sparkle and fade

Slept at Charlie’s, woke up and he made noises about being sick. I went home to feed the cat and eat leftover pizza and whatnot and then decided to walk to the grocery store to buy draino (my shower stopped draining overnight). However, I got sidetracked by the wintery wonderland and ended up walking around the neighborhood instead. I walked to the park a few blocks away and the afternoon sun came at a low angle through the trees and made the snow glitter. There was a dad taking his kid sledding and it made me think that one of the fun parts about having kids would be getting to do all the fun kid-type stuff again. Of course, kids want to wake up at 7am and do all that stuff, which would be the downside. There had been talk last night of going sledding but none of us had sleds and we figured suckmart would a) be the only place open that time of night and b) be sold out of sleds.

I walked back to Charlie’s place since we had talked about going to a late afternoon hockey game and we would have had to get going if we still wanted to attend. Charlie was still making sick noises and didn’t want to go to hockey so I climbed in bed and cuddled him for a while; he gradually woke up and we had a pleasant chat. We got up and had a sad dinner composed of a few meager scraps of leftovers, a shared microwave meal, a shared bag of barbecue soy chips and a couple granola bars. Then we played a video game for like, 8 hours straight. We bought Oblivion for the xbox a couple months ago and just started playing it this week. I have obviously not owned any modern video games systems, but I am absolutely amazed by how beautiful this game is and how complex of a world can be included on one DVD. The other awesome part is that you can wander anywhere on the map, there are no fixed pathways nor any real restriction to the main quest. If you want to spend 4 hours messing around in the woods killing goblins, you can do that – and additionally, you’ll find ruined temples and farms and such to explore. This is my favorite sort of video game, with an entire unknown world to explore and random interesting characters to interact with. Anyway, that was fun for many hours and then we came back to my place and cooked late night food.  I made Charlie a fried egg sandwich with melted queso cheese and it was, I must say, delicious.  I went to bed, Charlie worked.

 

tasty little chopses

Man, I was sore in the arms today because of rock climbing.  I did stuff around house, thought about playing disc golf, realized it was 32 degrees outside.  Called Charlie and invited myself over for cuddles.  We did, in fact, cuddle, as well as eat leftover noodles and get lucky.  Came back to my place where we had pork chops, trader joes stuffing and peas for dinner.  The chops were pretty good, great flavor but I overcooked them a wee bit.  The stuffing smelled SO GOOD in the pan, but upon eating it the flavor was not up to snuff.  A case of not enough seasoning packet to excessive breadcrumbs, perhaps?  Or maybe just not the right seasonings that I like in stuffing.  Charlie agreed it wasn’t up to stovetop standards.  Then we acquired C. and went to the gym, where they played basketball and I ellipticalled.  Then back to my place to shower, after which we were going to go to SnS but instead ended up at Mi Ranchito with Mac and CW.  I had chimichangas which were delicious, although I’m going to try to remember to order them without sour cream, because I don’t eat it and it just melts into a mess everywhere.  After that we went to Mac’s place to hang out, chat, watch a Phish tour DVD, and play mario cart.  That Phish DVD did an excellent job of convincing me the members of Phish are not people I’d ever want to hang out with.  Back to my place, where I did dishes and read and went to bed and Charlie worked.  A rather pleasant day, all in all.

 

forgotten day

Charlie slept here and hmm….  I do not remember the rest of the day.  I’m pretty sure we were lazy and then he left to do other stuff.  Eventually in the evening he wanted somewhat healthy food and we went to schnucks and bought whole grain bread and cheese and whatnot and after toasting it up in the frying pan with butter and melting the cheese we ate it in my kitchen and it was delish and then we had cuddles and he went home to work.

 

enchiladas and grief

Charlie slept at my place and then left to take Mac on car type errands. I called him in the afternoon and inquired if they wanted to go to disc golf, which we did at Endicott along with Ben. It was warm but windy, I didn’t keep score. Mac had a horrible cold and gave it to me. A nice day to be outside though. I went home and called Charlie a little while later to see if he wanted to have dinner with me, he wasn’t hungry yet and invited me to the gym with him and C. They played basketball for about 2 hours and I worked out in abundance. I invited them both to come for dinner but only Charlie showed up. I made enchiladas with stuff from cans and leftover thanksgiving turkey and they were amazingly delicious. Those are definitely going onto the recipe rotation. We hung out and played cards for a while then Charlie started talking about going back to his place to get some work done. Instead we got into an awkward conversation and stayed up half the night talking. He slept here.

