shut up and let me see your jazz hands

1. I beat Elephant Quest a second time and have maxed out my stats as much as possible, so I guess I will stop playing it now. It's so cute and fun, though! I wish it were longer.

2. KINK BINGO!!!!! Just one more day!

3. I have been eating a lot of popcorn lately. It started with this "Hawaiian hurricane popcorn" that was on sale a few weeks back at work, which has arare and nori in it, and then Carla brought back a couple packets of microwave popcorn from her trip and I ate those, and suddenly I had a taste for popcorn! Luckily we have a popper in the cupboard, and also there was a bag of popcorn that had been sitting there for years because usually I never make popcorn. But I got it out and made some and it was tasty and actually very quick (not significantly longer than microwave popcorn) and if I keep the popper out on the counter, it doesn't seem like a huge deal to make it, so I have started doing that and having popcorn for a snack. :D

4. Speaking of corn, we had some grilled corn on the cob today, along with hot dogs and some teriyaki chicken I picked up for $1 at work yesterday. I didn't have any of the chicken yet (just wanted to cook it because yay grill + if it was marked down to $1 it needs to be cooked right away), but the corn and hot dogs were delicious. I wish there were more corn, but it was two ears for a dollar, so I only bought two (I wish I had bought some the other day when I saw it four for a dollar).

5. I made something similar to this "tofu scramble" last night and it was super yummy.

It was a bunch of garlic and green onions cooked in bacon fat, then I added two boxes of tofu, maybe six ounces or so of shredded cheese (some from a bag of sharp cheddar and the other from a bag of I don't remember what), turmeric, homemade taco seasoning (because otherwise I'd have to grind the cumin and I didn't feel like it, so I used some already ground and mixed with other stuff), and some of the adadaba spice blend. I threw in several handfuls of bean sprouts, a bunch of spinach, and six roma tomatoes, then added a bit of salt. It was so good! I have some left to take for lunch tomorrow.

Daily Happysong:

Britney Spears - Stronger

1. Lunch at Hole in the Wall Burger Joint yesterday was delicious. I had a burger on a pretzel bun and sweet potato fries. Honestly, if we ever eat there again, we will definitely be splitting both a burger and the fries, because everything was huge and we were so stuffed. (Also it's pricey, so splitting would make it much more affordable.) We got there at 11.15 or so because I wanted to beat the lunch rush. Looked like we were the first people there, and by the time we left around 11.45ish, it was starting to get busy, so we definitely made the right choice. It was very easy to get there by bus, just walked up to Santa Monica and took the #1, then afterwards walked down to Pico to catch the #7. (Would have been nicer if there hadn't been a hot spell and the sun hadn't been blazing down on us. Thankfully it's cool and overcast today.)

2. And then this morning I went to breakfast with my mom. She had a coupon for IHOP, so we went there, and I was hoping they would have the same Christmas pancakes they had last year, but no. :( I am so sad! Last year there was a choice of pumpkin, gingerbread, and I think pecan. The gingerbread were sooooo good. I had them a couple times and was really looking forward to them again. ;_; Anyway, instead I had my usual, which is their harvest grain & nut pancakes, which are super tasty.

3. So, I totally thought we did not have an iron. A long time ago we got rid of our old ironing board, and I thought we had got rid of the iron, too. The only time in my life I have ever used either was when Carla was in cooking school and we had to iron her uniform. But after that, I was like, why do we have this? And then the washing machine sprung a leak and got the ironing board all nasty, and we put it out in the yard to dry and kind of ignored it and it got even nastier, so we just threw it away. Thought I'd given away the iron after that, but turns out we still had it. So! (The point of my story! Finally!) A few weeks ago we bought some iron on patches for the crotches of two pairs of jeans that had big holes. Today I finally got around to trying it, just put a towel over the cutting board and used that in place of an ironing board. And the patches seem to be stuck on good! So yay.

4. I wrote about 200 words on my Yuletide fic last night. I already had ~700, so that brings me to just 100 words below the minimum! Also I got over the place where I had stalled before, which makes me really happy. I wasn't at all sure where to go, so I had been in avoidance mode. But I really want to get this done early, unlike every other Yuletide I've ever done ever. So my goal for tonight is to at least make the minimum and hopefully finish the fic and send it to beta (this is me, so I can't imagine it being too much longer than the minimum).

5. I got quite a bit of work done yesterday! I was on a roll! I think today I will be on a roll, too. :D

Daily Happysong:

Hamasaki Ayumi - You Were...
This is off her most recent album, but it is one of my favorite things of hers ever. Just so, so pretty.

