cold, wet, dark - that was today's weather. gone are the spring-like days, here to stay is winter. a wet winter at that. this is probably the worst kind of condition you can have, not cold enough for snow, but just barely above freezing so everything comes down as cold rain. this wasn't a day for going outside and i was happy to stay indoors, confined to my bedroom, futzing around with code.

i decided to make another loaf of bread. reading the recipe for express bake bread, it asked for something called fast-rising yeast which i don't have, so i ended up making the normal 3 hour bake bread. it's really fun watching the machine make the dough, the ball of raw bread dancing around the pan as if alive, with random dramatic stops, then restarting again. i wonder what sort of music plays well with baking?

when the bread finally came out of the machine, it wasn't the perfection that was yesterday's bread. lop-sided and with splits on the uppercrust, nevertheless it tasted much the same. two slight differences: i used SAF traditional active dry perfect rise yeast instead of fleischmann's active dry yeast, and the packet i had said it had expired august 2004. second, i set the machine for a darker crust, although it actually looked lighter. the strange shape of the bread got me to thinking: could futures be forecasted through bread? the lost art of panomancy, i plan to bring it back. forecast for tomorrow: more bread!

i went to the supermarket in the evening to buy some sandwich meat. the man in front of me at the deli counter was a real food connoisseur (so why was he shopping at this little star market?) and kept on asking for meat they didn't have. when he was finally done with his order, not only did he have an assortment of meat but cheese as well. i left with half a pound of honey glazed ham and eagerly returned home to make myself a sandwich for dinner with my fresh bread. when an tao came back home, he had some tortilla pizza, i even saw him cracking an egg on his creation before going into the oven. we watched conan the barbarian before he went to sleep (at 8pm!). i myself would soon fall asleep on the couch after eating a whole bar of chocolate.

the mother of two whom i met at the cemetery saturday called me early this morning - asking if i wanted to have coffee with her tonight so she can ask me more about my photography. it was early enough that i wasn't completely lucid and basically agreed to go out with her wednesday night before her class. the whole experience left me with an icksome feeling. i was surprised how agressive she was in asking me for my phone number on saturday (wasn't email enough?), and even more surprised that she called me. naturally suspicious of total strangers who ingratiate themselves into my life - i'm kind of baffled by her intentions. it's probably harmless but if you don't hear from me after wednesday night, call the police.

final note: my mother called me asking if i wanted a heated toilet seat/bidet. remembering some bad experience with squirting toilets, i emphatically said no.