Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

This week was supposed to be a relatively quiet one, or so I thought. Then a cousin called, is in town, and we’re having dinner tomorrow, which means my hair appointment (for the 3rd of 4th time in a row?) gets rescheduled, hopefully to Wednesday, when I have a date with BC (dinner after haircut, I suppose). Thursday turns out to be election night for my cult co-op, so I’ll be getting some knitting in then. Busy, busy, busy.

The legs are a bit sore from yesterday’s short run, which is expected. Treated myself by making a nice curry tonight, though it reminded me why I don’t keep cashews in the house in a regular basis (*nom, nom, nom!*). This curry’s best with a light topping of cilantro & chopped cashews, so I went all out after a brief stop at the grocery store for the fresh stuff.

One of my larger projects is going to be picking up steam here in short order, so work’s going to get very busy with lots of the more tedious aspects of being an attorney. I think we know where we’re going with it, though, so hopefully it won’t be too painful.

I’m deliberately not commenting on all of the political posts I see all over the ‘net these days (well, except to share satire), mainly because I happen to like my friends and would rather not unduly antagonize those relationships.

Had a fun time at brunch with Dean and Martin this morning. Took a couple photos and posted them up on Flickr. Learned that the trick to getting brunch at Asylum in a decent amount of time is to get there right at 11 when they open. We walked right into our seats, nothing was messed up, the server wasn’t overly harried. It was a most pleasant restaurant experience.

Back to the training grind this morning. Short run before work, and a short swim this evening. Felt good to get back in the pool, but I definitely need to work on drills again – my form started to fade too quickly as the swim went on. I did do some limited drills among the laps, but I need to look back at my materials to refresh my memory on them.

Oh, and training 2x a day = getting home to my body screaming “FOOD!” It’s a good thing I went to the farmers’ market on Sunday.

Work was … work. Thought a particular crisis was going to come to a head, but no calls, so I assume we’re still in a holding pattern there. I’m feeling somewhat unmotivated, but I suspect that’s the decaffeination talking.

Bike ride planned for the morning, and I hear I’m going to see the new Rambo movie tomorrow evening with BC. Promises to be a real stinker, which should be nicely amusing.

Well, that was a pleasant way to spend a weekend. Most of it was, thankfully, spent with BC. Quiet night in on Friday. He went home for a good chunk of Saturday, then came back that evening for an outing.

We headed out with friends for drinks, dinner and Cloverfield Saturday evening. The camera work did not make me sick, though I suspect it was a one-time watch for me (big screen – good; small screen – meh; at least that was my impression of it). I do also have to echo another bloggers comment that “I wanted to see more monster, and less people.” The relationship drama stuff could have been cut down in order to see more of the actual attack, and I suspect any military folks watching (as was the premise at the beginning) would have edited out all that extraneous stuff in favor of “more monster.”

We were very nearly late to dinner because, well, in the spirit of MAL (which we did not attend) I attacked him in some of my Nasty Pig gear when he came in the door about an hour before we had to head out. That was quite fun.

Sunday was langorous. We finally bestirred ourselves from some gaming in the morning after sleeping in (Mass Effect on the Xbox for me, Bioshock on his laptop for him), got a nice big late lunch at Thai Tanic, then picked up stuff at Whole Paycheck for a mushroom & sun-dried tomato risotto that evening. Yum!! Fantastic recipe out of Vegan with a Vengeance, though I modified it slightly (more rice, mainly). We were glad to spend most of the day indoors, since the temps never really made it out of the 20s. Poor BC forgot to bring gloves, so when we hauled the groceries back to the car (two bags total) I handed him one of mine for his bag. He laughed, but still took it gratefully as we wandered back, one gloved hand with groceries out, one hand firmly ensconced in a pocket.

Unfortunately he had to work today, but we have date plans tomorrow – another nice night in with movie and some soup (a curried split pea soup, to be precise). For most of the day I was a bum. Did hop on the bicycle trainer to spin out a few miles for a little over an hour, but mostly played more Mass Effect. Beat the game late this evening playing on “casual” mode, so I’ll have to play it through later on a more difficult level. For now it’s back to one or more of the games on the Wii, I suspect, so I can finish those and perhaps lend them to BC.

