Somebody Give Me My Gin

The head-shaving ceremony went off without a hitch. I have now rejoined the ranks of the bald. I should perhaps upload some pictures in case anyone is interested. Kind of look like some kind of supervillain...or a gay black man, I forget which.

Yesterday I made chicken angel hair alfredo for bamboofae, dancing_deer, triggerhorse, fisherking and arlekin. It wasn't intensely great cuisine, but you know, it didn't turn out so bad. I used Tyson's chicken, some cheap WalMart angel hair pasta, Knorr's powdered alfredo mix, oregano, salt, pepper, basil leaves and sick amounts of butter and whole milk. :)

I made the angel hair al dente, used more milk and butter for the alfredo than directed, and loaded up the sauce with spices while it was cooking. The alfredo had an interestingly cool, almost minted taste that came off well; in retrospect though, I think a bit more garlic and/or salt is in order. Definitely use chicken that has less water, and find a way to keep the pasta from sticking. The annoying thing is it was just fine before I drained it; maybe I should keep it in hot water until absolutely ready to serve?

Anyway, cooking for people is tremendous fun, and I *really* enjoy doing it. I could say that I'll do it more often so I can be better skilled about it, but I know myself better than that. ;) Still, everything from the selection of quality ingredients to the final presentation (one of my favorite things is presenting food with flourish ;) ) is an incredible joy to perform for me. I think I'm getting bitten by the joshuwain bug; there's almost no finer thing to do for your friends than to provide them with excellent, fun meals.

Maybe it'd be a good idea to have a Sunday dinner for folks in NARFA; some sort of potluck where we could all get together, leave politics and alliances at the door (if possible at this point), and generally have a good time over food we've all made ourselves. We do a few things together, but we don't get together as a cohesive family nearly as often as we used to. Then again, this is probably for the best; if there's something I've learned in all my years in the furry community, it's that you just cannot mix oil and water for very long.

Writing comes as hard as ever. My lovely otter has been writing poetry again, and where he goes I can't be far behind. :) I've been reading a lot more than writing recently, though. Picked up Dostoevsky's "Notes from the Underground" and "The Idiot," and I fell into "Notes" without even meaning to. The introduction and the translator's notes were enough to get me sucked in; I took Russian for two to three years in high school, and there was a point there where I was speaking it every day. Unfortunately, I've since forgotten most of it through disuse. But the translator's relating how difficult it was to capture the nuances of Dostoevsky's first three sentences properly in English reawakened my appreciation for how deceptively graceful and beautiful Russian can be. Now, I wish I could get my hands on a parallel translation of Dostoevsky or perhaps Zamyatin's "We," just so I could relearn things through fine literature. :D Another interesting thing I picked up about the translation of "Notes" I have is that it inspired many things, from a parody by Woody Allen to the opening of Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" and "We" by Zamyatin. I had no idea its reach was *that* strong. It's really fascinating. :)

And Nina Simone rocks all ass. Can't stop listening to her, really.