Arrrrh, in honor of Pirates I'm drinking a dark rum drunk and it's very tasty on a gorgeous afternoon in San Francisco.

It's got dark rum (Whaler's - I think ND brought it to the F2F?), a bit of upscale Dr. Swami & Bone Daddy's Gourmet Top Shelf Margarita Mix (made with real citrus pulp, unfiltered lemon & lime juice), Maraschino Liqueuer (unrelated to Maraschino cherries), and some Orangina for sweetness and citrus and fizz. Luscious.

I've only ever had the frozen ones.

Me too! :) We get the beef ones from Trader Joe's, and they are just fabulous. And cheap too!

Enchilada sauce is a spicy Mexican tomato sauce. It's YUMMY!

ION, it's official. My body hates me. I'm getting a yeast infection on my arm again...just like in the Spring when I was on steroids forever. And I'm on SUCH a low dose! They said I shouldn't experience *any* side effects on this low of a dose.

They lied!

Tried to page my PCP, but she's out of the hospital and being covered by someone I don't know. She's back in tomorrow morning, so I'll just wait, considering the pharmacy is closed now anyway.

AmyLiz, this is the enchilada sauce I make: [link]

And, the Mexican rice I make? Rice-a-Roni: [link]

I can cook from scratch! Really! It's just...there's not always time for it... So, I improvise. And slather EVERYTHING in sour cream. It's my secret.

Thanks, vw! I cook that way, too (when I cook, which isn't often). It's what I like about Rachael Ray. She doesn't make a big deal out of the fact that sometimes you can use decent shortcuts due to lack of time.

I wish I had a Trader Joe's near here.

I also wish I had one of Hec's drink. Yum.

I bet taquitos would actually be wicked easy to make. I think Deena makes them every once in a while. It's probably just meat wrapped in a soft tortilla then baked or fried. Easy peasy.

It's so exciting to read these stories of Nicole's experience in SF. She's going to look back on this and identify it as a time when the pieces settled together a little more solidly and her pride in her own eccentricity got a big boost. Go her! And go everyone for showing her how wonderful it is to be weird!

This. Oh, so much, this. I'm so happy Nicole is having a good time, and that she's still as much of an glorious eccentric as she was when I got the chance to meet her.

t waves tiredly

Stealing a few minutes to myself (house guests are swimming in neighbors' pool). Love them so very much but am so in need of down time, I can't tell you.

Thanks for all the congrats, everyone. We're very excited about the new house and about living together. Libkitty, we're moving over the first couple of weeks of August. We'd already planned and prepaid for a week in Seattle from July 26th to August 1st, and Drew is flat out with work until then anyway. So...August it is.

So glad that Nicole is having such a blast with Hec and JZ and Emmett. So sorry that vw is dealing with icky meds side effects.

I just had to read way too much material on the NY State math curriculum.

I feel your pain.

After looking through it, it actually seems like a more coherent curriculum than the standard one

I have some pretty big issues with it, actually, though those honestly basically come down to "If you were going to throw the traditional curriculum order out the window, thereby making it nigh impossible for students to easily switch states, couldn't you have taken the opprtunity to improve it SIGNIFICANTLY?" As it is, they learn basically the same material but they do it in an order that confuses both teachers and students looking elsewhere for help.

By 2008, New York should have switched back to a more standard Algebra->Geometry->Algebra II curriculum. At my school, since we're brand new, we're hoping to be allowed to start that immediately.

I'm trying to decide whether or not to take my dose of Predinsone tonight. My PCP is out, and I don't know the person covering for her, so I'm not sure that person would be overly helpful if I had him/her paged.

The other option I have is to page the doctor on call at the clinic. I'm pretty sure that the doctor who stopped in to listen to my lungs on Friday said she was on call all weekend if I needed anything. But, I've never seen her before, and she may not even remember me, because I wasn't her patient...she was just called in as a second opinion for the NP.

But, this rash is definitely a side effect of the prednisone. And, I'm pretty sure that the other symptoms I've been experiencing the last 30 hour, or so, are also side effects of the steroids.

Why does my body hate me so?

I'm so happy Nicole is having a good time, and that she's still as much of an glorious eccentric as she was when I got the chance to meet her.

You know who Nicole has been reminding me of? Tales of Teenage Ple. Pretty and twisted and smart and talented and alienated and full wroth where Michael Jackson impersonating = Rocky Horror performances.

I took Nicole and Emmett into Golden Gate Park this afternoon. It was gorgeous today, and AIDS Walk so it was crowded and carnivalesque on top of the usual Sunday stuff. The carousel was free and so was the face painting so we indulged them both. There were belly dancers out, and the regular swing dancers and roller disco, and at Stow Lake an entire troupe of Jane Austen Society Members in full Regency costume boating on the lake.

And honestly? That's not a particularly unusual July Sunday for San Francisco. Except that it wasn't foggy today.