Making brownies from scratch is not difficult, and the resulting brownies are, in fact, way better than those-from-a-box. Who knew that was possible? BROWNIES GO TO 11?!?!

Also, made a wicked good steak butter the other night. OM NOM NOM. Butter, miso paste, a few drops of toasted seseame oil, and a dash of onion powder and ginger.

And when we were in Modesto, CA, I scored a recipe for biryani from khryseos' ex-partner's ex-husband's mother. Can't wait until I find the time to make it.

With all that's going on in my life, you'd think this would go unmentioned. But I'm rather proud of how I managed this.

( Cooking and meal plan brilliance )

Okay, so a lot has been going on.

• My laptop died. Internet access has been limited, mostly because the ergonomics of khryseos' desk makes it miserable to sit here for long. Tried ordering a new laptop, company was a sham and disappeared with my money. ::sigh:: How embarassing.
• Celebrated my first Mother's Day as a mom. Wow. I am so honored to be here, to be part of this family. Hmm. This probably deserves a whole post to itself.
• Bonnie Pirate Laddie is out of school for the summer, and begins highschool next year. Wow.
• The ever-lovely s00j and her amazing omnisti cruised through on their way east, and we did our best to give them a break and a chance to reassemble themselves before...
• ...an awesome concert in Lincoln, NE. Met scarletandjade and coyotejoe65, and there will be bellydance and dinner parties and good times ahead with them, I am certain! What great people!
• Cooked like a madwoman for Heartland Pagan Festival, and it was GOOD. That probably deserves its own post.
• HPF probably deserves its own post, too, but is too much. I sum up. Reconnected with old friends, made many new friends, ran into a fellow from highschool who I NEVER thought I'd meet in that context, assisted with ritual, sang with BPL, and, oh yes...
• khryseos asked for my hand in marriage, and I accepted. That DEFINITELY needs a dedicated post.
• I have one week to make a Very Pretty Dress, a Very Handsome Vest, and get ready to go to Hawaii. Aloha!
• After Hawaii, it'll be a week of ANAC (Association of Nebraska Art Clubs) conference, in which I'll be chauffeur/guide to the guest artist. Fun!
• And then, a week of Bellydance Boot Camp -- The local American Tribal scene is awesome, and hey, it's a good opportunity for costuming!

Beyond all of that, we'll see. Wow, life is good.

Birds.

Or maybe that's khryseos working on a project. Sawing something. Some squeaky wood. With a rasp.

::knock, knock::

BPL: Um, Carey? There are three turkeys at the basement door.

C: Unh?

BPL: I woke up to this weird sound, and I looked, and there were turkeys outside. You can still hear them. I think they're in the neighbor's yard now.

C: ::shuffle shuffle robe:: ::shuffle shuffle back porch::

C: Huh. Look at that.

BPL: Oh, there's another one now.

C: Gods, what a racket. I need coffee.

Kittenpants: 2, Nebraska: 2

"Anathem" by Neal Stephenson.

I love this book so much.

I have not destroyed all my fears, have not scoured every one of them from my soul.

Once, this is what I thought was needed.

( I have become a hunter of fear. )

The drywall in the studio is mudded, sanded, primed, and painted. Shelves have been installed and secured. I've unpacked most of my boxes of art supplies, reference books, tools, paper, etc. khryseos has set up his fabrication bench and his wax table. He's started to unpack boxes of tools and organize them on shelves, pegboard, etc. My drafting table is set up. The drying racks have been installed. My lamps are hooked up. I've plugged in my cheapass iPod speakers.

Now, theoretically, we still need to install a sink, build another wall (and insulate, mud, sand, prime, and paint it), hang a door, wire more lighting, purchase photo backdrop material (and dye, sew, and hang it), build vertical storage for boards and canvases, and install a ceiling. But you know what? None of that is necessary for me to paint or mix oils. Right now, I have what I need to dive back into work.

Coming up: website updates, more wax carving, crazy silver etching experiments, local model search...

...but first, I need to pick up the Bonnie Pirate Laddie from school and take him to rehearsal.

Holly carp. I'm thirty!

My birthday dinner was AMAZING. If you ever find yourself in Omaha NE, you MUST go to Baby Blue Sushi Sake Grill. (I imagine the other restaurants by the same folks are just as good: Blue Sushi, Roja Mexican, and Bianco Italian)

This is the best sushi I've ever had, and I'm including the place ashlupa took me to in Atlanta, Hana Sushi in New Orleans, and all the places in Kansas City, which is a city that considers eating to be the primary pasttime, the way college towns focus on cheap drinks.

