…we never really finished the first bathroom renovation, so to hell with it, let’s start on the second one. Only we’ve hired professionals to do it this time! And demo starts tomorrow! Let’s take a look at what we’re wrecking:
Bek and I removed the giant mirror that was on the wall in front of the heinous green wallpaper, because that’s going to go into the basement, but I think you can manage to imagine a mirror. That patch of unwallpapered wall next to the medicine cabinet was there when we moved in (did they move the medicine cabinet over a couple feet? Replace it? We’ll never know); the torn patch of wallpaper next to it was me, trying to figure out what was behind it (and deciding it was way too much of a pain in the ass to remove). The holes in the wall were made tonight, just for the hell of it. All of this is gone tomorrow. All of it.
This closet is actually in our bedroom, and it’s not going to be a closet anymore as of tomorrow. We are eating this space to expand the shower …
…because this is the existing shower, and there’s been a leak in it somewhere since we moved in, so it literally hasn’t been used in years. This is going to get much bigger and have a bench, a rainfall shower head and a regular one, and a few other bits of coolness. But the kicker? The thing I’m looking forward to the most about this entire process? My wife let me order this tonight.
Yep. That’s right, motherfuckers: I just spent over a thousand dollars on a bidet. It has a remote control.
My asshole is going to be immaculate.
Start looking forward to the review right now. Because there is going to be a review.
I have to get up early tomorrow so that I’m ready for the construction guys, and I don’t even mind.
Well, the tree’s up— no ornaments, because there’s a kitten in the house and the tree alone is risky enough— and there’s some Christmas treats in the fridge cooling off. My wife spent the day preparing the master bath and the closet we’re about to lose for the big renovation, since demo starts Monday, and I got a spot of shopping done.
A couple of disclaimers, provisos, quid pro quos, etcetera before I begin this piece: First, I was sent this as an ARC by the publisher in return for a good honest review, although now that I’ve read it I’m going to spend my own actual money and buy a copy. Second, although there is literally no chance that either of us remembers it, Cat Rambo and I have probably met! You see, Cat used to work at The Griffon, a gaming shop in downtown South Bend (the second oldest such place in America, as it turns out) and I have been a semiregular customer there for roughly thirty-five years. I’m not sure what years Cat worked there or how often they worked when that was their job, but it’s hard to imagine either being especially long-term without us crossing paths at least once or twice, and The Griffon being the store it is, that probably means we’ve had an actual conversation or two. This isn’t going to affect my review, of course– you’re about to find out that this book has “Luther will like this” baked into the premise, pun fully intended– but it’s interesting.
The premise of this book has been described as “Farscape meets The Great British Baking Show,” and for many of you– certainly for me– that description may be salient enough to immediately attract attention. I can’t see a sci-fi book compared to my favorite TV show (seriously) and not immediately be interested in reading it. And the comparison isn’t unreasonable, either; while the majority of the characters used to be part of the same military unit, they are all retired and run a restaurant at the beginning of the book, and they have found themselves in a position where they may be eligible to earn the restaurant something called a Nikkelin Orb, which had me giggling from the moment I first saw the phrase. (If the joke escapes you, Google “Michelin Star,” or you could just click the link, I guess.)
Anyway, all hell breaks loose, and their restaurant gets blown up, and they sort of steal an expensive, intelligent bioship which immediately decides it’s been for-real stolen and starts to fly them off to a prison planet so that it can turn them in for stealing it, and then they discover that the Empress appears to have frozen one of her heirs and mailed her to them, and then things get even weirder, if you can believe that. The crew includes a chimp with a taste for explosives who only communicates via sign language, a hypersexual, polyamorous squid-thing, their four-armed, eight-foot master chef, a pastry chef who as near as I can tell is a more selfish & predatory version of Big Bird, and two twin were-lions.
So the characters are great, and the way they interact is great, and the hints at wider worldbuilding from what parts of this world we get to see are fantastic (I want more books in this series, and I want them now,) and my only real gripe is actually that the book could have been maybe 50-75 pages longer, as some story points get kind of glossed over quickly, to the point where occasionally I had to stop and reread a page to make sure that what I thought had just happened had actually happened in, like, a sentence and not an entire chapter. Rambo manages to deftly balance a light, Douglas-Adamsesque comedic tone for decent chunks of the book with a villain who ends up pretty genuinely terrifying and some moments of real sadness and pathos. I just wanted more of it, and at 285 or so pages this is a pretty quick read. I feel like it wouldn’t have outstayed its welcome at 350-400 pages, but I’ll trade a shorter book for future sequels if I absolutely have to.
