beyond the wide world's end

My right wrist! Still in pain. It makes this delightful pop (...I honestly don't know whether it actually audibly pops or if that's just the feeling) when I rotate it. Handwriting is doable but painful, knitting is fine (though I'm not doing much of it right now, let me tell you) but can be sort of...odd (I'm not sure that I'm actually in pain or just uncomfortable or just thinking I should be in pain), I can hold things but I'm definitely far more aware of my hand and wrist than I usually am. My wrist isn't swollen or anything, although it seems like my hand is swelling a little more than normal on occasion, but not all the time. I think I'm also starting to feel some kind of splintery-ish aches in my forearm, but it's mostly concentrated in my wrist. Typing is mostly fine, mouse-handling a little strange. Advil didn't help, but I'm kind of used to painkillers not helping (they work for cramps, but ninety-nine percent of the time do not work for anything else -- mainly, my recurring back pain). Left wrist is a little achy, but not like my right wrist. Depending how I'm moving my arm, I can lift things without difficulty or pain, which at least means I can drink my tea.

In conclusion: I don't even know, y'all. This is day three (and possibly day four, but if it is day four it wasn't bad enough on the first day for me to really notice). At least I didn't wake up with a crick in my neck this morning, unlike yesterday, where it was both wrists and my neck, and also briefly my back later on in the day. I still think it has something to do with the way I'm sleeping, since I'm having my familiar "I don't know what to do with my hands!" problem when I'm in bed again, but that happens fairly often and this has never happened before. I haven't done anything strange or unusual to merit this; I'm not even spindling a lot, so I know it's not repetitive stress from that, the way it was this summer. What the actual fuck, o my body?

*

Today I made bread pudding, or tried to, and it sort of worked out. Next time, I'll use more liquid (I didn't actually measure anything, just whisked together some milk, cream, eggs, sugar, vanilla extract, cinnamon, and lemon zest), cut the bread into smaller pieces, and bake it in my loaf tin instead of my square cake tin -- as was, I only had a single layer of bread cubes, so it was (a) too thin and (b) I had to dismantle it and put it in the loaf tin anyway after it had baked and cooled in order to put it in my fridge. Ooops. I was going for the same flavor profile king cake has (thus the cinnamon and lemon zest), so I made the same icing -- powdered sugar, lemon juice, and milk to serve with the bread pudding. It does have a very similar flavor profile, so success on that front! Traditionally in New Orleans you'd make a whisky sauce, but I don't have any whisky. I did actually go looking for it in the store, but I don't want to buy a full-size bottle since I don't really drink and I only have one other recipe right now that calls for whisky or brandy. Maybe they had those single-serving bottles, but I didn't look all that closely. Maybe next time.

In other totally boring food news, I had some leftover (Japanese) curry, but no rice and I didn't feel like making any. So I boiled some soba noodles and served the curry over that. And it was good, but it was also the weirdest fucking experience. I grew up eating curry and rice (and potato chips. Salt and vinegar. You dip them in the curry, scoop up some of the curry and rice, and eat them. WHAT, MY FAMILY DOES IT), and it's probably my number one comfort food. I can never make it the same way my mother does, of course, she probably adds a splash of magic and motherly love and secret samurai spices or something. Anyway, it's a flavor profile I'm very, very familiar with, and I'm eating, except it's noodles and not rice and -- so brain-breaking. That sounds crazy, doesn't it? But it's something that's so familiar, with just a little twist, and that twist is what makes my brain kick out and go NO WHAT WHAT REBOOT.

*

It's been a weird couple of days. My brain appears to be absent this week, which means my ability to do research is sort of currently stunted, which is not so good when I have a presentation on Monday. Oh, well, at least it's only a 5-10 minute presentation with a partner who has probably done more research than me. (And I have done some, and will do a little more tomorrow.)

*

Worked out my chapter timing problems, at least for the immediate time being. Serial fic writing is such a weird experience. On the one hand, you want the story to hang together as a whole, the way a novel does, so chapters and POV and plots have to make sense when read all in one go. But on the other hand, because it's being posted as a WIP, it normally isn't read all in one go -- there's going to be tension between chapters just because there's going to be a time break between when those chapters go up, just like TV episodes. I can't do anything about that except write faster, obviously, and sometimes that's not an option.

