brain waves

last night i got home from work around 7:15 and was telling mickey how much i'd love to go get a massage this weekend. it's the first time i've mentioned it, since the idea only struck me moments before i said anything.

5 minutes later he came downstairs with a bag from dosha salon spa with a gift certificate he'd bought me that day over his lunch hour -- for an hour long massage.

hurray for being on the same page, even after 8.5 years of marriage!

cautiously optimistic: mariners 08

oh happy day. please let this work out. i'm not sad to see jones go, will kinda miss sherrill, but if the loss comes with the prospect of actually having a decent pitching lineup, i'll take it. oh, and we also picked up mel stottlemyere as pitching coach. that has to help, too, doesn't it?

indulge on behalf of the rat

my friend kim told me that on the lunar new year, one must behave the way they want the rest of the year to be: be happy, positive, no fighting, indulge in good food, be with friends and family, etc. if there's still time left, be sure to treat this new years day the way you want your year of the rat to be!

speaking of indulging, i've just started two for the road by jane and michael stern. i was only a paragraph into the book before i was hooked. here's why:

'our first date was over a white clam pizza at pepe's pizzeria on wooster square in new haven, connnecticut, and it was instantly apparent as we gazed into each other's eyes across the thin-crusted neapolitan pie, speckled with tiny, tender clams and frosted with olive oil, that we shared a passion for garlic. our initial lust for each other was fueled by an orgy of lobster rolls, split hot dogs, yankee doodle double dandy doodle burger cheeseburgers, calzones, and cannolis.'

if that's not the best first paragraph of a book, i don't know what is.

update: sorry for all the typos. i am a poor proofreader at night apparently.

craft day

mickey and i deemed saturday craft day. his craft was to brew a batch of beer, and mine was to paint on canvas a picture i've been meaning to create since returning from NZ last year.

at 5pm last night, mickey put all the ingredients in the big stock pot and started heating the grains and water for the first step. 5 gallons of water takes a long time to heat on our stove, so at about 6:30, we finally reached 180 degrees. at this point he removed the thermometer from the pot, so we could continue to steep the grain. to our horror, the thermometer had a crack in it. all that beer was now contaminated with either mercury or some other metallic substance that was in the thermometer. what a waste.

my craft day was mildly more successful

"manapouri electrical station"