A seething mass of turgid drama.

This week's Resolution Recipe: Quick "Baked" Beans.
"Baked beans is a favorite side dish, but it can take a long time to cook properly. Here is my quick stovetop version, with increased fruit and veg servings."
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Miss Beatrice woke me up around 12:30 AM with a series of extended "help me" yowls. She didn't have a hairball; I think she just wanted attention. Of course I had to get up and check.

Eventually I got back to sleep, but didn't sleep well the rest of the morning. Dragging today.
ETA: the lounge coffee was decaf, which I found out after I made a cup. That's cruel.

Last night the wife and I met at Left Door, a speakeasy on the other side of town. We went there once before last-minute with some friends when our intended bar was booked for a corporate event, and everyone liked it - so we thought we'd go again with a reservation so we could sit instead of standing at the bar.

Sadly it wasn't impressive this time. None of the house cocktails spoke to either of us. I ordered a Blood & Sand because it's thematically appropriate for a '20s bar and I wanted something I generally can't make at home. Our waiter didn't seem to understand what I was ordering... and then came back saying they didn't have the ingredients. (For the record: Scotch, vermouth, Cherry Heering, and orange juice. Nothing outrageous.) I am pretty sure that he didn't communicate it and/or the lone bartender didn't know how to make it. So we both had sidecars, which were okay but nothing more than that.

We ordered a round of oysters, which were fine, and a set of other appetizers, which were okay but tried a bit too hard. We decided not to order anything more and walked up and down the street a bit before getting a decent gelato.

Oh well. Date Night itself was fine, but I don't think we'll go back to the bar. There are plenty of other high-end bars that can make classic cocktails on demand.

This week's Resolution Recipe: moules à la basquaise.
"The hardest part of the dish is roasting the peppers - and that ain't hard. If you're a total chicken-head, you can simply substitute jarred pequillo peppers... but then no one will respect you in the morning."
( I am a chicken-head )

We went to Mists Coronet yesterday. Overall, I am glad we did and we had a good time.

We probably wouldn't have gone if it weren't for my SCA job - which is one major reason I took it. Once we're there we typically enjoy ourselves, but getting over the donwannas has been difficult. Anyway, slight car foo getting there due to the interchanges not being the same as the last umpty-hundredth time we went to the site, but no big deal.

Geoffrey and Crystal camped and have a new sunshade, so I hung out with them as part of St. Teresa. The wife spent the day next door with Morgan & Greg and more people. I wandered around a bit, chatted with people both job-related and not, and generally had a good low-key day. Due to a miscommunication we didn't bring any sunscreen, so my shoulders are a little burned but not too bad - my peasant bucket hat did its job.

We had dinner onsite with the rest of the Company. I brought a quick-pickle cucumber dish from Platina, which went well with the warm and dusty day, and creme bastarde (fake whipping cream) which is a sweetened milk and egg white dish. Kind of like rice pudding in being sweet and bland. We also had a lovely chicken in verjuice, mushrooms and chestnuts, aged cheese, and a chicken fritter that would have been very good direct from the fryer but was cool by the time it was served.

We made it home around 8:30 and I went straight to bed as soon as our stuff was out of the car. I am still tired today, from peopling and also from walking around on gopher-caused uneven ground.

We didn't finish watching The Gentlemen. What caused us to metaphorically throw the remote against the wall:

1. My previous rant about continually enabling trainwreck family members.
2. The weed-growing organization is supposedly professional and relatively low-drama. So why is the pothead botanist put in charge of delivering a van-full of product? He's a genius at breeding pot, but a total idiot otherwise. He'd be kept in the grow lab and any other responsibilities would go to someone with baseline competency.
3. The pothead botanist brings a prospective girlfriend into said (massive, underground) grow lab. There's no security?

Not so much "deus ex stupida" as lazy script-writing.

Around 3 AM we were awakened by an earthquake. Not a big one, but just one sharp jolt - so it felt close. Turns out it was around Berkeley and only a 4.3. The bad news: I did not get back to sleep before my 5 AM alarm. The good news: Miss Bea was unsettled and wanted pets and scritches. She stayed by my side for an hour, much longer than she normally deigns to pay attention to me.

Thursday the wife and I drove to the other side of the City for dinner and a movie. We went to our usual place when visiting this theater - a family-run Chinese restaurant. Sadly they aren't doing soup dumplings anymore but we still enjoyed some of our usuals: green onion pancake, green beans with chile, and dry-fried chicken wings (which are fabulous). The service is pretty slow but even with commute-hour traffic we had plenty of time.

We saw Spinal Tap II the day before it opened. I'm not quite sure how this indie theater gets to do that but I'm not complaining. The movie wasn't as good as the original, but it was never going to be. The Comicle put it well: it may not go to 11, only 8, but still rocks. We enjoyed it.

I have started brining 5 lbs pork loin to replenish our lonza stores, and am attempting a puff pastry sausage roll tonight for dinner. Mildly ambitious but that's okay for a weekend, and I'm using commercial puff pastry because I am not insane.

I didn't get to bed late, or sleep badly as far as I know. But the second cup of coffee didn't change my fatigue level any. A third is right out...

This week's Resolution Recipe: moules marinières.
"Mussels are beautiful. Mussels are delicious. Mussels are easy as hell to cook."
( Bourdain's cookbook has five easy steamed mussel recipes, and until now I had made none of them. )