Have to bring Christmas treats for a Relief Society meeting tomorrow, so I spent my only free night this week baking. Like, three hours of it. :( Turned out pretty nice, though.

These are the cookies that are my family's secret recipe, from my mom's Hungarian side.



This is the last batch, the pretty one. Since I only make these once a year, pretty much, it took some trial and error to get it right. Oh well. People will still probably eat the imperfect ones.

I also - since I had extra pie crusts from Thanksgiving and needed to use them toute suite - made some quiche - spinach, bacon, tomatoes, onions, and Swiss cheese. It's tasty. It's also going to feed me for the next several days. Yay!






PS~ If you have a sore throat, don't eat pickles. It hurts. DX

Anybody need friends for Thanskgiving Dinner? phoenix_melody and I are staying in town, and any of you are welcome to join us. My house, next Thursday. (Fi says I'm in charge cuz it's at my house, so I'm coordinating.)

So post here if you'll be in town/coming, and let me know what you'll be bringing!



I need a food icon.

PS~ If you have a dream in which people keep asking you, "How do you ID a missing body?" you should let them know that their reasoning is wacky.

Also, if anybody's interested, the CW is marathoning "Vampire Diaries" December 14th through 18th (2 eps a day).

Quote of the day:
"Have we sent the 'Don't shoot, we're pathetic' transmission yet?"
-Farscape(?)

Feeling good today. :) It's become fall, and I have fun things going on this week (seeing "Thriller" tomorrow with Isaura, date on Thursday, and Snow Patrol concert on Saturday!). I'm wearing a fun hat, I enjoy my work, and I just sent off a letter to the City Attorney's Office asking for an update (it's been a few months).

( Accomplishments )

Also, I just renewed my LJ account, including extra icons, and I realized that I have TONS of icon space that I'm not using. I decided if I'm paying for it, I should be using it, right? So now I feel like hunting for icons. :P I'm into a few new TV shows that need representation, and there's some gorgeous art out there that I could icon-ize, and some seasonal ones, and I'd like some airy/earthy, peaceful-types, too. People, where do you go to find icons? What are your favorite icon communities?

I also want to make a custom mood-theme. I was working on an Avatar theme once upon a time, but I'm thinking now that maybe I should work at making a Muse mood-theme. Hmmmm....... ^_^

Quotes of the Day
Here's a tip to avoid death by celebrity: First off, get a life. They can't touch you if you're out doing something interesting.
- Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine

First you're an unknown, then you write one book and you move up to obscurity.
- Martin Myers

When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.
- Anatole France

***

So in an effort to put healthier carbs in my diet, I made these bran muffins the other day, and they turned out SO GOOD that I wanted to share the recipe with you. :D I found a classic bran muffin recipe online, then read through the comments for people's modifications and used the ones that sounded good to me. Here's the final recipe. It's full of whole grains and has virtually no fat!

( Click for tastiness )


PS~ Glee last night was AMAZING!! I bought "Somebody to Love" on iTunes right after watching it. :D

PPS~ My "Mentalist" season 1 box set came yesterday!! All the pictures of Simon Baker are of the GQ variety, and it's awesome. I'm excited to watch the special features. X3

I'm kind of in love with my story right now. It's rich and detailed and there are lots of interesting characters, and I'm very sad that I can't work on it until I finish moving. ;_; Fi, I blame you and your sounding-board-ness for making it worse today.

REEEEEEALLLY looking forward to being done moving.


Also to being done with this workout program (ouch! still only in week 2!) because then I could eat unhealthy things like pie and chicken strips and cheetos if I wanted to. And popcorn. ;_;

PS~ Just finished listening to Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys - very fun. I highly recommend the audiobook.

I hate busy weekends, particularly after a busy week. This one was really hard. But almost everything got done, so at least there's that. Here's hoping this week isn't as busy.

I made a boat-load of sushi for a ward activity on Saturday, and had leftover filler ingredients, so I made more yesterday. I went through three batches of rice to use them up. ^^;; I think it amounted to about eight or nine rolls of nine pieces each. It was good, though. And when I went to Chao's to get nori, I also picked up some furikake to use for making onigiri - yay! I've been wanting onigiri for a long time. (But I wore myself out making sushi, so it might be a while..)

