I went out this weekend.

So very many posts across the (shudder) blogosphere seem to begin this way, but this one matters! To me, in any case. newdrunkdrivers and I enjoy going out together, or at least we used to, but now we get out of the house in the evenings sans bebbeh very rarely. It is actually surprisingly difficult to find people who are willing to come over, watch your tv, play your xbox, and help themselves to good booze under the guise of "babysitting". As it works out, the aforementioned child is fast asleep upstairs by 6PM, and so the only burden incumbent on said sitter is to, as also aforementioned, entertain themselves with ESPN or zombie games or Wii Fit or even the intertubes, as we also supply that. In considering the matter, I really think people ought to be paying us! Anyway...

So, a friend's birthday was Saturday night, and she and her husband are child-free and extremely hip people. The birthday party was scheduled for early evening at a lounge and late evening at a martini club with a friend who "spins". I am peripherally aware of what this is but do not make it habit to affect easy familiarity with it.

Luckily I am just familiar enough with DC that Rouge was old stomping grounds for us, so at least I knew where the bar was. What I did not know is that there is a back room for private parties. This room (see right) has couches and pillows and SNAKESKIN ON THE WALLS. How sleazily awesome is that. In deference to my yawny self, and in part to stake an early claim on the (unreserved) back room, the party started at 7. newdrunkdrivers insisted that I should attend; he was still recovering from stomach flu and was happy to be the dude lounging on the futon watching West Wing reruns.

I have NO CONCLUSION whatsoever to this story, and in fact the entire story is just set-up anyway.
I dug out mascara, and used it!
I left the house after dark and went somewhere!
I couldn't find a nice shirt that didn't have baby snot or whatever stains on it, but I put on a jacket!
A bartender made me a drink that was not on the menu!
I chatted! (I even served and vollied, when assorted drunken jackasses decided "Hey, it's DC, let's talk about women in politics.")
I was awake til midnight!

Remarkable things, hence, remarked.

Not her first christmas, but the first time she will receive a present. What a present it will be! Thank you Inhabitots, for pointing me to the must-have best-ever seriously fantastic ABC blocks in the world.
A – Appendages 
B – Bioengineering 
C - Caffeine
 D - Dirigible
E – Experiment 
F - Freeze ray
 G – Goggles 
H – Henchmen
I – Invention 
J – Jargon 
K – Potassium 
L – Laser M - Maniacal
N - Nanotechnology
 O – Organs 
P - Peasants (with Pitchforks)
Q - Quantum physics
 R - Robot
 S - Self-experimentation
T – Tentacles 
U - Underground Lair
 V - Virus
 W - Wrench
X - X-Ray
 Y - You, the Mad Scientist of Tomorrow 
Z – Zombies

Sort of taking a break from warcraft to work on a warcraft novel. Yes... it's true. I'm writing fanfic. Though technically I'm not so much writing it as talking about writing it. And huddling in a pile of blankets in a corner, bemoaning my fate.

The tiny germ-bringer has done it again. I'm at work, but I told them I was taking a sick day and not to bother me plz.

Miss H is just on the verge of walking. She's a little slow on walking and talking, but seems to be cool on doing her own thing. She's still small; got in a fight at daycare the other day with a much larger child. I was impressed -- she got jumped by another kid, and whipped out some street fighting moves -- defensive grappling, a few headbutts. How does a 15 month old learn these things??

She remains as generally happy and charming as the day she was born though. Yesterday we went to the cocoa bar for a latte (for me), and sat outside on the patio. She sat fairly patiently in a chair and people-watched. I need to check on whether wifi reaches the patio from across the street. It would be a great place to hang out with a laptop in the evenings.

Things that Baby H does not like:

- being wiped down with water and having her hair scrubbed
- cold stethoscopes

That is all. She likes everything else.

Luckily she has no memory and after screaming her lungs out from the vicious shampooing, she got wrapped up in a hippo towel and fell asleep.

Funny that I got the urge to post independently from newdrunkdrivers but within 24 hrs. I had no idea he'd just posted a summary of house/family stuff.

To echo... the kitchen in our new house truly is terrible, almost to the point of unusable. Everything in the oven comes out uneven, burned on the bottom or the top, uncooked on the inside. The counter space is laughable. The cabinets are out of reach, or too low to reach comfortably. There are black holes where things disappear. The sink is the unpleasant white porcelain that stains instead of the nice stainless steel that does not. The appliances are ancient, the fridge fills with standing water regularly, and the dishwasher, though new, is located in the spot where the range should have been. We are surviving it though, and kitchen remodel isn't a priority until other things are paid for and we've settled into the house for a couple of years.

I'm looking forward to maternity leave.

newdrunkdrivers built me an herb garden, which is doing wonderfully, and I'm slowly working through plantings for the rest of the area. The west side of the house functions as a giant solar collector right now (it is amazing how, as shelters from the elements, modern houses are really poorly designed) and so I have been working on ways to mitigate the problem that the nursery upstairs, in the southwest part of the house, is usually boiling during the day.

As such, I ordered three varieties of hops ("Willamette", "Centennial", and "Sterling"). The vines don't do a lot in the first year, though the bare roots look like they have healthy sprouts, but in the 2nd and 3rd years, it's not too hard to get the full 18 feet of length out of them, and they prefer vertical growth -- perfect for a two story house -- shade in the summer, and dieback for solar collection in the winter. Added plus... homegrown hops. I got them in the ground today, but at 35 weeks, I can't do a lot of garden work without getting out of breath very quickly.

I like this one even better. "Of course, just seeing the warning might be enough to decohere them."

The rest of the warning signs: http://www.flickr.com/photos/87547772@N00/sets/72157594323393196/

This is so Snow Crash!

The whole set of modern warning signs is genius.

This weekend was a balmy 55F degrees, and while I couldn't make myself do anything useful on Saturday besides veg, Sunday was sunny and beautiful.

I started the day by trying to make some .jp food for breakfast. I made the rice cooker recipe for sweet rice with adzuki, which was interesting -- a little bland -- but I screwed up on the adzuki beans and didn't cook them until they were completely soft, so the texture was off. I also made miso soup, but then didn't realize that the shiro miso we'd bought was quite salty, and the dashi that I made for it was also quite salty. The fairy ring mushrooms in it were tasty, but the saltiness of it really didn't work. Thank god for Turkish coffee; it never fails me!

Mr. Neshura helped me out afterwards in the great outdoors; in exchange for buying him dinner, he put his manly muscles to work single-digging and aerating a 6x2 foot garden bed, as well as weed-eating and cleaning up around the front yard.

I planted five varieties of heirloom garlic in the new bed: "Red Janice", "Transylvania", "Zemo", "Ail de Pay Gers", and "Sakura Japanese" (N to S). Next to the front gate I put in some more garlic, a variety called "Siciliano". Two other basically unused garden beds got "Red Rezan" and "Oregon Blue" (also N to S). I'll be curious to see which of the areas is most preferred by the garlic. It will overwinter and grow slowly, to be harvested in mid-summer. These are all hardneck garlics, not available in your local Megamart; I haven't tasted them but the flavor is said to be superior.

I also threw in some daikon seeds here and there around the beds, along with an overcoat of white clover seeds and some here-and-there brassicas for greens. I don't know if any of them will sprout, but they weren't doing me any good sitting in seed packets. We'll see!