Rework and real work

Today...

Sword work...

Reworked the prologue a bit, since it was pretty much the way I'd written it on the train trip to Salt Lake City, including numerous tyops. Right. Salt Lake City was... this year. Wow.

Also changed the files over to Open Office from Rough Draft (RD not having a spell check I like), and in doing noticed a distressing number of characters and creatures with names starting with "t" -- will have to fix that...

In between... made that pudding pie I mentioned earlier because I had extra milk in the house and while the pie was in works I filled in the time with getting our new universal remote in gear. I really dislike the extremely powerful, extremely complex and extremely tiny-keyed remote that came with the DVD player -- we tend to watch our movies in the dark and I had to keep a flashlight to hand to even figure out which end was up, much less use the keys. The universal remote(on Christmas sale at Staples when I was picking up some paper) has a much cleaner layout and will also run the TV and the VCR. Took a few minutes of fiddling with codes to program it, but it wasn't hard...

With the universal I can figure out how to pause the DVD and start where I was -- something not easy with the proprietary RCA remote's layout. I note the universal remote does *not* work on the ATM machine and will *not* slip me packs of $hundreds on demand. I could hope.... Oh yeah,one of the reasons I wanted the new remote working is that our splurge has arrived... 11 hours plus of the extended LOTR. While I'm noting I should point out that we're in receipt of more galleys today that need to go out early Monday, so I doubt we'll be able to fit in 11 hours of LOTR until our Christmas break... if then.

Tomorrow starts what looks like a six or seven day run of "chance of snow or light freezing rain" ... but I would like to get to the PO and to the store before the 25th.... which may be hard given deadlines. Sigh. The life of the freelance writer is *so* romantic...

Green and gold

Green and gold were the colors of lunch --

we had three cold (previously boiled) Yukon Gold potatoes, so I took a can of green beans... and I heated the green beans (with some Italian dressing mixed in) after I ...

cooked some Morningstar Farms sausage links in the wok-like pan (with olive oil and water), added a cup of chopped frozen onions and some soy-bacon bits, and a half a cup of apple cider vinegar, slipped in a few chopped chives, and then let the water cook down a bit before adding the thin-sliced potatoes. Stirred the potatoes in good, added some garlic along with a couple big dashes of Old Bay seasoning, and after a taste, added some powdered garlic. Stirred it again, added another teaspoon or so of olive oil, let it heat while I ...

sliced and bagged the nice robust whole wheat bread Rolanni baked yesterday. We used the fresh-cut not-quite sandwich ends for lunch ...

which was served in bowls on the antique Maine-made maple table while the snow came and went, leaving behind a bright sunny and somewhat windy day.

A nice meal, kind of a hot near-german potato salad and one the cats didn't bother us to share with them -- I think the vinegar does it. There were some leftovers, which I look forward to.

Maybe a pudding pie later today. I have the pie shell set...

All this is a sign that I'm working. Really.