Forty Hours a Week

I'm not dead, just resting. 

This working thing, I'd forgotten just how much time it sucks out of your life, leaving not a whole lot of time for the finer things, such as spinning, beading and knitting. Pretty sad, actually.

A couple of weeks ago I sold this necklace.  The stone is muscovite, and what you can't really see are the sparkles - it's like glitter suspended  in the rock. 

She wanted earrings to match, and even though I had no more of the fresh water pearls used in the rope, I thought I could make dangly spiral earrings all the same. Perhaps with some extra faceted glass beads.

Ugh, perhaps not.

Eventually I decided on fringy dangles instead, using beads the same colours as in the necklace. I hope she likes them.

I'm reserving judgement on the new job, though I feel right at home among the people in my group, even if almost the entire company are philistines when it comes to coffee. My commute is pretty painless although my gas consumption since being unemployed is way up by a factor of about three, probably. 

I definitely prefer the sloth and indolence.

This evening I made bouillabaisse for twenty apparently, although there were just four of us for dinner. I'd get up to take a photo of the remaining gloriousness, but I'm tired and in bed already (I love laptops), so you'll just have to take my word for it. I used a very large angry lobster, a huge dungeness crab, shrimp (with the heads still on, yum!), flounder and red snapper. If we'd included the baby octopus and manilla clams as we'd planned, I'd be able to feed the entire work team with the left-overs, but luckily all I need is a family of seven to ten to help me with my little problem. 

In general I'd just fake the recipe, but for grins I went to my favourite recipe site, epicurious.com and I'm really glad I did. The cherry on top was the rouille, a salty, garlicky, spicy and oily paste that rounded off the flavour perfectly. 

My friend Peter generally brings beer or cider, but Karl had already filled my fridge with pear cider, so instead Peter regifted me with chocolate that Matthias had brought him from Germany.

Oh.

My.

Gawd.

Lindt 70% with jalapeno and grenadilla. Passion fruit, if you must. This stuff is on a par with salmon roe sushi - yes, it's that good. It's so generously kind to your mouth that it can actually cure depression, make you fall in love, turn you into a better parent, and dissolve your crow's feet away completely. It's better than Amy's mint lemonade in summer (and that's saying something), better than my risotto with eggplant and anchovies that I can never stop eating, better than the d'affinois that Dale always brings to spinners - this is my new favourite food.

And apparently they also make it with mango and cayenne.

Oh yeah.