Also at some point it helps to step back and think about the situation as a reader -- not necessarily of this story specifically, but as a reader of fanfic and WIPs in general. And since at the moment I am, I kid you not, for the first time in years freaking stalking this one author's Hobbit fic, well, that helped make up my mind. *laughs*

*

Amazon sent me a recommendation e-mail consisting entirely of Hobbit movie tie-ins and Lindsey Davis novels. Oh, Amazon. You know me so well. (Okay, this was Amazon UK, my Amazon U.S. rec e-mails are considerably more confused, since I've gotten a bunch of my textbooks from them and all I've gotten from Amazon UK has been Hobbit stuff. My Amazon U.S. rec e-mails are like, "Here is a set of knitting needles, a Latin textbook, a book on medieval Spain, two Lindsey Davis novels, a cookbook, a Shakespeare play, and a Tamora Pierce novel. Surely you must want one of them?")

Sometime I ought to take a picture of my to-read pile. It's higher than my bed. I'm afraid to put any more books on it, which means I need to find somewhere else in my tiny room to start another pile of books, since I...I have a problem. (My library books and most of my cookbooks are elsewhere. Uh.)

Currently reading An Imperial Possession (still. I KNOW), Rome and the Sword, and N.K. Jemisin's The Killing Moon. And The Hobbit, technically, but I just don't want to go on, because it's all heartbreak and immense readerly frustration from here on out. I would rather go back and reread the first two-third and pretend it has a happy ending!

*

I wonder if draping a hot water bottle over my wrist would help? But then I couldn't do anything, and that's my dominant hand.

My life is currently exceptionally boring, except for the intermittent bouts of uncontrollable panic. So there hasn't really been much to post about, since I'm currently not really writing much. (Well, aella_irene and I are working on an original (which has pseudo-Vikings in it!), but fic-wise, I mean.)

I actually have housing at Leicester (which I need to accept, whoops); it's not precisely what I wanted, but I applied fairly late, so it's good that I got something I'm okay with. (Although we'll see what it's actually like when I get there, I guess.) I'm still working on the visa application, which I meant to have done a month ago? But it takes me like two weeks to get anything done: one week to let it sink in that I have to do it, and another week to do it piece by piece every day. Which I did with the housing application, and since sadly I got that information and the visa information at the same time, I didn't do them at once. Uh. Don't come to me if you want something done fast. I keep freaking out that I shall do something wrong on the application and I shall be BANNED FROM BRITAIN FOREVER. Never mind that if I don't actually do the application I won't be able to enter the country.

I spun yarn! It's only about 52 yards of bulky-weight (and pretty thick-and-thin, even plied), so I'm not sure what I can make with it, but I SPUN YARN ON A SPINDLE OMG. But now I need to buy more roving, so I'm pondering my options and wondering if I should just get something relatively plain and cheap from KnitPicks or somewhere on Etsy (weirdly, I've never bought anything from KnitPicks before) to keep practicing on while I try and get an even single, or if I should get something hand-dyed and nice. (Is there a spindling and/or spinning comm on DW, by the way?) For the record, I have the Schact Hi-Lo Drop Spindle with a 2-inch whorl (1.1 ounces), which I've been using as a top-whorl since I can't find a good bottom-whorl tutorial that isn't for a Turkish spindle. The only problem with it is that the notch is directly facing the hook, which doesn't quite seem right, looking at other spindles. But it's worked pretty well for me and I like it.

I made frozen yoghurt! Which I mentioned in my last post, I think. So far I've done two batches of strawberry (AMAZING AMAZEBALLS OMG) and one batch of blueberry (which is yummy, I'm just not as keen on blueberry as I am on strawberry), but should probably branch out of the fruit zone. My mother wants vanilla made with vanilla extract, not vanilla beans (since those are expensive), so I should get on that.

I made pizza! I made pizza about a month ago for the first time, but I've done it a couple more times since. I use the olive oil dough recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, then oil a baking sheet, break off about a fistful of the dough and spread it out on the baking sheet as thin as I can. (I do actually have a pizza stone, but I haven't, uh, used it for pizza yet. Usually I use it for bread.) I use canned tomato sauce (yeah, I don't make my own, we have a giant package from Costco anyway), homegrown basil, and storebought mozzarella (theoretically I know how to make my own, but we're trying for simple here), then toss on whatever toppings I feel like. I like it with thin strips of ham or Canadian bacon; a couple nights ago I did my side just with Canadian bacon, then added olives and onion along with the Canadian bacon to my parents' side. Then bake it for fifteen minutes at 500 degrees and NOM. Yum.

