Stone Cold

Rain hard enough to wake me and the house is cold. It warmed to near 60 degrees yesterday and I'd let the fire go out long since. Crashed on the sofa, woke up dehydrated and starved, the temps had dropped down into the 40's and it's only getting colder, one of those cycles where one night's low is the next day's high. Snow tomorrow. Pretty well set. A very nice omelet of tenderloin tips, fried with onion, and some goat cheese. Park my old Selma, Alabama, rocker near the stove and read an Elmore Leonard while the house heats. Bath-robed, head-lamped, chuckling at some very clever dialog; if anyone saw me, they'd haul me away, but the truth is, it's three in the morning and the driveway must be as slick as goose shit. The cheese aisle at Kroger always deserves a glance, because it's well stocked, but this region is not very sophisticated in its taste for cheese, so I get some good things quite cheap. Goat cheese, some Irish butter that is exceptionally good, and one of my favorite English cheddars. I'd also picked up some pork loin chops, so I could make a large pork fried-rice. Gene Pitney on the radio, I remember that song, "Town Without Pity", a movie? My connection to popular culture has pretty much evaporated, I find it difficult to talk about games. Went for just a small walk, down my path on the logging road, where I've flagged a few things I want to remember to notice. Hard rain sweeps in again before I can get back to the house. Very cold rain and I get soaked almost instantly. I had a clothesline strung up in the girls old room because I'd washed some underwear by hand, so I stripped down in there and hung everything up. A full body rub with a bath towel is a great thing. Move my reading matter (an offprint of a long article about building Viking longboats) over to the island so I can start caramelizing an onion and a red pepper. I like to take forty minutes to do this, a large pat of butter in the 10 inch cast iron skillet, a wooden spoon; I stir, as Alicia pointed out, with my entire body. I'll have $6.54 tied up in this meal, and I expect it would feed four hungry people. I eat it out of a bowl, with a soup-spoon. Which makes me laugh about a piece I've been considering, the working title is A Brief History Of Eating Utensils; right now, I think I'm spending too much time on the fork. Now that the leaves are gone, I have to wear my long-billed sword-fishing hat because my writing window faces west. The library called and they were holding a couple of books for me, so I zipped into town, got the books, perfect timing with snow forecast, stopped at the pub. Cory wants me to take some stuff from the freezer (they're changing out appliances) and one thing is this huge brisket, 12 or 14 pounds. I know just how I want to cook it, a low-heat smoke that'll take about twenty-four hours. I wish I had the grill I finally had fabricated for me in Colorado, but it was lost in the divorce, and I wonder how I can trick that out. It's all about controlling temperature. Try these socks / they might keep your feet warm / good luck on staying dry. The hardest part is just staying awake.