So, I didn't post last week mostly due to some work issues that I really didn't want to talk about...I'll probably write them up eventually but they're long winded and probably nobody but me will care about them anyway. Suffice it to say that management has been doing their best to drive morale down to an all time low for my little section of the world for now.

Anyway, work stuff aside things have been pretty good. One of my roommates was off in Thailand up until last Wednesday so things were rather quiet at home. I seized on this opportunity to clean many things (this, sadly, has yet to include my, you know, bedroom, which continues to exist in a state of reorganization chaos) Very little interesting happened other than Frolic which was fun even if I did have to dodge a kiss from some guy who was reasonably drunk that I'd never met before in my life even before he introduced himself. He was actually not bad looking but one does have to have one's standards, after all. (He then proceeded to disappear and I never saw him again..it was rather amusing, honestly)

Other than that. Book club was last week, that was pretty fun. I saw Avengers on Friday (I...liked it? I think all they hype I'd read about it ruined it just a bit because I expected to be blown away and I was not. Enjoyed it though. Even if Iron Man remains a prick)

The rest of the weekend was fairly low key as my good friend and ex-roommate Charlie was visiting. There was much watching of him play video games and watch movies. And the wine bar during the eclipse. Drinking wine while the sun is being devoured by a dragon is the right way to do things, you know?

Hoping to do a bit of art this week, it's been way too long.

So last night I made portabello mushroom enchiladas. They turned out pretty yummy (though spicy! Over did it a bit there, I think)

Didn't get pictures of them 'cause, you know, eating.

For posterity, so that if I decide to make them again I think this is what I did for the mushrooms:

4 portabello mushrooms
4 cloves garlic, minced
Juice of two limes (vaguely...I didn't really measure much of anything)
one yellow bellpepper coarsely chopped
one large onion, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Corn Tortillas (room temperature is easiest to work with)
Grated cheese to taste (I used tillamook sharp cheddar. Whatever your like on your enchiladas basically)

Chop mushrooms into half inch chunks or there abouts. Toss with lime juice, garlic and oil. Marinate overnight (You could marinate the other vegetables as well but I, er, didn't have them when I did this part)
Sautee mushrooms, peppers, onions and garlic in marinade until vegetables are tender and most of the liquid has cooked off

Prepare sauce (or use canned again I didn't really measure so measurements are approximate. If too thin, add more sour cream, too thick, add more broth)
2 cups vegetable broth
Canned chipotle in adobe to taste (I used a whole can. Bit much. Probably half or less would have been better for most people)
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon salt
16 ounces of sour cream

Stir together cream, broth, peppers and spices. Heat to low simmer until mixture thickens

Prepare enchiladas

Dip tortilla into sauce until it's absorbed some but isn't too soggy.
Place in baking dish (I used a 9 1/2 by 13 pyrex baking dish but you can divide them up however you like, it's a forgiving dish) and top with approx. a tablespoon of mushroom mixture.
Roll tortilla into cylinder.
Repeat until mushroom mixture is gone/pans are all filled/you're out of tortillas (aren't I precise?)
Pour remaining sauce over enchiladas
Top with grated cheese to taste
Bake in 350 degree oven until cheese is melted and any exposed tortillas start to brown.

Enjoy!

Notes: The limes I had were fairly small and it was enough to give the mushrooms a nice tang...you might want to experiment with the amount of it in the dish depending on taste

So over the weekend debmats and I went to Asilomar state park for the weekend where we tooled around the beach, Pacific Grove and Monterey. Herein lies the tale (warning picture heavy because I'm easily amused and had a new camera)

( Enter, if you dare the horrors of bad photography...and many deer )

Behind again though that's mostly because not much of note happened during the weekend other than a bit of board gaming on Sunday (Arkham horror. Three games. First won easily. The other two more representative of how the game likes to rape you with extra tentacular action. Was fun but was up way too late for a weeknight.

