The Fandrogyne

~ I'm pretty much finished going through my list of review copies and marking the amount of pages per book. There are some left on the list that aren't accounted for, in part because I didn't make note of the author's name at the time (I've been keeping this list for over 5 years) and the titles are too generic to find properly on GoodReads, so I might have to see if I can fill in some blanks if NetGalley's archives go back that far. But for the most part, I think I'll have a much easier time now deciding what to read based on whether I feel like reading something short and quick, or a doorstopper.

~ I had a lot of chicken breasts thawed that needed to be used soon, so I cut them into pieces, used some ranch Shake 'n' Bake that I picked up on sale at the grocery store the other day, and made a lot of large chicken nuggets. Very tasty, even cold. I love making homemade chicken nuggets like that, though usually I use a mix of panko and parmesan cheese instead of Shake 'n' Bake.

~ I finally got around to writing a letter to my grandmother, which I intended to send along with her Christmas present, and was getting ready to go out and mail it when I suddenly remembered that oh, the post office is closed on Saturday. So now I have to wait until tomorrow morning.

I'd be annoyed at having taken up time in which I wanted to do other things, but really, I'm terrible at writing letters, so it's good that I made myself do it, even if I couldn't mail it when I wanted to. I'd already been putting it off for a week, by that point, anyway.

~ The weather has been warm enough that some of the snow has started to melt, though there's still a lot of it around because it was so heavy. Also, when I thought a branch fell of a tree and knocked out the power line almost right at my front door, it turns out I was a little mistaken. It wasn't a branch. It was about half a tree. Right across the street there's a jagged tree trunk still sticking up, its top half missing, and that was what broke under the weight of the snow and came crashing down that night.

I feel pretty lucky that it wasn't bigger, and didn't hit this house when it fell. Or anyone else's house, for that matter! A downed power line is a lot easier to fix than a roof!

~ I finished another double-sided embroidered bookmark, which didn't turn out quite the way I'd envisioned, but I still like it. Playing with grey-on-grey embroidery can still end up looking good, sometimes.

(I want to list it for sale in my Etsy store, but currently the Internet is being really slow again, so that may not happen for a while. Sigh.)

I then ended up with a bunch of other designs that I want to try out, so I think it's time to settle back with some scrap fabric and see how well I can transfer what's in my head to something solid in the real world. With luck, it might even be something that doesn't look like butt!

~ I made yakimeshi again last night, only instead of using beef like I did last time, I used chicken, about twice the amount of fresh garlic that the original recipe called for, and some chopped green onions. Very tasty! But honestly, if you give me food that involves garlic, some sort of meat, and ponzu for flavour, I'm probably always going to say it's tasty.

~ Woke up to snow! Lots of snow! Not as much as if it was February 2015, mind you, but enough snow to be notable. It seems like a very good night to stay inside, drink lots of tea, and alternate between doing something artistic and reading a lot.

Shame I can't do those things simultaneously.

~ I spent most of last night either reading, or clicking around on freebie sites to see if there were any good samples that I could request. I used to love doing that, years ago. I got a lot of free samples then, usually of food or drink mixes, and it was nice to be able to try new things without any real investment on my part.

Now, though, I'm more likely to review the samples on Amazon than I am to just try it and never think of it again, which I've noticed lately has led to a whole load of offers for more free products. It's a never-ending cycle. I may not be formally reviewing books anymore, but it seems a lot of knock-off and tech companies want me to help boost their products by writing reviews.

And really, I'm not opposed to doing that, so long as the product's good and it's something I'll actually use. If a product is good, I like to be able to endorse it.

I don't want product reviews to take over my life, though. But there's less chance of that happening when the products aren't books. Books take a lot of time to read, and a good review usually consists of at least 5-7 paragraphs, so between writing and reading, book reviews can take up a lot of time. Small product reviews are comparatively simple. These wristbands that fit a FitBit Flex? Very comfortable, good variety of colours, work just like the official ones do only for half the price. Boom, review's done. (I flesh it out a little more than that, of course, but my point is it takes less time to test out a small product than it does to read a book.)

~ It snowed again last night. Normally I like the snow, and I get giddy and excited when the first real snowfall of the season happens, but all I can think now is how terrible the weather was last winter, with frequent blizzards and snowdrifts higher than my head and the daily work of clearing a path from the door to the road. It's not supposed to be as hard a winter this time, but I'm still a bit afraid of it.

~ I wrote over 3000 words yesterday. I think it's safe to say that I'm catching up to where I ought to be with NaNo!

~ My package from Amazon arrived today! I'm happy that all 12 bottles of ponzu arrived safely!

...If anyone's wondering why I ordered 12 bottles of ponzu at once, it's because I had a code for $10 off any order over $40, and the 12 together came to just under $40, which was actually the best deal. There were single bottles sold, but the code was only good for products sold and shipped directly by Amazon, and the 12-pack was the cheapest option they had. And none of the grocery stores around here stock ponzu anymore, so it was a choice between ordering a bunch from Amazon, or spending $18 on bus fare to another city, disrupting my sleep schedule, and having to stay there for an entire day in the hope that their Asian market had some instead. Ordering online was by far the better option!