I’m putting this all under a cut, because it’s supposed to be a nice holiday today for people.
This is not a nice post.
This, in fact, is something of a recollection of very misguided patriotism.
A post-Valentine’s valentine.
You’ll never guess to who….
Okay, you probably know.
For troubles with sleep and uncertainty are most likely caused by this.
Currently, my biggest problem is that I get distracted for hours. Worse, I can waste time perfectly well without the web. And then there’s the web.
Work is bad as well; I’ve been known to sit with dinner in my lap gone stone cold because I sat down to close “one” ticket and it ended up being sixteen.
I have an experiment at the moment: various playlists of a certain time length. I find that soft lounge music works best; something that lets me concentrate and that I notice when it stops. I used five hours of holiday music to remind myself to not work for 10 yesterday afternoon.
Because when you work 60+ hours a week at a job that requires you to care deeply about complicated systems on the behalf of millions of people, remembering everything in your personal life is not within your capabilities after week 14 of the year.
I have one for home, and I love it so. Plus tea calms me. And I have plenty of calming teas. Too bad I’ve never had them available when the high-priority screaming tickets come in.
Because things are a bit too ragged around the edges right now to ignore it. Remember the calming tea. And plus, y’know, ah….
Exactly.
Well, I do have a gazillion CDs now. I should start at some point. I just wish they were all already in mp3 form.
By the way, this book is extremely good for the classical music novice. It’s not just play lists, but also talks about the different styles and histories of music, covers multiple music periods, and is a great reference for the terminology and a little biography about the lives of each composer.
He also adds some more composers as a sort of “read more” link. Or rather, “listen more.”
Restaurant food out there is getting expensive. I am technically not in the middle class tax bracket so I’m supposed to be out there spending my guts out, but dude, it’s not like I live in a cheap area of the country.
Some of my basic kitchen weaponry in this battle:
These soups are both easy to prepare and healthy. And don’t make me sick. And are extremely portable to work.
(Ooh. Please please bring Tomato Herb over to the local island haberdashery!)
Joyce Chen Microwave Rice Steamer.
Because when I get home at 8:45pm, which is much more often than not1, I’d like some rice in 15 – 20 minutes please. Works best with long-grain.
Also does: pasta (perfectly al dente for some reason), steams vegetables (but really you could do that in something else), pops popcorn (haven’t yet tried, but I hear results are good).
And of course a normal rice cooker. Although I do go high-end, just because then they actually last and also have plenty of cool and useful features—but frankly you can make do with simpler models, which also can be beat up with more impunity.
But it’s not just for rice (otherwise I’d just use the Joyce Chen), but a rice cooker also lets you prepare entire meals all at once. Basically, chop up ingredients (or, if you have no time, find canned chopped up things), toss into cooker along with uncooked rice and some kind of broth, let rice cooker do the rest. Your recipe may not even involve rice.
You should definitely check out Roger Ebert’s The Pot and How to Use It, which will get you to a much more flexible position. Recipes? Who needs them? Especially if you’re just doing fried bell peppers and beef.
But for some recipes and other places to get started, see Recipezaar: Rice Cooker Oriental Chicken (steps 1-3; the others are if you’re doing this in a microwave for some reason, and no, not the Joyce Chen above), Pandora’s Feast (Veggie), Pasta in a rice cooker (with sauce and all), Rice Cooker Fried Rice.
I have 3: a large round monster for mass-cooking multiple days of main meals and soups, a medium round for side dishes, and an oval one for any elongated things. And I have a freezer, of course, and many plastic containers.
I try to get a Rival brand crockpot if I need one.
Oh, and Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker has extremely good recipes. Haven’t found one dud in the bunch, but you want to buy your vegetable broth (it takes a lot of time to make otherwise) and some of the recipes are a bit complex, but are worth it if you have the time.
I’m going to try to find another recipe book, since I no longer have vast amounts of time. I’ve found these books get reviewed like heck on the Amazon website, and people are quick to point out important sticking points, from “these are a bit complex” to “why does this one ask us to spray something into the pot each time? unnecessary” to “looking for something other than ‘dump canned chicken with mushroom soup into crockpot’”.
I’m thinking Slow Cooker Magic: A Seasonal Selection of Family Favorite Recipes may be up my alley.
Microwaved Fish Fillets. There are a zillion microwave fish fillet recipes on the net, for a reason: damned easy and the microwave is an ideal place to do fish. Fillets are also cheap.
With plain white rice, a seasoned fillet (or even a plain one with soy sauce) and some steamed vegetables, you’ve got an extremely healthy meal.
Just try not to get fillet from poisoned fish. Which is getting a bit difficult to do these days.
… right, back to the rest of the list.
Yes, I seriously need to do this (don’t we all?). Mostly I need to figure out where everything belongs and then just put it all back where it belongs. And it needs to really belong there.
Also I need to learn how to properly clean things. Knowing the right technique to do windows is probably going to save some pain the next time around.
I have some things I need to hire a handyman dude to fix. Or an electrician. Or whatnot. Somewhere this must fit into the budget.
Bunch of books to donate still. Bunch of just stuff to donate since I don’t need them. Need to get my so-called office tidied up, because…
My job is stressful. What few hours of peace I get need to be cleanly delineated, or else I go crazy (plus I start to intersperse work with everything else in my life, and that’s just asking for trouble).
