Mwah ha ha ha I baked a cheshire cat apple blackberry pie and it has the worst crust-carving of all time! Kick ass.

is coming over either tonight or tomorrow, and I think he’s going to teach me how to make his mouthwateringly delectable quesedillas with cilantro pesto. Oh happy day!

My Creative Zen mp3 player is sucking a little bit; I can’t seem to get the battery to hold a charge, no matter how long I leave it plugged in to the USB port with the recharger. Grr.

Tried to call yesterday to set up visit to NYC, but to no avail. Cranly, please leave me a post with the best time to reach you?

Played chess with last night for the first time in ages. It was good – my strategic mind is still functioning, but my ability to hold strings of upcoming potential moves in my head has shrunken to a miserable shadow of what it once was. Also, it took me forever to deliver the final blow, since I was too tired to remember how to use two rooks and a queen against a lone king and pawn to achieve checkmate. Seriously, JVL had to position the pieces for me, because I was virtually dozing off in my interminable pauses between moves. We played on his grandfather’s set, which is very nice. Good, large wooden board with clearly marked squares and nice carved pieces made out of some translucent green and dark gray stone (agate? marble?).

I had a funny dream last night about us playing on a set where the “white” pieces were all cheesy Dutch mementos – windmill rooks, clog shoe pawns, milkmaid queen, etc – and the “black” set were equally cheesy German mementos – beer stein pawns, the king in lederhosen etc. It was like a really visually gross metaphor for… something. I don’t know where I was going with that, I think I need a mid-morning nap. Zzzz.