Food @ MindSay

For this, I must first explain the pet situation.

The dog hangs out on a lead-run outside during the day when no one's here, sleeps in the basement, and is usually brought in the house once a couple of people are home. This is mostly because he's very much a people-dog. Has to be around people. Loves people. He has no concept of guarding ANYTHING. If you are a person, you must be there to play with him. He's very much Didi's dog - Mom will comment that in the eyes of the dog, Didi is God. Somewhat sacrilegious, but almost captures the situation.

He misses her terribly because she's up at school. Normally, when she's home, he follows her everywhere around the house, and half the time sleeps in her room.

The cats belong to my other sister. They are completely different personalities - one fat, sleepy, and purrsy, the other skittish, predatory, and often antisocial. Of course they're from the same litter. Given their tendency to mark when no one's looking, the cats are NOT allowed in the house. Santas' room is a very gray area, on that subject. She'll haul one up when she's napping, and the cat sleeps on the bed with her.

So, last night, we had our usual late-night arrangement. She's sitting on her bed with her laptop, I am sitting on the bed chatting with her, enjoying a nice warm cup of tea, and the dog is lying on the floor, regarding us with big plaintive eyes for any morsel of affection we might inadvertently drop to the ground. Santas regards my cup and saucer, then turns her gaze of interest (this never bodes well) to the dog, and then to her half-finished bowl of strawberry gelato. When I'd first come in, said pup was very interested in my cup of tea, despite numerous assurances on my part that, no, he really didn't want this.

Santas then proceeds to take my saucer (as I'd finished with the teabag, it was making a little brown crescent-puddle on one side of the plate), add a teaspoon of gelato next to the teabag...and feed it to the dog.

Yes, he ate the teabag. I stared at her, struck absolutely dumb for a few seconds, as she collapsed deeper into herself, giggling with satisfaction. "You are never allowed to have a dog in the future!"

Cats are far more finicky. Cats will not eat anything that smells remotely suspicious, like broccoli, dish detergent, or cat food. The chances of my sadistic little sister successfully feeding a teabag to a cat are far reduced. A good thing, to, as the feline digestive system is far more finicky than a dog's.

I'm not overly concerned about the dog. They'll try anything, and God knew this when he made them, so he gave them a digestive system that'll process almost anything. The only time we've ever really worried was when he got loose and got into rat poison. I've a friend with a giant labrador, and if she wasn't so busy, she could post a weekly blog, "What Will Duke Eat?". Newspaper. Ten pounds of dog food (that's like you eating sixty pounds of steak). Three rolls of toilet paper. A sponge (that one had us a little worried. It was one of the big soft foofy kinds - second cousin to a loofah).

While I'm writing this, the house phone rings.

It's Santas.

In her bedroom.

(This is across the living room and just up the stairs from where I am now.)

Asking me to bring her a cat.

Because she doesn't want to get up.

*facepalm*

I want to eat at the Kashiwa Mystery Cafe in southern Japan.  That's right, it's a mystery cafe.  You order and pay for your food, and then you go sit down.  Waiters bring you, not  your food, but the food that the previous person in line ordered.  Surprise!  That just sounds like such a cool idea to me.  Unless of course the person in front of you ordered something absolutely disgusting.  But would a restaurant even have disgusting food?  Hopefully not.

The cafe has a few rules. Among them:

• Treat the next person. What to treat them with? It's your choice.
• No buying twice in a row.
• Please enjoy what you get, even if you hate it. (If you really, really hate it, quietly give it to another while saying, "It's my treat...")

Now I have to go to Japan.

Here are pictures from Josh's birthday that was on Aug 19th!


Azrael can only lust after the wings that RandonHighJinx gave me! Leif and Mom were hanging out on the pillowy couch.


I had one leftover apple that I figured out what to do with. I made apple bunnies!


Josh & I huuuuuuuuging.


Silverfire's super cute kiddo Kat.


Silverfire and her family hanging out with us. YAY!

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The only glaring bad things about today was what occurred with my mam at about 12AM and the fact I ate WAY too much at nana's and rendered myself with an upset stomach.
 
Mam and dad were both on early starts, so I went there at about 9:30. I hovered about in the kitchen for a while, talking to nana and grandad, then I directed their attention to Play.com.
They'd been asking me what I wanted for my birthday and I'd had the idea when I was in the car of them getting me a CD and a game from there. Nana is a bit funny about inputting her details onto online stores, but grandad doesn't seem to be arsed - after all, he's a teleshopping addict and the possibilities of theft are the same, thereabouts.
 
So after I'd reassured nana it was safe - the amount of stuff I've been ordering with mam's Egg card recently proving it - I made them an account, saying they could use it if anyone else wanted DVDs or games for Christmas presents, for instance.
 
Shelly was going to order Abigail II: The Revenge for me, but apparently it's been out of stock for ages and if she had, I wouldn't have gotten it in time for this weekend, so. Either way, I ordered it for myself with grandad's card. It's still out of stock, so I'll just get it when it comes. I can wait.
They always spend £20 on everyone, so with the £12 I had left, I got Final Fantasy VII: Dirge Of Cerberus. It was one game on my wishlist that stuck in my mind of being £12. :)
 
After I'd sorted this, I was nominated to sort out their "Solitaire saving problem" - which just looked to be a saved game that wouldn't go away. I did what I could.
 
