Listen to the Rain

Last night I washed the rice and filled the rice cooker with water, but didn't start it. A few days ago, I washed the rice, but didn't fill the rice cooker or start it. Does that mean in a few days I'll wash the rice, fill the rice cooker, and close the lid but not start it?

Kind of disappointed in myself. Twice in a week is huge for me.

On Friday lisekatevans and I went to the Chicago Art Institute, where she is a member and could thus get me in without me having to pay $25. We went to the arms and armor exhibit, newly out after years in the Institute's storage, and later to the Japanese art section and the room that usually has folding screens, where there was an exhibition of Japanese pottery instead. There were even some Japanese people there getting a tour, though I couldn't quite make out what they were saying. Sadly, the room with the prints and drawings was closed for renovation, and we ran out of time after seeing the Japanese art. We ended with snacks and drinks at the Drawing Room in the Chicago Athletics Association and then she went off to prep for a performance and I went home.

On Sunday, lisekatevans came over for dinner and cookie baking, and it broke down that I made dinner and she did most of the baking while I cleaned up the dinner preparation. I made Hainenese Chicken Rice (and also learned there's kanji for it: 海南鶏飯), which has never come out quite right in the past. We had it when I went to Singapore for a week in 2010--I wrote about it here and I'm still annoyed that my posting habits fell off by so much while I lived in Japan because it deserved more written about it--and schoolpsychnerd and I made sporadic attempts to replicate it in the past that never quite turned out right.

It was a lot closer this time, though, thanks to slow-cooking the chicken and then using the water there as the water for the rice in the rice cooker. That also meant it took seven hours to cook, but I think the results were very good:


I now have enough leftovers to last into next week.

I started reading Elfquest, literally decades after first learning about it in the pages of Dragon Magazine but not having an easy way to get a hold of it. I like it a lot, but I keep having to shove down the thought about how cliche everything is. It is cliche, but only because it came out in the 70s and a lot of later fantasy was influenced by it. I know I've seen that art style before but it's almost certainly from someone who was influenced by Wendy Pini's art, and psychic animal companions and involuntary lifebonds are very important in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books where I first encountered them. Half the time it feels like a warm bath due to how familiar everything is and the other half the time I have remind myself that this was innovative when it came out. I'm not very far in, but I like it a lot so far.

After a week of sleeping more peacefully, I woke up early this morning with nightmares again. More dreams about zombies. I don't know if it's worry that my friends will suddenly turn on me, or an urban-dweller's anxieties about living among thousands of people that I don't know and could be dangerous, or just a bad dream. Regardless, I wish it wouldn't wake me up at 5 a.m.