This week I’m working from home, and I’m using my home office place for the first time in forever. It’s also a place where I can play music over speakers (though not all that loudly). That’s helped quite a bit; I could see making a stop there in the mornings and then at nights to pick up stuff and then drop off the stress.
That’s nice and ambiguous. Write what?
Well, obviously I’m going to write in my blog, with a mind towards writing with a column mentality.
I’m definitely writing more reviews. They’re, as I’ve said before, difficult for me to write, but I’ll keep banging my head away at them. This dovetails with…
My commute is long and often involves wait periods at either end. However, I use a ferry, which means someone else worries, and I get to stare out across the Sound and read on my Kindle.
I’m going to try for one book a week, which seems reasonable. And yields copy.
A last short story link for 2008: from Gene Wolfe himself, The Arimaspian Legacy at InfinityPlus.
A. Jericho
Secret Snowbound Island Base
Pacific Northwest
December 24th, 2008
Santa Claus
North Pole
Dear Santa,
Here is a list of what I would like for Christmas.
Please note that it’s very short. I’ve had a few good years, relatively speaking, and while the economy seems dire, I’ll probably hang onto my house since it isn’t on one of those crazy ARMs.
As for bigger things in life, I figure I can make those on my own more or less, although if you have any spare good luck that isn’t better spent elsewhere, I wouldn’t mind.
There are things people generally ask for, like World Peace and Please Don’t Let the Economy Break, but those are probably in our hands, and not in yours.
So here’s what I really want for Christmas:
deep-crust triple cheese mushroom sausage pizza
snow shovel
leather gloves
ETA: 9V and D batteries, 8ct packs
I’m kind of snowed in (again) and the electricity is really kind of unreliable, and I don’t think these are something normally found in the magic Christmas sack of holding. But if you could pick them up somewhere and fly them in, I would be grateful.
Sincerely,
A. Jericho
P.S. Hopefully reindeer like sunflower seeds, because that’s all I have for possibly ruminant food that doesn’t need heating.
P.S.S. Also, the rice milk is a change from last year, but the Oreos are a standard.
All Seated on the Ground
by Connie Willis
SITE: Original • Kindle-friendly1
A Hugo Award nominee for best novella, this is a warm Christmas romance involving alien contact (and the most disapproving aliens ever) delivered with the charming humor that’s just the Connie Willis touch.
Also available is a shorter novelette, Just Like the Ones We Used to Know (Original, Kindle-friendly), which is even warmer and cozier.
No one does Christmas and Science Fiction better (and more often) than Willis. You can also buy her anthology, Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, although it’s not yet available for the Kindle.
S?’s full 2008 Advent Calendar.
The Stupidest Angel
by Christoper Moore
Kindle Edition • Paperback • Fictionwise
This Christmas story is not like the others
This book has a flavor all its own
If you want a Christmas tale that is like no other
I suggest that you take this one home
The angel Raziel has discovered a child with a Christmas wish: to bring Santa Claus back to life. Awwww. If only this all wasn’t a misunderstanding on the lines of “I saw mommy killing Santa Claus”.
Christopher Moore: man is funny. His stories have a lot of heart without falling into the saccharine stage, which is perfect for Christmas stories. And he can poke fun at things without sounding just a wee bit bitter, also perfect for Christmas stories.
For a year or so now, apart from Terry Pratchett, Moore’s probably the only man that can get me to read about vampires without throwing up a little in my mouth.1 Check out You Suck, and I’m also waiting patiently for Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story to show up on the Kindle.
S∂’s full 2008 Advent Calendar.
Christmas Games
by David Langford
Kindle Store • Fictionwise
This story could have happened in Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 8 as an illustrative “this is why holodecks should not be on starships” scenario. Star ship staffers take a yearly Christmas VR trip where they roleplay a murder story—the same one, apparently, every year, like clockwork—except this time the detective’s died from an aneurysm, and the program has decided to take everybody hostage.
One of those “lie back and think of Monty Python” stories, and if you think I’m mixing my metaphors, that’s exactly what it’s like.
S∂’s full 2008 Advent Calendar.
Christmas Season
by Jay Lake
Strange Horizons: Original • Kindle-friendly1
How many versions of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” have you heard of late? Your enjoyment may very proportionally with this little short-short from Jay Lake.
S&part’s full 2008 Advent Calendar.
Chip Crockett’s Christmas Carol
by Elizabeth Hand
SCIFiction: Original • Kindle-friendly1
Unlike yesterday’s short-short, today is an entire novella, originally serialized at SciFiction.com. A modern day Christmas Carol in Washington, D.C. that isn’t a crass carbon-copy or sickeningly sweet carries the day here, and is one of the best Christmas tales around.
The Kindle-friendly version compiles all 8 parts into one long page, so it’ll take a couple seconds to load. This is one you’ll want to save off and send off to <your kindle name>@kindle.amazon.com .
If you prefer to be on the web when reading this, LiveJournal has a less eye-ripping-out version than the SciFiction.com archives.
You can also buy a hardcover of this novella alone, or the collection in which it appears, Bibliomancy, though both of these are getting really hard to find and very expensive to buy.
S∂’s full 2008 Advent Calendar.
Amazon’s Kindle Blog
