Well, I just put this bread pudding in the oven, so we'll see if I'm a total failure at baking in less than an hour (In two years I have failed to make proper scones no less than twice). This is just about the only useful thing I've managed to do all day. I haven't written anything yet, and my reading is driving me crazy -- Irving's essays are, on the whole, boring as hell. It wouldn't be so bad if he had varied his sentence structure at all, but no, they're all the same long, lolling, lulling sentences. All of them. And so nearly 200 pages in I've read all of two short stories, which were good -- most of the collection is made up of useless essays on such wowing topics as Christmas in rural England, and how winter is a moral guide. There's even one about how awesome it was to sail to England. The Boar's-Head Tavern essay (wherein Irving describes a day he spent trying to track down the tavern Shakespeare populated with Falstaff/Oldcastle, young Hal, and all the rest, then finds it gone, talks to an old woman, and sees some relics of the old pub in the local church).

I'm considering taking a break from it and reading the third Snicket book -- I bought the sixth, The Ersatz Elevator, last night. My mom bought me a small cutting board and santoku knife. I didn't know anything about it at the time, it was just the best compromise between price and shape/size/edge. Apparently it is quite the nice knife? You cooks out there could maybe advise me on this. The name is Japanese for "three good things" (or so I'm told by the intertron). The "san" bit is three, so it sounds about right. It's referring to slicing, dicing, and mincing. I'm not exactly sure what some of the differences are there, of course, but eventually I'll look it up. If someone wants to explain, please do.

For the benefit of Irishblessing I thought I'd tell you I fried some button mushrooms today (in reference to a conversation we had months ago, when I bought sliced mushrooms and couldn't tell her what sort I'd eaten).

That's my day. I should try to write/edit this short story, or plan/start my thesis postscript (you know, for the third time). That's all.