Tag: coffee cake

Bedtime Story

Saturday morning here in the Lost Apartment, with a big day of college football ahead of me, all leading up to tonight’s LSU at Mississippi game, which most everyone in the country will be watching, I suspect. ESPN has really been riding the Lane Train, haven’t they? You’d be excused for thinking occasionally that there isn’t anything else going on in college football than LSU and Lane Kiffin (Dad calls him Fast Lane, and it’s not a compliment), and all that attacks and criticism (some is justified; I ain’t that big of a homer for LSU to think they can do no wrong) has certainly solidified Kiffin’s standing in the state of Louisiana; there’s always been this “everyone is out to get us” mentality LSU and Louisiana buy into very heavily1. But it also got the LSU-Clemson big ratings, and tonight’s game is going to be a big ratings hit, too. ESPN is doing it’s damnedest to push LSU this season for some reason.

I do miss watching Game Day–or having it on while I do chores, or read–but as long as that douchebag Pat Macafee is centered there, no fucking thanks. Sigh.

I was tired when I got home from all the errands yesterday, and after putting all the Costco stuff away, I just collapsed into my easy chair to mindlessly watch the news and old college football highlights to help get ready for a day of marathon-watching college football. I’ll kick off the day probably watching Georgia-Arkansas while picking up and doing chores, then will be switching between Kentucky- A&M and Florida State-Alabama (both should be bloodbaths), before finishing off the day with LSU-Mississippi, with occasional looks at Florida-Auburn. I think I do need a day of resting in my chair and taking it easy. Sparky let me sleep late this morning, so I woke up with him curled up next to me, and of course, had to come down and feed the little piglet. I felt a little physically and mentally tired as I came down the stairs, but coffee is now kicking in and my mind is much clearer and sharper than it was when I made that first cup (I am not on my second, for those keeping score.

Okay, I was hungry and a bit groggy still, so I cleaned up, got another cup of coffee, and a slice of the lemon-blueberry loaf coffeecake I got at Costco yesterday (it’s delicious, highly recommend) and am settled into my easy chair with my laptop and more coffee and SEC Today on rather than College Gameday–I always forget that’s an option, and has always been a better one than Gameday. I don’t care much for Paul Finebaum (he looks like he’s had his head shrunken), but he’s not Pat Macafee, so eminently more watchable than that buffoon. I feel so much better now that I’m cleaned up. I do have some picking up to do around here, and Paul is going to his trainer and then will. stay at the gym riding the bike, so I have the afternoon to work on the house and get everything ready to focus on the game tonight.

This has really been a week, hasn’t it? Between the Ed Sheeran mess, the continued crash-and-burn of everything and everyone (remember, the really horrible parts of the BIg Beautiful Bill don’t go into effect until. January and after the elections; I think that’s part of the reason they aren’t as worried about the midterm blowout that’s coming because they plan on blaming everything on a Democratic controlled Congress–just like they always do; “they aren’t cleaning up our mess fast enought! It’s their fault!”) on the right, and our economy is circling the drain. Are we great again yet? I can’t speak for everyone, but I know I’m tired of all this winning. He was right–Americans are so sick of his version of “winning” that the entire world is begging him to stop. We are going to come out of this completely isolated and with no allies willing to trust us….not that we have any allies left besides Israel….and I don’t know that I would call them an ally so much as a collaborator.

