| Current mood: |  depressed |
| Current music: | Johnny Cash |
Jules: yeah, but it was down for days and days
Happy Election Day! I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous, given the nastiness of the campaign, but I want to focus on the good part: no more stupid ads! And, while there may be a giant fiasco involving voter intimidation, lawsuits and such, today I can pretend that Kerry will win by a high enough percentage that it'll all be over with by bedtime tonight. I can dream, can't I?
I'll be at the polls this afternoon, which means I'll be hanging around my precinct's voting station (aka the elementary school two blocks over) handing out fliers and reminding people of their rights, like the fact that they can cast a provisional ballot if there's a snag with their registration. Word is that the lines were already pretty long first thing this morning, so I'll be bringing snacks for people who are still in line at 7 pm. So far I have little bags of pistachios but I think I'll pick up some remaindered Halloween candy. (I made Eliot take all the leftovers to the office yesterday, so as to avoid temptation.)
Speaking of food, it's finally turned cool and I'll also be making my 3-day beef stew. It's the classic recipe: Day 1: marinate chunks of chuck roast in red wine with onions, carrots and celery. Maybe a bay leaf and some thyme, too. Day 2: take the chunks out of the marinade, dry them a bit on paper towels, then dredge them in flour and brown them. Dump the vegies in a dutch oven, reserving the marinade, and put the browned meat on top. Deglaze the pan with the reserved marinade mixed with more red wine and some tomato juice. Dump all the liquid and yummy pan scrapings over the meat, add beef broth to submerge it all, then cover it and put it in a 350F oven for 3 hours. Take it out, eat some if you must, but put the cooled stew in the fridge. Day 3: skim the congealed fat, heat and add pearl onions and peas. Mushrooms and potatoes, too, if you want. I use frozen pearl onions because I'm too lazy to peel them. Sometimes I freeze some of just the meat and broth and haul it out later to make Beef Stroganoff.
Did I mention the cool weather? Once again, Austin weather has skipped seasons: we went from Springlike (highs in the 80s and rainy) to Winterish (high in the 50s, with clouds and possible rain) overnight.
Oh, and the Halloween party: I went as a corset-wearing vampire, with some great fangs (held on with Super Polygrip--note to self, take care of teeth or you'll have to use that nasty stuff all the time) and my pointy Bitch Boots. Plus some scary-ass red nails. Eliot wore his tux, blackened his hair and wore a goatee, plus the fangs.
And now, answers!
1. Yep, I saw the Tomato Nation contest and I did contribute, helping buy computer stuff for a school library. Way cool. Don't even care if I win. Mostly.
2. Fiction? Not so much, though I did start yet another Aubrey-Maturin seafaring novel.
3. Fixing stair carpet disasters depends on the circumstances. It would be awesome to do something cool with the intense colors if you're gonna stay in the house. If you're going to sell, I'd go with something fairly bland, since homebuyers tend to want to paint over the previous owner's creative efforts. You could wait until the last minute and then uncover the undamaged softwood treads, which will be appealing to prospective buyers. Also, it's less work.
4. Oooh, new disk? Bring it on! I'm totally bored with what I've got.
And now, Questions for you:
1. Been reading any interesting non-fiction lately? I finished Seymour Hirsch's book about the Iraq war and it was really horrifying, just in time for Halloween. Eeeek! Made me want to sleep with the lights on.
2. Will you be following the election returns? I plan to watch Desperate Housewives on Tivo, then watch the Daily Show. Because otherwise? Too scary. Unless the poll-watching runs really late, then it's direct to Jon, my hero.
3. Do you have any favorite post-election consolation reading? I've resorted to Heart of Darkness once (Jesse Helms, shudder) and the book of Job (Jesse Helms, redux, argh!).
4. Speaking of Heart of Darkness: Have you ever read a work of non-fiction that changed the way you viewed a work of fiction? I'm thinking of King Leoopold's Ghost, which made it clear that Conrad did NOT exaggerate at all when he described the colonial atrocities in the the Congo. I'd thought that the description of Kurtz's compound was fanciful in its horror when in reality it was a pretty factual account of the sort of thing that happened at the time.
Edited to add: Aw, crap. Do we really have to look forward to four years of delusional foreign policy, gay-bashing, and a renewed draft? I'd rant at length but I don't have the heart for it.
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dangerchicks) wrote,
