Areas of Unrest

26 November 2006 - Domestic Pleasure

Before I get into what I wanted to write about this week, here's a wonderful quote from Joel Achenbach in today's Washington Post magazine section. "Americans believe there is no problem so grave that we cannot solve it, in part, with duct tape."

I also want to mention a celebrity death. Broadway lyricisit Betty Comden died this week. I have to note this since I'd previously taken note of Adolph Greene's death and all of their work I'm aware of was done in partnership. It's hard to realize that "On the Town" was a young partnership between them, Jerome Robbins, and Leonard Bernstein.

My final side note is that I was doing some office cleaning on Friday, a.k.a. procrastinating on work and, ran across a magazine article about future gear for soldiers. What's striking is that current infantry soldiers have to carry between 100 and 150 pounds of gear. That seems like an awful lot. I guess we really haven't progressed much beyond those clumsy suits of armor.

I spent the rest of the weekend in enjoying domesticity. I did go out to a crafts fair, but that was almost incidental to doing major grocery shopping. Hugely expensive as I needed a lot of non-food things. (And, by the way, is it seriously dumb to buy wine because you like the name on the label? I could not resist a bottle of Pinot Evil.) I've got a pot of chili bubbling away on the stove now and plans for trying out a new squash recipe (which will enable me to get rid of the cookbook it's in. Which has absolutely no other recipes I am remotely tempted to try. Canned spinach baked with canned cream of mushroom soup and dotted with bread crumbs just doesn't exactly thrill me. I am, though, amused by that sort of thing in a way.)

I had ambitions to do some more serious cooking (soup making, bread baking, and the like) but didn't seem to get around to it, because I was indulging in pleasure reading. There's a lot to be said for an afternoon curled up in the rocking chair, re-reading Dorothy L. Sayers. I admit I was actually hesitant to reread Murder Must Advertise because I remembered liking it so much. I was relieved to enjoy it again.

So this was pretty much down time, but that's a lot better than dealing with holiday weekend travel, no>