It's times like this I'm glad that 99% of my friends are of the invisible-people-in-the-internet-box variety. (Actually, I'm glad of that all the time, because the internet just works better for me. Is that strange, to be happy that one has no meatspace friends? Oh well.)

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I don't cook with soup, either. (See above re: texture issues.) I'm pretty much a meat-and-pasta/pasta-and-veggies/meat-and-veggies type of cook, though I can make a mean stew.

Plei, for those of us at work, what is your OIAL purchase?

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I don't cook with soup.

How can you afford soup when you're buying porn in the middle of the night?

FWIW, I also recommend the stroller walks with baby. Particularly if you've got a coffee cup caddy on your stroller. That makes all the difference. When I was at home with baby Emmett, I only survived because I'd take him out for 90 minutes in the morning and 90 minutes in the afternoon. Out to the Aroboretum and back. Very sane making, and frugal.

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I can't cook with soup, because MSG gives me hives and migraines. There are a few canned soups that don't have MSG, but aside from tomato, I don't like them.

The only cooking with soup my mother ever did was boneless, skinless chicken breasts with a can of cream of chicken soup poured over them, baked in the oven. That wasn't bad for soup cooking.

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Out to the Aroboretum and back. Very sane making, and frugal.

It works even when you don't have any place pretty like an Arboretum to walk to. It's just good to get the daylight in your face. If it's a walk around a boring block, it's still better than sitting inside, only talking to us, all the time.

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Cook's Illustrated has a version of turkey tetrazini (and probably one of tuna casserole) with homemade bechamel and sauteed button mushrooms instead of cream of mushroom soup, but as much as I trust that their version is a vast improvement over the canned-soup kind...it's still a casserole made out of leftovers. And making a bechamel, as easy as it is, seems like the kind of work I want to do for real food, not laziness-comfort food.

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Oh. I'm having a thought. Now I'm having a plan.

makes shopping list

And now I'm having a wiggins.

Plei, I approve of your purchase. Oh, yes. (Though, of course, I have *current* Batgirl and Robin in mind, because I'm just built that way. And they belong together in their freaky silent craving-approval-of-the-scary-Batgod way.)

t edit And damn it, why isn't there more Tim/Cass being written?

t edit again And Plei, I got your e-mail and fully intend to reply, but lo, I am lazy.

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Nora - did you know a Whole Foods just opened (or is just about to open) at the Charles River Plaza (I think that's the name)? It's about a 5 minute walk from North Station, especially if you know the extra-double-secret back way in.

Ooh! I am still a little sktchy on the geography there- it's changed so much over the past 10 years, with the Garden/Fleet Center thing, Big Dig, and putting the T underground...

How do you get to Charles River Plaza?

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Is that strange, to be happy that one has no meatspace friends?

I'm finding more and more that meatspace friends are harder to deal with. The ones that I have the easiest time with are the ones I have through here. People I see on a regualr basis.

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Steph wins for most edits.

And also answers this:

Plei, for those of us at work, what is your OIAL purchase?

As she said, pervy Robin and Batgirl a la Thrillkiller (the BEST ELSEWORLDS EVAH!!1!) pencils.

We don't keep the stroller in the house. It lives in the trunk of the car.

Also, I dislike going for walks by myself. I tried it, to see if it would be nicer with the baby, but it was just as much of a spinich outing as it ever was. I get more pleasure from doing basic exercises in front of her, and she giggles as I count my reps. I don't know what's so funny about me counting to ten, but it appears to be comedy gold.

I need to find my pilates mat (basement. somewhere.) so that I have a better place to do said exercises than the kitchen floor.

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