Predictability is the bland basis of life, no?

Londonoct09

Do feel free to leave comments - I'm quite proud of a few of them and might post them to photo comms. Criticism also v. welcome! :)

I didn't include the pics taken with kangeiko, solvent90, and hesychasm, but they're what made my brief trip so awesome - from the tastiest-omelette-ever brunch in that tiny place off the local high street to the Ice Worlds show in (and stroll through) Greenwich over the Moctezuma exhibition in the British Museum - plus tea at the restaurant: always, the tea - over a trip to Oxford to see how far along she's with that doctoral dissertation to drink wine and chat and watch The History Boys (slashy and queer) over dinner/drinks in this tiny French place in SoHo over watching Let The Right One In(♥) for a proper vampire/Halloween time over strolling through London and going wine-shopping at Fortnum & Mason's and also eating the tastiest veggie cuisine at Food for Thought to, finally, parting (sweet sorrow etc.).

This entry was originally posted at DreamWidth and has comments. Feel free to comment there using OpenID.

Guys, ( I failed at baking today )

Still: so not a caramel sauce. Any tips for that?

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Also, what's up with certain types of guys on on-line dating platforms? I didn't think much of it the first two times or so, but ( mutualism FAIL )

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Ending on a fannish note: ( House M.D. writers, You're On Notice. )

Friend, food, and drink: generally a winning combination. In this case, the WIN! holds true in two instances.

1.
I don't know why or how, but in the year(?!) I hadn't seen her, I'd forgotten Anne is a fan! ( The joys of re-connecting, fannage in Germany, and also a sidenote on the Munich murders )

2.
The (fresh and divine) soup kitchen I often go to for lunch was closed, however, so Anne & I had to find another place. Where they admittedly served huge portions of tapas - we could have easily shared two, I think, at roughly five Euro each.

If only it had been good too. ( Details of FOOD. Also, PICS )

3.
Now, having returned after everything and hanging at the parents' (who are away visiting friends: sturmfrei!), I'm drinking Hakutsuru Draft Sake, which is fine, if not exciting, taste-wise. If you do have sake recs, bring them on.

This entry was originally posted at DreamWidth and has comments. Feel free to comment there using OpenID.

If you had all the thyme in the world -

what would you cook/bake/otherwise prepare with a truckload of these specific herbs?

They're fresh and were, together with rosemary and bay leaves, the contents of a box from my organic supermarket that said "Herbs de Provence." One's gotta wonder if there were any left for the rest of the region. Srsly.

Made muffins with some of the thyme - wait; actually, I made some muffins with some of the thyme. The rest were sour cream/raspberry muffins, which I'm sure is a pairing no one will quarrel about.

( 2 Kinds of Muffins: photos )

ETA: Jesus Christ, these savoury muffins are spectacular. Om nom nom!

This calls for a recipe re-post...

( Olive'n Goat's Cheese Muffins with Herbs de Provence )

Excuse the Babelfish in the prep section, babes. I worked until 7pm, then worked out at my gym for an hour, and only then baked these two trays of muffins. & ;-)

Latest set of photos includes: Paper Moon in the Hollywood Cemetery; Santa Monica Beach; my second home here; and ZOMBIE CATS.

Part Ten

And oh, yeah, on that stage photo? Tatum O'Neal herself. She came to the showing. Yay, Hollywood star (never mind all the drugs and the scandals, people: par for the course).

Made it to Los Angeles (and am quite taken with Virgin America, I must say). Alas, had to say good-bye to ascian3 and sleipnirrr, while pukajen had to leave spontaneously to Further Her Career. Her bed remains awesome, though.

One last glance back at San Francisco. Not married to Lot, after all.

Part Eight

...and now I have eaten almost an entire 7.20 oz bag of Skittles. Mmh, high-fructose corn syrup.

monanotlisa: Notice how our days have themes?
ascian3: As in?
monanotlisa: Yesterday, we went hiking in mountain forests, where they are furry, tasty mammals - and we went and two of us had steaks. Today, we went to see the ocean, walking cliffs and resting on a secluded beach - and we'll be having sushi.
ascian3: *deadpan* It is good to have order in your life.

Photos of cliffs and the ocean, sea birds and the sky, anyone? Also, aforementioned sushi and, of course, fab friends.

Part Seven

We capped the evening by drinking yet more sake and watching The Voyage Home, the fourth Star Trek movie (or, as the fans would say, ST:IV), which was AWESOME. See old-skool Spock icon. ♥ If you care, this right here is not just the best ST:TOS Spock icon collection, but among the best icon sets I've ever seen.

Thanks for answering the poll, y'all who did! & :-)

Some hiking & dining photos. I was so hungry I actually did NOT take a photo of the food in front of me: steeeeeeeak!

Part Six

This time, there are even gratuitous comments.

Part Five

Time for a poll, people, the regular one.

Poll #1442393 One of the basic philosophical questions, right?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 37

I am here, reading this blog, because

Lounging on ascian3's sofa after a lazy day of out-hanging, wine-tasting, and stuff-shopping. V. soon there shall be hot-tubbing. Life = good.

Photos of the last couple of days, anyone? 'tis San Francisco, with and without whiskeypants, meeting darcydodo and livredor plus friends, and now, see above, Ascian & sleipnirrr.

Part Two - open

Part Three

Part Four

Every time I post another vacation photo, God kills a kitten.

