Driveby posting with writing update
I used to do most of my posting from dayjob (as I am right now...), but dayjob is busy all the time and that means less blog. :-(
In the past few weeks I've made ice cream twice (my first time and second time ever). First batch I put in too much peppermint extract and it tasted like Scope.* Yes, I still ate it. It's ice cream! The overall flavor was meant to be chocolate-chocolate mint chip (chocolate ice cream with mint flavor and chocolate chips).
The second batch, in addition to being a proper level of minty, was made with a higher proportion of cream. The resulting ice cream is SUPER RICH. I can only eat a couple of spoonsful at a time, which I suppose is a good thing. It's incredibly smooth and dense.
And last night I made lamb chops (the kind with the long bone). Marinated for 30-60 minutes in a bag full of olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, dried onions, and a dried French herb mix for dressing. Then into the oven for 20 minutes at 425°F. Perfect, succulent, medium-to-medium-rare chops! The kind where you end up sucking on the bones because you want every scrap of edible whatever.
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Seeds have arrived! Gonna be the three types of tomatoes from last year, plus two new types (a Roma and an orange cherry tomato). Will try the Brussels sprouts again, but this time I'll put them in the soil much sooner! Frisee again, and more of the green bean bushes. I'll give the broccoli rabe a shot. Adding dill and thyme to the herb box. Basil and chives again of course. Gonna take another run at the flat-leaf parsley.
Hoping the catnip doesn't come back, because the neighbor's cat comes around and Random hates him and goes bonkers when he slinks past the house. I know catnip is a perennial, but it's in a box, not the ground, so I'll uproot/cut it if it shows.
Gonna try watermelons this year, a small version, 5-6 lb fruits. Also, corn! The Earthboxes claim you can grow 16 stalks of corn in them, so I'll do 8 and do a little hand-pollinating (insects don't do corn; it's usually pollinated by wind). Also carrots, the little ball kind rather than the long kind, because these handle regular dirt better. (Carrots generally like sandy soil, but I'm growing in pots with potting mix.)
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Writing has been happening. My muse went on vacation in February, and I ground my way through an 1800-word scene 30-50 words at a time. My muse obviously got jealous that I was moving on without him, and he returned for March and begged me to kick his ass. (My muse and I have a bit of a BDSM sort of relationship.**)
Result: a lot of words. Hard to measure exactly how many because some scenes were new, some were wholesale rewrites of existing scenes, and some were new or rewrites with some cribbed sentences or paragraphs from the deleted scenes. I would estimate 5000-7000 words since the beginning of March, 2000 of them just this weekend.
I remain slightly embarrassed that it's a struggle to get through a scene of people plotting and talking in normal fashion under peaceful circumstances, but somewhat easier to get through a fight scene. And let's not get into how easily I write nasty interrogation scenes full of snark.
Of course, this means I need more conflict in my "people plotting" scenes. Hmmm. They do go down easier if the members of the cabal are disagreeing with each other.
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I also have two freelance projects that need my attention right now, which will probably throw a hitch in my writing momentum. Eh, my muse needs to recover from the last round of whipping anyway.
*For non-Americans: Scope is a common brand of mouthwash.
**Yes, he is imaginary. NOT AN ACTUAL PERSON.