Rum in My Tea

Fell over with the lurgi on Wednesday afternoon and haven't been fully right since. In fact, I'm not sure I'm significantly better now. It's "just a cold" but it seems to be of the kicking-my-ass-righteously variety of cold. So out with the dairy and in with the stock-based soups with lots of garlic and hot pepper oil. Last night I made scampi with eight cloves of garlic, and still couldn't taste the garlic, tho.

In, too, with honey and a tot of something high proof in my tea instead of milk. Last night, as Hal was cleaning up the counters, he spotted my current bottle of choice and said, "What? You're putting rum in your tea?" "It's medicinal," I cried. "Oh, I know that, it just seems so tacky." "Possibly, but there's no point in wasting good whisky on me now -- I can't taste anything anyhow."

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Lurgi being what it is, I haven't been accomplishing much lately.

Still, I've been slowly moving forward on the Elise-style hedgehog necklace I've started in multi-sized baroque pearls and sterling. There's about 2.5" of hedge-hoggy pearls in 21" of silver chain. Not that I mean to take the pearls all the way around. I suspect I'll taper off to bare chain after about 4-6" of hedgehog. I'll have to get more chain if I mean to make matching earrings -- that's the last of that particular length of sterling chain. And I do like the idea of earrings to go with. The short clusters of pearls look particularly charming. More than anything, though, I have to say how very pleased I am with the two pair of Lindström ergonomic pliers I finally picked up at Fusion beads, on Elise's advice. My God they're fabulous. At $50 per, they'd better be, but they really are a joy to work with, and make the wire-working a lot less prone to can't-quite-get-the-right-grip type frustrations.

I've got four stories not getting much of anywhere on the semi-front burner. "Proscenium Gate" is inching forward, currently just shy of 800 words, looking for 2400 when it's done, I'd guess. "Beanstalk" is more-or-less stalled at 1100 words, with no guess as to final length. I was never made to write Analog-type stories. The Tasting-the-Seasons story continues to evolve in my head, tantalizingly, but none of it has actually deigned to pass through the keyboard yet. And the local color story, due today? Just the kernel of an idea, waiting for the jolt of life. That one needs to go back in the agar for another swim. If I were feeling more hale, I could probably just push through on at least one, possibly two of them, but right now, I think I'll go have a nap. *sigh*