Ice ice baby

The radio was repeating their dire foreboding of frozen doom every 10 minutes while I had it on (Car Talk is on now, so the radio is off, but Why I Hate Car Talk is another topic entirely).  I'd already rearranged my weekend, going to EFRC yesterday so I wouldn't be missing anything important if I had to stay in the house today, but I'd had enough of poking at the mess that is my kitchen for a while, so I decided to see what the weather is actually like.

There's a thin layer of ice on all the vegetation, which is pretty.  It would be much prettier if it had sun on it, but the sky is an even gray.  Fairly bright overcast, but completely cloudy.  There's a light rain falling, but right now it seems to be staying liquid on the ground; it appears that it was icier earlier, but the real road is just wet and even the lanes aren't too treacherous.  A cold rain is pretty much the most miserable weather there is to be out in, but I still found my walk very peaceful and fulfilling.  (I'm also pretty sure I had a White-Crowned Sparrow, though my view wasn't perfect.  Striped head, easy to be sure of.  Lack of white throat, a little harder, since he never fully faced me.)  Unfortunately, my gear isn't really up to this weather (my boots leak and my winter coat is fairly water resistant but not actually waterproof), so I'm not quite willing to tempt fate by driving to a more interesting place and taking a longer walk.  If the temperature drops a degree or two, I think the frozen doom will be back with a vengeance.

Ginger-Cauliflower Curry

I got creative in the kitchen.

( recipe enclosed )

Book review: Reserved for the Cat

Today's book review is Reserved for the Cat by Mercedes Lackey.

This is the latest in Lackey's Elemental Masters series -- a standalone novel, but in the same world as The Wizard of London and others.  Since the other books in this series have been retellings of fairy tales, I suppose this one is too, but I'm not terribly well-versed in fairy tales and I don't recognize it.  The story centers around a working ballet dancer, and I know less about ballet than just about any form of human endeavor I can think of, so I just assume that Lackey actually researched those odd French words and concepts rather than making them up, but it certainly seems as solid as the Victorian background of the world (which I'm not exactly well-qualified to vet, but at least I've read other authors' novels with similar background).  The story itself is reasonably engaging, and the characters live.  Sometimes they're just a little too perfect for their roles, bordering on trite, but the plot itself is thicker than some of Lackey's recent work.  It's a creditable book in the series and a solid Lackey novel, so anyone familiar with these should know what they're getting.  Yet, for some reason I can't really put my finger on, I didn't love this book, I merely liked it.  8 out of 10.

( plot summary )