I knit lace! Or lace-weight yarn, anyway, usually I do lace shawlettes in sock-weight yarn. I'm slowly working on Juno Regina in Malabrigo Lace; I was hoping I'd have it done in time to enter it in the county fair, but at this point it seems unlikely. I do have to go through the stuff I've knit in the last year or so and figure out what would make a good fair entry, though, since for a change I'll actually be here for the fair this year. Shocking!

I miss Tulane and New Orleans. *sadface* I think I've just about come to grips with the fact that I won't be going there in a few weeks, but I really miss it. I'm hoping to back for my PhD next year, so I was shocked the other day to realize that oh shit, I actually have to start thinking about PhD programs AGAIN. Besides Tulane, obviously. Ugh, thinking about graduate school. Trying to figure out what I'm actually interested in.

My former roommates from Tulane (New York, Alaska, Texas, and Chicago, who was never technically a roommate but is an honorary one) and I have sort of started an online cookalong? Where we copycat recipes from our favorite restaurants in New Orleans on a biweekly basis and then tweet about them. Two weeks ago was La Madeleine (which, yes, I know is a chain, but we liked it and went there a lot), and this week is the Rum House (if you ever go to New Orleans, go to the Rum House. You can thank me later). So I've been hunting up taco recipes that look vaguely similar in preparation for this Sunday's food extravaganza. For La Mad we did a tomato basil soup and another dish of our choice (I made a lemon tart, because I overachieve), and this week is at least one taco and either a side or a cocktail. I shall probably try polenta -- they do this amazing roasted poblano and manchego polenta, but I'll probably try for something easier -- and one of three kinds of tacos. I'd really like to do a fried oyster one, but I'm not sure how easy that would be to do. So probably a steak or fish taco. Yum.

Watching the Olympics? Not much to say about that, I guess? Mostly the channel we get just shows the highlights/what they think is interesting: swimming, diving, gymnastics, track, and volleyball.

Currently I am reading Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of the New World, which is giving me on and off thinky thoughts about water rights and fishing in Dust-era Narnia. I'm trying to marshal them into something resembling either plot or coherent worldbuilding or both. Mostly I'm trying to finish the book before it has to go back to the library. I also started reading Connie Willis, and am working my way through the library's collection -- I read Bellwether, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, and Fire Watch over the past two weeks, which just leaves Passage. Then I'll start buying books. (BTW, you ever notice that all an author's weirdness comes out in short stories? Yeah.)

I went back to washing my hair twice a week, instead of just once a week, which I think was a good move, since it's thicker and feels softer now. I'm still having more trouble pinning it (my hair has less "grip") than I did in New Orleans, which I think must be either the humidity or the water or some combo of the two, since NOLA is much more humid and is on city water, and Ellensburg's very dry and we're on well water. It's mildly frustrating to me, since I like doing things to my hair, but, well, what can you do? I'm still trying to figure out how to get my hair to stay up using hair sticks. (Or in my case, bamboo knitting needles.)

As you can see, life here in Casa de Bedlam is...happening. I was going to write that there's nothing much to say, but apparently that's a lie, since I can get wordy about absolutely nothing. LIFE SKILLS.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate it. I have a lot of things to be thankful for, one of which is that I won't be working retail tomorrow the way my friend Chicago is.

I am thankful for all of you, the people who live on the Internet and listen to me talk about my life, who listen to me tell stories, who talk to me about your lives and tell me your stories. Sometime this school year is my ten year anniversary in fandom and I am, as strikes me every few months, very, very grateful that I walked into this world and stayed here, because it changed my life for the better and I can never regret that.

Happy Thanksgiving.

*

I went to Chicago's house for Thanksgiving -- her mom came down and they invited me over (for pulled pork, not turkey). I made mini-pumpkin pies (in muffin tins) and dinner rolls and hand-whipped spiced whipped cream. I made everything from scratch, short of buying a pumpkin and roasting it, by hand since I don't have a hand-mixer or a food processor or a stand mixer (okay, I have a small, crappy food processor that I hardly ever use because of how small and crappy it is), and the thing I am proudest of is that damn whipped cream. BECAUSE I WHIPPED IT. BY HAND. WITH A WHISK.

And I don't even like whipped cream.

This is what I made, by the way. My dinner roll recipe is from Love Soup. (Yeah, I own a book called Love Soup that is full of (vegetarian) soup recipes and the only things I've made from it are the dinner rolls and the molasses oatmeal bread. But the dinner rolls are amazing.)

I've got leftovers galore; it's a good thing my roommates are gone because I've co-opted Alaska's shelf in the fridge. I've got leftover pie crust; I might pick up blackberries tomorrow from Whole Foods and make blackberry pie, or I might just stick it in the freezer until something comes up.

