What? Wednesday again? Time for me to tell you what's hot and what's not.
What's Hot
-- Tofu. I would eat it more often, except I have to decide that it's what I want a couple of hours ahead of time, and I usually forget to do that. I think I could happily eat an entire block of tofu, cut into pieces, marinated, and sauteed. This is sort of a perfect meal -- just a few things I like, even thought they didn't have much to do with each other.
-- Finding things you'd thought you'd lost and/or forgotten about. I don't want to reveal exactly how many layers of cast-aside junk there was in my bedroom closet, but I've gone through it all now. And there were quite a few, 'Oh, that's where that's been!' moments.
-- The library. When is the library ever NOT hot, right? I don't use it as often as I should (mostly because I spend my working hours reading books), but there were a few things I wanted to read the other day, and I remember I could do so for free. Neat.
-- People who use their smarts and years of education to explain things in a comprehensible and interesting way. Most of the books I read in my free time would fall, I guess, into the pop-science (?) category. Right now, I'm reading Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth, and I suddenly understood how carbon dating works -- no big deal. I'm currently waiting for Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia to arrive at my library for me; the brain + music is fascinating (check out Daniel J. Levitin's This Is Your Brain on Music).
What's Not
-- Dirty floors. I don't know exactly what happened over the past couple of weeks. Maybe I didn't dilute my old cleaner enough, or maybe a larger-than-normal amount of sidewalk salt got tracked into the house. But my floors were disgusting. It felt gross to walk through the house with socks on (I wouldn't want to imagine doing so barefoot). Not to worry, though -- I bought new (Method) floor cleaner, and they're far less horrifying now.
-- Using your powers for evil. I had an amazing English teacher in high school, and as a result, I scored really well on that whole... language-y portion of the SATs, thoroughly enjoyed getting my English degree, and am now a happy and successful person. But, as I was ruminating on nineteenth-century poets this evening, I remembered the way Walt Whitman had been introduced to me, when I was an impressionable sixteen year old. Said amazing English teacher apparently didn't rate old Walt, so his unit on Leaves of Grass (required) was rather skewed. Towards eye rolling. I later came to appreciate Whitman in college, but I still think back to high school and have decided it's a bit naughty to try to pass on your distaste for a poet like that.
Please pretend that this comment was made on delurking day, as I missed that entirely, but would be much happier thinking that today was the day lurkers are meant to post. Leaving comments is stressful!
About the tofu--have you tried not marinating it? I realize that it sounds kind of weird, because for ages my standard thing was tofu + marinade + three hours = delicious, but I have a job and a kid and a dog and books and cats and three hours is not really on the schedule. I've taken to pressing the water out as best I can (in, say, five minutes), then putting the sliced tofu into a hot skillet that's got a film of veggie oil on it. Press down on them while they cook, and after five minutes or so, flip sides--they get all nice and chewy. Then I dump on the marinade that I would've used, and it reduces and gets sucked into and coats the tofu, and while it's probably not quite as awesome as the three-hours stuff, it's pretty awesome for the fifteen minutes or so that it takes.
Unrelated to that, I was terribly impressed (and inspired) by your comment about making sausages the other day. It's now on my shortlist of things to try in the near future.
(Holy crap is this comment long. Sorry!)