I am attempting a cooking experiment in my crock-pot today while also using the time to do errands and do my best lump impression. I shall probably post something if the cooking bit works out-- from the way it smells now, it will either be awesome or suck terribly. THERE WILL BE NO MIDDLE GROUND.

I'm working through the paperwork for moving in November. I have a pre-move inspection scheduled for the 26th which means I have cleaning to do this week in addition to working on the last bits of stuff for my class, which ends at the end of the month. It's actually kind of exciting to be moving because I want to into a bigger space than I had before.

AND THEN I will hopefully be going to New York on the twelfth of December. Assuming there are spaces still left on the bus.. but with any luck I'll be going on an epic date with The Girl.

I have a feeling it's going to be an insane next few months. But then I'm kind of angling for quiet on the actual holidays and perhaps even staying home for a change with my insane cat.

The weather's been pretty unremittingly cold and rainy lately-- it feels like it did last December, if you want to be honest, so I figured I'd break out some of the Christmas music I have sitting in the computer and give them a listen, since I'm planning on waiting a bit before putting up decorations this year. Here's hoping this set of holidays will be good. :3

Fall is definitely here. The air is crisp like apples that have been in the fridge for a bit and it's been gloriously windy like it hasn't been in quite a while. The trees are just beginning to turn colors, though none of them have quite managed to put on the firey colors of late autumn just yet. This year I think I'm actually optimistic for snow. Nice romantic dustings of it and a good freezing blizzard that shuts down the schools for a week. I'll take working a little extra in June.

I'm going to move apartments in November. Right around Black Friday so I'll probably be incommunicado for a while. I don't know-- it depends a lot on how smoothly the transfer goes for my phone and DSL service and how smoothly the transfer of my stuff goes. I have all the stuff, so that's not going to be a problem. It's a bit bigger and while I'm expecting to pay a bit more than I do now, it's worth it since I'm gaining quite a bit of square footage and an actual kitchen equipped with a dishwasher.

I haven't had a dishwasher in years and I loathe handwashing dishes with a purple passion. This is a big deal.

I'm not going to get to cook Thanksgiving dinner, obviously. I did order myself an apple pie assembled raw and ready-to-bake by a bunch of teenagers. It's really funny since the majority of the takers for the class that's providing the pies are male. And hot damn those guys can cook. They are a nice bit of extra credit to the gender. Since the pie will keep for a month and I signed up for late October delivery, I plan on eating pie on my last night in the packed-up apartment. Possibly with either ice cream or whipped topping. This is not an unhappy thought since I'm sure I'll end up getting turkey and all anyway with the family, just probably in town rather than up where they live. The local diner puts on a reservation-only Thanksgiving feast, so I think I'll be well taken care of even if it is just me.

Work goes on. I'm having fun with it. A little bushwhacked, but that always happens when I have to deal with a hundred or so essays that I have to read carefully. I'll catch up tomorrow or Friday with the rest and probably just stay late Monday too if it comes to that. I don't have class this weekend, but I do want to devote some time to straightening up and working on the big paper that will be due for my class in a few weeks. Even with the late-phase-class crunch looming, I am glad now I chose an accelerated course. It means I'm free in November to pack and clean for the move!

And since I have managed to come full circle, I shall sign off now.

And don't ask me about NaNo. I'm debating it.

It's been one of those lovely whirlwind weekends.

I got to see Ponyo on Friday night, in a teensy little projection room with a bunch of other hardcore Miyazaki fans since it was the 9 PM showing.

Saturday was mostly spent cleaning and trying to assemble a bookcase. Moose ended up called, and so I took us out for dinner at Applebees and had a pretty nice few hours chattering.

