randomness

Radio Paradise is going to kill my productivity today, they've been playing all kinds of really mellow stuff all afternoon. I do love this song though, so I'm not turning it off; if need be I'll go dig out some BT for the last hour and a half of my day to help perk me up. The mostly-quiet music combined with the generally gray day and my inability to resist picking up "A Rumor of War" last night even when I should've been asleep hours before are making me really, really want to take a nap.

I can already tell that the shorter days are starting to get to me. It's getting harder and harder to inspire myself to get out of bed in the morning and I definitely need to up the 5-HTP consumption a bit. My mission, which I choose to accept, is to not let myself turn back into a total hermit for the winter. The end of the year always is a little depressing for me, as I tend to do the "look back at the last year and wonder what exactly it was I wasted my time doing all those months" thing. Then I get morbid thinking about the fact that given family history it's quite possible awful health-related things are in my reasonably-near future (note to self: schedule doctor's appointments for physicals and other checkups in the next few weeks), and then I'm absolutely no fun to be around. More so than usual, I mean. Really, I can get annoyingly morbid if I let myself get caught up in it, which I try not to do since it is, after all, quite pointless. For the future though, I'm going to try to avoid getting sucked into that particular mental death (heh) spiral and follow the advice of that great philosopher Tim McGraw to "live like you were dying". I got plans, baby; now it's just a matter of getting off my butt and making them happen. This already implies that I'm worlds better off than I was at this time last year, since a year ago I'd already be hunkered down under my blankets ready to ride out the dark season in my little cave and not emerge until spring, no matter what.

Speaking of plans, next Monday is my 6th anniversary with nminusone. Go us. Unfortunately, those plans I've got? Not so much for this coming weekend, as I'm sort of at a loss as to what we should do, if anything. I've got about 65 hours of vacation to burn by the end of the year, so I suspect that no matter what, I should go ahead and take a day or two off.

Huh. Okay, for a complete tangent: from gibsonfeed, source of much goodness lately:

Where [the proposed film of "Pattern Recognition"] stands at the moment, and literally all I know about it: Peter Weir (of whom I have been a huge fan since age twenty or so, so that's very nice indeed) wants to direct it, there's an option deal in place, and Weir has a contract with Warner to...well, not to go ahead and shoot it, but to go forward toward that end. Toward which he's hired a screenwriter -- whose name I've forgotten (which is actually a good sign with regard to Weir's choice) -- and has gone to London, Tokyo and Moscow to look at locations.

tonight's dinner experiment

1/3 of a package of soba
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup sliced white mushrooms
1 sliced carrot
4-6 quarter-sized pieces of sliced fresh ginger
2 (or 3) sliced garlic cloves
2 chopped scallions
1 cup snow peas
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 lb large shrimp

Cook the noodles, then drain, rinse in cold water and set aside. Combine everything else except for the snow peas and shrimp in a large saucepan and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the vegetables are tender, 10-15 minutes or so. Add the shrimp and snow peas and simmer another 3-4 minutes. Divide the soba into bowls and spoon the broth mixture over it.

Yummy.

And now I and my wine and my dinner are off to watch the first few episodes of "Fushigi Yugi - The Mysterious Play".