Baby Blue takes a gourmet fusion approach to sushi that is a little unorthodox but DAMNED TASTY. Traditional favorites are available, but the showcase is the "New World" dishes. Beef tenderloin sliced thin, seared, and served on hot river rocks. Summer rolls with seared ahi, red pepper, spinach, lemon, and spicy peanut sauce. Hamachi sashimi with ginger ice and jalapeno salsa. There are Thai, Hawaiian, and Mexican influences in their approach to the menu. Walnut oil, fresh cilantro, curry, lime juice, fresh coconut.

The atmosphere is almost too hip: indirect light from glowing blue blocks, Pink Martini and the sassy side of Kirsty MacColl type music bubbling overhead, unfortunate lighting choices in the restrooms. The staff is way friendly and solicitous and quirky: our itamae kept his favorite knife in a tonto sheath because the rest of the staff had razzed him about his blade being too long to be a kitchen knife. He'd purchased the sheath as a joke, but was found that it was a good fit and kept the blade in good condition. =)

But oh my gods, the food. THE FOOD!

Eat there.

Oh yes.

It's when I'm cooking a spot of lunch for myself that some of the truly weird experiments happen. The stuff that I would never, ever ask anyone else to taste. The stuff that comes not from inspiration, but from a bizarre confluence of necessity and constraint, and an attempt to appease my strange food cravings.

SECRET INGREDIENT: What's in the fridge that I should finish off because there's only one serving left? What is on the verge of going bad? [Today's answer: one serving of roast beef]

Okay, I have my ingredient. But that's not a challenge. The rest of the internal dialogue and decision-making process kinda goes like this:

Okay, so it's roast beef. OMG I TOTALLY WANT A CHEESESTEAK SANDWICH!!1! Er. We don't have any bread, of any kind. Not even a bagel. And the cheese options are limited. And I'm hungry NOW, and don't want to bake bread from scratch. We're going to the store sometime in the next two days, so there's no sense in driving to town just for a loaf of bread. (AHEM! CHEESESTEAK!) I could just warm the roast beef, top it with a bit of chimichurri, and get over it. (NOOOOO! WANT CHEESESTEAK!) Fine. Cheesesteak. What can I make using only what I currently have in the house, in under 15 minutes, without making a huge mess, that will satisfy the unholy craving for cheesesteak?

And so. Instant grits made with beef bouillon, onion powder, smoked paprika, and dry mustard. Threw in a little cream cheese to satisfy the raging cheese monster. Warmed the beef and laid it over the grits.

Bowl o' instant cheesesteak. I'm going to culinary hell for this.

(YAY CHEESESTEAK OM NOM NOM)

Holly Carp, what a weekend!

• In a three-day frenzy, we cleaned the house, and I mean CLEANED. ALL the laundry is done, including the weird costume stuff and have-to-be-washed-alone blankets and whatnot. DUSTING happened, people.
• In addition to the cleaning, I cooked enough food for a small army, including: smoked ribs, turkey, and homemade barbecue sauce, marinated Greek salad, more gourmet mac-n-cheese than reasonable or wise, two fruit pies, two cream pies, 6 dozen cookies, tossed salad, sweet potatoes, russet potatoes, French bread, and I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting something. Gah.
• The cleaning and the cooking, however, meant that the holiday party for khryseos' employees went really well. "This is better than any restaurant" "We'll be glad to come back any time if kittenpants cooks" ::kittendance::
• We managed to get bamboo-laminate flooring at a fantastic sale price, so we now have enough for the den in the basement. Woohoo!
• The Bonnie Pirate Laddie is doing well. His grades are great, though he's bored to tears in most of his classes ("I got 106% on the test that the teacher was complaining I didn't study for and would fail. Can't I just test out of science?"). He was cast as the Rock Star in the community theatre play, and so we're trying to come up with ways to keep the ego in check. ;)
• The BPL's older brother, khryseos' firstborn, herein known as Goth Daddy, is moving up here to shift his life in a new direction. Adventure!
• And, celtic_elk is coming up to visit in a couple of weeks. I'm very excited to show him all the amazing sights of my new hometown, and the *next* hour we can go out to dinner! I'm seeing a lot of video games in our weekend. And perhaps I'll take the goth boys bowling. (cues the earworm for half the flist)
• Also, the BPL and I took down all the Yule decorations yesterday, packed 'em neatly away and put the tote and tree stand in storage. The tree is on the front porch, so khryseos can hack off the base of the trunk for us to use as next year's Yule Log, and then the fir tree and cedar garland are off to the drop-off. The living room looks so naked without the tree and decorations. But it's too early to put up spring decorations. Maybe this is why Imbolc is so depressing. :/ Need to hang more art.

The studio continues, slowly, to take shape. Very slowly. khryseos hopes to have the walls primed by the end of the week; I think that he's being sweet, but overly optimistic.

The wireless switch on my laptop has died again, grr.

