I'd like to sincerely declare that I'm sort of fed up with commuting so far to school everyday, for the following reasons:

1. The fastest we can ever get there is in 40 minutes, and that's if we take the NJ Turnpike, speed along it, and do it in the precise middle of the day when there is no traffic.
2. Usually, it takes an hour to get there.
3. In rush hour, coming home from my classes two days a week, it can take up to 80 minutes to get home.
4. I can't drive at night. I'm night-blind; I'd be a hazard on the road to myself and many other drivers. There's a good chance I'd end up dead. It's a no-go for me.
   
5. All of the good classes I want to take next semester are in the late afternoon/early evening.
6. My mom, who has been very patient driving me this semester, has declared that she has had enough. She refuses to drive me more than two days a week next semester.
7. The classes I want are four days a week.
8. I am deeply troubled.
9. I do not know how to solve this.
10. We cannot afford to move closer to school, and since I'm non-matriculated, that'd be rather foolish.
11. Before you ask, the closest bus to where I want to go is 25 minutes from my house.
12. Also, the closest train to where I want to go is 32 minutes.
13. Multiply those by 2 for whoever is ferrying me to said bus or train, as parking defeats the purpose of being driven at night--what the heck would I do to get home from said places, if I drove there in the day and came home when it's dark?
14. I have no idea what a car service costs, but I know I can't afford it.
15. I also can't afford to live in NYC with Chris and Zoe, even though that would be a straight shot commute, at least. It's an hour on the train, but it's a TRAIN and I wouldn't need to be driven anywhere.
16. I repeat, I'm deeply troubled by all of this, and rather pissed.
17. Chris points out that since Rutgers has a substantial proportion of its students commuting, it is structured to have more night and late afternoon classes. This is all well and good, but it doesn't help me with getting there.
18. I actually like classes at that time of day because I'm a natural night owl.
19. I can't help the fact that I was born congenitally myopic and night-blind.
20. I'll stop now because 20 points makes a post.
    

I'm very sad that Eva Ibbotson has passed away. She was a wonderful author of children's books, and I greatly enjoyed discovering her romance novels when they were reprinted. The first one I read was A COMPANY OF SWANS, but I do like them all.

This is loosely based off of Alton Brown's Blackberry Grunt Recipe. We made some modifications, since we didn't have buttermilk in the house, and I truly dislike any and all berries. So it's my apple grunt recipe, instead. =)

Apple Grunt

Ingredients:
9.5 oz. all-purpose flour
2 oz. unsalted butter, chilled and chopped into small cubes
1 cup milk
2 and 1/4 tsp. baking power
1 tsp. kosher salt

4-6 medium apples, peeled, cored, and chopped in a rough dice
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1-2 tsp. ground cinnamon (adjust to taste)
1/2 tsp. freshly-ground nutmeg
1 cup water
1 cup sugar

1. Blitz together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a food processor, until they're sifted together and slightly aerated. You can also do this step in a regular sifter, but I prefer my processor.
2. Dump the flour mixture into a bowl and add the cubes of butter. Using only your fingertips (your hands are scrupulously clean here, right?), rub the butter into the flour mixture. You're not trying to smash the butter in, nor are you trying to completely get it to disappear. Your goal is to use gentle regular motions to incorporate the butter in, until there are no obvious chunks of butter in the mixture.
3. Make a well in the center of the bowl and pour the milk into the well.
4. With a spatula, mix the milk gently into the flour mixture. Stop once all the flour is gone. DO NOT mix until there are no lumps. DO NOT mix until it looks smooth. This is a biscuit dough and it should look not-perfect!
5. Take the dough and stash the bowl in the refrigerator for about 15-20 minutes. You could try to work it into a pretty ball wrapped in paper, but I just threw the bowl in.
6. Take the spices, sugar, and water, and mix together into a slurry in a separate bowl. Add the apples and stir to coat.
7. Put the apple mixture (including any liquid!) into a cast-iron skillet, a large casserole, or some other oven proof vessel. Place on the stove and cook on medium heat until the liquid in the pan starts to simmer. Lower the heat a bit and simmer for ten minutes. You don't want the liquid to totally evaporate, but you want the apples to cook down and the mixture to get slightly syrupy.
8. In the meantime, make sure your oven is preheating to 400 degrees F.
9. Take the dough out of the refrigerator and arm yourself with a scooping device. The dough will be quite sticky; I used a 1.5 tbsp cookie disher, but you could use two spoons as well.
   
10. Once the apple mixture has simmered for ten minutes, start placing scoops of the dough directly on top of it. There's no need to take it off the heat; just be careful. Start at the outside of the pan and move inwards in a circle or spiral. The dough scoops don't need to be very close together as they will expand during cooking. Make sure to use every last bit of dough you can get out of your bowl.
11. Place the grunt in your preheated oven and cook for 15-20 minutes, or until the top is lightly golden-brown and puffy. My oven runs about 25 degrees cool, so it took it the full 20 minutes to achieve that state.
12. Eat, ravenously.
    

