forget your Unified Theory of Everything

I want to write, but every time I try I erase it all after three sentences. It's all very strange. I am a much less interesting person than I was two years ago (she says, ignoring the question of, "And how fascinating were you?").

Right. Five Things Make A...I can do this.

1. It's freaking me out a little that my tiny sports RPF fandom is suddenly popular. It's like having a favorite, out-of-the-way seat in a library, and walking in one morning to find someone else in it. Someone much cooler than you are.

2. If you happen to have a bag of artichoke hearts languishing in your freezer, there are worse things to do with it than this: Quinoa Salad with Artichokes and Parsley. It's best the day it's made, but it's okay as leftovers. Note that, although the recipe says it makes 8 servings, that's only if each serving is a miniscule 1/3 of a cup.

3. I bought new running shoes!

Unfortunately, my luck with meeting terrible people in sporting goods stores is holding true, since I bought them from a guy who hit one of my two instant rage buttons ("you ________ like a girl") by trotting out the "Sedin Sisters" insult (really? while selling a woman sports equipment? REALLY?). Then he told me how glad he was that Pronger was hurt. I should have demanded that the sale be cancelled, but I was too shocked to be thinking clearly.

Which brings us to...

4. I finally faced reality and had the realization that everyone else did months ago: Chris Pronger isn't coming back.

I've given warning in the past that I was going to deal badly when he retired. I started crying in the neighborhood CVS. I rather think that counts.

5. I missed Rosemary Sutcliff - except for the never-ending Sword at Sunset, about which I once said,

"...after over four hundred pages of extended cavalry campaigns I was ready to sell the Saxons East Anglia and throw in Kent at a discount. I'd have done almost anything for just one evil dwarf. It wouldn't even have needed to be a competent evil dwarf; I'd have taken one of the ones who *didn't* imprison the lady and *didn't* trick the knight into unfair odds, just to have something other than interminable descriptions of flanking maneuvers."

Anyway, I finally read Eagle of the Ninth - about which I've now said, "probably not as queer as it's written," and now I want all the stories about Cottia, who is entirely delightful.

I'm following up with an overdue rereading of The Two Towers - the Lord of the Rings is an autumn book for me, but then, we haven't really had a winter this year.