Also we watched Water for Elephants! Which is actually quite good, I really do recommend it. RPattz can act, y'all. Also, elephant.

For dinner tonight: bacon arugula tomato sandwich on homemade bread toasted in bacon fat. NOM. (I have actually never had a BLT, due to my aversion to sandwiches, but since you can define it without actually calling it a sandwich I didn't have my usual sandwich freakout.)

Basically right now I have all the arugula in the world, since I made broccoli arugula soup last night and it...didn't take that much arugula. So now I have all the arugula in the world and no idea what to do with it. (My mother says to boil it for a minute or two, dry it out, and freeze it, then pull it out whenever I need it; she does the same thing with kale and spinach so it should work for arugula.)

So the WIP is tentatively finished and sent off to beta to find out if it hangs together and if I should take out the (heavily implied) threesome. (Hey look! Peter is having sex with women again! Women he's not related to! Shocking.)

Meanwhile I shall tell you what Peter is having for dinner, because writing food is one of my favorite things: There was a bowl of mixed-fish stew, yellow from saffron and with small octopus tentacles, whole shrimp, and mussels still in the shell protruding from the bowl; toasts anointed with garlic and olive oil; grape leaves stuffed with pine nuts, currants, and golden raisins; meatballs made of ground lamb and fragrant with mint; finished off with fried pastry ribbons drenched in a sweet honey syrup and sprinkled with sugar-crusted almonds.

In other words: man, I definitely have to get around to cooking something from the cookbook I took those from. NOM. (Cookbooks are so dual purpose. You can use them as research AND as a cooking tool!)

In other news, I got my hair cut today. It went from being nearly to my waist (small of my back, maybe) to just above my breasts. My HAAAAAAIR.

1. Inn at the Crossroads -- medieval (or ancient or early modern) and modern recipes from foods mentioned in GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire series. If you're a food history geek like me, you'll love this. (Also, I'm really impressed that GRRM apparently wasn't pulling random combinations of foods out of thin air to throw into ASOIAF.)

2. "Jersey Shore" Gone Wilde (original link from roga). I have neither seen Jersey Shore nor have I read any Oscar Wilde (though now I really want to; my English major friends love Wilde), but this is hilarious. Definitely worth a click.

3. Queen of Atlantis, the new short story from sarahtales in Subterranean Press. Short summary: zombie boyfriends. I keep reading it over and over again and crying softly, so definitely a rec from me. (Also from Subterranean Press, Malinda Lo's short story The Fox. I love Malinda Lo; I need to go and see if Maple Street Bookshop has her new book.)

4. ...apparently I only have three things to link to. The rest of my not-studying time I apparently merely spend tooling around the Internet, watching TV, or baking. And reading! Quite a lot of reading, for class or otherwise. And walking. Perhaps I should go for a walk today. Or pack another box.

5. I suddenly have ideas for the fourth (and probably last, but maybe not) Rilian story and the third Jill at the Pevensies' story. Apparently the theme shall be "music." (Peter, apparently, plays the violin. Who knew?)

Things I have figured out today: caffeine (at least in coffee-muffin form, sans frosting) does not make me wired, it makes me sleepy. Which I think I actually knew before, but I test it every few years to see if it's changed. I don't drink coffee anyway; I do sometimes like the flavor in baked goods, so I went out on a limb with the muffins which were supposed to be very very caffeinated and...well, I wasn't sleepy before I ate three of them, and I was definitely sleepy afterwards, though I (thankfully) did not fall asleep in class. Although after the third one, I got -- hmm, clear-eyed is how I've been describing it? But not really awake, just clear-eyed and sleepy. (Not sure if focused is the right way to explain it. *hands*)

I started another Rilian story the other day, which so far doesn't have a LotGK aspect, but now Rilian's academic angst moves on to ART HISTORY. He prefers literature. However, I have some very interesting ideas for paintings that I want to describe. (Or, if we shall be technical, in this story there shall be an ekphrasis. Do you know Microsoft Word does not recognize ekphrasis as a word? It is WRONG.)

(There are five paintings I know of so far; one is a set of four that dates from the Golden Age, each one an individual portrait of one of the Pevensies on their thrones that are believed to be meant to be displayed together. The argument is, of course, what order they're supposed to be displayed in. It's also each of the Pevensies displayed with an animal; after some debate, because this is a Rilian story, I think Edmund's going to have a giant snake. I was going to give the snake to Lucy, but...eh, in some ways I'm still working off the original prompt for Charmed Life. I think Lucy will have a monkey. Peter and Susan are both going to have great cats; I'm hesitating over whether it would be appropriate to have Peter portrayed with a male lion or not. If I decide otherwise, probably a tiger or a leopard, maybe a lioness.

