Cooking Things: January 2008 Archives

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our heroine was making technicolor soup (that photo is completely unretouched), sitting on the couch with a sleeping kitten, and watching a lot of MASH reruns. Oh, that Alan Alda. I can never decide whether in his youth, in that role, he belongs on the list.

Carl Lumbly, though, he's a definite.

After two weeks off from work, I find that instead of feeling recharged, I am feeling like I need another two weeks. I recently met some Australians who were in the middle of a month-long tour (or maybe it was three weeks) of the US, and who have done similarly long trips to various corners of Europe in the past few years. And it made me realize how stupid I have been.

I quit my day job some years ago, in part, to have greater control over how I spend my time, and I've been completely squandering that control for the last year. I have gone nowhere and done nothing. Sure, I have been somewhat hemmed in by financial pressures and the fact that I haven't had a traveling buddy available when I did have the money and/or time. But really, there is no earthly reason why 2007 should have passed me by without my taking a single vacation. I am the boss of me, and I have not given myself the breaks I needed. Periods of unemployment (also called looking for new gigs) do not, unfortunately, have the same psychological effect as actual time off. I know that in theory, but I forgot to put it into practice.

Or rather, every time I considered doing so, a gig came up that was too good to turn down. For which I am duly grateful.

Enh. What a boring-ass topic for a blog post. I have another one in mind, but it is one of those personal things, and it has to do with boys, and it was brought on by having gone on another date and ending up feeling lukewarm afterward.

Which all made me realize that there's a very good reason I have been hung up on the blonde. I felt passion for him. Actual real live impossible to resist or even think clearly about passion. And that, my friends, has not come along very often in my life. Really altogether rarely. So rarely that it makes me sad just thinking about it.

I think that I have, in the past, settled for something that seemed sort of nice at the time, or that I fell into. Like a hole. One should not be describing past loves as sinkholes. (Don't take that turn of phrase personally, Boywich, please. You know what we had, and there was a lot of it that was good.)

Anyway. Back to the passion. Having had an all-too-brief taste of that recently, I find myself unwilling to settle for anything other than a repeat. It's ineffable, and impossible to tell by looking at photos or reading online profiles, or exchanging emails, or even talking on the phone. And I wasn't even sure about the blonde when I first met him. After the first date, I thought, well that was fun, and I'd see him again. But I didn't know if there'd be chemistry. And then the second date, I felt like I'd been hit over the head by a flaming ton of bricks.

Yeah, that's what I want. Bring on the flaming ton of bricks. Stat!