Words, cats, the usual
Mar. 27th, 2003 12:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanI crammed in two hundred words later Tuesday afternoon, and then cleaned up the kitchen. I hadn't expected there to be much to do, since nobody is really cooking, but there was a stealthy accumulation of spills and objects from the preparation of many snacklike meals, not to mention the usual fallout from the fact that nobody but me can tell for sure what state the dishwasher is in, and even if they could the system for putting upstairs dishes somewhere until they can be taken upstairs has broken down.
I only cussed out the kitchen once, however. I was greatly looking forward to cooking with Eric.
He arrived very promptly, and suffered me to take him around the yard and show him the tiny ferny shoots of common yarrow, the three-inch-tall, mutating from red to green leaves of the biggest clump of Appeldoorn tulips, the minute triangular tops of new iris leaves, the miniature pine-tree sprouts of winter aconite, the sparse blades of grass in the brown and gray lawn. He admired the rose hips on the white rose of York, and eventually decided to make an early attack on a sapling in the foundation of the house that he beat back last year.
Lydy was home, but didn't come out to say hello; it later turned out that she was taking a nap. Chumley and Fester mostly stayed with her, though Chumley, now seemingly quite recovered, did come lumbering out to look inquisitive.
We made seitan with five peppers, a recipe adapted from David's Five Peppers Pork. It's amazingly simple and fast, like many of his recipes, and quite tasty even with seitan. It was actually four peppers, because I didn't have any fresh hot peppers. We substituted sesame oil with chili, and that worked extremely well. I steamed some broccoli and some sugar snap peas as side dishes, and we still had the marvellous chewy brown rice from the Chinese grocery. It seems to exist midway between short- and long-grain versions, and is really delicious.
Dinner was very pleasant, even though we could not but talk of the war from time to time. David said something that made Lydy and me agree that he was impossible, but I am sorry to say I can't recall what it was. When I kept a journal in high school I got to the point where I could remember whole conversations verbatim, but I am not recovering this skill very well.
Eric went home on his bicycle to start his reading; I went upstairs and packed and gave Raphael a back rub. R was much absorbed in work and not inclined to conversation, so I ran downstairs to get the 9:19 bus, only to be arrested by a telephone call from Eric. "I've encountered the same word twice this week," he said, "and it's not in my dictionary." I went back upstairs and looked it up in the OED. I had actually never heard it before, which is fairly unusual. There are words for which I can't give a good definition and words I am wrong about the meaning of, but very rarely do I encounter one I simply have never heard of. Aporia. Wow.
We found it very useful over the next few days, too; it applies to many situations.
Eric was trying to simultaneously read the book he is assigned to report on in a few weeks and the essays that would be discussed in his seminar the following day. I read Chloe Cheshire until I was done, and then continued my reread of Dorothea Brande's book on becoming a writer.
Eric has a lot of difficulties pressing on him, and we talked about those a little. It's hard to be able to do nothing except extend a sympathetic ear.
Pamela
I only cussed out the kitchen once, however. I was greatly looking forward to cooking with Eric.
He arrived very promptly, and suffered me to take him around the yard and show him the tiny ferny shoots of common yarrow, the three-inch-tall, mutating from red to green leaves of the biggest clump of Appeldoorn tulips, the minute triangular tops of new iris leaves, the miniature pine-tree sprouts of winter aconite, the sparse blades of grass in the brown and gray lawn. He admired the rose hips on the white rose of York, and eventually decided to make an early attack on a sapling in the foundation of the house that he beat back last year.
Lydy was home, but didn't come out to say hello; it later turned out that she was taking a nap. Chumley and Fester mostly stayed with her, though Chumley, now seemingly quite recovered, did come lumbering out to look inquisitive.
We made seitan with five peppers, a recipe adapted from David's Five Peppers Pork. It's amazingly simple and fast, like many of his recipes, and quite tasty even with seitan. It was actually four peppers, because I didn't have any fresh hot peppers. We substituted sesame oil with chili, and that worked extremely well. I steamed some broccoli and some sugar snap peas as side dishes, and we still had the marvellous chewy brown rice from the Chinese grocery. It seems to exist midway between short- and long-grain versions, and is really delicious.
Dinner was very pleasant, even though we could not but talk of the war from time to time. David said something that made Lydy and me agree that he was impossible, but I am sorry to say I can't recall what it was. When I kept a journal in high school I got to the point where I could remember whole conversations verbatim, but I am not recovering this skill very well.
Eric went home on his bicycle to start his reading; I went upstairs and packed and gave Raphael a back rub. R was much absorbed in work and not inclined to conversation, so I ran downstairs to get the 9:19 bus, only to be arrested by a telephone call from Eric. "I've encountered the same word twice this week," he said, "and it's not in my dictionary." I went back upstairs and looked it up in the OED. I had actually never heard it before, which is fairly unusual. There are words for which I can't give a good definition and words I am wrong about the meaning of, but very rarely do I encounter one I simply have never heard of. Aporia. Wow.
We found it very useful over the next few days, too; it applies to many situations.
Eric was trying to simultaneously read the book he is assigned to report on in a few weeks and the essays that would be discussed in his seminar the following day. I read Chloe Cheshire until I was done, and then continued my reread of Dorothea Brande's book on becoming a writer.
Eric has a lot of difficulties pressing on him, and we talked about those a little. It's hard to be able to do nothing except extend a sympathetic ear.
Pamela
