Domestic.

Nate's on another one of his exotic trips, this time to Niger, but it's totally cool (ie, I'm not insanely jealous) because it's non-work related - his sister's getting married. It's a long story, but she was in the Peace Corps and is now doing her doctoral research there, and apparently seeing her get married (to her German fiance, Guenther [again, no umlaut, sorry!]) is a big deal and very important to the people with whom she's working there. Nate says the wedding will take several days and he's probably going to buy a goat for the reception! Cool.

Anyway, so instead of going out or something, tonight I: swept the house, did laundry, and cooked/baked. I made the no-knead bread (my second time, and it came out much better this time - I think because I let the first rise go for almost 20 hours, and last time it was about 10 or so), eggplant parmesan, and chocolate chip cookies.

The best part? Listening to old This American Life episodes as I cooked!

Oh boy, I'm an old lady.

The good.

Today I took a Flexcar out for the first time to buy a bunch of heavy things at Trader Joe's (canned tomatoes, beer, dish soap, soup, wine). (I sold my car, in case I didn't mention that before, in what had to have been one of the easiest car sale transactions in the history of automobiles: the woman barely wanted to test-drive it [we had to convince her], she didn't seem to notice the dings or scratches, and her husband only asked to look under the hood after she had already given me the cashier's check [a check made out in an amount very close to the asking price, I might add].) Anyway, the Flexcar experience was pretty awesome - I got a Scion xA, it was incredibly easy to reserve, and I set KEXP as the #1 radio preset. The awesomeness was a bit reduced on the way back from my house to the Flexcar's parking spot, however, because I got stuck on some ice (yup, snow in Seattle, again!) while trying to drive up a big hill. Thankfully, a very nice couple was walking by, and they helped me safely back up down the street so I could take a different, non-hilly route (the first thing they said when I asked for help was, "That's our Flexcar!").

All 3 of my teams are in the playoffs! This is exciting for me, since I am pretty much the definition of a fair-weather fan, so I get rewarded with a full weekend of football without any of the season of angst real fans have to face.

The Amateur Gourmet took my advice and went to Black Bottle! And he liked it! I have good taste.

This weekend we're having a ketchup tasting (and scotch too, but I'm not really interested in that).

School's started again, and while this quarter is going to be MUCH harder than last, we're actually doing important stuff - evaluating a walk-to-school and breakfast program, creating healthier menus for UW food service (and cooking our own recipes for students!), and learning about all sorts of food/nutrition-related issues (food safety, fish farming, biodiversity, etc).

I read 47 books this year! (I am positive this will decrease now that I'm back in school. And it's not like I remember salient points about most of them, but still.)

There's probably more I'm forgetting - and of course, there's bad stuff too. But no one likes to read about that, right?