A post in which I am enjoying denial

Perfectly timed for my needs, Lori had planned a party at her place tonight. I slept in, woke up, put in a movie, and slept some more. Amazingly, I hadn't slept well last night. Go figure.

When I woke up I finished watching the movie I had put in. It's one of my favorites, the Joan Hickson version of an Agatha Christie book called Nemesis.

When that was over and I dragged my lazy carcass out of bed, it was time to get moving. But first I had to check email. There was a lovely email from Lady Beth. I had intended not to say anything about the PSA situation, at least until I had the results back from the specialist. But before I knew it, I had dumped the whole thing out in an email to Lady Beth. Sigh. Her plate is incredibly full - the last thing she needs is another problem. But she's a nurse, and I was pretty desperate for some kind of reassurance. I regretted it almost the minute I hit the button, but the email had already been sent. It's out there now.

I did some research online for a dish I want to make for the party tonight. Lori doesn't eat much of anything vegetable. Since I don't prepare meat, it limits the field of ingredients considerably; but she told me that she likes mushrooms, and she will eat potatoes. My idea was that I wanted to make mushroom potato puffs, but the more I read about it the more impractical it seemed:

1- They're not good cold. This means I would have to bake them at Lori's house. In addition to heating up her house during a party and the general kerfuffle of taking over her kitchen, this would mean dragging a pastry bag and stuff, and actually piping them out at her house. Way too much hassle.
2 - Piping them out with out my tips getting stopped up would require buying a new pastry bag for my old piping set. The new one doesn't include tips big enough to do this without getting gummed up with mushroom bits.
3 - I couldn't actually find a mushroom potato puff recipe. This would mean debuting a new, self-woogled recipe on company (a cardinal sin in the first place), while at the same time preparing it in a strange kitchen. Simply put, a recipe for failure.

Plus there was a simpler way to do this. I decided to do plain ole tater skins (something familiar which people would eat), stuffed with mushrooms a la Billy (to fancy them up a bit and take them out of the ordinary), and topped with cheddar cheese (which just makes everything better).

That decided, I went off to the flea market for ingredients. It was too late for glass, but I don't really need more glass anyway. I've become sensitive lately to the suspicion that I was collecting rather fixedly for a while to compensate for the lack of other things in my life. As useful as that little placebo was for a while, now that I'm wise to it I don't enjoy it as much. I'll still collect and enjoy it, but I'm going to back off on the compulsive hunting trips a bit.

I came home and baked my potatoes to give them time to cool, then cooked the mushrooms. By the time I had all this done, I was kind of wiped, and so lay down for a bit. It was sure to be a late night, and I am leery of awakening the E-B again. I'm enjoying the little hiatus I've had the benefit of for the last week or so.

I slept for about 30-45 minutes or so and felt refreshed when I got up. I hollowed out my potatoes while I watched the end of Jesus Christ Superstar on some new channel I recently realized I get that seems to cater to Broadway musicals. Superstar is an interesting little show. It is protested here every time it plays by a bunch of fundies who have never seen it (natch), but aside from it being set to contemporary music (of the time, anyway) it's a fairly straightforward telling of the Christ story. I suppose some of the arrangements could be deemed rather irreverent, but I can see that they were trying to make the story accessible. Surely anything that gets the message out should be a good thing? I did note that the end makes some rather incisive implied criticisms by juxtaposing the rawness of the crucifixion with the ceremony and show-biz atmosphere of modern worship. Perhaps that stings a bit.

***

After I finished getting ready I went over to Russ's shop to meet him and Billy for supper. MC and sa were there also, and it was nice to be asked to dinner along with them. (MC had a rather strident reaction to finding out that my blog is public, and so I have changed her reference by request).

What I didn't realize was that they had a ceremonial hair removal planned for today. sa had decided to offer MC his queue (apologies to sa - he comes from a Norse tradition, and I'm sure there is some Nordic term for this which isn't in my lexicon), which he had worn for many years, as Tribute. It was a very moving scene, and one which I wasn't expecting. I felt a bit like an interloper to be present at such an intimate moment in their relationship, and was quite touched when sa told me later that if there were any three Kindred people he would have wanted to be there, I was one of them.

We went out for sushi afterwards with the newly shorn sa, and had a grand meal where I managed not to spill anything on Russ.

Unsurprisingly by this point we were running late for Lori's. I ran by the house and got all my tater stuff. I was going to end up assembling them on site anyway, but this was still less invasive than doing puffs. I got to Lori's about 8:45, just in time to say goodbye to MC and sa, who had to head home.

I was feeling quite flustered and really wanted to sit down with a drink and a smoke, but went ahead and put the taters together first. It was really too late because the guests had already been eating for some time by the time we got there, but this was a special dish I was making for Lori and I wanted to finish it. Because it was so late, almost none of them were eaten (I had baked and hollowed out 5lbs of potatoes today, so I had quite a batch o' skins), but that was OK. Lori appreciated it, and thanked me for it. She kept some of them to eat tomorrow, and said that they were quite good. And as we all know, I am a shameless compliment whore.

Speaking of which. Nicole and Jim were there tonight. I haven't seen much of them in a while, but they are nice people, and I really like them both. Nicole is very sweet, and she is the one who christened me with my camp out name of "Story Steve", by which many people still know me.

Nicole told me tonight how much she enjoys reading my blog. Not only does this please my intellectual vanity, I'm embarrassed to say that it just always brings someone up in my estimation when they tell me they enjoy my writing. Since I (secretly) flatter myself that I'm a struggling Dostoyevsky flowering in the dark (well, usually secretly), I have great appreciation for those who recognize my unheralded genius. In all seriousness though, I have a unique relationship with my readers. Since this is a public blog I don't even know who most of them are. I rarely get comments, and so most of the time I'm not really terribly conscious of them. I think this is probably a good thing for me. It keeps my ego from growing into it's Godzilla-like potential (I sometimes think that God has sentenced me to toil in obscurity for a lifetime for my own good because I doubt that I would handle the trappings of fame at all well). At times it is nice to think about people reading my words (many in later years as a compulsory school exercise, I'm sure), but at the same time I use this as a type of diary, so at times it's very helpful to forget there's anyone watching. It helps to keep me honest. Nonetheless, I am always pleasantly surprised when someone tells me that they read and enjoy.

We adjourned to Lori's beautiful deck, where we spent the evening talking and visiting. It was a splendid-looking evening and the heat had backed off enough that we weren't terribly uncomfortable. I was able to just go into party mode, enjoy seeing everyone, and play my allotted role of court jester to the hilt; although I did raise a bit of unintended trouble by relating an email that I received after SELF. I had taken it in a humorous fashion, but Miss Kat, dana, and Billy were pretty upset about it. I tried to smooth that down as best I could. Perhaps I was more distracted than I thought. I did seem to be a bit off-stride; ordinarily I wouldn't have made a blunder like that, but it was a relatively small blemish on an otherwise lovely evening.

As I had anticipated, it turned into quite a late night. I packed up my (many) leftover taters, made my way home, and collapsed gratefully into bed.