college basketball, except when it interferes with my other plans.

I turn 35 in just under a month. Since I'm a bit broke right now, I thought, hey, we could go to the bar and hang out, and people could get food there, then we could go back to my house and eat cake. That would be awesome and save me the $60+ on food and drinks. (I throw a party with damn good food.)

So I had Ben ask the folks at the bar if 15 or so people coming in on a weekend afternoon would be cool. Apparently Saturday afternoons are pretty busy, but Sundays aren't so bad. Unless there's a game, which they'll have on the TV. So I checked the UNC basketball schedule to see if there were any that weekend. OF COURSE. It's the ACC tournament, times TBA.

If Sunday's game doesn't start till later, like 7 or 8, or if it started around noon, it wouldn't be bad; we could leave before people start pouring in for the game. But I don't want to invite people and be like, well, we might have it at the Nickel, or it might be at my house, depending on stupid March Madness.

The Dook match on the 5th starts at 8 pm, as do most matches. But I don't want to assume anything and end up scrambling for new plans and not have food for people. The Nickel is very cozy, probably holds about 35 people comfortably, 50 like sardines. They have a surprisingly good beer selection, mixed drinks, and food for a small town bar. The staff is great.

We were there last night, actually, and the bartender was mixing a martini made with green stuff. I said it looked pretty, and he poured the excess into a small glass and gave it to us. Before we left, he gave Ben a taste of Bärenjäger because he mentioned he'd like to try it sometime. (It's alcoholic honey. Delish.) I want to try the Kentucky Orange Blossom next time I go: Maker's Mark, St Germain, Gran Gala, and soda. St Germain is ridiculously good; I apparently am quite fond of elderflower. (I tried elderflower (or was it elderberry?) palinka in Budapest, and it was YUM.)

So I have no idea what I'm going to do for my birthday this year. Balls.

I apparently thought it was a good idea to have a power bar at 5ish and a yogurt at 7ish then go to the bar with my one cool ex-coworker from the health department. (Which, apparently, hasn't changed a bit and mgmt and the clients still suck. Good to know that quitting was a good idea.)

Two beers should really not feel like 4. Especially because I know the second one for sure wasn't over 6% abv. Mmm, Hoegaarden.

I should either drink more water or sleep. Probably both.

Is that possible?

Anyway, last night I went out to the Flying Saucer in Raleigh with friends for a belated birthday shindig/shenanigans thing. One of my friends who I haven't seen in ages couldn't make it to my party, because she was out of town, so I organized a get-together.

I got all dressed up and everything. Wore my new Vogs with the 3" heels and didn't break anything.

Beer #1: Shotgun Betty, Lone Rider Brewing, Raleigh. 6% ABV. I've had this in bottles and from a growler, but they had it ON TAP! so I had to get it. Still awesome. It's got a nice clove finish.

Beer #2: Maredsous 10 (tripel), Duvel Moortgat. 10% ABV. I generally enjoy tripels, and Maredsous is no exception.

Enne said they'd split a Malheur 12 with me (it came in a 26-oz bottle), so after the first 2 beers were worn off a bit, we ordered one.

Beer #3: Malheur 12 (quadrupel), 12% ABV. I'd heard good things about this beer via the internet, and good god DAMN. It may be the best beer I've ever had. It's smooth, sweet, fruity, has a good body and a beautiful wine color. If it weren't 12% ABV, I'd probably drink it ALL THE TIME.

Oh, and because it bothered me, I looked up what 'quadrupel' actually meant. It's quadruple fermented, which means sugar is added 4 times (to feed the yeast and get them to produce more alcohol.) Dubbel = double fermented, tripel = triple fermented. That makes sense.

Also, I found this convenient guide to beer styles in the process.

Toradora is disturbingly relevant to my current situation.

So, I was working on my review of All the Shah's Men for my blog, and I decided to google my high school classmates who were from Iran, to see if they were on the internet anywhere, unlike the last time I googled them.

Turns out one of them is a real estate agent in Miami. He's got a photo on his website, and he looks pretty much the same as he did in high school, just older and a little shaggier. Weird. I wonder if he's still a jerk. (With pretty, pretty dark brown eyes.) I keep debating dropping in the link, but I don't know if he checks referrer logs.

Of course, the one I want to find is still nowhere to be found.

Writing progress today: 760 words in a (more detailed than usual) outline. It's weird forcing myself to outline, but for this, I really need to work out in advance, in detail, what's happening. There's a lot going on, and planning it out will prevent me from writing a scene and going, "derp, this is shit and doesn't work." Like I did the other day. I'd like to avoid having to scrap 10k words and rewrite.

I think, with some effort, I can get a good 9k words out of this battle scene. Hopefully more, but I don't know how much attention I want to pay to the details. I don't consider myself a military SF writer, though apparently I like to include military themes. I prefer to follow the model of CJ Cherryh or someone like that, as opposed to, say, David Drake.

I miss my friends in the SF Bay area. Still, there's no chance in hell y'all can get me to move out there. I like my large home and low mortgage and bourgeois lifestyle. And I really don't want to deal with California licensure. (And we couldn't afford to let me be unemployed at SF rent prices.)

I find console-based RPGs unspeakably dull and tedious, with the grinding and talking to people and the item optimization and stuff. But give me a fighting game that has taken all the story bits out of arcade mode and dumped them into scenario mode, wherein you take your fighter and an assistant and beat up hordes of enemies, and I'll put in 20 hours in 3 days, grinding and getting items.

(Yeah, I have Tekken 6 now. I've mostly finished scenario mode, except 2 hidden areas - the ones that unlock Mokujin (HARD! OMG!) and Devil Jin (HOLYSHIT this is HARD as FUCK.) I found an item that gives Lee Chaolan an extra 300 life, and that's the only way I made it to the bottom of the level full of ninjas to get Yoshimitsu unlocked.)

In other news, I had a party last night, and it was fun. It was the latest I've had a party over in ages -- there were still half a dozen people here until almost 2 am. Of course, I'm wiped today, because I still woke up after 5-6 hours of sleep at the time my body said "Hey it's wakey time, get up now!"

Improvised garlic knots were OK; I still need to experiment with those. Meringue ghosts were win. Two growlers of Shotgun Betty were enough; 1 would have been too little. I still had a pint left in the second, so I finished it off with lunch.

Pepper Dog Salsa, from Apex, NC, is tasty, but revise your selection down. The medium was too spicy for me to enjoy thoroughly. It was good, but very hot.

I'm supposed to be rewriting the first chapter of this damn novel, but I'm mired in worldbuilding still. Some of it isn't highly important at this stage, so I can do both.

I'd like to take a nap, really. Or go grind some more levels with Lee. I played with Hwoarang a lot already.