I have had the worst writer's block with this blog, but then I read this great post by Ursula Le Guin, and I decided, screw it, I'll write about nothing.
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Yesterday, my husband, Chris, turned 31.

We were still up when his official birthday rolled around at 12:07 am, so we celebrated by eating an apple grunt. It's biscuits and fruit, cooked first on the stovetop, and then transferred to the oven. I spiced the apples with half a teaspoon of ground ginger, a generous grating of fresh nutmeg, and a huge amount of cinnamon. We're big cinnamon people around here; it's about the only spice in our cabinet that is absolutely guaranteed to be totally fresh, since we go through it so fast. But back to the grunt... the biscuits are soft and fluffy and biscuit-y, but the absolute best part is that they soak up the apple juice and every spoonful is apple with biscuit that's soaked with just a tad of sweet, spicy juice.

After we had consumed a decent portion of the grunt, we went upstairs to sleep. I grabbed Zoe out of her nest on the bed and danced her around singing Happy Birthday. She was so sleepy that she didn't even mind, which was the best part. =) No clawing for me!

Later that day, after we had both slept and rapidly cleaned part of the house, our families came over. First, my younger brother, who proceeded to claim the couch and watch a movie about Denzel Washington smuggling heroin from Vietnam in corpses. Then, Chris' parents and younger brother showed up, bringing a giant lasagna for dinner and my mother-in-law's trademark carrot cake. Finally, my parents rolled in, bearing two loaves of frozen garlic bread, soda, ice cream, chips, pretzels, and three kinds of dip.

My dad made a beeline for Chris' dad, where they instantly proceeded to bond over my dad's Reader's Digest Complete Home Repair Manual, and a tricky electric circuit problem my dad was having with their family room lights. Chris' brother watched TV with my brother, while the rest of us chowed down on the snacks that had been brought. I managed to make a bottle of ginger ale explode all over myself and the rest of the dining room table. The lasagna that my mother-in-law had made was so large that it took more than two hours to heat through... so I managed to coerce my entire family into watching ice skating that I had DVR-ed! This was a major coup, as I can barely get Chris to sit and watch with me, and we're just at the beginning of the Grand Prix Season.

And then we ate lasagna and carrot cake. We talked about random stuff, like the guy who invented the dividers for bathroom stalls and the bureaucratization of the samurai. Chris got presents: a new wallet from me, a check from my parents and brother, and the new Metroid game from his family. Zoe continued her work on braveness, managing to hang out on the stairs for most of the evening. She even ventured to her food dish once or twice, which takes real bravery, as it means getting off the stairs.
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And that was my day yesterday. To me, it was fun, but essentially, boring to blog about. I feel like all my days are boring lately; that I lack blogging stimulation, sometimes. That without publishing to talk about, I'm not really sure I have a ton to say on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis. I go to school; I go to physical therapy; I read books and play with my cat. I play a lot of video games. I've clocked something like 120 hours on Recettear now, trying to get all the parts to fuse the final weapons and armor. I watch anime and ice skating and try to eke out the occasional post for Tor.com. I would retire the blog, but that feels wrong, because who knows when I'll want to really write next? I'm not witty nor funny nor truly able to make everyday fascinating and exciting; I write fiction to be able to do that.

So I guess this is my way of apologizing, yet again, for the lack of content. *sigh* One day, I'll figure out again why I have a blog.

Today, I lost my iPhone. I don't know where, I don't know how, although I suspect it might have fallen out of my pocket in a bathroom. Whatever the way, it's gone. I checked everywhere.

I called Apple and reported it stolen because it's not in my hands. I called AT&T and had them blacklist the IMEI, which they kindly did, even though I didn't have an account with them. It was a SIM-less iPhone at the moment, which just makes having it gone even worse.

I am so, so sad about this. =( I totally don't want to shell out the money to get a new one, and I was just waiting until January when I could get the hell off my family plan and Verizon. It had my Japanese dictionary and a bunch of other stuff on it. I am so sad. =(

Bullet list time!

• I love school. Seriously, love it. My brain is working again for the first time in ages. Say what you will about agenting, but it didn't use my brain the same way as learning Japanese and writing complex history papers does. =)
• I have a bilateral ankle sprain, which is a fancy way of saying that both of my ankles are sprained.
• I will be attending physical therapy for the rest of my life, at this rate.
• Before I got my second ankle brace--a matching set!--Zoe was afraid of the scary crutch-monster, aka, as me.
  
• I wrote a story that I REALLY love and it's been racking up great rejections, which gives me hope.
• I'm working on another story that I love.
• I have two midterms tomorrow.
• I made jelly! Three kinds! Quince, apple, and mint! They are yummy!
• I've been reading a lot of books.
• To get said books to read, I've been visiting the library. How I've missed it. =)
• Zoe finds it fascinating that old books have a different sort of smell than most of our books. She sniffs the library books endlessly.
• And that's about it...
  

What have you all been up to?