The other painting is not believed to be contemporary to the Golden Age; some scholars believe it's a copy of an older, now lost painting. It shows Edmund in the throne room at Cair Paravel, listening to a law case as the sun sets, shadows cast across the room. His attention isn't on the people in front of him, but a woman waiting behind a pillar, believed to be his mistress. There is a lot of attention to light and shadow in the painting.

I'm not sure yet what the other artworks that show up in the story are going to be; maybe Susan in Bath. *grins* And some Telmarine non-Pevensie stuff, of course; I think there should be at least one dramatic Caspian the Conqueror painting, maybe some woodcuts or something. There's definitely going to be a mosaic of some sort.)

I don't know where the art history stuff is coming from; the only semi-art history class I'm taking right now is a classics class on the Etruscans & Early Rome, where we spend all our time looking at tomb paintings. At least we've moved on from looking at pots?

I do need to figure out something with the LotGK to go along with it, though. So I can, uh, try and rationalize Rilian's histrionics over having to interpret art.

Oh, come on, Amazon, I just want a cheap paperback copy of One Virgin Too Many with prime shipping, is that too much to ask for?

Y'all, I have an important question. Due to varying issues of paranoia (including, but not limited to, I think the non-stick coating on my roommate's pots is flaking off, one of the pots is rusting where the non-stick coating has scraped off, and I can't figure out if she moved the pot I usually use because she no longer wants me to use it or if she just moved it to move it), I am looking at getting pots. The one I specifically need is a saucepan with a lid that is large enough to make soup in. (I tend to make a week's worth of soup at a time, but I don't eat much. Er, clearly I'm not being the most specific person in the world here. I also make rice and risotto in the same pot.) The slight problem here is that I'm not sure how large that is. Would a 2-quart be large enough?

Since I have to pay for it, I don't want to shell out for anything outrageous, but does anybody have any recommendations for decent brands of stainless steel cookware? Right now I'm looking at this pot and this one (though that one's more expensive than I'd like). Also this one from Farberware. (Which I think is one of the (many) pans my mother has.)

Okay, new goal for the week: every time I post something that's a complaint, or unhappy, or something of the sort, it has to be accompanied (or paired, or countered) by something happy. So.

Today I made curry and rice, which I eat all the time at home and which I always ate growing up; it's totally my comfort food, but I've never actually made it on my own. So I made rice, then I carefully followed the instructions on the curry roux package and sauteed onions with beef, potatoes, garlic, and carrots, then added water, brought it to a boil, then lowered the temperature and let it simmer until the potatoes were fork-soft. I didn't factor in the extra cooking time needed for the roux; by the time I'd stirred in the roux and let that simmer more some more, the potatoes were way, way too soft. There wasn't as much curry punch as I'm used to -- I think because I bought mild and we usually eat medium at home. (Same brand, though, it's a Japanese company.) I also didn't add all the roux, even though the package said to, because, well, we don't do that at home! I think. I'll call home tomorrow and ask my mother. Anyway, lots of leftovers; I think I'll probably have to make rice one more time this week, but I should be good through the week.

My goal for the weekend, knitting-wise, was to finish the leg of my first Winnow sock, which I did today, and then I knit the heel flap and turned the heel and and am now working on the gusset. The written instructions sort of fall down here because the construction's a little unusual, but I'm mostly working off the chart right now. I had juggle the needles and the stitches; I usually like to have sock on four needles, but right now it's just on three and might go that way through the end, so I don't have to break up the lace pattern onto two needles. (Right now, the sole is on two needles and the instep (the lace pattern) is on one.) But it's looking good, and with any luck I'll have it finished within a couple of days! Of course, then I have to knit sock number two.

*

I am fascinated, fascinated I say, by the different interpretations of the dreams in Second Sight. Like I said to a couple people, I had something specific in mind so (obviously, ha) I thought no one else would see it another way, but obviously not! Very cool. I forget what an adrenaline rush posting fic is sometimes -- it's different with a chaptered work, like Dust -- but short one-offs get a much bigger and broader response. What a great feeling. Definitely something I need during the school year, when I spend a lot of time feeling like my emotional health is suffering. So a (slightly belated) resolution for the new year: post at least one fic a month.

