duck-shaped pain

I don't know what happened to the car after I left. It didn't make it on the news or in the paper, which was surprising. Usually, anything out of the ordinary makes it on TV, since there's not a lot going on around here. Two weeks ago, one of the local newscasts had a live report from down at Sam's Club, covering the fact that they had changed their lunch menu and were now charging more for pizza. This went on for about five minutes -- which is about forever in TV news time. If a five-cent increase in pizza prices warrants a mention, certainly a car lighting on fire in the middle of the day should get more -- an alarming graphic, a follow-up report the next day, ominously titled "Could It Happen To You?"

I guess seeing the car messed me up and somehow diminished my instincts for self-preservation, because I made spaghetti alla carbonara for dinner last night. Most of you have probably eaten it at least once, but for those who need assistance, it's a pasta dish consisting of spaghetti, garlic, raw eggs, cheese and prosciutto. [1] You cook the spaghetti, briefly cook the garlic and prosciutto in some olive oil, and then combine them along with 3 raw eggs and half a cup of Parmesan cheese and some pepper. It's really rich and really tasty, but I couldn't manage to eat much of it because it was so filling. Mine was relatively light -- many other spaghetti alla carbonara recipes also call for some measure of heavy cream.

Today may or may not be the last weekday of my vacation -- I have not been able to get a clear answer as to what's going on over at work. If it is my last day, I'm mildly disappointed -- I finally got myself a good rut established, and it seems a shame to disrupt that. Coffee in the morning, bad decorating/cooking shows while I drink my coffee, then writing for a while, heading over to Horrible Coffee [2] in the afternoon to read for a while, make dinner, watch TV, messing around on the net, more reading, then a bath, then bed. If not, I'm also mildly disappointed -- earning money is a good thing and having something to complain about is a better thing.

[1] Pancetta is the traditional meat for this dish, but there was none to be found, so prosciutto it was (even though that's technically ham), because I hate nasty supermarket bacon.

[2] I haven't mentioned Horrible Coffee in quite a while, for the simple reason that I haven't been there for a while, which is explained by the name that I give the place. A few months ago, it changed hands and got renovated, so I decided to give it another shot. On my first visit, I was not pleased, for whoever had decorated it had accomplished something very difficult -- making the place seem more homey and inviting while at the same time making it much more impossible to use. This was accomplished by taking out most of the booths and replacing them with small, glass-topped tables. Small tables mean less room to spread out one's books and stuff (remember, this place is right next to the college, so they get a lot of the studying-and-spreading-out-one's-crap crowd), and glass-topped tables are notoriously unpleasant to write on. They put in some comfortable-looking big overstuffed chairs, but it turns out they're kind of narrow, so no real relaxing can take place, and there's no tables beside the chairs to put drinks on. This means that whoever is sitting in these chairs has to hold their drinks at all times, which makes it difficult to read or study while sitting. On the positive side, though, they replaced their seedy black futon with a really comfortable couch, which is good, and they put in a fireplace, and they got rid of all the drinks with the silly names (no more Uncompaghre Uplifts and Chokka Mochas) and started spelling the names of their remaining drinks correctly (I refused to order my favorite drink there for a long time, because they referred to it, for unknown reasons, as an Americana -- which invokes visions of folk art and rusted-out tractors instead of coffee refreshment). So I've been going back, and the bad aspects occupy less of my mind every time I visit. Plus, it's cheap.

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