I finished my wool socks last night, on one of the hottest evenings of the year so far. That did not stop me from wearing them for about two minutes before it became unbearable.

I tried two new recipes this week. Last Sunday I made a baked quinoa and cheese dish from Veggie Times that turned out well, even though quinoa gets absolutely everywhere. I found some in my knitting bag a couple days later. I thought the dish was a little bland so if I make it again I'd add chopped scallions and make sure the cheddar is a sharp or longhorn variety. It's also better sprinkled with Parmesan rather than the suggested additional cheddar.

The other recipe I made was black bean croquettes with fresh salsa from Eating Well. These turned out great, though I discovered too late that my tomatoes had sprouted an interesting filmy white mold and had to use diced canned tomatoes instead, with the only good part of the least spoiled tomato mixed in. I also served it over sliced avocado sprinkled with lime juice rather than combining diced avocado with the rest of the salsa. I'd also suggest flipping the croquettes at some point while still in the oven since one side gets nicely browned while the other stays too pale. They're even better the next day; had leftovers for lunch and dinner.

It's summer and foodie stunt tv is in full swing. The Next Food Network Star remains the most painful reality tv on the air, vividly illustrating that the best tv chefs are discovered and cultivated, not forced like bulbs in winter. Top Chef Masters improved with the second episode; the interaction between these chefs was thoroughly entertaining, and the challenges were much better.

I've had a hard time keeping up with much else on screen. In Plain Sight is having a great second season, and USA's new show Royal Pains is reasonably entertaining so far. I watched all of the first season of True Blood last weekend during the HBO free offer, but now am sadly stuck since I am not willing to pay $10/month more just to watch one show. I hear there are some good movies in theaters now as well. Maybe someday I'll get to see the inside of a theater again.

It's bloody hot this weekend, so of course I made salt and vinegar roasted potatoes yesterday for breakfast. (As previously mentioned my appetite has been weird lately, and I had to use up my potatoes which were rapidly going bad.) They were probably some of the best potatoes I've ever had. Dinner was gazpacho.

It's also really dry; the relative humidity dropped yesterday morning from 40% to 32% within about two hours. I have the vaporizer running as well, which helps keep the interior temp down by a degree or so.

The cats and I are sitting in the dark today trying to stay cool. Koosh loves going out on the patio on the leash now, but she always wants to go out at the hottest part of the day. I really want to finish the first sock of a pair for Cathy's mom since they have to be done before Friday, but it's hard to knit socks in the dark. We're currently watching In Cold Blood on TCM: it has "cold" in the title, the soundtrack is cool jazz, and it was shot in icy black and white.

On Monday I achieved a complete sock. Please hold your applause until completion of the companion. This one used a little bit more yarn than the last one that sprung a hole, so I finished the toe with some of the undyed Shelburne Farms yarn and it worked out splendidly. Last summer I compulsively knit dishcloths to keep from losing my mind and killing all our clients; this summer I think I will be compulsively knitting socks.

Late last week I received an "abnormal" medical test result and freaked out all weekend before I was able to get in to see the doctor first thing Monday and find out that it's not panic-worthy. For three days there I pretty much lost my appetite, and even though I now know that there's no reason for concern, there are only a few things that sound tasty. Last night I decided to make lemon rice pudding from Laurie Colwin's book More Home Cooking. She warns against using arborio rice, but it's all I had and sure enough, it was too thick (it's so dense I could cut it into squares). Unfortunately I didn't think of making the pudding until just after 8 pm, so it didn't get done until nearly 11 and still needed to chill. I ate a huge helping for breakfast this morning and it's really, really good. The entire time it was cooking, all I could think of was A.A. Milne's poem "Rice Pudding."

Somehow I managed to make an entirely green dinner tonight without intending to. For the main meal I made linguine with pesto, asparagus and feta, and a little while later wanted dessert. The only quick thing that sounded at all good was instant pistachio pudding.

This weekend I knitted my first sock which went very well until the very end when I was grafting the toes together. After the last stitch I turned it right side out, and discovered a rapidly growing hole at the toe where a stitch had broken or somehow been dropped. I'll give it a day or two before beginning again.

The last episode of Little Dorrit ran on Masterpiece Theater tonight. There's no way they could have known it when it was put on the schedule, but the collapsed Ponzi scheme that throws everything into chaos at the end bears an eerie resemblance to the Bernie Madoff affair, though in Dickens' story Merdle has the good grace to off himself. "Merdle" and "Madoff" even sound alike...

The cloche is done. For those of you who are unclear on what this is all about, this is what I was going for:












Image from the American Girl website.