My attention span decided to leave me for the day. Hopefully it will return tomorrow. (Naturally, it deserts me on the weekend I have a paper due. You know. Of course. Convenient timing, what?) I made the mistake of not taking an hour or two yesterday to go to the library and work on Latin (despite the fact that I have a Latin class in the morning), although I did get about an hour and a half in today: but see again, attention span effectively gone, which means I don't do the usual "search for the verb and rearrange the words in your head until they make sense" bit and instead went straight left to right, the way I do when I'm tired and it's hard for me to concentrate. (Apparently, some professors teach it this way, though, so at least it's not totally incorrect.)

I haven't been doing much studying in my dorm this semester, at least so far. I've been carrying my Latin textbook, notebook, and sheaf of looseleaf paper (so many trees die for me to study Latin: on the bright side, at least it's the latest in a long two thousand year tradition) around with me nearly everywhere, so I have the habit of, after my late afternoon classes, going to the library to work through another chapter or so of Latin. Or, when my roommates start acting up, collecting my things and going to the LBC or the library to work through some more Latin. (This is helped by the fact that after last semester's fiasco, I'm no longer particularly comfortable phoning home while anyone else is in the apartment, so I now tend to make my phone calls from the LBC or while I'm walking to Whole Foods. Also by the fact that sometimes I'm really, really uncomfortable in my apartment, for various reasons. I think I can say with some certainty, however, that PMS makes me paranoid (especially re: my roommates). I miss the days when it just resulted in chocolate cravings.) Only yesterday that never happened, because I don't have a late afternoon class on Fridays. *sighs* And nothing happened to make me leave my apartment in the evening. Seriously, I've spent more time out on campus after dark in the past two weeks than I have in the previous two and a half years put together, mostly just walking to or from the library and/or LBC. Also one of my classes that ends at 5:45. (I hate late afternoon classes.)

Anyway, I've been spending a lot of time in the LBC working through Latin, either back chapters or the chapters we're currently on (and, unfortunately, there's a gap of about five chapters in between those two), even after the food court closes -- the LBC is one of the few student centers in the U.S. that's open 24/7, so that's nice. Interesting to see who comes in after the main food court closes, though Der Rathskeller's open till about four in the morning. (The Rat's the World of Wings in the basement. Don't ask me why we have a basement when we're in a city that's below sea-level.) Today I think something was going on with Rush, since there was a herd of girls in short skirts and fancy heels migrating through the LBC. (I assume they were in nice dresses, but they were bundled up against the cold. The short skirts and fancy heels seemed mandatory, though. One reason why I shall never be in a sorority.)

Where was I? Oh. Attention span totally gone. May go back to knitting, since one of my goals for this weekend is to finish this sock, and I finished the gusset today and am partway through the foot. Which is pretty quick going, and I don't mind kitchener stitch. (Sad news: I started this pair of socks in October, and have only just once more picked up the second sock, which only had the cuff done. Am on a sock kick, though. No pun intended. Now I have a shawl with about eight rows remaining on my WIP/stash shelf.)

I made a great apple crisp earlier this week. Must pick up more apples and pecans at Whole Foods so I can do it again. I'm debating getting shortening, too: I can't get Crisco anywhere within walking distance, so I'd have to get the tub of organic whatever from Whole Foods, and I'm not sure I'll go through that much. (I use it for crostata dough and one particular biscuit recipe. I do have a cookie recipe that calls for it, though I usually use a variant that calls for canola oil instead.)

I have a teetiny bit of non-Dust Narnia fic in the works -- a continuation of this. Among other things, I'm trying to work through my problems with Jill POV. (Which is, uh, actually completely counter to what that fic's about, gah. I need to Jill On Her Own sometime, because most of what I have is Jill going, "Dude, the Pevensies are weird." Only she sounds more English. I mostly managed to conquer that with Eustace, now to do so with Jill.) Not sure what's going on with Dust 24: there are a couple different ways I could go, and I'm not sure which one to choose. (Could do both, might want to do the other one later, should probably have this scene, but don't really want to, this scene would be helpful, but I'm not even sure I want that character to exist, but the passage of time! and goddamn my choice of shoving a freaking festival into the middle of my fic too.)

In conclusion, a Narnia vid rec that is absolutely brilliant and gorgeous: Never the Same, by anonymous, for festivids. It is very smart, and very pretty, and has a great music choice. I generally don't watch Narnia vids or look at Narnia fanart or read Narnia fic or, well, uh, do anything relating to the fandom outside my own journal, actually, so I approached this vid with great trepidation. But it is brilliant.