Was it you who spoke the words

Well. That's that. LJ's officially taken one step further than I feel like walking beside it, so we're migrating here.

All the posts are transferred, and IIRC, comments too.

I can't promise I'll be any more active here, but I do know I'm going to cease activity there. So... ~shrug, wry grin~ Be welcome? Drop me a ping & say hey?

* There's at least one rabbit living under my back deck.
* Clover is green, fluffy hell to mow through with one of these lawnmowers, at least when it's the first mow of the season.
* The best time to mow my back yard is, weirdly enough, between noon and 14:00. Sure the sun's mostly right overhead...but the same trees that keep the place dim and damp and still? They cast lovely shadows over 3/4 of the yard in midday.
* Our wi-fi signal reaches all the way out to the edge of the yard, no problem!
* It takes most of Iron Maiden's Powerslave album to mow the back yard, at least when it's the first mow of the season.
* The birds are less disturbed by a human blaring metal from her back pocket than they are by a quiet human. Maybe they figure I'm not hunting anything if I'm making all that noise and no eye contact? Hm. Anyway, it amused the daylights out of me to watch the robins hop around in the freshly-mown strips listening for worms while Bruce yowled lines like, "live to flyyyyyyy, fly to liiiiiiive..."

Gods, I'm tired.
But it's a good tired.
An exertion-with-something-to-show-for-it tired.
~nods~

Tonight's dinner:

* ~One pound of chicken thighs, excess fat cut off, meat cut into chunks about the same mass as my distal thumbjoint. (see what I mean? What a unit of measure. But when you're chopping, it's good to have something nearby to compare to. Is this too big? ~looks at thumb, looks at chicken~ yeah a little; halve this bit of meat...)

* One packet Taco Bell taco seasoning. It's not just the spices; I could find authentic spice proportions somewhere and use those...but then I'd miss out on whatever thickening agent rides along with the spices and MSG in the packet and turns the spices into sauce while they cook. If you know how to use cornstarch responsibly, you can probably work from scratch. I will continue to use the little packets till they stop producing them or my system rejects the MSG dosage with violence. Makes measuring easy.

* An arbitrary amount of frozen bell peppers & onions from the bag I snagged at Mal-Wart for about two bucks. In this case, the amount was "what's left in the bag"; in future, it'll be maybe...mmmnnnn, say a 1:3 ratio, veg:chicken? Depends how far I need the chicken to go, you know? Anyway, throw 'em in frozen--the liquid that thaws out of them will eventually contribute to the sauce.

Those things all go into a bowl (or a gallon-sized ziploc bag if you're like that) and get massaged together then left to sit for a half hour or so, till the veg thaws.

Then! It's time for...
* At least one short stick of chorizo. I used one, tonight, and it was lovely but spread a little thin. Next time, TWO short sticks. Because I hearts me some chorizo.

Squeeze the chorizo out of its plastic skin into your waiting skillet and scramble it over medium high heat. You know it's done cooking when it looks a little gravelly and it starts hissing and trying to jump out of the pan. It will jump at you. I hope you're wearing a high-necked shirt. Be brave: the chorizo can smell fear.
At that point, remove the chorizo to a small bowl. The feisty thing.

Don't clean the pan. Just throw a little olive oil at it so the chicken mix doesn't stick.

Then add the chicken mix and cook over high or medium high heat.
Tonight, I put the whole thing into the pan; we have a big pan and it was a short pound. Next time, I might cook it in two shifts. We'll see. Anyway, you want kindof a stirfry situation happening in the skillet, thus the great temperature. Cook the chicken kindof fast before its juice can flee or the peppers can get soggy. Tonight, the short pound of chicken took about 10 minutes of flipping and pushing round the pan to cook. It was crowded; things more steamed than fried in there. Macht nichts: it still cooked through.
JUUUUSSSSST BEFORE you declare the chicken-bits cooked, put the chorizo back into the pan and give it a good few turns to integrate the sausage with the everything else.

To serve? Heh. What do you like? Mark & Dae had their share wrapped in tortillas; Mark put cheese in atop his. They seemed quite pleased. I put mine over a bowl of lettuce and topped it with cheese. Next time, maybe I'll put salsa in too; it needed some tartness to perk up all the savour/sweet and spice. Rice might make a nice option. Try things.

Oh little FinePix S602Z, how sweet you have been to me over the last nine years, and how sweet you were to Mark for several years before I even turned up. How much I have learned with you. How I love you.
How grateful I am that you waited till the Socially Acceptable Time To Spend A Couple Hundred Dollars On Something That Doesn't Generate Income to drop dead.
Well done in all your doing, little S602Z. I will take out the batteries you no longer recognise that you have and the SD card you won't stay on long enough to add pictures to, and I will put you somewhere safe with Mark's Dad's 35mm. You have been a good camera.

And welcome home, little FinePix S1. I look forward to lots of long walks with you and your rechargeable battery, 50x zoom, 16M effective pixels, and weather-resistant hull. <3
eeeeeeeee! :D

How does a part of the world leave the world?
How does wetness leave water? Don't try to

put out fire by throwing on more fire! Don't
wash a wound with blood. No matter how fast

you run, your shadow keeps up. Sometimes it's
in front! Only full overhead sun diminishes

your shadow. But that shadow has been serving
you. What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is

your candle. Your boundaries are your quest.
I could explain this, but it will break the

glass cover on your heart, and there's no
fixing that. You must have shadow and light

source both. Listen, and lay your head under
the tree of awe. When from that tree feathers

and wings sprout on you, be quieter than
a dove. Don't even open your mouth for even a coo.

From Soul of Rumi
Translation by Coleman Barks

Magic is the art of recognising the signs of rain in time to dig a trench away from your foundation & toward your garden. Can't change where the house sits on the land; can't stop the water from coming down...but you can avert flood and feed the plants if you're attentive and put in the work.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
That was not the gods-damned part
That was broken. Fuck.

What I wouldn't give for a database of malfunction noises, so that when something breaks, you can hold your device's mic up to it and push a button, and after a second or two, see a suggestion.
Sounds like your machine's transmission has failed, or Sounds like your vehice is missing its catalytic converter! or Have you checked the attic for raccoons?

Back to the drawing board...

So just in case anyone else needs to eradicate adorable rodents from their walls, please allow me to present The Richard Thompson Electric Trio performing Cream's "White Room."


(I could listen to Mr. Thompson sing a phonebook, myself.)

I've been talking mostly to myself, here, for a while. Sometimes a person needs to process and doesn't necessarily feel up to asking for an audience for it. Pretty frequently that person is me.
I finally got round to unloading a MASSIVE number of pictures from my camera, not long ago. And since, I've been crawling into plants' personal space to see whether I could get the camera to show something at all like what my eye found.
Today's result:


(I was deeply amused to realise that I'd put my wee purple flowers under a stained glass lamp full of purple flowers. Methinks there's a theme I'm only occasionally conscious of, here.)

So how're you lot?
~hugs all round~

Apparently, the way to get me off my ass is to give me a cold.

This morning, I got a wild idea: if citron in honey eventually makes a good goo for making tea (seriously: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yujacha), I bet those sour, tiny orange-looking fruits on the tree Mel's Dad gave me will do it, too! So I wandered out to visit Mr. Tree and see if he had anyone ready for the table. And lo! Three fruits were ready to come in! So at eight this morning, I was sterilising a jar and washing fruit for another citrus tea preserve.

Won't know for a while how it's going--got to give the little kumquat/orange/I honestly don't know bits time to gel--a couple days till it's Food; a couple months till it's Itself.

Still.
:)