Nothing funny about feldspar

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Nearly every time I make rice for dinner, Plagioclase’s mother mentions how much she loves rice pudding, and how she had a great recipe somewhere, and isn’t this rice interesting, and wouldn’t it make great rice pudding?

So last time I made rice, I made sure to make enough to have a couple of cups left over. I asked her to find her recipe, which she did (the one in the book had her “ex.” and “put on card” notations), and yesterday I made her recipe for rice pudding. The only thing I changed was I didn’t put in raisins.

And while it was ok, it could have been any boring vanilla custard. I mean, the rice was there, but it settled to the bottom of the dish (and yes, I followed the recipe), and so the whole thing was layered. Nothing special. She exclaimed over it: “I like any homemade rice pudding better than store-bought!” But then the questions started, “Did you follow the recipe? Did you add extra rice? Why’d you use so much sugar? Where are the raisins? Why’s it layered? Did you stir it halfway through?”

Plagioclase was no help, either, as he ate the last of the store-bought rice pudding saying, “I like this better.”

Now Plagioclase’s mother is hinting that there’s another recipe she likes better. But you know, I think I’ll just keep my rice and my custard separate from now on.

I never clicked the link to Google’s Advanced Search until today. But you know what? It doesn’t matter, because my search needs aren’t usually so sensitive. How often do I look for a web page where I’m looking for a specific range of numbers?

Blah, blahdeblah blah blah blah. Yup.

Sorry. I’m in tax-return-procrastination mode, and I just don’t have anything worth blogging about right now.

Plagioclase is off cleaning his mother’s car prior to us selling it. In his wallet are our notes from the wines we had at a nice restaurant last week. When he comes back, and assuming I’m still putting off doing our taxes, I’ll let you know what they were.

I’ve been reading Kage Baker’s novels of The Company since the first one In the Garden of Iden was in hardback. Like many fans of this series, I’ve actively promoted it to my friends (perhaps too vehemently sometimes). But as the series goes on, it’s in danger of losing my interest.

Not that the writing is ever bad — it’s smart, funny and page-turning, and the stories and characters (immortal cyborg slaves working in historical interstitials for masters living in the 24th century) are inventive and generally internally consistent.

But with the 2-ago book (The Life of the World to Come), I felt that Baker “jumped the shark” — the tight, engaging stories in the earlier books were abandoned to make room for a character I don’t like (which is ok, I don’t have to like them all, but it’s odd because I normally like even her bad guys) and a mish-mash of story designed to tie up some of the loose ends (and fill in some details) from the earlier books. The most recent book (The Machine’s Child) has all that too, in spades. It’s almost like Baker has a checklist of stuff she wants to clear up (rather than leave some question unanswered) and is doing it in the most expedient (and confusing) way possible.

I’ll finish out the series, because I do hope to learn what happens in 2355. I’m concerned that the hints I perceived in this book lead to a totally unsatisfactory (for me) ending. Let’s hope Baker gets back to story-telling rather than rug-making.