Sorry for the weird lighting, but I had to work fast because the batteries in the camera were dying and I don't have any other AAs on hand at the moment. This is my awesome dessert tonight, courtesy of Mark Bittman: fresh strawberries drizzled with balsamic vinegar and seasoned with black pepper. Dinner was a scrambled egg with feta, green onion and Italian parsley. While Mr. Bittman doesn't really dwell on the same plane of existence as I do when it comes to food, I happened to catch this strawberry thing on his Best Recipes in the World show which happened to be on when I was busy doing other things, and it's really good.

I ate this fine meal tonight while watching the first installment of Little Dorrit on Masterpiece Theater, one of the few Dickens novels I've not read. It's not cool to like Dickens, but he's one of my favorites.

Serious procrastination today avoiding a smog check, cleaning the apartment, and finishing my taxes. I managed to finish knitting the Kit Kittredge-style cloche I've been making for Amanda and also make inroads to finishing the messed up handles on the shopping bag I started months ago. I hand felted the cloche in the kitchen sink and am waiting for it to dry before adding a green ribbon. I gave Amanda her Crissy doll last weekend, by the way, and she loved it. Wednesday night I went to see Jon in his second grade school play, so Auntie Kate is top of her game this week.

My mom really enjoys The Last Restaurant Standing on BBCA, and I've seen it promo'ed endlessly during The F Word, so last night when there was nothing else on I decided to give it a try. By the end I think my blood pressure had spiked into the red zone. The level of tension and grim desperation on the show is truly unbearable.

And did that couple actually try to serve up Welsh-Chinese food? What is that, exactly?

I went to a dinner party a couple of weeks ago thrown by a friend from library school, and one of the other guests was a psychology professor who wrote a diet book a few years back called The Shangri-La Diet. The basic premise that you can fool your brain into lowering your body's set point by slurping down a couple tablespoons of unflavored oil each day. Rita has been doing it since she had her baby and has lost 60 lbs total--down 20 lbs from before she got pregnant--and hasn't even been working out. She says she's only really hungry about once a day. I got the book and it's pretty interesting. Cathy and I are going to give it a try. He recommends flaxseed oil, which is quite good for you anyway. Seth is a pretty funny guy and currently teaches in Beijing.

I finished Sonny Barger's book earlier this week. Even though he has very different philosophies about life than I do, it's hard not to kinda like the guy.

After letting it languish untouched for months, I've been trying to make as much progress as possible on my Cozy shawl and have almost hit the halfway point. Because I was in a hurry when I bought the yarn and didn't have the nice people wind the skeins into balls at the store, I have to do it myself at the end of each ball. This time around I managed to make an unholy mess (while trying to keep Isis from "helping") which took a good four hours to untangle and rewind. I watched all of The Last Templar, an atrocious miniseries starring Mira Sorvino as the world's most incompetent archaeologist, while I worked on it, which is how I knew it took four hours.

This recent post on one of my favorite blogs made me laugh because we used to get raccoons in the backyard in Danville all the time and it was a constant effort to keep the cats out of their way, especially Koosh. I vividly recall one morning trying to shove Isis and Sparkle out the back door, surprised that they were resisting so much when usually they were frantic to get out. It suddenly dawned on my sleep-addled brain that something odd was taking place on the deck: two gigantic raccoons were going at it. Ours weren't quite as noisy as Laurie's pair apparently was, but a disquieting experience nonetheless.

Dumb episodes caused by really hot weather: first of all, this photo is from an incident back in late June when a 12-pack of Diet Pepsi that I was too lazy to carry in from the car exploded in my back seat on one of the many days that topped 100 degrees. I think it was about 106 this particular day. The first can exploded as I was driving out of the parking lot at work, and luckily I still had the empty cooler from our ash-scattering (ash-dumping?) trip to Mendocino in the back, so I was able to put the soda cans in there. Two more exploded before I got home. At the time, work was insanely busy so the cans stayed in the cooler for a couple of weeks, where they got all moldy and gross and I ended up having to clean the cooler out with baking soda and vinegar in my bathtub.

This afternoon I was making gazpacho for the second time this week 'cuz it's nearly 100 again today, when I dropped my fancy pepper mill (except mine is an earlier, less ergonomic model without the stand) into the soup. At that point I discovered I have no idea how to open the damn thing. Turning to the Web, I found several other bloggers who couldn't figure it out either, and posted instructions from the manufacturer. I got it rinsed out (not easy--peppercorns float), and am now hoping it will dry without rusting or molding.

My hands still hurt a lot so I haven't been able to knit for about 2 weeks, and even holding a book upright can cause pain. Instead, I've rediscovered jigsaw puzzles. I put this one together over about three evenings and a morning while watching the final season of Charmed on DVD. I am now working on a Peanuts-themed puzzle while I watch the first season of The Wire.

I've been enjoying the first season of Mad Men so much that even though I'm watching the episodes on On Demand I'm still tempted to buy the DVD set just for the commentaries. By chance, The Apartment with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine rose to the top of my Netflix queue just after I watched the MM season finale, which was perfect timing as it's set in the same year and revolves around office politics and affairs.

