Friends entertain you. Good friends keep you sane.

[mindstalk]

No, I won't explain that.  She knows who she is. :)

I discovered today that Vernor Vinge's The Witling has been reprinted.  Not sure if it was worth $14 but I bought it anyway.  Looking at the 1976 date, I wonder if the Snow/Summer theme it shares with Joan Vinge's Snow Queen is from them kicking ideas around as a couple.

Computers in Best Buy: rather quiet, but slow under Vista, even with a gig of RAM.  The help said the computers can't take XP -- no drivers -- which makes me nervous about Linuxing them.  Damnit, I want a quiet computer.  My CPU fan is whining again.

Borders computers claimed the translation of Twelve Kingdoms was in the store, but they lied.  I feel bookblocked by bookteasing computers.

I'm wondering how this MP3 is managing to sound scratchy now.

I now own a cast iron skillet, to replace the Teflon I destroyed through turning on the wrong burner.  Initial use was not as non-stick as advertised.

I don't remember the last time I got 8 hours of sleep.  And I'm even starting to have a more regular and earlier schedule of going to bed; my body just like waking up early.  This is not good for grad school.

D-flat Minor is a lot cleaner at the moment; I spent much of Sunday dusting, even moving furniture to clean up some disgusting stuff.  This is notable for me; I was raised to keep dishes cleaned nightly, but no regular dusting or vacuuming duty, and the habit from staying with my friends in LA for 6 weeks before Indiana wore off a couple of years ago.  I'm feeling kind of proud.  The place is still cluttered but I could teach swing dancing again at the moment.  The vacuum did a lot of work but I think there's a final layer of thin dust and dropped grit which may need some manual work.  Still, woot.

Comments

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

You seasoned/treated the pan?

And you're not going to use detergent to clean it?

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

It's a Lodge Logic, pre-seasoned pan. Between the greasy look and the fact that I was cooking bacon I thought I wouldn't need to add oil, but the red parts of the bacon stuck pretty quickly. The fried eggs didn't do too badly, but I added some olive oil in with the bacon grease to be safe. Still not as non-stick as the Teflon. And yeah, I've heard to avoid soap if possible. Though my one stiff brush has soap in the handle; I had some idea that it wouldn't leak if tightly screwed, but I'm not sure about that now.

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, not as non-stick as Teflon.

And it is detergent one wants to seriously avoid - it is good enough to get the fat out of the pores. Soap - e.g. what they put in SOS or Brillo - isn't as bad. I don't know the optimum choice between soapless scouring and scouring with soap for leaving enough to remain cleanable and removing enough to avoid other problems. We have some cast aluminum that we clean with the steel wool soap pads, but we do very little frying.

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

Consulted local expert, who wonders if pan might have been too hot. She never uses extra lube with bacon, but you have to give it time to supply its own before the meat gets a chance to stick.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Ah, that could be it. Standard protocol had seemed to be heating up the pan before adding food, so I did that. You're suggesting put the bacon into the cold pan and let it heat up? Makes some sense; I'll probably try it later today.

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

DW says that's what she does for bacon.