What’s the best thing to do when you’re feeling run-down and fed-up? Plan a mini-vacation to the Happiest Place on Earth! And so that’s what I did last week, and yesterday my Happiest Confirmation letter was waiting in my mailbox.

I’m going to DisneyWorld! For a day and a half.

But hey, it’s worth it, I’ve come to appreciate the value of a quick trip to the House of the Mouse and, coming as it will after both the Coronation and CRW events, it’s something to look forward to just for me in an already jam-packed month.

In the mean time, however, I still have lists to make for Coronation, meatballs to roll, some sort of project idea that has yet to come to me for the CRW, and various other projects vying for my attention. I really want to work on rock*paper*scissors again, too, give it a bit of an update and rework some of the products on there (and add all the new ones I’ve done in the mean time). I think I may use it as a test-run-site of a CMS I want to try out and familiarize myself with before proposing to switch another site I’m involved in over to a more current, functional platform (I hope!).

Yeah, that sounds like a good plan.

Wait, did I just increase my to-do list exponentially? I think I did… oh well! I do like to stay busy!

Things overheard at the movies Saturday:

*(while in line for tickets) “I’d rather see DaVinci Code ’cause I’m all into studyin’ an’ that crap.” (said by a very country-hick-hip boy of about 16 or 17 smoking a cigarette)

*(while waiting for palmie to arrive) “Well that’s great, maybe you should have bought food instead of porn.” (said by a woman on her cell phone, overshare much?)

*(while in the movie itself) “You know if you controlled your children they might actually behave.” (Palmie’s response was, ‘did my conscience just move three rows back and speak?’)

I will say, honestly, that I liked Over the Hedge and I would have liked it much more, I believe, were there not crying children (babies and toddlers, chain reaction style) whose parents would not leave the theatre with them, or the toddlers and small children who wandered up and down the theatre’s aisles, or if the idiots towards the front hadn’t gotten the brilliant idea to take flash photos inside the theatre about 2/3 into the movie. wtf? indeed.

Things I’m loving right now:

*The new Rosemary crackers by Carr: incredibly buttery and flavorful without being overpowering. And the box is that perfect shade of sage green (I know, shouldn’t it be rosemary green, but no).

*The very real possibility of a Disney weekend next month.

*That I believe I’ve picked the cruise for Mom’s 50th birthday next June: two days completely at sea framing a day spent docked in Cozumel.

*That it’s Monday, which means enough accumulated podcasts to take me through most of the day.

Things I’m working on:

*Prep for the Sunday night feast at Coronation. 15 eggplant casseroles are completed (topping to be added on site) and 6 of the 8 required lambikins are in my fridge waiting to be stuffed and rolled this week before finding homes in other people’s freezers.

*Several knitted Christmas presents. Go me!

*Designing a calendar geared towards my schedule and the schedule of those like me. Stay tuned.

Things I want to get back to:

*Painting. I want to get a large canvas painted for above my couch.

*Decorating. I really need to do something with the apartment.

*My own websites. Serious overhalul needed of the site in general and the store site.

How many times have we seen, both in art and in life, a girl chasing after a guy, but the guy is all ‘you’re not my type’? Or vice versa, really, because the pursuit is not restricted to one sex, or even to heterosexual relationships for that matter. But I digress.

So. I’m at the pool party (and let me just say that it was totally wonderful to see some old friends for the first time in ages), hanging out, chatting with strangers, etc. and I end up talking to this guy who’s really nice, really interesting, can carry on a great conversation, etc. But as we’re talking, comparing divorce stories, etc. I hear him saw things like he wants an earth woman, a hippie girl, he wants to marry once more and have another daughter. So while I’m talking to him, interested and all, I’m totally realizing that, frankly, I’m not his type.

No big deal right?

Well, we wandered off from each other kind of thing and then bumped into each other again, chat off and on for a bit, then he says he wants to talk to me in private. Well, lo and behold he’s *seriously* interested in me and all I can think is, I don’t want the same things he does. And he’s intense, almost like he’s telling me I don’t know what I want. But isn’t this bizarre?

Palmetto says I’m the heroine of my own chic lit novel. This doesn’t exactly dissuade that rumor, no?

Did I mention that, in the process of trying to find someplace quiet to talk, we ended up in the LAUNDRY ROOM (and thank goodness there was a window or it would have been way to claustrophobic in there) and, well, it’s a pool party and people are starting to leave so things are being tossed into the dryer and people keep sticking their head in… Sigh…

I tried to explain that I really thought he was in the throes of infatuation and to give it time to wear off a bit before going overboard. I’ve seen this before. Does that sound overly conceited or??? Seriously, this is not the first time that some guy who I’ve only met an hour or two ago is spouting forever-isms and such. I don’t know if its pheramones or maybe they see my dogged independence as a challenge, I don’t know…

Anyway, kind of a surreal ending to a surreal day. We’ll see if anything really comes of it (I have my doubts, but hey, I was interested in him before the intense bits so…)

er, I mean, kitchen.

After 7 stores in four hours (and purchases at 5) I finally had enough errands run that I could stay home for a bit and test some recipes for Coronation.

The cheese tajine worked out well but I had a leetle mishap with the Khabisa.

See, the ‘fun’ part of medieval recipes is figuring out what in the world they really mean, i.e. redacting them. Luckily someone already translated them, and there are charts on what the old measurement names mean in today’s cooking vernacular. The issue that faced me was figuring out what, exactly, 1/2 a mudd of semolina flour equated. Answer? About half of what I thought.

Mudds weren’t covered in my first resource so I had to go digging only to find where they equalled, supposedly, 4.somthing liters. A few conversion charts later I came up with about 16 cups (rounding down) = 1 mud. 16 cups is roughly 8 pounds, so half a mudd is 4 pounds. well, I was making a third of the recipe (because I only had one bottle of the pomegranate juice on hand) so I figured I needed 1.3 pounds of semolina flour. Simple enough, right?

Um…

So I boiled the pomegranate juice, sugar and rosewater twice then added the 1.3 pounds of semolina flour. The flour which immediately absorbed the juice mixture with plenty of room left over! Oops. So… apparently my math is a little shaky or my mudd source was not quite correct for my manuscript. Since I had the cheese tajine in the oven I couldn’t quite rush out for more juice until it came out, so I set the crumbly mixture to the side for a bit. The good news was that it was at least tasty.

I am so impressed that the nearest store actually carried the pomegranate juice. Winn-Dixie isn’t exactly known for its selection and pomegranate juice is probably not on the average WD-shopper’s list, but there it was in their miniscule chilled fruit section. Wohoo!

Thankfully the second batch of juice reliquified the first batch, though it was still a little tough to stir. Something tells me starting with the right amount of liquid will make it easier next time out. The resulting desserts were very purple, tasted pretty good, and were a little chewy, but again that might be from the ‘dessert, interrupted’ thing. But hey, a double recipe (well, I suppose it’s actually a 2/3 recipe all things considered) makes 6 dozen of the things.

Tomorrow morning I’ll test out the lentil and eggplant dishes, maybe even the lamb roulade, and some of them will go with me to the pool party tomorrow afternoon.