Hold 'em, Fold 'em, RUN!

04:49 pm: How about now? Now? Is now good?
Sitting out my last 20 minutes at work, mostly out of guilt.

Yesterday we had a Picnic of Mandatory Company Sponsored "Fun". It was supposed to be from noon to 4pm, but everyone started to abandon ship around 2, because it was TOO GODDAMN HOT. Diligent drone that I am, I went back to the office to both do some work and to bring my core body temp down to somewhere in the double digits. But I still left around 4.

Today, it's a typical Friday in which no one is in the office and thus uninterrupted (well, except for a completely blown morning in a meeting with my boss. I mean, the meeting was actually USEFUL and will result in good things, but I didn't get to the stuff I wanted to do today until well after lunch.) I've finished everything I set out to accomplish.

So I signed on to Spotify, and I'm listening to Mike Doughty's last album which I hadn't bought yet. Spotify IS pretty nifty, and I've tried other such mechanisms before.

Now I just want it to be five, and then I will go home to burgers and beers with my beloved.

09:56 pm: Okay, what?
Work was awful today. Just. Awful.

And I find we're getting more beets in our CSA box tomorrow. Now, I love me some beets (BORSCHT!) but seriously, we've been getting beets in 50% of our boxes. TOO MANY BEETS.

Also it is hot. And the cats want to be on me. WHYYYYYYY?

09:26 pm: Guess what I made!
It was BORSCHT.

It was delicious, but mostly I got to say the word "BORSCHT" a lot. Examples:

"I'm having borscht anxiety."

"I will achieve victory and borscht!"

"Borscht borscht borscht."

I've determined that you can't be sad when you're saying borscht.

09:08 am: Woohoo!
Finished Dance with Dragons!

Non-spoilery review: Feels like everything's coming back together, though not as I had thought, which I think goes for most of the characters in this book. "Everything was going great! Until my plan got totally derailed!" My one niggly question did not get answered, but there was plenty going on, so I didn't truly miss it.

Where Feast for Crows seemed to be more focused on the common people of Westeros, and how war sucks for them, Dance with Dragons had a broader birds-eye scope on how war sucks all around. I mean, you start out meaning to accomplish X, but to do that you need help from both Y and Z, but Y and Z hate each other, so they start trying to accomplish objective J which you had NO IDEA EVEN EXISTED. And then there's a plague.

Life is not a song. Heck, it's not even straightforward!

I will re-read again, more slowly, at a later date.

12:54 pm: Is it 5PM yet? I have reading to do.
Non-spoilery things about reading Dance with Dragons:

1 - I'm finally past all the chapters that GRRM had teased us with in the interim between books. It was kind of like fake reading, because I was a) impatient to get to stuff I hadn't already read but b) concerned that something may have changed! CHANGED! I don't think anything significant changed.

2 - The only thing I want to be spoiled about is if ( okay one kind of spoiler? )

3 - There will be much reading this weekend.

10:56 am: Shoes, sleep, book
I'm wearing these platform wedges that make me six billion feet tall. It's kind of great, I won't lie. I feel all imposing, stomping around, six+ inches taller than usual. I'm taller than the cubicle walls!

Went to Pub Quiz with CMC last night and we did pretty well for a group of two. The quiz itself was wide ranging and well-managed. May do it again! But we had too much beers, which meant that we both slept very badly. Booooo!

MY COPY OF DRAGONS IS WAITING FOR ME. WILL THIS DAY NEVER END?

Not that I'll be reading right away; I've got a movie night planned. BUT THEN READING OMG.

11:47 am: Things
1 - CMC and I made THE best dinner sandwiches yesterday. Roast beef + blue cheese + horseradish mustard + caramelized onions = OMG Also there was turnip puree and roasted brussels sprouts. NOMNOMNOM

2 - ONE MORE DAY UNTIL DANCE WITH DRAGONS

3 - I'm thinking about checking out a local pub quiz tonight. Dunno if I'll join the quiz, but I want to see what it's like.

4 - There is no four.

10:27 am: People being wrong on the internet
I know why Yelp doesn't allow negative feedback to reviews; the clusterfuck that would ensue would be epic. You can only push a button to say that a given review is "cool" "funny" or "useful". I would argue, however, that there should also be a feedback button indicating that the reviewer was "fundamentally unclear on the concept of this location."

For example: Reviewers of Hot Doug's who complain that all he has are hot dogs. FUNDAMENTALLY UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT
Reviewers of the deli whose prominent feature is that it only stocks organic and/or locally grown foods, and then bitching about how Subway is way cheaper. FUNDAMENTALLY UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT
Reviewers of a brunch place that give 1-star reviews because it's not open for dinner. FUOTC

HOW DO I STOP THEM FROM BEING SO WRONG?

*seethe*

01:29 pm: How many ribs is too many ribs?
So, CMC and I hosted our very own Ribfest for 4th of July. There was only one vendor (CMC) but the reviews were excellent. For my own part, I manfully ate of many ribs. Too many ribs. Enough ribs that all night long, I felt like I was sweating out meat juices and BBQ sauce. Sexy, right?

And there are still ribs in our fridge. HOW?

I think all I did this weekend was eat and clean, which is, fyi, not a terrible way to spend a weekend. CMC and I went to brunch TWO TIMES (not on the same day) at two COMPLETELY NEW TO US places. As we tend to find a nice comfortable rut and stick with it, this was quite an accomplishment. We went to:

Marmalade, which will become a regular haunt of ours, I think, seeing as how it's all of a block away from our home and the food was good. CMC had the french toast, and I had a bout of indecision which ended in the ordering of a two-egg plate, a bowl of tomato soup (SUPERB), and a side of bacon, just to make sure we were getting a good spread of what Marmalade had to offer. The coffee was good, the food was tasty, and the atmosphere was cheery. A+ WILL BRUNCH AGAIN.

The Publican, which is a whole different level of excellent. Wine-poached egg with prosciutto and bearnaise sauce? Yes please! Slab of fancy bacon with real maple syrup? Thank you kindly! Country-fried steak and oyster sauce? DON'T MIND IF I DO. The only thing I didn't like so much was the coffee, which was good but not to my taste. You know, how when you have a beer or wine that you can tell is good, but that doesn't gel with what you like in a beer or wine? An IPA, say, or an oak-aged Chardonnay. That's what this coffee was like. It was VERY acidic, which may be your idealized cuppa joe, but is not mine at all. All the same, A+ WILL PROBABLY NOT BRUNCH AGAIN BECAUSE IT IS FAR AWAY.

Tonight, I will follow up on eating Too Many Ribs by eating Too Many Sushis at the $20 sushi buffet with friends. Then maybe I will roll home and clean up some more from the Fourth.

04:34 pm: Quick Postings
1 - There was a MASSIVE spider in the gym bathroom yesterday. I notified the front desk and they said they would be on it right away, but this morning I couldn't shake the feeling that the spider was still there. Watching. Waiting. For me to be naked and then it would POUNCE ON MY FACE.

2 - Work is weird today. There's plenty to do and I'm getting stuff done, but it feels so awfully slow.

3 - I have finished Feast for Crows way ahead of schedule, and now I have to WAIT for Dance with Dragons instead of reading it right after FFC. *grump*

4 - I locked myself out of the house on Monday, and went to the Library while waiting for CMC to get home and let my dumb ass back in. I picked up a book called Four Queens which is tiding me over, and is really well written. 13th century women kicking ass? Yes, please!

5 - I'm so out of here, I didn't even finish this po-