Back to the salt mines tomorrow, though even with all the other stuff I was doing this weekend I think I came up with a solution to a sticky wicket one of our programs has gotten into by mis-reading some of my office’s advice. Clarification (to the program; not here) shall be forthcoming tomorrow.

Mind-numbingly boring work today. We’re reviewing emails in response to a Congressional inquiry, and actually what we’re doing is reviewing the work of the summer interns, and while I’m sure the member was expecting to find something smoking, what we’re finding instead is that people are really, really dull over email. If I have to read one more argument about where to go for dinner, or an announcement of another new baby, I may scream. Unfortunately the torture continues tomorrow.

Oh, and a manager (not in the counsel’s office) at the not-so-BGA called me today unsolicited to let me know there were attorney openings coming up there, and offered to answer any questions I had. I’m going to take her up on it tomorrow, since finding the actual structure of the counsel’s office there has proven to be a futile task. Again, nice to have folks with whom I’ve worked think of me for such things.

So, after the doc review, as a treat I stopped off at Jenny’s and picked up Chinese take-out (mmm, Fiery Tofu…). Ate at home, cleaned stuff up in the living room (pre-gaming chore), then set myself to setting up the Xbox. I actually crawled under the “entertainment center” (aka my desk) and unhooked all the cables from the PC that’s not worked in months now due to lack of a fan, and got that cleaned up and put away. Then the Xbox itself was relatively easy to set up and get into. Used the same old same old user name on there, ‘legalmoose,’ because my first choice was already taken and I didn’t feel like trying to come up with something else. Got hooked in, got the free month of Xbox Live Gold membership, and then popped in Bioshock.

Wow. Blown away. Absolutely loving this game, as evidenced by the posting here at 11:30ish. I had actually set an alarm on my phone (appropriately enough with the old horn “ah-OOOga” sound) for 9:30. That got snoozed a couple of times. I just played the thing on Easy mode, but am really enjoying it.

This is actually the first time I’ve played with a controller of this type. I know, scrape yourself off the ground, but up to the DS purchase, all my gaming had been on the PC. Now I’ve the DS, a Wii and an Xbox, and I love all three for the different types of experiences they give. Still having problems with the camera (for some reason I want to push down to move the camera up, and vice-versa – holdover from some other, older game on the PC maybe?), so occasionally I miss stuff, but the plasmids are quite fun. I’m playing the nice guy, rescuing the little sisters instead of killing them, ’cause for this one I wanted to see how that played out. Next time, slaughter.

So I have Bioshock, and Mass Effect (still in the shrink wrap), and two games that came with the system (some racing game and a Marvel Comics marketing ploy, I mean game). A fun addition to the living room, I have to say.

I’m helping another staff with interviews they’re doing for a position which will have a focus on the type of law that I do, so today I wore a suit so I’d look presentable for the interview. My boss walked into the office early in the morning and asked why I was in a suit (I normally don’t even bother with a tie). “Oh, I have an interview,” I replied. Her eyes got really, really big. “You know, I’m helping [the other office] with vetting and there’s an interview today,” I continued. She was quite relieved to hear that. And then accused me of being cheeky, which I suppose I was. But one does have to have some fun with the boss on occasion, no?

Short run this morning. First morning I’ve needed to haul out cold weather gear (tights, gloves, heavier top layer). Very short run, less than two miles, about twenty minutes, focusing on keeping the heart rate down rather than pace (though I do glance at the pace thing from time to time).

Fantastic weekend with BC. Went out drinking with he and Brian and Mikey on Friday, made risotto for dinner Saturday, home fries and tofu scramble for brunch Sunday, carved pumpkins with his family on Sunday afternoon. Lots of good food, lots of fun. ‘Twas nice to spend the entirety of the weekend with him, with no real plans to have to go or be anywhere if we didn’t want to. Very good time.