1. I got the living room/dining room vacuumed and dusted and tidied up for our guests coming over tomorrow.

2. I made up a bunch of sweet potatoes tonight with the mustard/garlic/herb stuff from this recipe. Well, sort of. I didn't have any dijon mustard, so I used yellow. I didn't have white wine, so I used cider. And I didn't have any chicken broth, so I left that out altogether (doesn't need it anyway). Also I used way more garlic than it calls for (even considering I was scaling up because I was using more potatoes), and didn't measure the herbs, but just tossed in whatever looked good. XD So I guess it's more "loosely based on" that recipe, but they taste delicious. :)

3. I am excited about a couple upcoming DW features in the new news post. Being able to filter entries in a comm to one user (this will be so handy when looking for posts of mine!) and being able to filter on multiple tags at once (omg I have wanted this since LJ introduced tags!). Apparently these are both new on LJ as well, though I won't have a use for the tag filtering there anymore, but I do sometimes search comms for old posts of mine there, so it's good to know I will be able to do the filter there, too.

Daily Happysong:

Yonekura Chihiro - Just Fly Away
Catchy, bouncy theme song for a rather forgettable anime (Mon Colle Knights, which I only know about because I translated it).

1. I finally got around to reinstalling all my Peggle games and played a bit. I forgot how much I love these games. I hope they release a new bonus pack soon.

2. Carla went to the farmers' market yesterday and got me a bag of apple chips. I've gotten them from a couple different sellers before, but this was a much bigger bag for only $5. It's really hard not to just gobble them all down. They are soooooo delicious. Dried fruit is so dangerous that way. -_-

3. We went to the store last night and there were cake mixes on sale for $1, so I was going to buy one and make a cake for Carla, who'd had a bad day, but the line was super long, so she just said let's skip it, but on my way home I decided I would make her a homemade cake once she went to bed, and surprise her with it in the morning. So I did! Well, not the surprise part yet, since she's still asleep, but the cake is all ready and waiting.

She's a huge chocoholic, so I knew it had to be chocolate, but I wanted it to be not just plain chocolate, yet it also had to be something I had all the ingredients for at home, since I was making it in the middle of the night and without a car can no longer just run to the store at times like this! So I thought maybe a chocolate cinnamon cake would be yummy and I found this recipe and then just made a chocolate buttercream frosting for it. I went all fancy and did a layer cake and everything. I can't wait for her to wake up. :D

Daily Happysong:

Megamasso - Gyuunyuu (Mjolk)
I have been totally in love with their song Lips for a while, but never got around to listening to the rest of the album it's on. Well, I finally did so last night and ended up five-starring almost everything on the album, including this song. :D

I actually meant to include this in my daily happiness post, but forgot. Here is the recipe I used for the ice cream. It's from a Williams-Sonoma ice cream cookbook I got years ago and rarely use because I hardly ever make ice cream.

( Peach ice cream )

1. There's an Avatar friending meme on DW! Also yet another interview about Legend of Korra with the Avatar creators.

2. I really liked this Holmes/Watson block print. So pretty. *_*

3. We have been buying a lot of bananas lately, and inevitably the last couple will get too soft to eat, so I toss them in the freezer for eventual banana muffins. There are like ten or twelve up there now (a recipe usually calls for three), so I figured I'd better start making some muffins before the freezer became nothing but bananas.

Rather than go with one of my usual recipes, I decided I wanted to try banana bran muffins this time, so I bought some wheat bran the other day and googled for a recipe. I ended up going with this one, but I subtituted honey for sugar (I used about 1/4 cup honey, though next time I might use less) and put in dried cherries rather than chopped nuts (I don't like nuts in my baked goods, but I do like dried fruit, and cherries were what we had on hand).

Anyway! They turned out really good!

4. I've been getting so much stuff done the past few days! I'm very excited about that. :)

Daily Happysong:

BoA vs Lady Gaga - (Don't Call) My Name
A mashup by mas4 of BoA's My Name and Lady Gaga's Alejandro. Very catchy!

1. omg I made such delicious curry tonight. We had a couple potatoes, some carrots, and an onion, so I wanted to make curry, but we had no meat except ground beef. For myself I would have no problem just making vegetable curry, but Carla likes meat with hers, so I thought, hey, I could make meatloaf curry. I've seen it at restaurants, but never had it myself because I always go for the katsu curry or just plain (or the delicious, delicious beef curry they used to have down at Mitsuwa in Little Tokyo, made with thin-sliced beef).