The Wiccan Church of Minnesota will be featuring my painting of Brigid in their Imbolc ritual. Yay!

Also, the University Book Store in Seattle, WA featured my art in their 2008 holiday marketing campaign. Yay independent booksellers!

I have joined the Kearney Artists Guild and volunteered for a couple of committees, so yay local art scene! Looks like I'll have a couple of pieces in the guild gallery show in April. The best pieces from that show will go on to a state competition, so that's exciting... =)

Art Studio: sagamockingbird is right. The dust, it gets everywhere. (Which is why I'm here, taking a breathing break.) But, the walls are taking shape, and that shape is FLAT. Also, there are signs and portents that we may be able to get *flooring* soon. Gloria!

The Bonnie Pirate Laddie: has landed a role in a community theatre production. It looks like a medley of 1950's music. I pray he gets to be a greaser. Also, he got the role of the Mad Hatter in the school production of Alice In Wonderland, so THAT'S fun!

khryseos: is researching about Socrates and Virtue. I have A Few Resources to aid his study. =) Also, we're hosting his work's holiday wrap-up party... in two weeks.

Tonight is the local Artist's Guild meeting -- I'm gonna go crash it and see if they'll let me play. =)

I think... I'm done mudding the walls. Tomorrow I can begin sanding, and look for places to do detail clean-up with the mud.

It's not dissimilar to gessoing canvases for painting, really. Although with gesso, you sand between each layer.

Actually, joint compound looks and acts a lot like a thick gesso.

Gesso is ground chalk in a binding agent, like a glue...

Joint compound is, what, ground gypsum suspended in latex?

Same thing. Huh.

----

Also, kenllama has written about our adventures out dancing with Melek Taus.

This week, I am teaching myself how to tape and mud drywall.

That... pretty much covers it. If you need me, I'll be in the basement, covered in joint compound.

In my dream...

( Conspiracy! Rebels! Ducks! )

And then I woke up.

Perhaps this can turn into a meme.

I threw together an iTunes playlist for the 'pod to shuffle through while we're trimming the tree (and OMG, is THAT worth another post). Some of this is genuine yuletide music - Paul Winter's Celtic Solstice, Olympia's Daughters' Winter Solstice Live, a bunch of the songs from Sharon Knight and yezida's new album, "Songs for the Waning Year", etc. But some of it is just stuff that seemed appropriate to me, whether thematically or in general feel and flavor. Here's some of the more interesting stuff that ended up on the playlist, for your amusement:

( Yuletide Shuffle )

So, how about y'all?

Thanksgiving. It happened. As the overstuffed fridge (and houseguests) and mountain of dirty dishes will attest.

I made, as is my wont, way too much fantastic food.

Ginormous roasted turkey.
Way too much* stuffing.
Mashed potatoes.
Holy mother-of-all-gravy.
Sweet potatoes.
Brussel sprouts á la otterkin**.
Duxelles.
A port wine cherry reduction sauce with shallots and fresh thyme.
Crescent rolls.
Freshly toasted pecans.
Pear-cranberry pie with vanilla bean.
A cream pie with chocolate ganache, toasted pecans, and caramel pastry cream.

Now, to shower, dress, makeup, and to the mall for a day of gift-wrapping at khryseos' store. Gods, Black Friday. MADNESS!

If/when life settles down again, I'll share recipes!

----

* The recipe said it would serve 12 "with leftovers". I halved it, as there were 5 adults and one toddler, but three of those adults are athletic males, one of whom is a teenager. So I figured "serves 6+" would be about optimum. AFTER HALVING THE RECIPE, I had to use a @#$% cauldron-size stock pot to mix it, and had to use TWO deep 11x9 pans to bake all of it, and we still only ate a quarter of what was made. So I'm going to violate my rule about not writing in books and change the recipe to say "serves 48". Jesus Murphy.

** khryseos has boycotted this vegetable for 20 years. As a testament to my cooking, he tried one. As a testament to otterkin's, he ate a second one. (After that, there was no pulling him away from the roast turkey with port-cherry sauce.) He said, "I can honestly say that this is the best brussel sprout I've ever had. In fact, while they'll never be my favorite... I can eat these. I never thought I'd say that."

A snippet of updatey-ness. I'm not on the computer as much up here as I was when I lived in KC -- doing more things-in-the-world, and less time surfing the internet. I think this is a good thing. =) But I do miss you fine folks.

( Feri training, proud parent moment, gearing up for the holidays )

But for right now, I'm going to go make gingerbread cookies. Mmmmm.

Tonight, I had two beers, and installed hardware in a PC. Like, takin' the case apart and putting things in PCI slots and everything.

Clearly, the world has become a VERY different place, and anything -- anything -- is possible.

C'mon, Obama!