Converse came out with probably the most offensive ad in advertising history this week, and for the record, I am white, and the first thing I saw was a Klan robe and a lynching. I used to love Converse; I can’t wear their shoes anymore (haven’t in decades) because they aren’t good for my feet and. ankles–so I can happily state this morning that I’ve not given Converse any money since the early 1980s. Sydney Sweeney also released an ad for a gambling site (a new cancer on society) that wasn’t even sexy; it literally was just vulgar. The female form is beautiful, but this ad wasn’t sexy or beautiful at all; it was like comparing Playboy to Hustler. As someone who has never been aroused by a woman’s body, I thought Playboy was always tasteful and classy and beautiful; Hustler was always like “here’s my vagina! Can you see my cervix?” It’s her body, and she’s certainly entitled to do with it as she pleases, of course. I just don’t think it’s healthy for her acting career to focus on being a sex(less) symbol rather than the actual, you know, acting. By the time she’s fifty she’ll have had so much plastic and poison injected into her face she won’t be recognizable. I hate it when women don’t have enough confidence in their talents and rely on their looks and body for success.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Hope you have a lovely Saturday and whatever team you root for (if you do have one) does well today. GEAUX TIGERS!

  1. A lot of SEC/Southern football fans are almost cult-like in their worship of their school and team, and LSU is no different, of which I am well aware. That is a whole other subject, which I will explore in more depth at another time. ↩︎

Ooh My Love

Friday morning post-Muses work at home Friday! The streak continues for at least another year, as Paul got a lovely rainbow-hued shoe last night. It was a gorgeous night to be out on the parade route, but alas–I was very tired since I got up at six, and everything kind of ached. I came back inside after the shoe was achieved, but Paul went back out there while I fell asleep in my easy chair. Sparky let me sleep in this morning, and he was curled up into a ball, purring, between my shoulder and my head, which kept me there even longer because who doesn’t want to cuddle with a warm, purring kitty? It was fun being out there on the parade route–I may save my energy for tomorrow’s Iris/Tucks madness and skip out on tonight’s parades–but it was fun watching people and seeing all the fun costumes. I feel good this morning–a bit creaky as always, but rested, which is a vast improvement, you know? I have work to do today and I have a couple of errands to run, but I think I am going to try to read and clean the apartment once my work is done. I still have the bulk paper towels from Costco away, laundry to do, and of course, the floors. I also need to prune the books some while I am at it. The men’s Olympic figure skating final is today, too–so will probably have that on while I do chores around the house.

And maybe I’ll even do some writing today, stranger things have happened, after all. I also want to make potato leek soup this afternoon–and definitely need to organize the refrigerator/freezer. But right now I am sipping my first cup of coffee and have already scarfed down coffee cake, but am still hungry. I wasn’t hungry yesterday and didn’t really do more than snack after I got home from work yesterday. I did do some chores when I got home yesterday afternoon, but it was Thursday and I was tired, so I just kind of chilled and watched the Olympics for a while, before falling down into a news wormhole on Youtube before it was time to head out for the parade. I don’t have to work again (after today) until Ash Wednesday, so hopefully this sort of mini-vacation (I also only have to work three days next week) will help me get rested up and help me get my act together; a Greg at rest tends to stay at rest, so I need to avoid the siren song of my easy chair and Sparky.

Easier said than done, frankly.

But one never knows. I am going to have some things delivered today so I don’t have to go out into the madness and try to find parking and all of that mess–and then I won’t have to leave the house again until Monday, if then–although I should head uptown and get the mail Monday morning and do whatever I need to get done around town that morning since I won’t be able to get out of the neighborhood all day on Mardi Gras.

Okay, had a meeting and ran an errand and now I am back here, resting before I dive back into my work-at-home duties. I feel good, having had enough coffee and had a few things to eat, so my blood sugar went back up again. I don’t feel physically tired, despite running an errand, and I have some soreness still in my Achilles tendons, but I am going to ice them this afternoon while doing my work at home duties. I think that will help me with being out there for Iris tomorrow morning/early afternoon. It’s kind of grayish outside today, but not chilly; we’re supposed to get some rain over the weekend , too; I hope it holds off until after Tucks, at any rate.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, everyone, and I’ll return in the morning again–see if I don’t!

Muses bathtub and rubber duckies!

