A dreaded sunny day, so I'll meet you at the Bishop's Park gates

Nice walk into work today - sunny and gorgeous outside. It's amazing how many more people are in Bishop's Park on a Saturday than when I'm normally walking through it - lots more joggers, a whole different set of people with babies, and shoals of kids playing soccer.

The sad thing about this all was that, of course, I was walking into work, a far cry from my original plan of What I Would Do Today, which included going to Borough Market and generally farting around. And now that I'm into work (having forgot my badge, but fortunately catching up with my boss as he was walking in), the testing environment is not working even one little bit, and it is all pathetic and sad as 1) it's a Saturday 2) the company party was last night so people just AREN'T rolling in when they said they would, and 3) they didn't get stuff done last night so we can't get jack done today.

Rah. I wonder if I can get my Christmas shopping done?

Since I was stuck at work with nothing to do all day other than order lunch ... I did a meme.

( End of year meme. )

[28.] What was your favourite film this year? List here, the winner: Lucile Hadzihalilovic's Innocence.( Read more... )

[36.] Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned this year? Er, be careful what you wish for?

I really didn't move here for the exciting Saturday nights

It's Saturday night in what I would imagine would be called "a town that knows how to party," and I'm ... sitting on the couch cutting recipes out of newspapers, newspapers I've held on to for almost ten years precisely because they have good recipes in them. I've found about four variants on sausage and cornbread stuffing (only one of which calls for actually making your own cornbread), the yummy chicken/peanut stew I got good travel out of years ago, and, er, the review for Gods and Monsters, which really dates the pile.

Work was long and stupid, it was an utter waste of my Saturday, so I won't say much about it except I got free pizza.

Um ... I got home around 6 PM and shadowdaddy and the cold-affected wechsler were both here waiting for me, which was quite nice except for the fact I'd been expecting to leave at 4. I made some lentil and leftover pork chop soup, completely freestyling and letting the inspiration take me - carrots and onions and celery, of course; the whole of the extra pork chop from last night, diced; a sad little yam that didn't get cooked Thanksgiving and had been secretly begging me to put it to good use for the last two weeks; the bones of the other two pork chops; leftover fresh thyme and parsley; garlic (because we had it); and the top of the turban squash we cooked up for dinner two nights ago but hadn't managed to finish. I got to use my (FABULOUS! Just like Christmas ... near Christmas!) brand new Swiss Diamond stock pot to make the soup in (SO EXCITED ABOUT NEW PANS!), and all of my yummy spices from home (Johnny's Seasoned Salt - it's magic! And it is!) - freshly unpacked - to pick up the flavor. And I got to serve it in the cool yellow ware soup bowls I picked up from City Kitchens several years ago (nice to have something besides the cereal bowls to eat out of). shadowdaddy said he thought it was the best soup I'd ever made, and I had to agree it was just pretty darned good.

Anyway, so now all three of us are sitting around geeking on our computers, and it would be sad except these are my two favorite people in the world so instead I am feeling very happy. And I'm tired. It was a long day. I expect tomorrow I won't do much besides breakfast, other than, well, go to a movie at 4 (Pandora's Box) and then see Kit and the Widow with thekumquat et all. Should be a good end to a weekend in which I was a complete slug otherwise.