the tedium of food

Tonight I was crazy productive and made both a new batch of Laddie's hotdish AND a batch of pot roast. (...Which will technically not be done until 7am, but whatever; once it's in the crockpot, it's all good.) My oven was being temperamental and did not want to heat, but I turned it off, waited a minute, and turned it on again which is a nuisance trick but usually fixes that problem. This is because my oven and stove is a sort of gas-electric hybrid, in that it uses gas to do the cooking but instead of constantly burning pilot lights, it uses electricity to start the flames... and occasionally the spark doesn't actually spark. *sigh*

(The vegetable side dish turned out all right, btw. I think I accidentally made a very weak/watery veggie curry? That was not really my intent, but eh, it's reasonably tasty and went fine both with last night's catfish and tonight's hotdish, so I will count it a victory.)

I still have a batch of pork whatever in my freezer (I cooked it with carrots, onions, cranberries, and applesauce), which will be joined tomorrow by the pot roast. I moved my last container of potato hotdish down to the fridge to thaw, so that and the Laddie's hotdish should get me through Saturday, I think. I need to buy more potatoes, cheese, and sour cream and make another batch of that. It's a good hotdish. (I already have onions and ham on hand, and I should have another pepper or two ready to use by the weekend.) And then I have another chunk of pork still frozen and waiting for me to make it into something, so I think I'm all right on the food front for a while, even discounting my stash of crackers-cheese-and-pepperoni, and the emergency canned soup and ramen noodles in the cupboard.

Breakfast is currently one toaster waffle, an individual cup of unsweetened applesauce, and whatever beverage I'm feeling that day: tea, Coke, or cranberry juice. Breakfast will continue being the exact same thing every day because I don't want to think in the morning and this particular iteration is working well for me on that front. Breakfast used to be a packet of Cheez-Its -- or occasionally PopTarts or a granola bar -- accompanied by one of the same three beverage options, bought and eaten while on the clock at the smoke shop. It took me about ten months to settle on a good replacement for that pattern, but I think I have it now.

...

The most annoying thing about cyclical chores -- cooking, laundry, vacuuming, etc. -- is that you're never really done with them. The sense of accomplishment doesn't last, because it's all to do over again the next week. *deeper sigh*

wherein Liz sorts books again

I felt so good about pruning my fiction collection that over the weekend I tackled my nonfiction as well. This resulted in a donation of 59 books (dropped off today), and another 28 pulled out and recategorized as "to-read, and why the hell was this shelved with has-been-read stuff anyway???" I suspect a bunch of those will end up donated as well once I get through them, because they're things I want to read but don't necessarily want to own.

Also my nonfiction bookshelf is now semi-organized in a way that makes sense to me, though it doesn't follow any actual library cataloging system. This was true in my old apartment, but had not been true since I moved into my current apartment, and since that was about six years ago... *wince*

Final Friends of the Library booksale donation totals for 2015 are as follows:

For my parents, 29 hardcovers and trade paperbacks; 63 mass market paperbacks; and 10 kids' books and/or puzzles.

For me, 112 hardcovers, trade paperbacks, and graphic novels; 53 mass market paperbacks; 25 kids' books; and one really nice illustrated edition of Anne of Green Gables.

...

I feel a lot lighter somehow. :-)

oh no, it's the fandom police...

I will never stop finding it fascinating how many people involved in fandom think hate-reviewing is a good idea. It's like they get a mad-on toward one particular character and feel a need to tell anyone who likes (or simply doesn't hate) that character that they are Doing Fandom Wrong.

My latest example, which I received today in regard to Uchiha Sasuke from Naruto:

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:Boring. they should execute the traitorous bastard. In my eyes, he's worse than Itachi ever was!

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This also shows up sometimes in the form of the Staunch Defender, who falls in love with a particular interpretation of a character and goes around telling anyone who dislikes that character (or simply likes them in a different way) that they are -- you guessed it -- Doing Fandom Wrong. I think the defenders tend to be a little more frothing and verbose than the haters, but it's all shades of the same impulse: you must like what I like in exactly the way I like it, or else.

Which is both hilarious and sad, and I am sure happens in all fandoms, but Naruto is the one where I run into it personally.

wherein Liz sorts shirts

I think I really like this decluttering project. :D

I decided that sorting through all my clothes sounded like way too big a task to be manageable (and was probably why I'd been putting it off for a couple weeks), but dividing "all my clothes" into subsets should probably work. So today I sorted through my short-sleeved blouses and nice t-shirts. (These are things that more or less count as business semi-formal, at least when paired with appropriate pants or skirts.)

I pulled them out one by one and tried them on -- with the exception of things I wear every other week and therefore knew I was keeping -- and ended up deciding to get rid of thirteen shirts. I don't even know why I still had most of them! I'd only worn maybe two of the discards within the past year, and I already knew most of them were too short, or were too tight in the sleeves, or were made of uncomfortable fabric, or had some other combination of flaws.

While I had momentum on my side, I tossed a few other things into my discard basket as well: two skirts that never fit right, a fancy dress I have no occasion to wear and didn't much like in the first place, three spaghetti-strap tank-tops (which I used to use for summer pajama tops -- they are so soft, and expose more skin to fans than t-shirts do -- but I haven't worn them since I got air conditioning); and a red t-shirt-with-logo that's sized weird and made of nasty harsh fabric to boot but which was free and so I just kind of hung onto it for way too long.

Tomorrow I may try on the rest of my dresses. It's good to have a couple for the rare occasions when one needs a nice dress, but I don't think I need more than two, max. And then on the weekend I can tackle my other closet with my long-sleeved shirts... and maybe even look through my bags of "clothes I should repair someday" on the theory that if I haven't repaired an item for, like, five years, I probably don't really want it anyway. *eyes closet meaningfully*