Home of the Snarkmaiden

Along with most of the rest of the country, we've been having a chilly week. Nothing on places like Madison and Minneapolis, with temperatures in single digits, but by local standards, damn' cold. Sleeping at night is complicated by the random pile of heat-seeking mammals weighting down the comforter making it tricky to roll over in bed, and pretty much impossible to pull the covers over whatever shoulder is exposed thereby. But by pulling out all the stops in my usual cold-weather layering routine I've been managing to keep reasonably warm. I hate to guess what the electric bill will be like for December, though. And I broke down and ordered a whole suite of Thermaskin long underwear from Land's End. Of course, by the time it arrives, the cold spell will have broken and the longies will be temporarily redundant. But I expect they'll come to some use later in the winter.

Also had a hot toddy for the first time this weekend. Hal and I had meant to get to get to Cederberg Tea House to try the South African tea that friend M. raves about, but in the event the tunnel on 99 was closed making traffic on any southerly approach to Queen Anne pretty well unspeakable, and so we gave up and retreated to dear old Hudson for something warm and consoling. It being too damn' cold to have a Bloody Mary (my usual at Hudson, because they are reDONKulously good there), I decided to try a hot toddy instead. Lovely. Really quite nice. I've been playing with recipes since and have decided that whole cloves are a mistake unless you spike them into the lemon peel because otherwise you just wind up with a mouth full of cloves on the first sip, but otherwise it's a gorgeous drink to curl up around when it's too friggin' cold to do much besides huddle under a blanket and a warm dog and watch The Good Wife.

Both 2011 TAFF winner John Coxon, and 2011 DUFF winner Dave Cake, should be in attendance at this month's Fans with Beers event. A finer pair of dudes you couldn't hope to meet. If you plan to be in Seattle this Sunday and want to meet them, or just generally hang out, drink beer, and chat with SF fans, please feel welcome and encouraged to join us:

What: Seattle Second Sunday Pub Meet
Where: The Pig N Whistle, Greenwood
8412 Greenwood Ave N
Seattle, WA 98103
Pub: (206) 782-6044
When: Sunday, August 14
4:00 pm - 6:30 pm or later

Mostly for my reference, but for anyone looking to drink single malt whisky in Seattle, there are a number of options listed in this entry of the occasionally useful seattle group.

The Seattle Tun, a Second Sunday collation of fans with beers, is an open pubmeet for Seattle Area science fiction fans who like to socialize, talk, argue, gossip, and drink beer with like-minded fen. If you expect to be in Seattle and would enjoy a bit of beer-lubricated conversation on a wide range of topics, only some of which include Sinus Friction (Never call it Si Fri!), please feel free to join in.

Where: The Pub @ Third Place, Ravenna
6504 20th Ave. NE, Seattle, WA 98115
Pub: (206) 523-0217
When: Sunday, April 13
4:30 pm - 6:30 pm or later

The Pub is open 3-10pm on Sundays; NB that the bookstore upstairs closes at 7:00 pm so if you need to service your Jones for books, or want to exit by the bookstore door, you need to do it before 7:00. Otherwise it's just a quick nip 'round the block from the pub door to the bookstore parking lot.

I'm still far from well, but yesterday libertango did manage to get me out of the house long enough to eat some lunch at Noah's. At the last moment I took a pass on the bagel&lox, and went for a pastrami-on-bagel sandwich instead on the theory that if I continue to avoid large glops of tasty dairy I may also continue to avoid glops of sinus-stopping mucous the consistency of set rubber cement. Yes, you're welcome for that image. Have some rhino-snot pie.

After food I was wobbly but not quite ready to fall over. I suggested that we might seek out the Kirkland Sur la Table which was supposed to be right nearby, so I could maybe spend some of the gift card I had been hoarding since I moved up. (The other local outlet is in Pike Place, which is singularly inconvenient were one to decide to spend one's loot on a cast iron thingumy, or a Kitchenaid whatsit, since the only times when it is possible to get the car near enough to the store to load into are times when Sur la Table has been closed for some while.)

I wandered around fingering things and exclaiming over others for the half-hour or so before the flu decided it was time to lie down again. I'm very pleased to see that someone has cottoned on to the idea of making the little fluted brioche and petit four tins in a non-stick-coated version. That is an invention that was morally necessary some time ago. And I'm very curious about trying some of the new silicone cake pans, which are supposedly not only non-stick (and able to withstand baking temperatures) but flexible enough to make it easy to simply pop your finished baked-goods out. Very whiz-bang. But I couldn't quite bring myself to trust a cake pan that is the color and consistency of a cheap Chinese marital aid.

On the whole, I find myself still vaguely disgruntled by Sur la Table. They display prominently weird one-of gizmos that I have no earthly use for, and hide, or do not have, stuff that I consider basic. They have a wall full of pepper mills, but not the William Bounds "love" mill that actually works. They have balloon whisks in every imaginable size, some large enough to bring us back to the topic of marital aids, but no spiral whisks. Okay, I take that back -- they had one weird silicone spiral which, while made inline to its shaft, could be made to take the right 45 degree angle and be used as a spiral whisk. But just that one.
And while they do have tampico bristle "vegetable" brushes, they cleverly hide them behind and amongst the vast array of nylon-bristled ones. Feh.

I came away with some pretty good loot, though. I bought two heinously expensive lifetime-non-stick cookie sheets (though I had to ask to be shown something that wasn't a jellyroll pan), three Orrefors knock-off rocks glasses (they didn't have more), a handful of the tampico brushes, and two sizes of the fancy, brightly-colored silicone spatulas that le creuset makes. Mine are red, natch. And I still have a hefty balance on the card. Woot.