PICTURE OF THE DAY

Signs of spring.

DAILY RAMBLING

Another day, another profligately glorious sunrise. Clearly the universe does not have an FX budget. I had a phone interview yesterday, and this one has moved on to an actual come-on-in interview, but that's not until Friday, so now I get to spend the week in something of an agony of tension. It sounds like a good job; challenging, but I far prefer that to being bored to tears, and a long commute, but I pretty much knew that would happen when we moved out here.

The saffron bean dish made wonderful soup, thinned out with a bit of vegetable stock and served with a simple salad. I am determined in future to stop using bottled dressing (at least those that are all high-fructose corn syrup, anyway), but can't quite bring myself to toss the bottles we already have (apparently there's a diet out there--one of the new ones that fetishizes Frenchness, not that I have a problem with that--where you toss out everything in your pantry that includes HFCS in the first three ingredients; a bit draconian but probably a good idea, to be honest), so we're going through them quite slowly. We don't have salad very often, and I'm not sure why. It's easy, requires no cooking, etc., but I just don't think of them unless we're having pasta, and even then my pasta dishes usually contain copious vegetables, so side dishes tend to be ignored. I seldom feel organized enough to coordinate several things simultaneously, hence my fondness for one-dish meals.

Did not make it to butcher yesterday, and today Dave has a number of errands to run, so it will probably be put off until later this week. That's okay; it's near a bookstore, and I fear being sucked in and, worse, buying something in the fervent hope that this time next week I'll have a job. Though on that topic, we seem to be toxic to local bookstores; as we moved here the used book store around the corner was in the process of closing (Dave came home with several armsful of acquisitions that first week), and now the antiquarian place around the other corner is dead (we never even got to go there, afraid of blowing our budget for several months should something catch our eye).

But the Tatnuck has been going strong for many years, so with luck they will continue to survive. We've only been there once so far, the first time my mother came to visit. Nice place, neat space, fairly good selection for a general bookstore (I have to admit I was spoiled by years and years of shopping at the Harvard Bookstore, Pandemonium, Wordsworth (now apparently gone except for their specialty children's book store). I haven't even eaten at their cafe yet, so they'd better stick around.

I'm getting tired of this fiscal responsibility thing. I'm really hoping to get a job soon enough that some of my severance package can be used for something as frivolous as a night out or a new CD or something without feeling like I'm fiddling while steering us toward the shoals of poverty.

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