For the first time ever I attempted flour tortillas last night*. They tasted tortilla-like, I made a big mess and wonder how the hell you get them to be nice and round, but I was encouraged to try them again, this time with lard. See, I made them with evil-EVIL Crisco this first time, because I was not brave enough to try the less easy to work with fat. Or so I'm told! My mom made some with olive oil or (UGH) canola oil, but they never tasted anywhere as good as lard. But lard was verbotten at in my mom's kitchen, to the weird point where she actually used Crisco sometime for tamales, thinking Crisco was healthier than lard. Oh mom, the bastards lied to us :(

Anyway, yes, I feel bad about using Crisco, but now I have some lard in the fridge and think next weekend I'll make another batch and see if I can make tortillas that are closer to a round shape.




*My parents are from Jalisco (central Mexico), where corn tortillas are king. Flour tortillas are more of a staple in the northern part of Mexico. So, mom never learned to make them until she was about my age. I remember her first attempts not producing round and fluffy results, but she learned to do them over time.

I don't know exactly how I feel about last night's episode. It had a lot of stuff that I adored, while at the same time the writing kept throwing in stuff that made me cringe. I'm going to let it simmer for a while and not rewatch for a long time, maybe until the S5 DVDs come out.

Speaking of DVDs, thanks to razielsoul I have a shinny new set of S4 DVDs. This weekend might involve some marathon viewing of my favorites, as I plan out food shopping and cooking for the next week.

Tax season is starting, so at home this means I take over all food planning and preparation, break out the bento boxes and try to keep both me and Mr. L healthy until April 15th. I made mole this morning for our lunches, using the paste that I bought in Tlaquepaque. I really like this Oaxaca brand, Mayordomo, and will probably buy more online once I figure out the best place to place an order. According to my mom, the local Tijuana open air market (Mercado Hidalgo) has smaller name brands of Oaxacan chocolate, which I haven't tried, but I tried their pinole and it was amazing. It makes me hopeful for other yummy stuff that I can't get at my local Mexican markets in San Diego.

I've caught up on S3 Chuck and I can see the differences that a cut in the budget have made. There was one whole episode without a single scene in the Buy More, which was disturbing. It was kind of boring, but at least the next episode was recognizable as the old Chuck.

I like the Buy More characters and miss those that are gone because of what I assume where budget concerns. Although, I have to say I'm confused by the guest starts they're lining up so far. They seem on the expensive side, but maybe they're perceived as attracting people beyond the regular viewers. But I miss those who are gone :(

I put Hans Fallada's "Everyman Dies Alone" on hold last summer, while I did Infinite Summer, but it wasn't until last week that I finished the novel about civilian life under Nazi Germany. My husband noticed that I finished "Everyman Dies Alone" almost immediately after reading "Nothing to Envy", a non-fiction account of the lives of North Korea defectors, before their new life in the south.

The lives of ordinary people under a police state horrify me, but I keep reading. I keep thinking it can get this bad, anywhere. I don't believe any country is immune, although I do believe the US is many steps away from anything like what I read. But still, not immune.

Living where one has to be careful all the time, where being paranoid is a must, and everything one has been brought up to believe by the State turns out to be a lie, but where people still need to live their day to day lives like they do believe. Romances and bad marriages, promotions at work, worrying about fitting in and pleasing those you care about. Yeah, shudder worthy but compelling reading for me.

We got back from a trip to Portland to find that a skunk has been digging in the vegetable beds. A bunch of my poor little broccoli seedlings are dead, same for some beets and other veggies. So now we're ready to do battle! Or at least defend the perimeter.

In our neighborhood skunks are damned cheeky about getting into people's homes (we once had one come into our kitchen) so it's not a big surprise that this one has found digging for grubs in our yard much easier than sticking to the canyons.

Mr. L is in charge of skunk invasions. He has a system. We'll see!

Just said goodnight to friends we had over to share Three Kings cake. It was special this year since one friend was in town on holiday from Dublin and came with her boyfriend, who is from Lithuania. So I got to share a bit of Mexican tradition with some very lovely and warm people. Of course they wanted the plastic baby (a stand in for baby Jesus), even as I explained that normally people don't want the baby. In Mexico, the person who usually gets the baby has to make tamales on February second, so no one wants to go through that again so soon after Christmas.

I'm so full of cake and hot chocolate (and by that I mean I'm on a serious sugar high) that a steak or any kind of animal protein sounds quite delicious right about now.

Reading this.

I find it very difficult to see things from the POV of those who, to me, are completely irrational in their dislike of the OTW. But of course I'm not objective here, I've supported the OTW since the start and will continue to do so. I'm a member and make a small monthly contribution because I believe it's worthwhile.

I don't get it and tell myself to get over the fact that I'll probably never will, to just chill, otherwise I'll spend too much time trying to figure out motivations. But yeah, I already spent my lunch hour looking at that FW post and scratching my head.

I don't know how it is that some fics work so much better as audio files, it's not just the excellent narrator (FayJay), but WOW, the The Incestuous Courtship of The Antichrist's Bride podfic is SO MUCH FUN.

Just the thing to bring glee to my day!

