Crow and Cornbread

Well, another week has come and gone, so I guess it’s time for another check-in. Pull up a chair, pour yourself something to drink (hot or cold – your choice given the weather), and let’s talk about the week that was.

Monday started with something rare: I woke up actually wanting to write. As in, my first thought of the-day was I want to write.

Unfortunately, reality kicked in: I needed to go to work because the bills need paying and it’s a chaotic time of the year anyway with that final stretch of the semester with graduation/commencement on the horizon and a new term right around the corner, so taking a day off just isn’t in the cards.

Still, I held onto that feeling and hoped it would last . . . and it did! That night, I sat down and wrote five full pages in my journal – after I replaced a leaky pen, that is.

Have I written anything since then?

No, but I have things planned out.

Yes, I actually plan out some of my journals since I have two journals: one is stuff that I want to remember, and so it’s kind of sort of categorized and organized, and the other is like a daily journal that I kind of talk about the day in and in that one I write almost every day, thought sometimes it might just be three question marks in a row, like I’m asking myself what in the world was today, anyway? but I do try to keep up with it.

Wednesday brought something I’d long been missing: time with my friends. We didn’t actually play D&D as scheduling continues to be our temporary, seasonal nemesis, but we spent about four hours just talking and catching up.

Spring tends to be busy for all of us, and it’s pretty typical that our games pause around this time each year. Still, it felt really good to reconnect. Between two D&D campaigns, a Cyberpunk Red game, and our chaotic World of Darkness “kitchen sink” chronicle, there’s a lot to come back to, and we’re all looking forward to it.

I just needed that boost and so Wednesday was a good day.

And speaking of D&D . . .

This Friday was our Founder’s Day ball at work, which I now know commemorates the first time the board of the college met.

I should probably know how long ago that was, but I forget.

Something I haven’t forgotten: Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, and not the other way around.

Anyway the theme for this year‘s event was “white and gold masquerade” so of course I dressed up in all black with a crows mask.

Yes, I darkened my eyes. No, I did not take a picture of just my eyes.

I had intended it as a sort of test cosplay for my DND character, Rustle, and it works pretty well, I suppose. It was more like a human going to a masquerade than an actual Kenku, but that’s kind of what I was going for.

We played some games and ate some really good food (beef tips!) and took some fun pictures:

Then we called it a night and by “called it a night” I mean, I made several G&Ts and enjoyed more Murder, She Wrote.

One episode was very very confusing: it was like we had jumped right into the middle of a story and come to find out we had! It was a Magnum, PI crossover and the first half of the story was considered Magnum, PI and the second half of the story was considered Murder, She Wrote.

I had no idea what was going on, so I skipped that episode.

Of course, part of the fun of Murder, She Wrote are the guest appearances. For example in one episode I recognized Bernard Fox, who is also the pilot who sacrifices himself to get Rick O’Connell and Jonathan to Hamunaptra.

But anyway, I recognized that actor among many others – you know you don’t necessarily forget someone like John Aston or Leslie Nielsen and then of course you’ve got other actors that later went onto to make a name for themselves like Joaquin Phoenix, George Clooney, Neil Patrick Harris, and Courtney Cox.

Probably my favorite episode for guest stars so far would have to be “Murder Takes the Bus” which features Larry Linville (Major Frank Burns; M*A*S*H) and Rue McClanahan, (Blanche Devereaux; The Golden Girls).

Maybe I should start looking for these series on DVD . . .

Come Saturday, I did my grocery shopping and some thrift shopping and almost immediately I was thrown off my groove when, after the first stop of the day, I made it to the second grocery store at 7:30 only to find out they wouldn’t be open until 8:00 because they were doing some work on the floor. Since the other grocery stores didn’t open until then anyway, I had a whole 30 minutes that I just kind of sat in my car and listened to podcasts and tried not to think about the fact that I was now “losing” time.

Later on, having put the groceries away, I went thrift shopping and saw some really cool stuff, but nothing I felt I needed to spend money on except for one very specific thing: an 11 inch round stoneware baker.

For supper last night I made something akin to a cheesy chicken enchilada skillet. I did it all up in the sauce pan and made some yellow rice to go with it and it was just really good.

Now today has been rainy and I did not want to go out and so I spent the morning doing some cleaning and having cinnamon toast crunch and coffee and then as I was cleaning up the kitchen something said

Nope you’re not done yet. You’ve got to make something else!

and I’m like OK so what am I gonna make and it’s one of those weird things that I almost without thinking just started throwing stuff together and made a one pan – well, almost one pan – breakfast skillet. Technically it was two pans because I made some cornbread mix in a separate bowl then I fried some ham in a cast-iron pan and on top of that I put sausage gravy and on top of that I put scrambled eggs and on top of that went cheese and on top of that cornbread mix and on top of that went more cheese and then it all went in the oven and it baked until it was nice and golden and delicious.

But I forgot to mention that before that I had already started tonight’s supper (might be tomorrow’s supper, too) and that is a crockpot of chili. Not sure what possessed me to make chili. I don’t actually know that I’ve made chili before, but I am a chili enjoyer and so we’ve got kidney beans and pinto beans and black beans and browned meat and tomatoes and beef broth, and onions and garlic and a bunch of spices, including instant coffee and unsweetened cocoa powder and yeah, we’ll see how it turns out.

It’s made the house smell real good I can tell you that!

Another good thing about today has been that it has been cool and by that I mean we’ve got a high of 65° so especially with having the oven on I’ve had the windows open, the door open, the fans blowing, and it is now a quite enjoyable 66° inside.

Of course since the rain has been coming and going, it’s been hurting my back so this is another blog post that is being dictated rather than typed on a keyboard.

I thought that I’d have more to write but looking at my photos and my social media feeds and other random stuff that I have lying around to try to jog my memory, it seems that we are now at an end so that only brings me to ask the questions:

What about you?

How are you doing?