Because I’m on a bus right now with sixty seventh graders, heading to a museum in Chicago.
Seriously MAKE ME DIE
NOW NOW NOW
DO IT
Tag: death
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate
I’m sick– again? still? who knows– but one way or another I’m taking the day off.
On Hell Flu
I hate it when I’m right.
In which oh hell no not right now
I had a great post planned for tonight, or at least parts of it; it has the potential to turn into one of those two- or three-day extended things.
Then I went on an emergency shoe-buying trip right after work– shut up that’s a thing— and now I’m going to go lie down for the rest of the night and hope that what really feels like it might be impending Hell Flu isn’t actually impending Hell Flu.
Universe: I do not have time for Hell Flu right now.
No.
If I don’t post tomorrow, assume I’m dead, and divide up my possessions amongst yourselves. If, that is, you can find my house.
Vegetating: day two
Note that this is not actually a picture of the dinner I made tonight; I stole this one off the Interwebs. It’s the same dish, though, and doesn’t look too far off from what ended up in my Dutch oven– ie, it looked like nothing anyone wanted to eat until we started eating it. This, folks, is Eggs in Hell– apparently originally a Mario Batali recipe, although the one I followed was from Michael Symon’s 5 in 5 cookbook and is not precisely the recipe outlined in that link. In particular, it looks a lot less spicy– for example, it only uses one jalapeño instead of four (this may be the first time in my life I’ve had food with jalapeños in it two days in a row) and no red chili flakes. Basically: Five eggs, a shallot, a can of San Marzano tomatoes, a clove of garlic, some olive oil (too much, I think, actually), parsley, and the aforementioned jalapeño. Combine everything but the eggs and set to a-simmerin’ for a few minutes, then turn down the heat a touch and poach the eggs.
The cookbook claimed the eggs would poach in about two minutes. I have poached eggs in water in two minutes; you cannot poach an egg in simmering tomato juice in two minutes, so there was some consternation about the done-ness of the eggs. Turns out it takes around five and could maybe have handled another minute. The dish looks (appropriately, apparently) like hell upon being removed from the heat, so I didn’t take a picture of it– but take a couple of those eggs and some of the sauce and spread ’em over some cheddar cornbread (that recipe, plus half a cup of cheddar in the batter and half a cup over the bread once it’s done cooking) and you have some damn fine food.
(Seriously, I’m never using eggs in cornbread again. Yogurt yogurt yogurt that cornbread is fantastic.)
Work was annoyingly stressful and I have a feeling if I talk about why I’m going to spend the rest of the entry raining hell down upon a thirteen year old who might actually deserve it for his various acts of stupidity and assholery, but I’m going to refrain anyway. Once in a while I should act like the adult.
Anyway. Point is: I’ve survived two days as a vegetarian, because shut up, eggs aren’t meat. Five more to go!
SUPER IMPORTANT OH I ALMOST FORGOT EDIT: I bought the ghost chilies. So. Do you know me in the real world? Are you interested in a suicide pact? LET US MAKE DEATH CHILI TOGETHER.
Don’t read this if you respect me
…I fully expect this to be my most popular post of all time, by the way.
Alongside this whole “don’t yell at kids” thing I’ve been doing lately I’ve been trying in general to become a gentler person. At some point in the last few weeks I decided (possibly at the spirited urging of some internet people) that I wasn’t going to be automatically killing spiders any longer. Seeing a spider no longer means trying to kill a spider. They eat other bugs. This is good, right? We like spiders; we should keep them around.
There’s been a spider living in my bathroom for the last week or so. Just a little house spider type of dude, one of the almost-transparent kinds, not like the black monstrosity I killed in the tub not too long ago (and, I think, blogged about, but I’m not gonna go looking right now.) He’s been hanging out in the upper corners of the bathroom, so even if I were inclined to kill him, he’d be hard to reach and I’d have to stand on something– no real point, right? So for several days every time I’ve gone into the bathroom I’ve spent a few seconds looking around to see if I could spot him. The other day– Wednesday morning, maybe?– he happened to scuttle into the laundry room before I closed the door, and I’ve not seen him in the bathroom since. Which, weirdly, was sorta sad. I’d started thinking of him as a bit of a pet. For all I know, the dog ate him.
My wife went down into our (more-or-less unfinished) basement tonight to go through some stuff and called me down; it rained like hell all day today and we had some water on the floor in the utility room and, as it turned out, some more– inexplicably in the middle of the damn room– in the main area down there. I discovered the wet area in the main room by accident– by stepping in it, wearing socks. Which led me to take my socks off and cuff my jeans a bit, as my jeans are generally a bit too long when I’m not wearing shoes. Several times as we were poking around looking for wet spots (shut up, you’re gross) I walked through cobwebs. They don’t freak me out like they do some people but they’re still kinda skeevy, y’know? Nobody likes walking through cobwebs.
Being bald and walking through cobwebs is more unpleasant than usual, by the way. Trust me.
Anyway, I’m brushing myself off every three seconds and my feet are cold and my pants and socks are wet and WHY THE HELL DOES EVERYTHING IN THIS HOUSE LEAK ALL THE SUDDEN JESUS CHRIST and suddenly it occurs to me that I have to use the bathroom. There is no bathroom in the basement. And, believe me, ordinary “have to use the bathroom” types of experiences get rather radically worse quickly when you have to use the bathroom while barefoot on a cold tile floor and wet.
“Gotta go,” I told my wife, and headed upstairs.
Where I entered the bathroom and, well, went. This was, shall we say, a multiple event, necessitating a seated position, and because I’m like that I grabbed a book on the way into the bathroom. (There’s a post coming about John Green, by the way.) So I’m seated and reading my book and taking care of business… and my fucking pet spider drops onto the top of my head, scuttles off, lands on the book, and then drops into my underwear.
I will allow you to imagine the sequence of events that followed, as my skill as an author cannot do justice to what actually occurred.
I kill spiders on sight again, by the way.
So here’s a thing I learned today
If your first egg looks like the one on the right when you try to fry a couple of eggs, you should probably dump the pan and start over. It’s not, as you think it might be, because you overcompensated for the last time you made fried eggs, when they looked beautiful and perfect and then were sticking to the pan. You didn’t put too much cooking spray in; the fact that the pan has effectively no surface friction has nothing to do with this. The egg’s bad. Dump it and start over.
Trust me, please.
This has been an infinitefreetime public service announcement.
In which hopefully this isn’t the peak of my day
Stage One of Really Long Saturday is complete: I have successfully cooked and eaten a large breakfast, featuring eggs and hash browns; I really wish there was some bacon in the house, because then I could have eaten that, too.
Stages Two through Infinity are: Take Shower, Get Dressed, Pull Together Complete Change of Clothes for OtherJob, Remember to Load Car for Entire Day, Purchase Expensive Drill, Drive to Brother’s, Build Deck, Go to OtherJob for, oh, I Dunno, Six Hours or So, Do Not See Son or Wife At All, Attend Capital Letter Addiction Course, Come Home without Causing an Accident, Die.
You can guess which of those tasks might be the big one. And I’m still sick.
I’ll try and post tomorrow if I’m not dead.
If anyone has a theory as to why WordPress consistently suggests that I add “aviation” to my list of tags for my posts, I’d love to hear it.