I have to get to serious cleaning this week in anticipation of the weekend after next. More a matter of putting things away than anything else, but it’s a necessity if I’m to have folks in here. And laundry must be done, and done soon. Had planned on it tonight, but didn’t have the energy for it, especially after zipping up to check on the cats at Richard’s place (thank heavens I have the mini for such trips now). Tomorrow or Wednesday, then. No plans to go out on Halloween, not for lack of an invite or two, just for lack of motivation to get all dressed up. I couldn’t care less about costuming, and there won’t be trick or treaters in the high rise. All my candy is at work anyway.

Looks like my site it down, so I’m going to leave this up on the laptop and try to post it in the morning. At least the building turned the heat on three days earlier than they planned to (I hope they got the new valves in!), so it’s not frigid in here tonight.

Lotsa cooking this evening. At least, a lot for me of late. Whipped up some sauteed spinach with toasted pine nuts and garlic as a side dish, and then made taters and tofu with a miso gravy for the main course. The main recipe came out of Vegan with a Vengeance, and it was pretty darned good. Had to make a couple of tweaks, of course – the grocery store only had 3 nasty shallots, so no shallots, and the miso was almost out so I estimate I used closer to 3.5-4 tablespoons instead of three (why leave 1/2 a tablespoon in the container?). All in all a good dinner, and I’ll have a great lunch tomorrow at work, too.

Work was catching up after the time off. Lots of email to catch up on Surprisingly, no voice mails, but that’s a good thing (I despise voice mail – especially since our phones don’t give you a visual clue that you have voice mail).

I blame Julie, but I’ve been wanting to cook more of late, and to stretch myself on my cooking skills. I’m an okay cook, but I know there’s more I could be doing. To that end I’ve picked up the Veganomicon yesterday. It’s the same authors as Vegan with a Vengeance (well, one of the same authors), and I’ve tried other recipes of theirs with good results. the book’s a good entree to vegan cuisine and a variety of cooking techniques. I’m halfway tempted to do what Julie did, go through the entire cookbook and cook every single recipe. It would be good practice, and a good stretch. Not sure if I’m quite up to an undertaking like that yet. It would help if I had a working oven first.

And BC would have to spend much, much more time at the apartment. I can’t eat all this food by myself, even doing leftovers. That and I’d have to actually (*gasp*) have people over to eat.

It is awfully tempting, though.

I had been thinking about gaming systems, but if my obsession behavior the past two days is any indication of how it would be if I got one, I really, really should not. I picked up the new Zelda game for the DS, and it’s been absolutely fantastic. Some of the elements are a bit slow, but for the vast majority of the game I think they nailed it for my gaming likes. So much so that I’ve been up far, far too late the past two nights playing the game. Only had to revert to guides twice, which is a good sign for me.

Big thanks to the folks who came out on Friday, I had a marvelous time, and it was good to see people. That was precisely the b’day celebration I needed – low key and fun chatting and watching folks chat.

My eldest niece and her mother popped up today to play tourist, so we wandered through the Mall and a few museums. She absolutely loved the Metro. It’s a shame Air & Space is still so disorganized and doesn’t have more hands-on stuff for kids – that’s what she stopped at whenever we were in an exhibit, the ‘I can play with this’ things. She also spent most of the day talking about going to City Lights, my now former favorite Chinese restaurant in town.

The service was, in a word, atrocious tonight. They were busy, that much was readily apparent, but that’s no excuse. No one came by to check on drinks. My niece managed to down her water and her soda fairly early, and even after I specifically asked a server to get her a refill of her soda (even handing him the glass), it never came back. Then I couldn’t manage to flag anyone down because they were all flying by so quickly. The one guy I did finally catch was one of their busboys whose English was somewhat lacking, and unfortunately my Spanish is non-existent, but we did manage to get soda refills, at least, for the niece and her mother. To say I’m miffed would be an understatement – this is a place where the more established wait staff calls me by name, in Chinese, when I come in, so it’s not like I’ve never been there before. Hell, I was lying in bed for about 1/2 an hour just now and all I could do was dredge up much-unused vocabulary for expressing in Mandarin exactly how annoyed I was at the whole thing (and it’s amazing what ancient vocabulary can be dredged up in the service of strong emotions). As it was I did get one of the management staff before we left and let them know that this was the most dismal service I’d ever received there.