When I was leaving the bedroom to go back into the living room, grandad took my hand and slipped me £30. I was confused as to why - then he said it's because they apparently give out more for 18th and 21st birthdays. Can't be bad. I thanked him and put it in my pocket. I'm going to save it. My birthday money, I'll halve it - spend half on games and keep the other half in case there's anything I need it for.
 
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Nana didn't have any green beans this week, so I had peas instead.
I can't decide if I like peas or not. They have a proper bodged flavour. I can tolerate them, but I wouldn't say they're proper nectar, like green beans are.
 
Ash hates peas, Shelly loves them and I can tolerate them. Ah, another thing we all share a different opinion on.
 
After we'd eaten, nana and grandad sort of took it in turns to play Solitaire. They'd swap around every hour or so - nana would clean and grandad would watch the football while the other played.
I was laid on the bed continuing with Super Paper Mario.
 
I finished off chapter 7 - which wasn't as daunting as a task as I'd first predicted.
What a fucking weird twist though! I'm glad like, Luvbi was a right slag. :)
 
I think after 10 hours of gameplay, I've actually developed a small liking for this game. I'm still not rating it 4-star-excellent on my Backloggery, but it's risen from a 2-star-decent to a 3-star-good.
I got annoyed with it when I was at the 78th level in the Pit Of 100 Trials and I got killed by some bastard shadow monster. I had no sodding mushroom shakes left and I was miles away from the next level, so the fuckers ended up killing me and I wasted like an hour of my life in that hole.
 
Sigh, that happened all too often in Paper Mario: TTYD too.
 
So I swapped to Spyro: Enter The Dragonfly.
I really expected it to be shit - as all the new Crash and Spyro games after the PS1 era got sucky, but it's surprisingly decent.
 
Saying that, it's technically Spyro 4. Crash 4 was good too - but after the 4th one, it started getting shite. (Not counting the spin-off games like CTR and Crash Bash, of course.)
 
Some of the dialogue is fucking weird.
Nana thought the pigs on the island level were amusing - and we were both like WTF at the tiki idols who do the drumming and sing in their weird tiki talk. Funny at first, but then it got very vexing.
 
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Nana went mental with the tea today though.
Along with the usual sausages, crackers, cheese and cakes - she did a 9" pepperoni pizza as well.
So I had a slice of that along with my usual stuff, but maybe I drank too much apple juice.
 
I was okay until about 10PM when I got home. Then I got the growly stomach and realised I had an upset stomach. So this led me to take the gut-dehydrating tablets to make a natural cork up my arse. :)
 
I took a shower, straightened my room - then I played a few gigs on Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits.
I did a few songs on vocals, mainly the newer ones that I've recently learned. Electric Eye and Beast & The Harlot, for two. :D
 
Then I switched to bass. I played it on medium so I could finish those songs that don't have scores. I was surprised at myself, I only cocked up one song, and that was via an overstrumming accident.
How I like the shiny 100% stars.
 
Mam was in my room later on, insisting she make an account on Twitter so that she can follow Eddie Izzard.
She just didn't seem to take it in when I said "Mam, I've never used Twitter, I NEVER WILL. I know NOTHING." - she kept on asking me how she did things.
HOW THE HELL WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW?! PRAY TELL!
 
This is where Dixie learnt two lessons:
 
1. Never set your MSN to show the last part of your last conversations.
2. Never ask mam to respond to someone on MSN for you.
 
I asked her to tell Shelly that she was on the PC, but our last conversation section was there - namely me expressing my distaste about being kicked off the PC and being spoken to like shit - via my exclamation of "Mam's a cunt" - thankfully, it didn't implicate either of our mams. So I danced around the point and said I didn't know if it was directed at her or Shelly's mam.
 
She was all high and mighty and was like: "MURR, WHY WOULD IT BE ABOUT ME?"
For a second, I felt like saying to her: "BECAUSE YOU ARE A CUNT SOMETIMES...??"
 
- But I didn't.
 
It was strange. As soon as mam started being all pissy, my stomach upset started up again. I got the burny bowels and the squeezy intestines and I needed to go and explode again. I wonder if it was rendered by my uncomfortable emotions. Thus leading my stomach to also become uncomfortable to mimic?

I like rice. This is not news. I almost always have rice ready to prepare. I will eat it plain, for this makes me happy. Often, I will get creative with something from our decently-stocked spice drawer.

Usually, I have some idea of what I'm going for, and this guides the choice. Sometimes, I know the taste of what I want, and I

I was enjoying my bowl of rice, and reading some sheet music, when Santas came into the kitchen.
Santas, being Santas, took some of my rice without asking a) for permission, or b) what was in it.
"Yeaugh!" she declared after making a distasteful expression, bolting for the refrigerator and chasing it with apple juice.
"Paprika." I considered the bowl a moment, before returning to my reading. "And salt, I think."
She glared at the bowl, offended. "Whatever happened to curry?"
I froze. I looked up at her, mid-bite. "That's what I wanted!!"

Mystery solved.

Of course, Santas later came back to the bowl to mooch again. I watched her, amused and fascinated. "You declare that what I have created is most foul, you are in the process of making your own food - yet you keep coming back to scavenge mine."
Mouth full, "Uh huh."

And in case anyone was wondering, rice and paprika is definitely not the same as rice and curry.