One way or another, this is definitely something I’m going to recommend, and I can easily imagine myself mentioning it again in a week and a half or so when I put my best-of list together for this year. Go check it out.
I was getting ready for bed just now, and I realized two things at the same moment:
That I had not blogged today, and that given the tenor of my week it would not be unreasonable to assume that I had not, in fact, made it through the last student day before Winter Break without going to jail. Fear not! My unbroken record of days where I didn’t kill a child and go to jail remains an unbroken record, and in fact today was probably easier than I was expecting it to be.
We had a pajama day at work today– no, I did not participate– and I was expecting a horror show of uniform issues. What I got instead (and, really, what I should have expected) was that everyone wore comfy pants and untucked T-shirts. There were a scattered few brave kids in onesies mostly as jokes and a few in proper pajamas, but mostly everybody showed up in their flannels. It was probably the most chill out of uniform day we’ve had this year, honestly.
That’s not the second thing. Consider it a bonus.
This is the second thing: that I actually still have an Amazon delivery coming today– it has been projected to arrive between 8:00 and 10:00 PM all day– and I kind of feel like I owe it to the driver to not be in bed while they, a fellow human being who is still at work, delivers my irrelevant shit to my house.
In fact, I’m gonna go turn the driveway light on.
I expect to be leaving work by noon tomorrow; I have some light grading and classroom rearranging to do and that’s it. After that? Coma time, which is my favorite time.
I had to clear my classroom and wait for security to show up for the first time in my entire career today. Then I stayed after school for a parent/teacher conference with the mom and dad of a kid who in the first semester alone has racked up fifty-six office referrals, and neither showed up.
Two days until winter break. I’m tired, goddammit.
So Hosea walks into class this morning at the beginning of the day and hands me something wrapped up in a plastic grocery bag. “Merry Christmas!”, he says, “but don’t open this until I’m gone.” I agree and put the bag on my desk, where I proceed to forget about it until fifth hour, when he’s actually in my class. He asks if I have opened his present; I conceal my lapse of memory by saying that I thought he meant to wait until he’d gone home for the day, not just left advisory. This placates him, however, and we get through class.
During my prep I look at the bag. There is a note attached. The note is legitimately rather sweet and has already been added to my Notes from Students file where it will remain forever until my wife and son throw it away after I die:
I open the bag and find two things inside. The first is this bag of chips:
Okay, cool, I think. I have a thing I need to do after school that is going to keep me from getting home on time and maybe a quick snack will tide me over until then. Then my teacher Spider-Sense kicks in and I examine the bag a bit more closely:
Hm. Maybe not, then. But what’s this other thing?
It was wrapped a bit more prettily than that, as I’ve unwrapped it a couple of times since then, but you get the idea. It’s a couple inches square. Now, Hosea has brought me baked goods from home before, which is always kind of unfortunate, as he really is a nice kid when he wants to be, but I have a thing about eating random baked goods from kitchens I’ve never seen, particularly when students hand them to me and double-particularly during Covid. But, shit, I’m genuinely kind of hungry, and this looks like it could be a brownie. I could go for a brownie right now. Maybe I’ll make an exception.
I unwrap the item and immediately die laughing, because this is what is inside. I actually have to take it to another teacher who I know also received a gift from Hosea to make sure that I am looking at what I think I’m looking at:
It may be that at this resolution and sans any context or touch you still can’t tell what this is. I thought for a moment it might be a block of cheese; it is not. No, that is half a bar of soap, and I think it might be homemade soap, but I’m not a hundred percent sure, as there’s traces of a logo molded into it, which it only now occurs to me could mean that not only is it half a bar of soap but it might be half a bar of soap that has been used and then dried off before being wrapped in aluminum foil.
Again, the note was sweet. And it’s the thought that counts. But apparently the thought in this case is that I am smelly and have the iron stomach of a raccoon or perhaps some sort of opossum, and … well, this is what having Hosea in class is like.
I think the general feeling is that the first experiment with Pepper Belly Pete’s recipes was a resounding success, although when I make this again I’m going to fiddle with it a little bit. I feel like it wants corn, for some reason, and both my wife and I prefer our soups a little creamier than anything with a chicken broth base is usually going to be, so there might be some experimentation to see what the best way to thicken the broth is. Maybe toss something in there to add a little heat, too. More experienced cooks than myself are welcome to leave suggestions.
The critical part, the “dumplings,” came out more or less exactly how we wanted them to, although next time we might cut them a little smaller than quartering the biscuits. That’s a minor complaint, of course.
This will be my next TikTok-related food creation– this is the same guy as the apple cider cookies from a few weeks ago– and then I’ll probably try something else of Pete’s:
Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com 