Ordinary life

I'm using the FlyLady "you can do anything for 15 minutes" technique to try to clean the kitchen.

I just finishedmy first fifteen minutes, and the garbage is out, the dishwasher is unloaded, and a number of backed-up dishes have made their way into the dishwasher.

I really shouldn't have checked my friends page before starting the cleaning. That ate an hour.

Mark and Christy are out grocery shopping. They just called from the fish market.

I really, really need to get the kitchen in some sort of order by the time they get home with the food that needs to be put away.

So my break times aren't going to be 15 minutes long. No sir.

Instead, I'm just going to post this and then go re-set the timer.

I'll start on the Valentine's Day disgustingly cheerful post after another fifteen minutes.

Wish me luck with the fridge.

Valentine's Day, part 3

Dinner was, predictably, wonderful. The restaurant had gotten cute and had sprinkled the tables with foil Valentine confetti. I decided to be completely unadventurous this time and had onion soup, hanger steak frites with asparagus, and a wonderful almond-cherry cake for dessert. I admit that some of the more inventive offerings were tempting, but... you see, I don't generally order onion soup at restaurants any more, because it's so often oversalted and under-caramelized and disappointing. This was NOT disappointing. It was probably the best onion soup I've had outside of Paris. And I had a feeling that that would be the case. Don't get me wrong, the sweet potato and truffle purses sounded very tempting, but... really GOOD onion soup. Comfort food. Nice. And we split a bottle of wine among the three of us, and I got to have bites of the garlic-herb mashed potatoes in the brandy sauce from Christy's filet mignon, and it was just such a nice thing.

Maybe the nicest thing was knowing that we DO have a Valentine tradition.

In the morning, Christy gave us very sweet cards and a heart-shaped box of Dove truffles. Very nice. I felt neglectful, since I had put "heart shaped chocolates" on the "too bad" list this year (even though we usually get them for Christy) because of her diabetes, and totally failed to notice the heart-shaped boxes of the low-carb stuff.

So, when I went out to pick up my paycheck from work and get it into the bank, I stopped at the florist on the way back. They were very sweet and declared that "last minute" officially started TOMORROW morning, and put together a bouquet of coral pink roses, blue iris, and a little waxflower and million-star gypsophilia, and tied them up with a bow, so I could give them to Christy. I am sure that I amused the heck out of them -- the customer before me was male and saying "he" about the recipient, and there I was saying "she" and wearing jeans, purple Converse high-tops, a hooded sweatshirt and my motorcycle jacket. (no, no motorcycle, it's just a fashion statement...)

So now all that's left is going to see Casablanca at Cinestudio tonight.

I support gay marriage

Marriage is love.