Anyway, not much else going on this week though we did hit the wine bar last night. Tomorrow debmats and I will be heading down to Asilomar for the weekend. Which should be nice though I've never been there before. Must remember my camera for the trip as my phone is being excessively irritating of late.

I baked a couple of cookies this evening. Gingersnaps.


Just a few.

Last night I was all responsible and stuff. Instead of lazing about watching television, reading or playing video games I actually cleaned up a bit. And, horror of horrors, touched a project that I always mean to work on but never get around to since it's overwhelming.

The discarding of my cd's jewel cases.

See, when we moved upstairs I determined I was wasting a fair amount of bedroom real estate storing cds (and if you've seen my room, there's not much to waste in the first place!) So I determined the best thing to do, since I do like having physical media backups of my music was to invest in one of the many sleeve systems designed for holding cds and the associated booklets so that I could store them in much less space.

Two things I did not consider at this time:
A) When you have as many cds as I do (since I've been collecting them since I was 13 or there abouts. Aka the early brunch time of time) the cost of the sleeves and such is, well, not cheap.
B) When you do buy the sleeves they do not magically fly into your house and fill themselves. You actually have to take the cases off, label them and all the assorted nonsense.

So I touch this project once a twice a year, shove a bunch of them in sleeves, run out/figure out I could be doing fun stuff instead like flirting online and give up.

Anyway. Probably did about fifty cds last night. I was bit slowed down by the fact that I had not labelled a good portion of the cds that I had done previously. And there's the..."Wait, is this acutally on my ipod or did I forget to rip it moments" as well. I expect I shall finish this project in approximately fifty years, give or take ;-) (Probably a bit sooner, actually as I've been very, very tempted to start attempting to brew mead. But the boxes of cds are taking up real estate that I'd probably need to do so)

In other news, seeing a Ram's Head theater production of City of Angels tonight, which I hope shall be great fun.

So, after having it for seven years I have taken to pleading with my ipod to continue working (seriously, it's sad when a grown man resorts to "come on baby, just make it to work...I can't take this train ride without you!" Which I sort of did this morning. And yes, it did) I've sadly come to terms with that it might be time for a new one.

I feel like I need to have a funeral when I get the new one. Given that it's been tossed around, dropped innumerable times, actually cracked open once after a particularly hard drop onto asphalt and probably played well over 10,000 hours of music with only a slight crack in the screen and an admittedly crotchety battery.

I salute you, oh melodic soldier!

It's been a reasonably good week. Wine bar on Wed and approval of my guitar from someone who actually knows what a good guitar is instead of me that just wants to pet it 'cause it's pretty. Last night was supposed to be a home night but after an e-mail stating celebration was necessary I ended up having fondue with debmats. Lovely as always.

We had fairly awesome weather yesterday...a very big thunderstorm for this part of this country. I love thunderstorms though at one point I yelped and almost fell out of my bed when, after all the lightning being far away, a bolt landed pretty much on top of us (Not sure if it was actually ground to air or just cloud to cloud but there was no delay between the flash and the noise...and it was loud enough that it set off a couple of the car alarms in the complex.

Tonight, work happy hour! Then tomorrow frolic and Sunday board games. Should be fun.

More cooking stuff. Made lemon marmalade with lavender vodka. Also a blackberry pie that had a bit of failure when it comes to the top crust. Sure it tastes fine but it's ugly. Bah.
( Food porn behind cut )

So I don't really have an excuse for not posting as work has slowed down a little bit (blame television without pity and battlestar galactica recaps plus lj being really slow this week. I never thought I'd miss the days where I'd see the same meme 50 times!)

Anyway, not too much has been going on anyway. Went out to lunch/wine with Friends on Saturday and then hung around for a bit yakking (Beware the hoop trundling menace!) and a bit of stand up comedy.

Sunday people showed up unexpectedly (to me) and there was board game goofiness.