We didn't have any packets of meatloaf seasoning, so I googled for ideas for what to season it with and the first thing that came up was powdered onion soup, which we have several boxes of in the cupboard as it was on sale one time and we were going to make dip or something I guess. So I used one of those, and some seasoned bread crumbs that were in the cupboard and divided the mixture into little patties and they turned out really, really good! I will definitely keep this in mind when making curry in the future.

2. I had ice cream twice today. :) First was mint chip, one of my favoritest flavors, and second was Thrifty's Lemonheads flavor, which I just could not resist buying when I saw it. It's not as intense as I was expecting, but is really, really good, with bits of Lemonheads in it (in almost powdered form).

3. I saw several people post this otter swim lessons video and just couldn't be bothered to click, but then I finally did and omg it's so cute! The mommy otter is giving her babies swim lessons! *_*

4. I finally read chapter 85 of Hourou Musuko and ( spoilers )

Daily Happysong:

Chemistry - Aikagi
I was listening to their first album last night and remembered how much I love it.

1. I realised I had a manga translation I was supposed to do by the end of May and buckled down and translated all twenty pages of it last night. Huzzah! It's really not that much, but I have such trouble focusing that I'm very proud of myself for doing something that "long" in one sitting.

2. Afterwards, I made peach & blackberry crumble (photo & recipe here) with the peaches and berries my grandparents had given us. I would rather eat fresh fruit and less dessert, but no way could I have eaten all that before it went bad, even I ate nothing but peaches and berries for every meal.

It's a really simple recipe, but it ended up being annoyingly complicated for me because none of the peaches wanted to come off the pits, so I had to hack away at them. And they are very ripe, so a firm grip crushes them... >_< Also the skins did not want to come off easily. Argh! Then I found that we did not have any loose, boxed brown sugar, only piloncillo, which is hard as a fucking rock. D: So I put a little water in a pan and boiled the cones until they were soft enough to mash up. As it happens, the only butter we had was in the freezer, too, so that needed to be melted as well, so once the brown sugar was soft, I tossed the chopped up frozen butter in there, too.

Then the pan I had chosen turned out to be a bit too small. Everything fit, but it was right up to the edge, as you can see in the photo, and ended up boiling over in the oven (which we never clean, so it will be there forever).

Anyway! It is out of the oven now and smelling delicious. When it has cooled a bit, I will have some warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. :D :D :D

3. i_fail_at_comms is a new comm! From the user info:

Have you ever worked really, really hard on a project -- only to have the challenge that you were working towards close? You are still awesome. Your work is still awesome. Come and celebrate the awesome and the fail with this deadline-challenged community.

Man, this comm is totally right for me. If it's big things I can usually make the deadline and get something posted, but the random comment challenges, or the stuff that's pick-a-prompt rather than exchanges...yeah, not so much. I have so many half-finished fics on my hard drive. Some comms and challenges are technically never over, but you still feel weird posting to them months or years after anyone stopped caring, right? Well, now you can post here! I...I imagine I will be posting there a lot, if I can ever manage to finish these things... >_>

4. June 1st! That means kink_bingo!!!

5. I posted my writing roundup for the past three months and am so excited about how much I've been writing this year compared to the last two. I doubt this year will rival my most prolific years, 2005 and 2006, where I managed to write 40+ fics each year while at the same time co-writing a ton of stuff with redtexta and others. But at least I feel like I'm out of that slump to some degree.

Daily Happysong:

The Decemberists - July, July!
You can always count on The Decemberists for catchy tunes about gruesome subjects. :D

1. I finished chapter 7 of Saint Young Men! I just need to write the notes and then I can post it. :D

2. My mom and Tom were here all day again, but this time he actually got the leak fixed. Yay, no more leak! And now I will enjoy several days of NO PEOPLE until maybe going karaoke with Alexander on Wednesday.

3. Carla came out to her cousin and it went well.

4. Slowly but surely I am catching up on Ugly Betty. I only have two episodes left to watch!

5. I made super delicious split pea soup for dinner. ( Here is how! )

6. fizzyblogic wrote me wee!ftm!Holmes fic! The rest of you can all jump on the trans!Holmes bandwagon at any time. :D :D :D

1. puritybrown said she had an extra copy of Skim and would send it to me! I've had it on my bookmooch wishlist for a while, but no sign of it (and there's like 29 other people who've wishlisted it), so I'm pretty excited about that. :)

2. Baby otters!

3. I made a cake tonight 'cause we're having my mom and Tom and my grandparents over for my mom's birthday tomorrow. Haven't made this cake in years and forgot how good it is.

( Recipe for cake & frosting )