KJ

Early this month, I mentioned that I was thinking about our Thanksgiving menu. We made our holiday-dinner-for-two tonight, and it came out really well! After I posted the above, I talked with T a little more about favorite holiday dishes, and he put in a request for stuffing. Since most stuffing recipes make a lot of food, I went looking for smaller-scale options, and I found a recipe promising chicken breasts and stuffing for two. We decided to try it out, but I still really wanted mashed potatoes and gravy, so it was a starch-fest. Fortunately, I enjoy a good starch-fest. For a vegetable, we made green beans with browned butter, sage, and hazelnuts.

The final plate.

And then dessert was leftovers from yesterday, pecan pie for T, pumpkin cheesecake for me.

Now we are happily stuffed and watching the recording of AOC's nwe Among Us livestream with special guest Jagmeet Singh, Canadian politician, all around a fine way to spend an evening.

Is not terribly satisfying, I have to admit. But I've already skipped two days this month and don't want to make a habit of it.

Oh, here's a thing: we made chocolate crackle cookies today. I love this kind of cookie and have never made them before. I think they're a tad under baked, but better that than the other way around. It was a fair bit of work and a little messy, and I think I'll use less espresso powder next time, but definitely a good addition to the rotation.

I continue to think about how to make time and space for writing while being a work-from-home employee. I've done a fair number of things improve my space for dayjob work -- two full-size monitors, a laptop dock, an adjustable keyboard tray that I talked my employer into buying (and that took some doing) -- but ways to alter the area to make it more conducive to writing when appropriate have been slower in coming. I have made one discovery, though, which pleases me: the application of coffee.

Ever since I got my first laptop, I've had a mental association between writing and coffee. Taking my computer to a cafe is one of my greatest pleasures, and one of the things I most miss from the before times. Sometimes these trips were productive, and sometimes I ended up spending most of my time socializing online, but it was always a mental recharge. And while I haven't quite figured out a way to replicate the entire experience, I can at least make coffee for myself. I need to avoid caffeine after lunch now (stupid aging), so I've taken to keeping homemade decaf cold brew on hand. It's an excellent afternoon treat, and I make a point of saving it until after I'm done with paid work for the day. As with going to the cafe, I don't always manage to write while I'm drinking it, but it still gives me a signal that it's time to switch gears, whether to fiction writing or journal writing (I have a glass right now!) or ladybusiness work or just chatting with folks. A little thing, but it makes me happy. And hey, I have yet to find a cafe that even sells decaf cold brew, so there's even an advantage to making my own.

So that's my new trick for carving out my own space. Any other ideas? What have you tried?

1. T's favorite boba tea place was completely closed until recently, so he bought some tea leaves so we could experiment with making our own. They released a cookbook recently, and today we finally had the ingredients together to attempt a raspberry-pineapple tea fresca, which is maybe my favorite of their drinks (and a seasonal offering which they haven't offered in over a year). It's a little early for fresh raspberries, so we had to add a little extra sugar syrup, but for a first try with the wrong brand of tea, we came pretty close! It's nice to make treats for ourselves when it's harder to go pick something up.

2. Today brings probably the most gorgeous weather since this whole thing started, so we took a walk down to the farmer's market at the Ferry Building. Making that trek on a day with nice weather was probably not the best plan from a shopping point of view -- I think that's the most people I've seen in one place since FogCon. But it still felt more comfortable to me than the last time we went to Safeway: being in open air, plenty of space to pass people at a distance, lines well labeled with six-foot gaps. We didn't buy anything, so it ended up being more of an exercise trip than a shopping trip (although we did stop by a fancy market on the walk home to get the raspberries and a couple of other things we couldn't buy at Whole Foods on Friday), but it was good to be out for sun and fresh air.

3. After finishing Horizon Zero Dawn, I moved on to Persona 5: Royal, which T and I will be playing together. We're only a few days in, and if I recall we're mostly or entirely on rails for awhile, but it was lovely just to step back into that world again. The new content is being introduced slowly so far, just a couple of scenes at this point, but I look forward to both that and to re-meeting all my old friends again.

4. Working at home continues to be about the same. I'm very glad I'm only expected to put in an average of six hours a day rather than eight. (That's my normal work schedule, not anything special because of the COVID-19 situation. My five-year anniversary with this organization was last week, which blows my mind a little. Remember when this was a short-term gig that was supposed to be over in three months? Actually, you might not, because I talk so little about my dayjob here, but I assure you that was the situation when I started. Now I'm a regular employee, getting raises and higher levels of responsibility, and I was even nominated for a promotion (which I didn't get, but I'm well positioned for the next cycle, so fingers crossed). I've never thought I would prefer working at home, and I can now say with absolute certainty that I'd rather be in an office, but I'm glad it continues to be an option.

5. I did a Zoom call with some family yesterday -- my parents, my dad's two sisters, and my 14-year-old nephew, who I haven't seen in person since he was... 10? No, nine, five years ago, when my brother (his dad) graduated from college. I've had very little contact with him over the years, so it was really pleasant to have a bit of actual conversation with him. We're hoping he can come to California for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, which is in June 2021. Let's hope that family gatherings, at least, can be happening by then. I've heard multiple people say that lock-down has put them in better touch with their family than ever before, now that we've moved to a norm of online video chat, so maybe that can be true of us, too.