Sunday was spent shopping. I started out being good, since the whole reason we went out in the first place was so I had a chance to trade in a bunch of DVDs for some cash. Then The Girl and I both got dresses for katimus_prime's upcoming wedding, which then led to me needing dressy shoes. And then I remembered that I had my birthday gift for Bath and Body Works, so I got myself another bottle of perfume (I love the neroli jasmine). And since I wanted a bigger teapot we impulsively went to the other mall and got a teapot. And about a pound of whole leaf tea (split evenly between a mate/chai blend and a really fruity roobois blend for iced tea). And since our tea guy knew The Girl, we scored a tea blossom~! And I went by the Lush and got another face mask and a new bath bomb. And then we went home and I made us a steak dinner and taters and the iced tea. :D

I'm kind of grateful it's a quiet Monday. My last for a long while since work finally resumes next Monday, but yay for paychecks! And I've decided I'm taking my vacation days this year. So I'll probably sit down with a calendar and spread them in there so I can get the paperwork up and done. (I'm trying to be good and not take a day off after the Aion release. I did actually get a chance to play some on the beta and it was zomg fun.)

The rest of the family might be up this week and I have laundry to do. And more iced tea to make. Ah chores.

CDs come in an awful lot of packaging.

In part eleventy-billion of the housecleaning wars, I tackled the mass of CDs I have managed to stash everywhere. All but two classical sets and an audiobook went into the massive CD keeper I got while in high school, since I didn't have room for a lot of CDs when I was living with my parents.

Holycrap what a difference. Though now the junk box is full of plastic CD cases. The CDs and the little books they come with are in the keeper, which still has several sheets worth of room for more should the mood strike me.

Ponyo opens tomorrow and we have plans to go see it. The latest Aion beta weekend is also starting tomorrow, so I know how I'm going to spend my morning, especially since we tackle the big closet and some minor furniture assembly on Saturday. I will endeavor to take some screenshots and/or pictures.

I started reading The F-Word the other day and I'm enjoying it a lot. It's got a nice mix of positive news to go along with all the bad news that tends to float around the fatosphere, as they call the fat blogging community. I will probably write a bit about it, since it's a topic near and dear to my heart, but I'm not going to get into it now since the condition of Being Fat in America is one that occasionally sends me into profanity-laced ranting. (I refuse to call it obesity. Fat, no matter how negatively it's connotated with some people, is still just a descriptor. Obesity makes it sound like my body shape is a medical condition akin to cancer. No. Thanks.)

I am half considering switching to tea from soda. Partially because I just really like tea and go on long jags of drinking it, and partially because soda is getting too expensive/pain in the ass to store. I also wouldn't mind cutting my sugar intake since I'm starting to wonder if it's been contributing to my periods of feeling like a slug, but I can't drink diet soda on account of aspartame makes me feel like I want to hurl. (Yeah, they make Splenda Diet Coke now, but I dunno, it tastes just a little off compared to both regular and diet. I do like Splenda as a sugar sub in other things.)

I have started reading through Alinea at Home which is the sequel to French Laundry at Home that I was reading back in July. The art deco food is kind of scary, but it's neat reading the stories about trying to make these insane preparations in a normal kitchen. I'm in the food-that-looks-like-actual-food camp and I prefer the simpler side of cooking because it tends to really showcase your yummy stuff's natural flavors and I've never been a big sauce/added salt/ketchup person. Or at least I haven't been since I was a tiny thing in elementary school when I tried to put ketchup on everything.

The last couple of days have been fun. On the 6th The Girl and I went out to The Melting Pot and ate fondue. It took about three hours and it cost a pretty penny, but it was totally worth it. We are at least going back for The Girl's birthday in March somehow. XD Since I got boozeahol and it was a late reservation, I spent the night.

So on the 7th I drove back home and the rest of the ol' nuclear family drove down. I asked for a wireless router for my birthday since I'm going to need some kind of networking set up when The Girl finally gets around to moving in.. and it gave me the chance to finally rearrange my apartment. The place has been in the same awkward arrangement since I moved in since it was the only way to have a decent wired connection on account of the totally awkward placement of the single phone jack.

The boys picked out router equipment, I found a copy of Nausacaa and a couple of Modest Mouse CDs (one of which I lost in the Great Mouse Disappearance of 09). We got dinner and then I got to listen to Moose complaining about how dirty the inside of the computer case was. Mother fussed until she managed to convince Dad and me that it was a good idea to just go ahead and rearrange the apartment, rather than go with the original plan of just setting up the router and letting me and The Girl do it the following weekend.

