Heidi submitted a it's that you don't know how they're easy.

They're holding a Pseudo[0] in memory of Scott this weekend; I'm not sure if I'll be able to fly in and out of Chicago for it, but I'd like to. I've got to run the numbers and my calendar. It'd mean I would be doing the MIT Mystery Hunt mostly remotely again, but you know what? I can Hunt any year.

It turns out that cooking is an excellent way to kick yourself out of a mild funk and get moving again. My keyboard breaks today were spent buying cheese, chopping carrots, steaming broccoli, and the like, and at the end of the day I have produced...

  • Cream of broccoli soup
  • Macaroni and cheese (from scratch)
  • Garlic vegetable noodle stirfry
  • Pasta bake
  • Grilled asparagus
  • Leek and potato soup, redolent with fresh dill
  • Chopped pizza toppings for tomorrow night
  • Ziploc bags of peeled and chopped carrots and peppers for future recipe use

At this point I ran out of containers to put food in, or I'd have kept on going with the eggplant and the shrimp and the salad greens and such. My ability to focus mentally without a physical activity to ground me came back around midnight; I think sometimes I need to have people around that I'm not interacting with so I get a low level of activity that my brain can filter out and ignore while still staying stimulated enough to not go rocketing around the place. In college, I could walk into a hallway nook and plonk down and a friend would probably be studying there; it's a little harder now.

Audrey likes me bringing her to school, and so I was declared at least partially Ready To Be A Mommy. "NO, I am NOT," I declared. "Sit down. Eat your soup."

[0] For those who didn't go to IMSA: Club Pseudo is our open-mic/improv-theater night, held approximately monthly. Scott was a big Pseudo fan when he was at IMSA - he's one of the backup singers in Steve Blunt's classic "IMSA Diddy-Wah" music video, something I only realized today upon seeing it again, despite having been a fan of the (inside-joke) song for nearly a decade. It may have something to do with the extremely long hair.