Sunday: 3.22.09

11:05 p.m. And another weekend staggers to its end. Goodnight, gentle readers! See ya tomorrow!

10:58 p.m. Flouride rinse....

10:40 p.m. ....and the Quiz is ready to go. Mrs.5000 says "Tell the world I say goodnight." I'm ready to brush my teeth myself.

10:32 p.m. OK, I've come up with the pictures....

10:06 p.m. Finished movie. Finished fabric sorting. Was reminded by Mrs.5000 that it is Garbage Night, and we broke into our immaculately choreographed Garbage Night ritual. The neighbor's band was playing a cover of "Cruel to Be Kind," which was fun to sing along to.

And now, once again I must face the terrible terrible fact: I got no Quiz! And Monday just hours away!

9:24 p.m. Turns out "Singin' in the Rain" is actually fairly entertaining...

7:50 p.m. Evening has set in with a series of unremarkable tasks. Mrs.5000 and I have coordinated our calendars for the next couple of weeks. She has chosen Tuesday as the day I will take her on a "mystery date." I'm chatting with MyDogIsChelsea, who is bummed because she needs hardware and the hardware store is closed. (A skeptic of my choice to liveblog Sunday, she is now allowing that this post is "actually pretty entertaining." She is a generous soul.) And the last glimmers of sunset fade over the City of Roses.

Over the course of the day, I've continued to wash and dry a small mountain of old blankets and fleeces I bought in bulk at "The Bins" for use as quilt batting (stuffing, for you non-quilter types). Now a vast mountain of shabby fabric looms over the room. So I think, as a capper to this weekend excitement, that I'll watch the next Great Movie in the queue -- it's going to be "Singin' in the Rain," looks like -- and get this crap pressed and folded.

7:21 p.m. Kitchen finally restored to order. Time to put together the Monday Quiz. I usually have the Quizzes ready a few weeks in advance to avoid this kind of situation, but not this week...

6:45 p.m. Mrs.5000: Well, I'm going back to work in the basement.

michael5000: You're just going to leave me to clean up the kitchen all by myself? What kind of monster are you?!?

Mrs.5000: I'll try that on you next time.

michael5000: Hmm. It won't work.

Mrs.5000: Well, it isn't working this time either.

6:16 p.m. Have successfully done battle with the airlines. We're heading to Colorado at the end of June. Meanwhile: dinner.

5:43 p.m. I'm on hold with an airline, which feels TOTALLY old school. Like, pre-1997. But we've got this 2-for-1 thing that I don't know how to access from the web site. Really bad lite jazz.

The bread was awesome, though.

5:22 p.m. Found Mrs.5000 and got settled, but then she called her parents and wandered off. Caliban the cat came and laid down on me, which was pleasant. Typed up some recipes. Now, the timer has gone off, and the bread should be ready. Haven't eaten much since the long breakfast, so I'm excited about this.

4:40 p.m. Several rounds of chess later, I've dried off. Still some time before dinner -- I suppose I'll find where Mrs.5000 is and write up some of the day's cullinary exploits on the laptop.

4:24 p.m. Back. Three laps around Laurelhurst Park to get the blood moving. Spring is a-bustin' out all over out there, even on a grim day like today. Lots of pink and yellow blossoms everywhere. S'nice.

3:47 p.m. I've stretched, I've made a few moves in chess games, and now I'm ready to run. Once I find a hat. Oh, and shoes.

3:28 p.m. The oven is off, there's a load of dishes in the dishwasher, and I've starting typing up some "michael5000 Kitchen" entries. Have been listening to the classical station, and [very specific in-joke] have realized that Edmund Stone reminds me of Toby. [/in-joke] Now, it's finally time to go running. It looks like my timing has been good, as it's no longer hailing, not even raining really, and the temperature has soared into the high forties.


2:34 p.m. The granola is done, the soup is done, the lasagna is in the oven, the bread is in the bread machine, and I'm sweating like an ox. I hate cooking for a single meal, but I love the big production of cooking a lot of things at once.