Could not have cared less about the finale of Hell's Kitchen. GR certainly likes perky blonds.

Knitting is mostly on hold lately because of persistent pain in my hands. The symptoms are neither classic carpal tunnel nor arthritis, so hopefully it'll go away soon with some rest. It's making yoga challenging, too.

E3 was this week and I doubt they'll hold another one next year. While losing the out-of-control megabooths and general show chaos was a good thing, the ESA's and IDG's disorganization meant a lot of press didn't come to the show and many of those that were there missed the Concourse pavilion booths entirely, thinking all the companies were up in meeting rooms. Some big companies even sent their demo'ers home Wednesday night, leaving their games unattended all day Thursday because the traffic in the pavilion was so light.

One of my clients did receive the distinction of having the Worst Trailer at E3 (maybe Ever) as decided by the trolls over at gametrailers.com, so that was something. Never mind that it wasn't exactly a trailer and had been thrown together in a couple of hours right before the show because the deal had just been signed and they wanted something to catch the attention of walk-bys. At least they're talking about the game.

Apparently the favorite dish on the child's menu around here is caterpillars in a blanket. I've now found three caterpillars on the patio, half torn out of their cocoons. Since I'm not finding them anywhere else I have to assume they're being dropped by swallows in their kid feeding frenzy. Either that or it's the vanguard of some bizarre plague.

No, I didn't post a photo.

Knitting lace--even if it's not terribly complicated--turns out to be one of those activities that takes over your mind, like Tetris or Katamari Damacy. Long after you put it aside, your brain just keeps on with it, to the point where it's hard to focus on anything else or even fall asleep. So much for my nice relaxing hobby.

Gah! I finished the final three rows on my reversible bag last night... only to find that I'd knitted the last panel on the wrong side. Sigh.

Instead of fixing it I made a ball out of one of the skeins of yarn I bought yesterday while watching Hell's Kitchen from Tuesday. I hate everyone on that show.

What is it with mayonnaise lately? First the guy on Top Chef didn't know it was just egg and oil, then it shows up in the relay race. Top Chef came up at lunch on Mother's Day because we're all watching it, and Paul told us how his friend Richard got all excited about making his own mayo with a hand blender after seeing it done on an infomercial in the middle of the night. Now Michael Ruhlman's blogging about mayo. Must be some kind of trendlet.

I've spent the past few days on press tour for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky (no, I didn't get a say in that annoying, overly-punctuated title) and some other games that aren't getting quite as much love, so I'm a little tired and cranky. Bought new yarn today in hopes of starting this shawl soon.

The baby swallows hatched yesterday evening, and the parents have been flying back and forth tirelessly catching bugs to feed them. These are the shell remnants I found on the patio under the nest. There were apparently three eggs but one was completely shattered. These were in better shape before I accidentally banged the newspaper down on them this morning. Can't hear any peeping yet, but it might be drowned out by the obnoxious racket all the baby ducks make. They're pretty damn cute but really noisy, from early in the morning to well into the night because it's been so hot the past few days. Today is not as bad--only in the high 90's now at 4.30.

When the full force of afternoon sun hits my apartment the only thing to do is close all the blinds, crank up the a/c, and hunker down. I've been knitting obsessively the past few days and managed to complete a pair of black merino handswarmers that Cathy wanted (yes, it's May but the a/c in her office is really cold) and the hat I started making for her mom back in November. I'm also close to finishing the Debbie Bliss reversible bag I've been working on for over a year since I decided I can't start anything new until some of these languishing UFOs have been taken care of.

I caught up on Lost while knitting today. Hurley and Ben sharing a candy bar in the previous week's episode was one of the best scenes ever. I've given up trying to figure out the show otherwise; just going to let it unfold in its own sweet time. I did catch an ad for the new Mole series, which will hopefully be as good as the first.

Tomorrow I go to LA for a press tour. I hear it's cooler there.

First my driver's-side headlight went out. Then my furnace broke. I got the headlight fixed this morning, after Rebekah and I went down to the parking lot yesterday and fiddled around with it ourselves and only succeeded in detatching the wires. I'm in less of a hurry about the furnace since it hasn't gotten colder than 58 in the apartment and I don't mind being a little on the chilly side. During the day it heats up to about 66 anyway, so I've just been running the space heater (the one that looks like a deranged fencer's head poking up through the floor) for a little while in the evenings. That's hardly energy efficient, though, so I guess I need to call maintenance.

Was in a used bookstore over the weekend flipping through their old cross stitch and knitting mags and found this knitting leaflet from 1972 (click for up-close detail, if you dare):





Where to begin? The hair? The "tans?" The shiny pants? The silky neck scarves? Maybe it's because I live near San Francisco, but this leaflet seems to be some kind of early example of soft core gay porn... from the knitting section.