I like reading; I actually love reading. I think the written word was the greatest invention of man. Better than the wheel, honestly. Though, if I didn’t have a car with wheels, living in the middle of nowhere as I do at the present time, how would I get my books!!! But you know what I mean. I read this great book last week by Emma Holly: Strange Attractions. Now I know that she does write erotic fiction, and the title is a little risqué, but I have to tell you, I LOVED this book. Not for the romantic scenes, which are normally my favorite part of an Emma Holly. No, I liked this book for one specific aspect of the story. One of the lead male characters, B.G. Grantham is a physicist, and his theory is that every person is a quantum being. When it seems like the world is working against you, for example if you’re late for work even though you awoke and left eh house in more than enough time to arrive on time but the woman in front of you at the coffee shop takes twenty minutes to make up her mind and by doing so makes you late, it’s not really the world working against you. It’s the world living up to your expectations. As a quantum being, if you believe that you’re a messed up person who can’t get life right, that’s the way your life will go. The again, if you believe that you’re a wonderful person, then just by believing in yourself, things will start to go your way. I think that’s a great philosophy. Remember being in high school and hating the girl (or guy) who always came out on top. And s/he seemed even cocky about that belief. Because s/he had that belief, everything did go her/his way. It’s always said that we’re each our own worst critic. But I wonder… If we all believed in our selves with the same consistency as the bane of our high school existence, how much better would our world work for us? I think just the few chapters that dealt with B.G.’s theory of quantum beings was easier to understand and helped me more than any self-help book I ever read. Though, maybe I shouldn’t say that, as one of my college professors, Theresa Foy DiGeronimo, co-authored a self-help book that I did find very enlightening.
May 7th –
I’ll start this off by saying I’m a really bad cook. Not just bad – HORRIBLE. Sometimes, the dog won’t even eat what I’ve cooked. I decided yesterday that I was going to try to make meatloaf (this would probably be about my 20th attempt to make an edible meatloaf.) I looked up a recipe on-line at www.southernfood.about.com. I think that website has the easiest to follow directions on the internet. Would you believe I had to go through 10 recipes to find one that didn’t want ground pork mixed in with the ground beef!? As it was cooking, I was surprised that it actually smelled like a REAL meatloaf. And when it was done cooking, it tasted like meatloaf. Good meatloaf. I was shocked. So when I woke up this morning, I decided to push my luck, and try to make something else edible. So right now, the chicken terraki is marinating in the fridge for an hour. The recipe I found in this supposedly easy cookbook, quick food: easy, everyday ideas for busy cooks, called for Mirin. Of course, I didn’t look at the recipe before I left for the grocery store. So as I wander around looking for all the ingredients, I had to ponder what mirin is. I have this funny thing about me: I can’t ask someone who actually works in the grocery store where to find something. I don’t know, it’s like admitting failure. But I always figure it’s alright to ask a fellow shopper, because they’re looking around too, and then I just don’t feel as stupid. So I asked a woman in the produce aisle if she knew what mirin was. She assumed it was a spice, and told me to check the spice isle. Okay, looked there. No mirin. But it’s listed under soy sauce in the recipe, so let’s look in the international foods aisle. Nope, not there. And there were no customers in the aisle with me. But the were two people who looked like they worked there. Nope, can’t ask them outright. I will not admit defeat. So I picked up the cookbook, looked at the shelf again, and said in a loud voice, “What the hell is this stuff?” The man turns to me, and says “Sauces,” with his one eyebrow raised. “No, not that. This,” and I point to the cookbook, “mirin.” “Oh, that’s a Japanese cooking wine. We don’t have that here.” He ended up pointing me in the right direction, the other grocery store. And they had mirin. One dusty bottle of mirin, hiding behind a Goya cardboard display. I’m still not sure if there only being one bottle in one store in a twenty mile radius is a good thing or a bad thing.
