Monday, December 27
I often wake up when a cat is misbehaving in the solarium. Somehow the sound of Delancey chewing on a spider plant or Spencer uprooting one of the aloes is enough to rouse me from a sound sleep. So when the three men appeared on the roof and started tearing the structure down at the crack o' dawn this morning I was, let's say, all ears. There's a good inch of snow up there but they had a leaf blower to uncover their stuff. They're cutting the plywood now and will soon install it to cover the whole opening, which is nice since they ripped the sliding doors out hours ago and you don't want to know what it's like in the hallway right now. Here we go.
A quick recap of the last few days: the 24th was spent cooking and prepping for xmas dinner. That night I DJ'd a party in Marina Del Rey, so if you noticed a preponderance of fado in the air late that night, that's why. The 25th was a trip to the city, more prepping, more cooking, and a Christmas dinner that couldn't be beat. There was toad sauce, homemade Almond Thins, regular crackers, several cheeses, caponata, cream of cauliflower/leek soup (bangin'), a rack of lamb (could have cooked more), green bean casserole from scratch (could have cooked more), broccoli/broccoflower/cauliflower with zingy dijon sauce (could have cooked less), beautiful roasted root vegetables (didn't eat them, but they looked good), Quorn roast for the veggies (didn't eat it, but heard it could have cooked more), a pumpkin pie (bangin'), and a cheesecake (a little battered from its travels, but otherwise the best one I've made so far) with fresh whipped cream, and coffee. Other than the storebought crackers, root vegetables, and Northern Spies, it was all sugar free and rather low carb, and I'm not sure anybody realized that, which is just how I wanted it.
The 26th was spent quietly at home, where we had a marathon viewing of almost all the Queer as Folk episodes that have been piled up in the Tivo for months. Gayest Umoja ever. We kind of stopped watching back when Justin fell in with the weird violent guy so there was practically a whole season to catch up on. Got through most of them, though. There are a couple more, but we had to stop at some point since we knew the men on the roof would be hard to ignore this morning.
Now I've got to do some work stuff, get back to BJ's for a big restock after all the holiday baking—that cheesecake was not the first one I made that day—and, happily, get back to karate tonight. I think I will skip grappling for one more week, but I'll take as many core classes as I can. I won't be working there this week, ostensibly because of the house construction but really because they're doing a holiday camp thing for all the kids who are off this week, and, well, you know.
10:22 AM
