Still sick with a cold, but clearly no longer exhausted, as I had plenty of energy to make brunch for the family, AND send two e-mails I’d been avoiding afterwards. Yay, me.
Plan for today — keep going on clothing sort; I’m down to workout clothes at this point, so almost done. I have a date with some friends for online board gaming at 1 (at Board Game Arena), which should be fun. I think we might teach a couple of them Wingspan.
Oh, speaking of gaming, while sick yesterday, I played two games of TM with the Hellas expansion and corporate era rules (against the computer), which gives a bunch more cards than the basic game, which is good for me getting used to playing with them before I play Alex again, because I think some of his consistently stomping me is because he just knows the cards a lot better than I do. I played two games as Saturn Systems and Ecoline, and in both of them I managed a much more developed science game than usual (easily passing 7 science tags) and ended up breaking 200 on both, which I don’t usually do. So that was nice.
Sometime today, if I don’t get tired, I’d like to start actually exercising again — I kind of fell off the wagon when ChiCon started, and I can feel the difference in my body. No good. Tentative date with Anand for pool fight at 4-ish, which should take care of it. 
And if I get really ambitious, I might do a little writing — my workshop actually really liked the food memoir piece I gave them, which was very good, because I had worked on it for so long, I was ready to give up on it in despair. They think it just needs a little tweaking before it’s ready to send out. Which means I need to figure out the right markets for a literary food memoir piece (around 5000 words). Onwards, I suppose.
*****
“In my mother’s kitchen, the cupboard held a lazy susan stuffed full of little glass jars, bottles that had once held boullion cubes, labels rinsed off. When you opened the door, complex spice scents rose, mingled with the tang of tamarind that had somehow always dripped from the container. Jars full of whole spices and ground, both individual and blends: cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves, mustard seed and cumin seed and fenugreek, chili powder and turmeric and more.
Amma had strict rules for which ones you used when, but none of the jars were labelled — she just knew the difference. Some nights, I’d sneak into the kitchen and reach to the back of the cupboard for her precious dark jaggery; I’d hack off pieces with the biggest knife, addicted to its complex palm sugar sweetness, then sneak it back in, hoping she wouldn’t notice…”