The integrated camera on my netbook comes in handy (if one is as share-y as I am):

Snapshot comma random Up on, you would never have guessed, Telegraph Hill.

Good times in San Francisco and with thelastgoodname. They were, among other places, had in this Vietnamese restaurant.

( Obligatory food photos that might just make you hungry )

Now, I'm lying in whiskeypants's sofa-turned-guest bed. We both met bar_butterfly, enjoyed the first affordable pizza I've ever seen on this continent, and had a sales clerk elaborate on the values of six of the eclectic dozens of beer the store offered: drinks for our later viewing of Kill Bill 2 and Pan's Labyrinth, which is utterly gorgeous and haunting like few other movies. Watch it, just beware: this is not pure fantasy. Civil war, fascist dictatorships, and how this shapes and destroys human beings constitute the story, not a mere backdrop.

Speaking of society and history? grimorie spoke about the death of Corazon 'Cory' Aquino, the 11th president of the Philippines in her lj today - of the funeral, but mostly the love of the people for her. (Click her name; she's crossposting.) thelastgoodname has a post up that deals with college football and not-so-isolated racism.

I used to think that the colour "apricot" was a bit of a cheat. Oh, please, I thought, my apricots are orange. Brightly so! What's up with this muted tone?

And then, today, I made this li'l shake from organic soy milk and the scraped-out (juicy, so juicy) flesh of super-ripe apricots...and, okay, I concede.

Apricot, indeed:



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If you do the Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto thing, check out the *comments* to this post.

I'm unapologetic...but also too old for celebrity crushes. *sigh* Especially when said celebrity seems to be a bit of a douchebag. At least Star Trek RPFandom seems to agree, by and large. Heh.

As for this icon: never have the lyrics been more ironic. Want the song - Commander, by Girlyman? I just bought the whole album; I'm allowed to share with a few close friends, after all.

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Annnd it's time for Ian's birthday party. He's serving a small group of us dinner. ::rubs handsbelly in glee::

hermine just left - arrived here in the afternoon, and somehow the time flew, and it was so late we decided she might as well stay: almost time for watching today's Tatort, which was a lot more fun with two. There was also a quick lentil curry dinner, with bonus pineapple for dessert. (No, Grim, it wasn't a personal pineapple, sorry.)

Beforehand, to properly cheer her up these days, I had baked yet more muffins. (The last batch I'd made Thursday night from 11pm to midnight because said co-worker was leaving for London, and I'd promised her a taste of my famous muffins - no, really, famous! See my lj moniker, as given to me by the ever-apt stultiloquentia).

See?

( Organic Strawberry-Yoghurt-Muffins, with a dash of lime. )

This was originally a drabble based on a prompt by lunabee34; it turned into a 600-word-ficlet set post-Whispers.

But let me re-fresh your memories first: Whispers, yes. The episode with the planet of the mutants. Who looked like zombies. And produced killer fog. (I KNOW.) Still, a 100% women team. Um, yay?

Images of The Team, then. ( Major Anne Teldy, Sgt. Dusty Mehra, Cpt. Alicia Vega, and Dr. Alison Porter. )

You're welcome. Now.

( SGA ficlet. Rated PG. Set after 'Whispers.' )

Coming home at 11pm on a Friday night is less fun than it sounds. Yes. Even less than that already negative level of fun.

On the plus side, I took the bouquets from voguefan's & my office home with me.

( Flowers? )

I'll go watch Life now. Yay, Dani Reese. ♥

Returned from Hamburg and the private Jumping Dinner organised by Em & her friends there: great fun; more about it later. Also watched Dollhouse and have a few things to say.

But first, before I forget, after the overwhelming response in this post's poll? Here you go.

My workplace, as I've mentioned once or two hundred times, is very...corporate. But since this is the fifth season - the mad days - they did host their annual Office Costume Party last Thursday, as always themed:

Heroes of our childhood

Awesome theme, I'll give 'em that. A fave colleague of mine came as Lukas der Lokomotivführer, there were three Pippi Longstockings (♥), two Lucky Lukes, two sets of ??? (no, this is not a typo; click the link if you're curious) of mixed sexes, and maaany more.

What did I chose? See for yourself (and the cut-tag text explained).

( Move on over, Merlin! )

So, yeah. Alanna of Trebond, represent!

Since I feel I should enjoy it while I still can:

( My skiing(-free) retreat, in pictures. Annotated, too. )

I baked a cake, but I eated 1/4 of it.

...no, really, I did. Thankfully (or not), I took photos of the crispy-golden glory it was before that.

( Apple-cinnamon cake )

In actuality, this is the mother of all muffins...but turns out I misplaced my little silicone muffin forms sometime during the last move. Ah, well. Double the baking time, double the fun, right? Lower the temperature for the second half, too; that way, it did turn out baked through & through yet deliciously moist.

ETA: ( Recipe: REAL' SIMPLE APPLE MUFFINS )

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Did spend a good hour at a local gym afterwards, which made my knee feel a whole lot better. And for the record, I am looking forward to posts that do not mention my health, not even in passing.

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I only needed a 30-seconds translation because I needed a caption for the icon I'm using for this post, but as I couldn't find a translation online, I created one. If anyone else is up for a tiny piece of Schiller, have at it?

( At once *freer than birds* and clinging to the original )

Personally, I blame the alcohol for everything in this post.

( 3 Wine Icons )

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