Downloaded some more podfics and had to get rid of some of them right away. Bad mixing in of music and voice, making the narrator almost unintelligible. Developing a thing for some readers, which I can count on will be fun. However, I've been in a weird mood for a couple of days and can't settle on listening to anything for very long. Get itchy and restless with most stories. A weird one that might be just the thing to listen to today is The Incestuous Courtship of The Antichrist's Bride, which is not my favorite by Fleshflutter because I like her more serious stuff better, but I think the fic has a great reader in FayJay and has the possibility of being a better podfic than a lot of Fleshflutter's other stories.

There have been a lot of times I've been listening to old favorites in SGA and SPN and realize that they don't do it for me in audio form.

Episode 1.2 of V was an improvement from the pilot. It got me, and even Mr. Logovo, interested in seeing it next week. This time they didn't rush through the story and it is varying enough from the original miniseries that I want to see what happens next. I like the characters played by Elizabeth Mitchell and Morris Chestnut, so I have a hook right there to get invested with the show. The only thing missing is a real villain to hiss at, but Morena Baccarin is not it right now. Maybe ( 1.02 spoiler. )We'll see!

In a new effort to start dressing like a grown up (I've attempted this many times before, but I have jeans+tshirt enablers all around me) I managed to hurt my left foot by wearing heels. They weren't even that tall! *sigh*

My mom gave me this humongous bag for my birthday. I think she supports my efforts to stop dressing like a 14 year old boy. However, having no experience with huge leather handbags, I'm surprised by how heavy the thing is, what with the leather and the zippers and the heavy canvas material that makes up the lining. Do people normally walk around carrying these things and not get tired? It's like the heels thing, right? I'm just never going to get it. The bag is pretty though! I just can't put that much stuff into it's hugeness, otherwise I'll throw my back out or something.

V.- I found the pilot last night for the V reboot disappointing. It has potential and some characters I liked, but the script was very, very clunky. I'll give it a shot next week, see if it improves any.

Leverage.- I should learn to use DVR now that we got our new box, maybe see the show "live" for once. The first season was my happy place for a few days, as we zipped through the episodes. @nd season has been sometimes *meh*, but I so love Parker and Hardison. OK, and Eliot too.

I haven't seen a single episode of White Collar yet, which makes me a rare specimen in my flist. I will though! I just need to -um- figure out when it's on. This is why people use DVR, yes? I'm so used to downloading stuff, so now that I'm actually seeing my new(ish) shows with Mr. Logovo it means messing with an actual TV.

Last thing. Burn Notice? My husband likes it, I haven't been crazy about it, had seen some S2 episodes with him, but before my trip to Mexico I saw the pilot and a handful of S1 episodes. Wow, it feels like the same thing that happened to Burn Notice happened to Leverage in S2. Sort of losing some of it's kick, which means you (well, more like I) stay because a love of the characters, and sort of stick with it even if the writing is not as fresh. Lesson to self: Don't jump into a show in S2. Always go back.

60 Minutes tried to explain BitTorrent to the masses tonight. Oh 60 Minutes, you never fail in delivering the hottest new thing, about 4 yrs too late.

Fantastic new Supernatural vid by Killa.

Little Lion Man.

I don't get sniffly at vids, most times they don't get to me that way, but there are exceptions. My experience went from admiring the vid and choice of song to kind of trying not to get too teary eyed. But the good kind of tears.

Went to Hulu to see SGU and got bored and stopped after about 15 minutes. I think I'll wait a few episodes before I try that again, see what the flist reviews say. I kind of had a bad feeling about the main nerdy character. Like I've seen this guy so many times, the nerd loser who saves the day, that I started to figure out how they decided to write this character. I managed to get creeped out, because of all of the crap I heard before the show even premiered. I was imagining the writers either projecting or presenting this guy as the audience stand in and - ew.

I got my hands on Merlin 2.03 and that was so, so adorable! Oh, the Merlin and Arthur stuff was perfect. I needed more Gwen though. Can we get more Gwen and Morgana at the same time, plz?

I've consumed Leverage in huge amounts, now at S2, episode 5 I think. Ready now for some fic. I'm sure I saw some on the Yuletide site. Anyone care to rec their favorite story? I'd love me some Hardison/Parkinson/Eliot in any and all combinations or pairings. From friendshippy gen to threesome hotness, don't care, I just love them :D

Just had another wondeful lunch at the hole-in-the-wall place that serves the best guisados and Mexican homecooking in town, Super Cocina. Inexpensive too! Give me more of that green chile pork thing that I can't remember now what it was called! Yum!

Do no, do not if you can help it, read/listen to a translated version of Bolaño's 2666. I'm reading it in Spanish and have the audiobook in English, which I was listening to and from work. Mistake! When I got to part four and all the characters are Mexican, the English translation was missing a lot of the flavor. As I said, duh! How could this have been such a surprise? I think about translations and dubbing and language all the time. I guess I was just hoping this time it would be different, and I was excited to have had been able to download audible's file for only about 7 dollars and get completely into the novel even as I was driving.

I think part one of 2666, the one about The Critics, works in English sort of OK, but the closer I got in the narrative to the town of Santa Teresa, the more I realized I had to dump the audiobook. Hrrmp!

Now I need to download some podfic, to listen to instead.

Via edgarspp, a special recipe book that I'm guessing (hoping) is a joke. Plz?

http://www.lulu.com/content/4956212