The final results are very satisfying, since the apartment now finally has clear traffic flow (aside from the junked up entryway, which is a victim of my efforts to clean out all my junk).

It also means I have a long list of things to pick up at the store, since I need a new small bookcase (the cube bookcase Mother picked out last year or whatever it too flimsy) and a bunch of little odds and ends. This looks like a job for another trip to IKEA, since the small Expedit cube case fits perfectly in the spot where the flimsy cube case is and it's much more rugged in terms of how much it can hold.. and the price is right, since IKEA dropped the small case's price to about $50~! I should also measure the space on the loveseat, since it desperately needs new cushions. If they have a set that fits at IKEA, I might go ahead and grab 'em since the loveseat itself is in fine shape aside from the thirty-year-old cushions.

I don't get to move after all. :| Despite being told at a couple of points I wouldn't get a transfer fee because I've lived in my complex so long.. they want to hit me with the fee if I move. No thanks. The fee is a quarter of my monthly income when I'm working and pay doesn't resume for another month... and that's on top of rent. HAET.

This is not helped by the fact I have to go pay said rent soon. I'm probably going to sulk for a while about it, since now the earliest I can move is freaking Thanksgiving. Stupid crap lease renewal date. Never move places right before Christmas. It will bite you in the ass.

Since moving my crap was all I had for birthday plans (I turn 26 next Thursday) I have no idea now what I'm going to do. I'm probably going to go ahead and clean out stuff and make at least another Goodwill run with the stuff I'm getting rid of that's still serviceable... but meh.

On the other hand, since we moved up the trip to the Museum of American History I got to have a pretty fun time in DC. There are a million pictures but they're all sitting in my camera and will have to wait until I'm finished sulking. I also got a couple of cookbooks to feed my addiction, and since I got the news about the fee while we were shopping, I bought a collection of episodes of The French Chef in a fit of pique, to go along with the cookbook I got a couple of weeks ago.

Miso missed me. At least I have that going for me. :|

If I actually wrote down how I spent my summer vacation, it would be an interesting read.

So I'm thinking about moving apartments. Not very far-- just trading up within the complex. I've decided I'm going to run by the office and talk options and such. If there's a way I can transfer my current deposits to a new lease, I might even go look at a couple places and get the paperwork train started. If not.. I suppose I'll be waiting until November to move since by then I will resume getting paid and can cough up the hefty deposit I'll need. (September and October weekends are kind of booked up with class... And since Thanksgiving is getting to be a non-event in my family aside from lots of good om nom noms and watching the parade, I might just move then. None of us get along the best with the extended family, and most of them live two days' drive and/or a flight away. No thanks.) WISH ME LUCK, GAIZ.

The Girl and I were talking about this, and decided to move our planned trip to DC up to during the next week. We plan on hitting the American History Museum and then probably Maggiano's. That way, if the move thing goes through, we'll have the original weekend of the trip to move stuff around.

As it was, we had a nice date out at the mall, though not the one The Girl currently works in. I actually picked up one of the newly-released editions of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I wanted that book since I saw a souffle recipe in a cooking magazine that was adapted from Julia Child, but naturally everyone assumes it's because of the book. While I admit, I do kinda want to take in Julie and Julia in the theaters since the previews looked solid, I don't plan on getting the book. And frankly, what I saw of the blog was pretty boring, at least the beginning part. The current crop of "cook the book" food bloggers are much more interesting. And have pictures, which totally does not sway my opinion at all. Much.

I also totally plan on attempting souffle when the weather starts to go cold, either the original version in the book or the adapted version in the magazine or something I throw together myself. That and develop that oven-fried chicken recipe. I'm thinking of combining techniques with a Japanese cookbook that calls for a marinate and then flour rather than the flour-egg-flour technique. We'll see-- I want to see what oven techniques there are for crispy chicken before I settle on something I want to attempt.

We also went to IKEA. I can't not buy things when I go there.. this time I got straws. A big package of straws. Bendy straws. In neat designer colors. And I am totally thinking of putting them in a glass and trying to make some kind of flower arrangement with them. Send help.