 

usually the mashed potatoes are my favorite, but my sister ruined them

Woke up early-ish, headed downtown to soup kitchen. I was in the carry-out department as usual and we handed out upwards of 530 carry-outs, which is the most I can remember doing for years and years. Went home for an hour or so to change and whatnot before going to Pam’s. My sister and I helped her finish up the cooking and then we ate: turkey, corn pudding, peas/carrots, sausages wrapped in bacon and the aforementioned potatoes. My sister insisted on mashing them (we always fight over it) and used an immersion blender instead of a masher. They were WAY overmashed, more like the consistency of thick potato-leek soup instead of mashed potatoes. I did not find it appealing, and was a little bitter because I would have made them much better. Stuffed ourselves and followed it up with pie, watched Christmas Vacation and played some board games. Headed home and to bed, I talked to Charlie for an hour or so.  We had a happy conversation where we talked about the conversational bizarrities of other people and how he likes me so much because I can talk about lots of things on multiple levels.  Was glad to hear him being cheery and affectionate if stuck by himself for thanksgiving.

 

sunday is for pancakes!

Charlie slept at my place, we woke up and I made pancakes. I used pancake mix but I mixed them thin and I cooked them in butter. They turned out a lot better than what pancake mix usually produces, which tends to be too dry. These ones weren’t quite right flavor-wise but they were definitely somewhat swedish pancakey. Charlie agreed they were an improvement. We took a shower and got lucky and then Charlie had to head to work. I didn’t achieve much the rest of the day, I talked to him later and he was watching football with friends and I was invited but I didn’t really feel like going. A lazy sort of sunday.

 

i produced enough stew for perhaps 8 meals today

I talked to Charlie in the afternoon and invited him for dinner. This meant I had to cough up something for dinner and I finally found the missing cookbook that contained the recipe I already had all the ingredients for. So I got to work on that. It was one of those stews where making it doesn’t take long but it has to be cooked for about 3 hours. Charlie eventually came over and we had stew and garlic bread. The stew was great, it was pork/chicken/chorizo/assorted veggies/fruit, the only bad thing was that the chorizo lost its flavor. I think next time I’ll sub potatoes for chorizo. Went back to Charlie’s place with Charlie and hung out with some of the usual suspects and ate chocolate chip cookies. Charlie got the brilliant idea to go to an Indiana Pacers game and while not paying attention I said I didn’t want to go. M. said he would go and that was settled. Charlie and I went to Steaknshake pretty late and M. called and revealed that he wouldn’t be done with work til 5pm for the day with a 7pm Pacers game. So I said I would go instead. Charlie dropped me off at home and said he’d get tickets.

 

holy crap, november already

Coaxed Charlie out of bed at a decent hour, he did some work while I watched a special on the National Parks and then a documentary about praying mantises on the HD discovery channel. I must say, few things rival the televisual majesty of nature-type shows in HD. We decided to go to the zoo, I went home to have some lunch while he finished up working. We went to the zoo in a rather goofy mood and just wandered around. We went into the insectarium (I don’t think we’d ever been in there before) where we encountered a howling child in a stroller. The adult in charge of the child did nothing to calm said child nor did he take the child outside, which was rather irritating. We left so we wouldn’t have to listen to the howling anymore.

After that we went back to my place to assemble a quick dinner before Charlie went to play basketball. We came up with: salad with feta and tomato plus pasta and vodka sauce with italian sausage from the Joes in it. It was great, the flavors went together nicely and it was pretty quick (would have been even quicker if the sausage hadn’t been frozen).

In the evening I went to the borders and noble and then shopping for the ingredients for another dish I want to cook in the next day or so. Came home and enjoyed a caramel apple. That’s a product where it’s not really worth the effort and mess to make it yourself. They had gourmet ones for sale that cost $5.99 per apple, which struck me as crazy. The only thing special about it was that it was rolled in pecans instead of peanuts. Charlie called while I was grocery shopping to tell me he was going out drinking with friends, I told him he could come sleep at my place if he wanted but he never appeared.

 

gloom

I got woken up early because Charlie had to be awake early to drive to Chicago. He went back to his place to pack and whatever and I went back to sleep. He came to my place again to say goodbye (he was also supposed to pick up a coat but he forgot) and give me my frisbees in case I wanted to play disc golf. He hit the road and I didn’t do much productive the rest of the day other than working on my painting, which I supposed is a worthwhile endeavor. I had errands to do and things like that but I felt vaguely malaised so it was a good day to lounge around, kind of rainy and gloomy. Charlie called in the afternoon to say that he was at a mall in Chicago to buy a coat since he had forgotten to take one and it was cold up in the northern realms. Amusingly he misplaced his car at the mall. For dinner I cooked up asparagus risotto from the Joes with shrimp in it which made an excellent meal.  Watched some TV in the evening, didn’t stay up excessively late.