Otherwise it’s been a lovely weekend. I’m going to get my newest toy hooked up to the bike tomorrow and head out on a ride with a friend after his bike (re)fitting. Haven’t played with it yet, so this is the inaugural run. Should be interesting to see the data once I’m done.

Thanks to those who wished me well yesterday, I appreciated that.

BC and I went out to Vegetate for a marvelous meal, after he shared a gift or two (the eyelash curlers were a particularly humorous touch, and set the right mood for the evening). Then we came back here and proceeded to polish off a bottle or two of really good wine from the bottom of the rack, cuddle, and watch Mars Attacks, which he’d not seen (he had accused me once again of not having movies with real stars in them – so of course I had to pull out the one movie I have that has pretty much nothing but major actors in it). All in all a wonderful way to end the evening.

Today we were completely lazy and slept in until noon or so, with more cuddling and general gentle treatment of the hangovers we both had from the good wine the evening before. Just back from a nice dinner down at Jenny’s where we were mildly creeped out at the number of spiders hanging out right outside our window. There were two beer signs in the window, attracting a lot of bugs, so the spiders were very active, and very distracting as you’d catch them out of the corner of your eye. Not a place for the arachnophobic. But the tofu dishes we shared were both just incredible (their fiery tofu is fantastic – I almost always order it when I go).

He’s on his way home now, but he’ll be out tomorrow at Cantina, so those who’ve not met him will have a chance to do so if you come out tomorrow evening. Should be a fun time, and hopefully the really, really bad 80s cover band that was playing there this evening won’t be there tomorrow. If they are, we’ll have something other than me to pick on.

Hadn’t seen BC all week. Our schedules hadn’t meshed at all, so we hadn’t gotten together until this afternoon. When he walked in I just held him for several minutes. Hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him (and vice versa).

After a short while we went to go see D-War: Dragon Wars.

Worst.
Movie.
Ever.

This is so getting added to the cannon of bad movies. Thank heavens the theater was in no way, shape or form crowded, because I kept leaning into BC’s ear to MST3K the thing (actress: “Don’t we have a plan?” me: “Honey, you don’t even have a plot, of course you don’t have a plan!”). Lawdy, what a mess. Sudden scene changes with no warning or transition, people suddenly knowing all about this obscure Korean fairy tale, the Tim Gunn lookalike bad guy, it was all just dreadful. It was very difficult not to dissolve into loud laughter, though we did giggle a lot over in our little section of the theater. A lot of so-so CGI was really wasted there.

Checked in on ‘s pussy, who thankfully was still alive and happy. Off to an amazing dinner at Vegetate after that, then home to get in some needed alone time. He had to zip home, but we have a date set for tomorrow. Which is good, since I just spotted his sunglasses on the dining room table.

Prior to his arrival I was feeling quite blah this morning, so I spent a good bit of time cleaning, my default reaction to feeling out of sorts. The bathroom looks much better for it, as do all the floors. BC and I are going to go on a charity run next weekend, so I’ll finally get rid of a bunch of stuff I need to donate, and make room for some folding chairs I have, and my two clothes drying racks when not in use. I’ve been feeling a bit out of sorts in general at home, and now that race season is almost over (with the big effort races out of the way), I can actually focus on home stuff. The whole “entertainment” portion of the main room is a bit of a mess, moreso since my PC is now on its last leg (the CPU fan is making a most disagreeable noise). The two pieces there, the large desk and the big shelving unit, were bought for my last, large bedroom, and not for this space. They sort-of-work, but not really. A more proper entertainment center with media storage and perhaps a small desk and book shelf would work much better.

Not that any of that is happening any time soon, mind you. Debt reduction first, more decorating later. Paying off that loan this week cut a good year off the total time it’ll take to kill off all remaining loans with that company (just two more there). That’s the company with the highest interest rate, so with the greatest chance for savings on interest by paying them off early. It’s definitely been nice to see the payoff date change from several years in the future to just a year and a half (well, less than that, but that’s date if I continue the current payments with no more early payoffs) with the two sub-loans paid off these past couple months.

Time enough, despite the fact that I feel like I would make a hummingbird look patient when it comes to these things.