Flayed

“Looks like you’re getting a bath tonight, baby,” I say aloud, my voice oddly muffled inside my helmet.

            The sky to the right of me—south—is a pale blue smattered with white clouds.

            The sky at my left is ominous with black storm clouds. 

            At a stop light, I glance down at the middle finger of my right hand.  It is smeared with blood, but the blood is dry.  Oh good, at least it stopped bleeding.  A flap of skin is clearly separated from the fingertip where it should be attached, and the exposed inside of the digit stings with pain each time I grip the throttle. 

            This has not been a good week for my skin staying affixed to my body. 

Culinary Execution

My cooking game has been in the shitter lately.

            I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with me. 

A few weeks ago, I was trying to make thai red curry with the beef stew meat that Nicole gave me last time I worked.  I browned the meat, chopped all the veggies, mixed in the sauce ingredients, and set the slow cooker to cook on Low for 8 hours.  That was at 9 o’clock at night.  I woke up in the middle of the night and set the slow cooker to “Keep Warm.” 

Or so I thought.

I accidentally set it on High.

By the time I woke up, I had myself a well-done beef stew. 

The carrots soaked up all the curry flavor. 

Look here, I like a couple carrots grated into my curry.  But Green B.E.A.N. Delivery doesn’t let you buy just two carrots, so I bought a pound.  (I signed back up in January, because they were running a special where you got 20% off your first 3 orders.)  And then I had a brilliant idea:  I wasn’t going to use rice with this curry, so if I grated all the carrots into it, they would give it the texture of rice! 

Well that stroke of genius certainly backfired.

Luckily Frank liked it, so I gave it all to him and just roasted some frozen chicken thighs to use as my lunches for the week.