The kitchen looks like a tornado hit, so now I suppose I ought to clean it.


1:08 p.m. E.G.G. 2.0 is in the oven, and enough of the alcoholic beverage to intoxicate and fatten a platoon has been blended up. Now, on to the soup. Mrs.5000 has made a couple of remarks about my "manly stomping about from one ingrediant to the next." I think she's making fun of me.

Occurs to me that I had intended to get the Monday Quiz set up back at the coffee shop. Damn.


12:42 p.m. And, we're off and running with Ex-Girlfriend's Granola 2.0. The hail has stopped. A slight touch of panic that I'm not going to get everything I hoped to do this weekend done has begun to set in, but this is an expected part of Sunday afternoon and arriving quite on schedule.


12:17 p.m. As the relentless hand of time drags us into Sunday afternoon, I've returned home. I haven't mentioned before, but it is damp, cloudy, and kind of miserable today -- barely over 40 F, when it was 60 F and sunny yesterday afternoon. Spring is a harsh mistress.

Vida demanded a photo, so here I am as a was a few minutes ago:

Note: Haircut, public Bible, chess.com, remains of pomegranite-blueberry smoothie.

As I was posting that picture, it began to hail briskly. My run later today should be all kinds of fun.

But that's for later! For now, it is going to be one of those Sunday afternoons when I do the michael5000 kitchen! That means I can skip lunch and nibble as I go. Today we're doing a soup, a bread, and an alcoholic beverage (!), as well as revisiting the "Ex-Girlfriend Granola" recipe. Might also do a lasagna, but no promises.

11:56 a.m. And another boring Michael Reads the Bible post is in the can! Time for a few quick chess moves, and then home to the castle.


11:23 a.m. Done reading. Now I'm about halfway through writing up the MRtB post.


11:00 a.m. Geez, the Book of Job is so turgid...


10:46 a.m. Well, that's probably enough depressing chess for one morning. Now, time for my weekly Bible-reading session. I used to be really self-conscious about doing my Bible reading in public places because, gosh, what if someone thought I was religious or something. I've since realized that a) there's no reason to think anyone is paying attention to me; b) there's no reason to think anyone who noticed me would care whether I was religious; and c) so what if they did?


10:10 a.m. God, my chess games are depressing. It seems like in the three months I've been playing a lot, I've just been getting worse and worse. My rating corroborates this.


9:37 a.m. OK, fully dressed and at the coffeeshop. The coffeeshop is just a few hundred feet from Castle5000; I've come here fairly often since they opened a few years ago, and a LOT since I got Bruno the Laptop, who can take advantage of the wi-fi. Ostensibly, I come here to "write," but spend at least as much time chatting and playing online chess. By socializing and playing chess in a coffeeshop, I join in a tradition going back at least as far as the glory years of the Ottoman Empire. That I am not interacting with the other people present with me in the physical space of the coffeeshop is neither here nor there.








I had a very light breakfast, so I am supplementing it now with the pomegranite-blueberry smoothy, for the antioxidants, and the coffeecake, because it looks yummy.





9:01 a.m. Got the laundry going and had breakfast -- just a little granola. Then, found myself reading an article in the New Yorker, and had to finish that. Contemplating getting dressed now.

8:24 a.m. I haven't moved. After the last update, I was messaged by Serendipity, and then there was chatting, and then I was messaged by Heatherbee, and then there was some concern about updating my profile picture to something more post-beard. Meanwhile, Mrs.5000 has woken up, so Sunday is really in full swing now! Better go get breakfast.


8:01 a.m. OK, up for good now. Didn't feel great yesterday afternoon, so I was in bed early and am up kind of late, for me.

So: Sunday! Let's see. I collected quite a bit of scrap fabric yesterday -- free boxes and "The Bins" -- so I better get some more of that in the washing machine. Then, I'll figure out something for breakfast.

5:40 a.m. Up briefly to pee. Back to bed.

I'm still asleep.