It's hard to believe it's almost the end of March already. Pesach is looming just around the corner, reminding me that I must use up or give away food and clean the kitchen (and ideally the rest of the house) and plan what I'm going to cook (and when I'm going to cook it), and get out my dishes and buy groceries and then cook. It's a busy time of year, and I'm feeling sufficiently overwhelmed by the prospect of it all that I'm considering rescheduling an interview I have next week, pushing it back to after Pesach, so I'm not trying to do so many things at once. Then again, to be honest, I'm also considering cancelling the interview altogether. The clarity I had six weeks ago about needing a new job has been fading, and what's replacing it seems to be a sense of security about where I am now, and excitement about the work that I'm doing. I'm no longer sure I need -- or want -- to leave.

In other exciting news, I cooked Sunday night! For the first time this year, I actually tried something new and mildly complex, namely 'crunchy curry fried chicken' from the enormous cookbook Liralen gave me a while back. This involved rubbing chicken with vinegar and curry powder, then dipping it in batter and frying it. It took me a while to figure out just how much to dip the pieces in the batter, and how long to fry each of them, but by the end I'd gotten it working nicely, and it came out really well. Plus it used up an entire cup of flour! Next time I make it I'm going to use boneless chicken breasts for Jim and drumsticks for me, since I'm sure it'll go much faster if I don't have to remove any bones.

I want to keep cooking, so I have plans to make goulash sometime this week -- probably tomorrow night -- and then next week I need to do something with the stir fry meat I have sitting around. Plus there's still some pasta to use up, but I figure whatever of that I don't use I can give to someone who will appreciate it.

After a discussion on a mailing list, I decided to start cataloguing my unread fantasy & science-fiction books, which coincided nicely with my need to shelve all the sf anthologies I got from Marith before she moved. As it turns out, I have 336 unread f&sf books. This doesn't include the anthologies, which have been shelved but not yet added to the spreadsheet. Looking at this list, I think I'll quit romancing the library quite so frequently for a while. The frightening thing is that this is just my f&sf collection -- not the nonfiction or historical fiction or mystery or mainstream fiction or young adult. I would not go so far as to say that I have too many books, because I don't think that's possible, but I do think I have too many unread books, and will be trying very hard to fix that by *gasp* reading books that I own for a while. Although I'm not sure how to break my library addiction. There's just something so satisfying about being able to take anything I want from so many choices. Then again, my belief is that if I get all my books organised, I'll feel much the same way about my home library -- until that far-off day when I've caught up with it and get to start buying massive quantities of books again.

I had a lovely lunch with Moria today, wherein I drank chai, ate adequate scrambled eggs, and discussed with her careers and criticism and gardening and other such things. I left laden with lemons and swiss chard, which is a very wonderful way to be, even if I'm not exactly sure what to do with the swiss chard. Moria suggested steaming it, or making a soup with it -- but I've never made a soup from scratch in my life. Perhaps the swiss chard is a sign that it's time to learn.

Yes, the scrambled eggs were adequate. I'm trying to learn the proper appreciation for words such as 'mediocre' and 'adequate'. I'm reading a collection of Thomas Albright's columns -- he was an art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle during the 60's and 70's and early 80's, before his death from lung cancer. One of the things he talks about repeatedly is his belief that society has lost sight of the meaning of the word 'mediocre' -- that all mediocre means is 'average', and that many works are in fact average, and calling them such is no insult. I've been thinking about this, and also about Albright's repeated statements that art criticism cannot be an objective experience. I don't know if I agree. It leads to a lot of questions about the purpose of criticism that I don't really have a handle on yet. They're interesting to think about, though.