Crazy Arms

Sunday morning and all is calm in the house. I feel good, very well-rested and cheerful, which of course is lovely. The Sparkster let me sleep in till almost eight, and now I am finishing my first cup of coffee and have already had this morning’s slice of chocolate marble swirl coffee cake (can’t imagine why I can’t lose weight, can you?), and am about to get another cup of coffee. I did get some things done yesterday, which is cool, and have more things to do today as well. I have one errand to run later this morning, and I’m going to get that out of the way, come home and get cleaned up and get back into working for a bit. Yesterday was a lovely day. I worked some more on the apartment, and delved even more deeply into my renamed main character in the current work. I’m also going to try writing it in the first person present tense, which is going to be really hard for me. (I tend to always use first person past tense.)

The best part of writing a book is this part–even if a lot of this background work never makes it into the finished part.

I’ve been listening a lot to old Fleetwood Mac albums in the car lately, and while they’ve always been my favorite band of all time–every album is a gem, in its own way–when I go for a while without listening I sometimes forget why they are my favorite band of all time. This past week I was listening to their Christine McVie-less recording from the early aughts, Say You Will, which is really good, but kind of Buckingham Nicks 2.0, really. I also like watching Youtube videos of young people listening to their recordings for the first time, and appreciating the artistry, talent, sound, and production values. Rumours will always be my favorite album of all time, and my favorite album of theirs, but the others are also excellent and merit more listening.

We watched this week’s episode of Heated Rivalry, which was probably the best, and most engaging, episode of the show thus far (I loved episode 3, spoiler alert); the first time I cared whether the main characters were just fuck buddies or a couple slowly falling in love. I still have some thoughts about the show, some quibbles as it were, mostly about relationship roles and the feminization of bottoms, but that can wait till I’ve finished watching the show and review it for the newsletter. (I’m still bitter about the cancelation of Boots, but…they also could have seriously fucked up a second season, so I’m choosing to see this cancelation, evil as it was, as a good thing.)

I did have the college football games on yesterday, but the only one we watched was Miami-Texas A&M, which was the only good game of the day. We turned off the later games to watch other things once it was clear they were not going to be competitive. Despite their blowout losses, good for both Tulane and James Madison for having breakout seasons and making it to the playoffs before a lot of name brand schools did. I don’t know if I’ll watch the quarterfinals or not; I don’t care who wins but I am also not a big fan of any school still left in it–although I always pull for underdogs, so I kind of would like to see Indiana do well–so am not sure.

I did finally finish reading The Postman Always Rings Twice yesterday; it’s really a nasty little book, isn’t it? I now can see why it was controversial; for one, it’s told from the villain’s point of view, which may or may not have been shocking to readers in the 1930s. (This particular reread also made me realize I need to delve more deeply into Chlorine and my main character–who he is, what he wants–and very glad I did; this reread was crucial.) Postman also deserves its own newsletter (I need to get some of the others done and out of the way already, don’t I?), where I can talk about this vicious little novella that changed everything in the crime fiction genre (I”m talking out of my ass here, but I would imagine it did challenge the sensibilities of readers conditioned to Christie, Queen, and Sayers, among many others), and its impact on me, both as a writer and a reader. I also generally don’t revisit Postman often; usually I just revisit Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce, but am very glad I did. It made me see what was wrong with what I had already done on this book.

I also gave my main character a new stage name–because the old one really didn’t work. It was more modern than the weird names movie stars were given in the late 1940s and early 1950s (Tab Hunter, Rock Hudson, Troy Donahue), and so yesterday one of those dopey names came to me as I was cleaning the house; and realized it would work, plus would help define the amorality and narcissism in the character. I will reuse the working name for him in another book, certainly–it’s a good name–but this new one is even better.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. The sun is shining outside (it’s gorgeous out, just as it was yesterday), and I still have some things to do this morning. I’m going to start reading the new Eli Cranor. methinks, while also revisiting a classic juvenile series mystery from one of my favorite juvenile series. I also have some short stories I want to work on, too. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will be back in the morning before I head in for my last two work days before Christmas.

The gift where they meant well, but didn’t think about the cost-feeding, clothing, cleaning up after him, etc.