My Life Flows On

We returned last Saturday from our annual trip to spend the winter holidays with family. I enjoyed seeing everyone. My relatives are multiplying, with two new babies this year. Next year they'll be old enough to run around hollering with their older siblings, and Christmas will be more chaotic. New Years' with aristeros' folks was quite calm by comparison; we spent the evening watching Twilight Zone reruns.

Instead of going on about my goals for this year, I think I'll just link to my life to-do list. I've been working on the cooking this past fall. It's probably also healthy to remind myself to take care of myself, mentally, physically, and spiritually.

A friend of mine from out of town will be visiting for a couple days starting tomorrow, so I'll get to show her around. That should be fun. It's also a good reason for aristeros and I to tidy up. We tend to need an extra incentive.

Happy thing of today: Received a package I had ordered for Christmas, which was wrongly sent to our house instead of to where we spent the holidays. aristeros liked the tee shirt I got him.

Today's happy thing: Leftovers from last night's cooking endeavour were more than enough to feed both of us tonight, so all I had to cook was rice.

The dish was a stir-fry featuring chicken, asparagus, reconstituted dried shiitakes, and tofu. Flavorings were onion, garlic, ginger, oyster sauce, soy sauce, black pepper, and crushed red pepper flakes. The tofu was frozen and then thawed to reduce the moisture content, following a suggestion from a magazine, and lightly fried before it was added to the mix. aristeros liked the texture with this treatment. I seem to be getting better at estimating seasoning amounts, because I didn't measure anything, but it wasn't too bland (though still pretty mild).

[Edited to add: Re-reading my entries about food, I notice this was very similar to the stir-fry I wrote about four months ago, but it turned out better this time.]

Yesterday's happy things:

• I spent all day together with my love.


• I bought a lampworked glass pendant from a church Christmas bazaar: a new bauble, a cheap price, the proceeds go to a good cause.


• In our one-on-one RPG, my character was given a brief rundown on court intrigue and other perils of her new job (for which she was hired based in part on fake credentials) by the ghost of her predecessor, who was tortured to death by a demon while in the line of duty. I thought this was a pretty interesting way to find out what's going on.

Today's happy thing: aristeros got me a memory card reader, so now I'll be able to upload photos from my camera again. Like these, which I took on Thanksgiving Day.