This week is a bit busy. I made dinner as per usual last night, now with bonus pie:


debmats had demanded I try making this shaker lemon pie last week as she'd had it somewhere and thought it was the yummiest thing ever (I partially attribute this to her vast dislike of all things custardy which means that lemon meringue is right out) It turned out pretty well though I definitely have some modifications I need to make to it to make it a little less "woah, I have an entire round of lemon in my mouth"

So dinner was good. Tonight is book club, which was postponed a week due to work issues so up to Alameda! We read "Discount Armageddon" (a word I'm incapable of spelling correctly the first time, I'm afraid) by Seanan McGuire. That should be a fun discussion.

Friday I think there's to be wine bar with a whole group of people, slightly inexplicably as the friend who wants to organize it never actually introduces his friends to each other in my experience but now suddenly wants a horde. Not entirely sure what to think of that.

Reading "The Master of Heathcrest Hall" by Galen Beckett and enjoying it muchly.

I decided, since this week has been a crazy running to barely stay afloat (I suppose that's a mixed metaphor. Unless you can walk on water. But then you wouldn't be able to splash in puddles so it's a lame superpower. Sorry, Jesus!) Work has been very, very busy. Anyway, to catch up.

The weekend was good. My ex roommate and good friend, Charlie, was celebrating his birthday on Saturday and didn't have any plans so I dragged him over and out to dinner. Followed by (and actually preceeded by, a bit) rockband and then a rousing game of Illuminati. Which lasted till 5:30. I think we mostly threw the game at the end there because of lack of sleep. And there was cake. I had a go at making a cake that mimicked the drink, a sidecar, (lemon cake with brandy orange frosting), with varying degrees of success...frosting rocked, lemon cake needs tweaking. I expect there shall be another mad science baking post when I manage to get it right. And possibly a number of sidecar cakes to feed people.

Me being me I woke up at 8:00 unable to go back to sleep, baked biscuits and then played video games until people were moving. And then played more video games until people left. Eventually realized a day where you have eaten precisely three biscuits was a day where you might want to eat something else and went out with folks to get food (and beer...which reminds me, the new beer song I downloaded for rockband should be required to start off every party we have at our house forever more! Or end it. I'm not sure which)

So, good weekend. This week has been keeping me crazy busy with trying to finalize our research proposal (12 million over 5 years with many, many people involved. I'm amazed I haven't run through the halls flailing at invisible bees yet, honestly) and trying to stay in the pseudo good graces of a professor who kind of hates me. Fun stuff. Oh, and reporting. The director did give me a bottle of wine (pinot) and a gift card for my help though so I haven't minded that part! I did bake emergency peanut butter cookies last night along with the crack dip I made to make the week a bit better.

Speaking of gift cards: Does anyone else ever feel weird about using them, especially the visa ones? Because you obviously want to spend the whole thing but then you have to explain to the cashier that they need to ring you up twice to pay the remaining balance and it all just seems like so much WORK, you know? I may be scarred from the one time my atm card demagnatized itself at the grocery store and I couldn't pay for my food though. I was redder than the reddest red by the time I had to apologize and leave. Good times in a way totally and completely not resembling anything good. :-)

I woke up from a dream of my dad passing away (It's just after the second year anniversary of this so it's not too surprising that I'm dreaming about it. And honestly in the dream he passed away floating on a raft in the middle of a pool in a park which is preferable to the lying in the hospital fighting for breath until his body gave out once disconnected from machines so it was, you know, a nicer way to die than actuality) to realize that my alarm clock hadn't gone off and I was half an hour late waking up.

So you know, Tuesday isn't fired YET but it definitely has had it's written warning that performance goals are not being met.

Also do to last of the cold fallout plus allergies one of my ears is plugged and slightly aching, so you know, all around fun for the whole family :-)

However, I'm at work, I have forbidden broadway's parody of Blood Brothers stuck in my head (Oh no, you put the shoes on the piano again!
Just like...Marilyn Monroe!
Aaaaaah...I could have been him! Her, Him! Both...)

Which never fails to be amusing. And there is homemade chili in the future. So The day should get better.