Tonight was pork loin: following yesterday's success, I went again with the basil/chives/hot paprika/salt/pepper blend with canola oil, to fantastic results, although I caught it just in time, as my wonderful meat thermometer claimed an inside temperature of 183F, clearly an error, as the loin was not a fiery, blackened pile of organic slag. Instead it was about perfect, and next time I can do the spices even better, possibly using the Joe's Hot Stuff from Louisiana (which isn't that hot).

Also, I think I've developed a new requirement for long-term relationships, in that my wife or girlfriend should, unlike me, be able to notice that I left the oven on and it has been running for the past five days or so. Oops. On the bright side, the house didn't burn down.

I have to work tomorrow; kind of an odd feeling because it feels like it's been a long weekend. I think I'm working on several projects which are very important to other people. I might even remember what they are. They're sort of fun, but mostly not very hard. I do have one difficult code problem at work, so hard that after months of letting it sit, I still don't know the answer. Those are good problems to have: like extremely smart people, they remind me that I'm not a genius, I'm just extremely clever. This is a large design problem: if you want to change a design for something (software, a building, a curriculum), you have a Final Destination for the thing, and you have a Path To Get There--a plan for the changes you're going to make. If your thing needs to keep working perfectly while you change it, then the Path To Get There might become so much more complicated that you're forced to modify your Final Destination. In my case, I can't think of a Final Destination that allows for a Path To Get There.

I'm listening to some of my sappy music, and I'm in a good enough mood I'm feeling vaguely romantic-like. Except not really. It's not such a bad thing when I can actually imagine being in a relationship (as opposed to actually doing it), since visualizing and imagining has always been how I've trained myself to do things. It's a tricky balance: if I want to prepare myself for an experience, I need to remember the mindset, but stay fluid and free-floating about the details. Aikido is a great teacher for this, because having a vision of what I'm going to do, before I try to do it, is a sure way to screw up. The parallels are apt enough: you can't act on your expectations, you have to act on your experience.

Ever have the feeling that surely, if you just moved somewhere else (Seattle? Vancouver? Spain?), got a different job, and started over again, that somehow that would change anything? I get it all the time. It's incorrect, but I get it anyway. (Obviously, if it were correct, I would be living in Seattle, Vancouver, or Spain, because I do what's right for me. Q.E.D.) The attraction of that idea is a good gauge of how screwed up my mood is. Right now: slightly above minimal.