It Tolls For Thee
Sep. 20th, 2019 07:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pshaw_ravenLong time no see, DW. I'm sorry about that but I keep procrastinating on updating this, and it seems like something is always coming up.
Here in the northeast part of Florida we had almost no real weather from the recent tropical systems. Dorian made it windy one day, but that was it. Today we finally are getting some drizzly rain and the weather is slowly starting to change. It's sometimes in the 60s at night and the daytime highs aren't murder. I've also noticed some trees beginning to change, different changes in animal behaviors (Droopy the Crow is coming around more often now and checking out the corn feeder), and we're starting to see Orb Weaver spiders building webs, which normally doesn't happen until fall is immanent.
We're about five and six weeks out from some major running events. I'm specifically looking at the Black Creek 10k, where I'm hoping to PR. The week after that is Disney Wine & Dine, where Fox and I are doing the Two Course Challenge - the 10k and half marathon. I feel like they missed a great opportunity to call those races "Dine & Dash" but no one asked me. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the upcoming fall and winter not only for some cooler weather but because running training kicks into a higher gear. I'm currently on a slow cut to get to racing weight for my 10k, then as we go into the time of year when there's lots of yummy, high-calorie foods, I'll be in Dopey training so I'll actually have a good reason to eat more. I'm carb loading. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking with it.
I also just finished reading For Whom the Bell Tolls. It's one I've meant to read for years and just haven't. My first husband was also a huge Hemingway fan and that really put me off even more, though I never really developed a taste for H's writing. I liked the book much better than I expected to, however. Despite all the obvious problems it has, H's glorification of war and violence and idealizing of romantic love, not to mention his weirdly choppy sentences, it was rather good. Although I would not describe it as "muscular prose," but rather like a distracted interior monologue. The entire book reads similarly to the way your thoughts get when you're anxious and have literally nothing else to do but think.
Anyway, it went well with having read Dan Simmons' The Abominable, and currently Donna Barr's Stinz comics. But my next fiction pick needs to be a palette cleanser - something light and maybe funny. Something like a dish of spumoni between rich, heavy servings of roasted meats and pasta.
I'm also about to order a jar of steamed chestnuts. I'm sick of going to Publix and paying through the nose for bags of chestnuts, only to get them home and find they're all moldy inside. A waste of my time and money when fifteen bucks will get me almost a pound of nothing but the nut-meats, ready to go. I plan to make dorayaki, possibly with ice cream or whipped cream and chestnut paste. I don't know if the ones I had in Tokyo had ice cream or whipped in them, but they were in the ice cream case, so I assume some sort of ice cream. It'll be easy enough (hallelujah!) to find a good non-dairy vanilla ice cream that can be spread when soft. If I'm remembering correctly, cashew ice cream has a softer texture. LOL I might need to sample some dairy free ice creams - research! Yeah, research. And carb loading. That's it ...
┬─┬⃰͡ (ᵔᵕᵔ͜ )
Here in the northeast part of Florida we had almost no real weather from the recent tropical systems. Dorian made it windy one day, but that was it. Today we finally are getting some drizzly rain and the weather is slowly starting to change. It's sometimes in the 60s at night and the daytime highs aren't murder. I've also noticed some trees beginning to change, different changes in animal behaviors (Droopy the Crow is coming around more often now and checking out the corn feeder), and we're starting to see Orb Weaver spiders building webs, which normally doesn't happen until fall is immanent.
We're about five and six weeks out from some major running events. I'm specifically looking at the Black Creek 10k, where I'm hoping to PR. The week after that is Disney Wine & Dine, where Fox and I are doing the Two Course Challenge - the 10k and half marathon. I feel like they missed a great opportunity to call those races "Dine & Dash" but no one asked me. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the upcoming fall and winter not only for some cooler weather but because running training kicks into a higher gear. I'm currently on a slow cut to get to racing weight for my 10k, then as we go into the time of year when there's lots of yummy, high-calorie foods, I'll be in Dopey training so I'll actually have a good reason to eat more. I'm carb loading. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking with it.
I also just finished reading For Whom the Bell Tolls. It's one I've meant to read for years and just haven't. My first husband was also a huge Hemingway fan and that really put me off even more, though I never really developed a taste for H's writing. I liked the book much better than I expected to, however. Despite all the obvious problems it has, H's glorification of war and violence and idealizing of romantic love, not to mention his weirdly choppy sentences, it was rather good. Although I would not describe it as "muscular prose," but rather like a distracted interior monologue. The entire book reads similarly to the way your thoughts get when you're anxious and have literally nothing else to do but think.
Anyway, it went well with having read Dan Simmons' The Abominable, and currently Donna Barr's Stinz comics. But my next fiction pick needs to be a palette cleanser - something light and maybe funny. Something like a dish of spumoni between rich, heavy servings of roasted meats and pasta.
I'm also about to order a jar of steamed chestnuts. I'm sick of going to Publix and paying through the nose for bags of chestnuts, only to get them home and find they're all moldy inside. A waste of my time and money when fifteen bucks will get me almost a pound of nothing but the nut-meats, ready to go. I plan to make dorayaki, possibly with ice cream or whipped cream and chestnut paste. I don't know if the ones I had in Tokyo had ice cream or whipped in them, but they were in the ice cream case, so I assume some sort of ice cream. It'll be easy enough (hallelujah!) to find a good non-dairy vanilla ice cream that can be spread when soft. If I'm remembering correctly, cashew ice cream has a softer texture. LOL I might need to sample some dairy free ice creams - research! Yeah, research. And carb loading. That's it ...
┬─┬⃰͡ (ᵔᵕᵔ͜ )
no subject
Date: 2019-09-20 01:48 pm (UTC)-T~
no subject
Date: 2019-09-24 01:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-20 08:27 pm (UTC)Dumb question, but have you ever read Hitchhiker's Guide? That one's an easy win for light, fun reading.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-24 01:20 pm (UTC)I haven't read those in a long time, but I recently read both Dirk Gently novels and a shortish (or, long for an essay) bio of Douglas Adams. I'll pick those up when I'm at the bookstore next.
Also don't know if you've read it, but Space Opera by Catherynne Valente is also very funny, and while prior knowledge of Eurovision isn't required, exactly, it's helpful.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-24 05:09 pm (UTC)