A good week

Harvest Moon Regatta off Galveston Island

So far, anyway, and I don't have any reason to think it won't go on being good. :)

I got my first review for Knight in Black Leather. It's lovely, (5 stars!) and Christine Klocek-Lim is my new best friend. :) Go read it. :) (Yes, I am over-using the smiley face emoticon.) But it is a really nice review. See?

"I laughed out loud during the first chapter. I sighed in happiness by the seventh and bit my lip in dismay by the twenty-third (I also might have cried a little, but I refuse to get into that)."

 I've been writing, but since I fell down on the job while I was out of town, and let myself continue to fall for a few more days, I'm only on Day 2 again. (Sigh)

Took Dolly the princess dog out for a walk yesterday, and she was a little pickle-dog this time. There were two doggies down playing on the beach, off-leash with their people, and it was all I could do to keep her from jumping off the seawall to go play with them. And that made her want to play with everybody else she saw. She's five years old. Aren't doggies supposed to slow down a little when they get that old? She dragged me across the street to wiggle at the neighbor. Pit bulls are strong doggies. And today, she's been a real whiny-baby, wanting me to come out and sit with her or play with her, or something.

I've been trying out some new recipes--a Mexican skillet chicken that's made like fried rice, only with enchilada sauce rather than soy sauce. Good stuff. And I made some marsala pork chops that were to die for.

I only made a couple of alterations in the recipe--you're supposed to bread them in bread crumbs, but since the fella's gluten-free, and I didn't feel like crushing any Crispix or corn flakes, I just didn't bread them. And I had a LOT of pork chops (or fork chops, as they're generally known in our house, because that's what one of the boys called them when he was little). Recipe called for 4 chops. I had 8 or 10. Hey, it worked. And I had some fresh mushrooms, so I sliced them up and threw them in the sauce. And I was probably a tad generous with the marsala wine. (The recipe called for one measly little tablespoon of marsala. A half cup of white wine (I used chardonnay), but only a tablespoon of marsala!) But when I got done--oh, it was SO good. My knees were all swoony.

Basically, you just fry up the fork chops, take them out, then saute a big mess of thin-sliced onion (with mushrooms if you want), add in a bunch of pressed/minced garlic, and when the onions are soft, throw in the wines and cook it down to almost nothing, then add in half a stick of butter. (No wonder it's so good!) But you don't need much with each pork chop.

Yes, I have been writing. This is the pantsiest thing I've written in a long time (meaning I didn't really have my world-building done when I started it, and didn't really know where I was going with it), but I'm discovering a lot of stuff now, near the end. Meaning I'll have some things to fix when I start putting it in the computer. But that's for later.