I also went to the Vocal Point concert on Saturday, which was fun. I think they only had one or two new songs from last semester, which was sad, but it was still a good show. And when I brought a plate of sushi over to my brother last night, I got to talk to his roommate (who's in Vocal Point) about the show, too. :)

I did manage to get some work done on Muse, thank heavens. It's always frustrating when you feel the creative bug and don't have the freedom to indulge it. But I have a page 1! (I've had a sketch for page 0 for a while, but it needs major redrawing.) Page 1 is only one panel, though, and it's drawn out. Page 2 is next, and I'll hopefully work on that today. When I've got a few pages drawn, I'll scan them in and try inking them digitally - that'll help with the smoothness of line and the cleanup time (which always takes a while), and I can also work bigger than my actual drawing and then reduce it down for "print" to get cleaner images. ^_^ It might look less organic than hand-inking, but it may work better in the long run. We'll see.

For page 2, I need to decide what Argus looks like, because he's in it. ^^;; All these minor-ish characters keep demanding their designs before the more major characters, pfffft.. Ah well. I also need to get working on writing chapter 2 so that I have plenty of direction before I get there.

This morning I noticed pixiepilot has a mug with the NCIS seal on it. I thought it was cool, and started thinking about what similar thing I would want on a mug. My top, I think, would be the Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters seal - anyone know where I can find one? My Google-fu failed me; but I could probably make my own and order it from Cafepress or something.

PS~ Last night we went out to a steakhouse and had most of our meal paid for by chibidrunksanzo's company. It was LE TASTY! I had my leftover steak and potatoes for breakfast. I'm beginning to appreciate a lovely steak, and would like more.

It's been an interesting day, and pretty dang good. My coworker brought Jamba Juice for everyone, which was cool. Then my supervisor had a special thing planned for lunch: since we're almost completely done with the last of the sets for the Deadline o' Doom (*seven* cartridges in two months - in the past, they've taken us about six weeks apiece, if we're lucky), he appealed to our boss-boss to take us OUT of the office for lunch to celebrate/thank us for our hard work..

..at Ruby River.

..where I had real steak for the first time. (Weird, but true.) It was quite lovely, and they actually have very affordable lunch menus! (But I didn't like their root beer much - too much spice/kick, like those root beer barrel hard candies. I like my root beer mild and sweet, like A&W or Mug.)

Also, my first dragon grew up! Isn't he beautiful? I'm so addicted to the Dragon's Cave.. thanks a lot, pudges.. And my red dragon egg hatched, as well, my water dragon got his fins, and my stone dragon grew wings! I should have two more adults in short order, and I have two eggs left to hatch. ^_^

Here they are!


I think it would be way fun to make sprites like these. I wonder if they'd add new dragon species if somebody made them for 'em..?

Now I've got to start packing for real, so I can move my stuff over to the new place.

EDIT: Yay, two more eggs!!!!

Cake Mix Cookies

1 box cake mix (any flavor)
2 eggs
1/2 C oil

Preheat oven to 350. Beat eggs in a bowl, add cake mix and oil, and mix well. Spoon onto ungreased cookie sheet, two inches apart. Bake for 9-12 minutes. Leave on pan 1-2 minutes before removing.

Optional: Frost one cookie and top with another to make cookie sandwiches.

The recipes I checked for this varied between 2 and 5 dozen, but I got almost 3 dozen from it.



An excellent potluck tonight - good food and companionship from everyone.
We'll miss you, Gochan. <3

(And no, I'm not talking about Tenzou-taichou, though he's pretty cool too.)

I got off work about noon-ish today, because we ran out of things to do until the next wave of work; not a big deal, since it doesn't happen *too* often. But since it was lunchtime, and I've been reading a lot of Hana Kimi (and thereby remembering how much I love and miss Japan and things Japanese), I wanted to eat Japanese food for lunch. So I called my brother, who said he was game, and picked him up from the Wilk. We went to Yamato - which is on State Street just north of University Parkway in Orem - having been recommended it by my boss (who served a mission in Tokyo).

( The Experience! )

I'm totally going back there again and again until I've tried everything I want to try, and re-tried all my favorites. (And I'll be thrilled to drag any of you along, as well!) Next time: ramen!