On the whole, her majesty is displeased.

Things that have pleased me in the last, say, 18 hours:
-The post-punk station on Pandora.

-Trader Joe's Belgian Chocolate pudding.
I love it so much that I was going to give it a dedicated post, but I'm putting it here instead. Trust me on this one.

-Last night, I had the first hot whiskey of the season: an inch of whiskey in a mug, the juice from half a lemon, a big spoonful of honey, filled to the brim with boiling water. Heaven in a glass and the perfect libation for cool nights in drafty apartments. It also pinkens my cheeks most fetchingly.

-I slept the sleep of the innocents, most likely because of the hot whiskey, and woke up early, alert and refreshed.

-I'm really liking the book I'm reading: In the Woods by Tana French.

Some of the things that have displeased me:
-I tried on the spinster sweater (so named because it's all handspun yarn, and because it seems like a sweater for living alone in a cottage somewhere) and it looks pretty awful, the most unflattering garment this side of high-waisted jeans. It's almost done though, so I'm going to finish it and wash and block it and see if it looks any better. It doesn't really matter, since it'll be warm regardless, but STILL. And it didn't help much with yarn using-upedness, since I still have a lot leftover. WOE.

-There was some weird juju in the apartment last night that led to my roommate's girlfriend starting a grease fire in the kitchen (luckily, it was contained to the pan and eventually burned itself out, but I had a couple of scary moments where I was trying to remember whether you're supposed to throw baking powder or baking soda on a grease fire and then realizing that all of my baking supplies were in the cabinet over the stove and I'd have to reach over the inferno to get either one and kicking myself for continuing to put off getting renters' insurance; the correct answer is baking soda, btw), my roommate knocking over and shattering a large mirror in the living room that we think was left by a previous roommate, and our internet service going down completely this morning, rendering me incapable of making the pictures go from my computer to ALL of the computers.

-Bad Co-worker #3 took home all of the (awesome) leftovers from an office party yesterday that everyone had agreed to split for lunch today. The main thing I was looking forward to was the roast chicken that our Puerto Rican office manager's mother's boyfriend had made, complete with a TOP-SECRET blend of spices. BCW3 didn't even ask, just walked out with the whole trayful last night. Inconsiderate bastard.

-I made an almond butter and jam sandwich this morning to bring to work as a snack and, when I was putting the bread away, realized that all four of the remaining slices were moldy. I looked at my sandwich: no mold. I ate it for lunch anyway (since the lunch I was counting on wasn't there, NOT THAT I AM SUPER PISSED OFF ABOUT THAT OR ANYTHING), hoping that any loose spores would either be benign or beneficial, like taking penicillin in its raw form, and would maybe protect me from the creeping crud that everyone in New York seems to have right now. I don't usually worry about this kind of thing, since I tend to assume that stomach acid will kill off pretty much anything that needs killing, but still. Did I really need to spend a couple of idle moments today wondering if tiny mold creatures were going to multiply and colonize my body, wreaking havoc on any defenseless humans in their path? No. No, I did not.