I'm a Wiener!

I did it! I did it! I made it to 50,000 words in one month!

The rub, of course, is that the damn thing isn't done: I started segmenting it into chapters, and I left off at about the eighth or ninth chapter, and I think there are about fifteen chapters. So it looks like I've got some work to do. But—it's actually turning into a book! A terrible book, a giant piece of dreck, but it's mine, darn it, and I'm actually starting to believe I could finish the darn thing.

Yay, me!

Oh, happy day!

The first president I remember anything about is Ronald Reagan. From there it was sour for a while, until Clinton, when we had some good times together. And it's been crap for a long, long time.

I am so happy today.

NaNoWriMo Begins

This year I'm going to make it. Unlike last year where a) I didn't actually know what I was doing, and b) the damn cat got in an accident halfway through the month and it totally derailed my story, this year I HAVE A PLAN, a fully thought-out plot outline, and there will be NO ACCIDENTS and everyone will remain in perfect health and we will have no disasters and nothing to hijack my creative process. 50,000 words, here I come!

Sticky Rice

Inspired by my obscene fondness for a few of the dishes at Whiskey Soda Lounge, I did a little searching about how to make sticky rice and my favorite dish (so far) that they serve, Neua Naam Tok. I didn't think it was going to be so simple, but a look at one of my cookbooks and a couple of websites was enough to get me going.

Sticky rice is actually so simple it's ridiculous. You just have to buy the right kind of rice, soak the rice, and steam it in the proper implement, the traditional basket-and-base thing shown here. I was somewhat reluctant to purchase a unitasker that was so large, but I figured that was the thing that would give me the real-deal sticky rice I wanted, and I figured we could find room for it. Bonus, the market up on Sandy, Thanh Thao, had everything I need. A search for Neua Naam Tok dug up its translated name, Waterfall Beef. The version I made at home was not quite as awesome as the dish at Pok Pok, or as brain-meltingly spicy, but it was still really tasty and I think it may become a new staple.

A bonus was that Thanh Thao carries all kinds of awesome, like Thai iced tea mix, which tastes just like what you get in the restaurant, and great veggies, frozen fish, and a hot deli of unpronounceable things that I can't wait to try out.

"I kinda thought I was supposed to end up with Bait, but..."

Happy Act One Day!

It's all well and good that I'm in the Whedon-Is-My-Master-Now camp, but when the dude dumps Wonderwoman, and Dollhouse could very well blow, one starts to consider one's loyalty.

Fortunately, Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog was totally officially charming, so I guess he can live. They packed so much into 13 minutes: cute nerdling pining, a super villain named Moist, Wonderflonium, and an unseen duo of chick villains named Bait and Switch. AWESOME! And - both Doogie and Mal can sing! Even though the amount of traffic to the site killed the internets, forcing me to iTunes, it was a $4 well spent.

Superheroes and Their Later Careers

So, I'm working, half-watching Mystery Men in the corner of my screen while I'm plugging away in Flash. It's a movie that I didn't appreciate enough the first time around, and it makes me weirdly nostalgic for the late 90s, a time that seems farther and farther away all the time. I thought that the guy who played The Waffler looked kind of familiar; turns out it was Dane Cook, who I've never seen in a movie but who has nonetheless inserted himself into my subconscious somehow anyway. I idly went over to IMDB to see who else played the try-out superheroes, and it turns out that the guy who played Pencilhead also played, among other things, the Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth, Abe Sapien in Hellboy, AND one of the Gentlemen in "Hush". Nuts! He's a freaky prodigy.

There's also the fact that the movie has not only Janeane Garofalo, whom I will always love, and TOM WAITS. 'Nuff said.

Best kind of breakfast

Best kind of breakfast
Originally uploaded by cacahuete & ananas

Now that it's summer, we should be doing this a lot more often. So far it's only happened once, but that's not saying it couldn't happen again. Like tomorrow, for instance!