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sandboxdiva pinged me this weekend wanting to ensure that I'd seen the latest Binging with Babish episode since it focused on chocolate chip cookies, so of course I promptly had to sit down and watch it.

( Binging with Babish: 10 Levels of Chocolate Chip Cookies (embed) )

1. Did I pause the video to take note of exactly how fancy the ingredients were for the Level 8 cookies, ( yes I did. )

2. Did I also factcheck Babish on his assertion that "regular old homemade chocolate chip cookies probably cost like $6/batch to make," why yes I did. Come on, buddy, you're based in Brooklyn, groceries aren't cheaper there than in the Bay Area.

( How much does it cost to make a batch of Toll House cookies in November 2025? )

3. Am I doing all this to distract myself from all of the elections going down today? Of bloody course I am.

4. Is my version of the Guittard Super Chip cookie recipe still my go-to? Yes, because 72 hours is a long time to wait for cookies. Also, converted to weights, a higher ratio of brown sugar to white sugar, and no nuts.

5. What am I baking for choir tomorrow? Um. I should probably figure that out, shouldn't I. Of all the bougie things to have on hand, I actually currently have a glut of hazelnut flour that needs to get used up, and we do have some gluten-intolerant choir members, so I may end up with a flavor variant of these hazelnut chocolate chip cookies, probably converted to bar format, possibly with the spicing and inclusions changed up.

6. Reminder to self: you'll be in rehearsal tomorrow and will have to miss it, but Community Kitchens is doing trainings for home chef volunteers to cook meals for the Town Fridges in Oakland. Ping them to find out when the next training is.

7. Oh thank god, results are coming in for the major races and I don't know of any truly disasterrific results yet.

Current Mood: nervous
Current Music: cookie cookie cookie

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recipes: cookies: chocolate chip

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( October )

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23 trick-or-treaters this year, likely due to rain and construction. The last four were after we had started picking up and bringing things inside, and in fact after we'd sorted the candy into Keep and Share. (The Share candy stays outside overnight for the late crew, then goes with Belovedest to work. We don't have particularly much trouble with raccoons.) In the last party, the one with the umbrella hat and some sort of Studio Ghibli makeup (white face, red eye triangles) was enchanted with the glow sticks and picked one of the very few blue ones.

This year's innovation was doing the Wizard of Oz + Dark Side of the Moon thing with (much less cleverly timed) Chaos Emergency Doof Broadcast (Which is 4 hours of very silly DJ work), some of the Halloween episodes, with Addams Family Values on mute (several times through). We got the inflammable tango to "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", and a few other silly confluences. I think this is one of the ones where precise timing doesn't help all that much, but it's great when it happens. By the time the show had run out of explicitly spooky songs, it got a little less entertaining.

Belovedest was Jigglypuff. I was a very tired Dulcie (wearing my own nightgown and some exhaustion makeup). I ordered the wrong crust on 2 out of 3 pizzas, and the 3rd one was gluten free.

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hyounpark pinged me from BART this morning with the sad news that Fugakyu is closing, after 27 years.

It feels like I've been going there forever, even though honestly the last time I went there was probably when we still lived in Boston. But I'm like 80% certain I've gone on dates there with all of my major boyfriends (if I dated you for at least a year, that's the defining line in my headcanon). A bazillion times with

hyounpark during our Boston era. Plenty of times with

noghri, both while we were dating and then when we became friends. I thought I'd brought

kallmir2000 there, but I double-checked and it was Ginza I was thinking of. (Which makes sense because Ginza was within walking distance of my old Fenway apartment). Where, admittedly, I'd also eaten sushi at with even more of the people I've dated, hahaha, including both Punsterboy and Choirboy! 😁 (Even though Ginza's been gone for well over a decade now.) And

theconvictor and I had our Valentines' Day 2000 dinner at Fugakyu when we spent the weekend in Boston on a romantic getaway from campus, feeling ever so grownup, removing our shoes to sit at one of the traditional low tables in the fancy embedded booths.

Fugakyu was even where I introduced multiple friends to sushi (

fes42,

jennifer,

david_grana, Adam); where my girlfriends took me after devastating breakups and meh second dates, because sushi would be followed up by ice cream at JP Licks, and then a visit to a certain little shop down the way (also long gone, alas; I'm hoping this recent rise in romance-specific bookstores brings an appropriate replacement to the neighborhood) because that was definitely better than moping over guys!

And now it's closing, for "personal reasons."

Damn, am I gonna miss their pinetato (pineapple and sweet potato) maki. And the kinuta. And the hotate hokkayaki. And the giant boats of sushi that I would split with my friends. I know where to get sushi; honestly I may just pop down to our neighborhood sushi joint before the trick-or-treaters start arriving. But mostly, finding out that Fugakyu is closing next week is just making me miss everyone in Boston. Even knowing that many of the friends I mentioned don't live there anymore, like us.

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: you know it's not the same as it was

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Video appointment with chemotherapist today. I'm done with immunotherapy! The scan says I've been stable.

I still have:

* bone strengthening (not marrow encouraging) med every 12 weeks, infused
* Scans every 3 months

So that means a trip or two to the cancer center every 3 months, although if they keep it at 3 months for the one and 12 weeks for the other, they may fall out of sync.

I should probably celebrate this?

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Via

foxmoth, this is a brilliant meme but also a challenging one! With a certain degree of "oh well, I guess that one does fit..."

Lust, books I want to read for their cover:
- Taylor Jenkins Reid, Atmosphere (OK I have read it but I would have picked it up just for the cover, UK edn)
- Andrew Porter, The Imagined Life
- Benjamin Wood, Seascraper

Pride, challenging books I've finished:
- Uwe Johnson, Anniversaries
- Laszlo Krasnahorkai, War and War
- JRR Tolkien, Hobbitinn (The Hobbit in Icelandic)

Gluttony, books I've read more than once:
- Alaistair Reynolds, Redemption Ark
- Sergei and Marina Dyachenko, Vita Nostra
- Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air (I like reading this on airplanes, God help me)

Sloth, books on my to-read list the longest:
- David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite
- Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars
- Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Greed, books I own multiple editions of:
- Mary Renault, Return to Night
- (...plus various books in multiple languages but I think that's the only one with multiple editions in English)

Wrath, books I despised:
- RF Huang, Babel
- Don DeLillo, Underworld (I want so much to like this but I don't)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Envy, books I want to live in:
- My own

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books,
meme

When I last checked in, I told you about the heart cath and stent procedures I had toward the end of September after my heart attack. Well, that wasn't the end of it. I came home on Thursday and by that Sunday, I knew something was desperately wrong. I could hardly breathe and wanted to faint. I called an ambulance. The ER found that my hemoglobin was 8. It should be around 12. By the time they tested again an hour later, it'd dropped to 6. I had an internal bleed. Over the next four days, I received 4 units of blood and 2 iron infusions. I also had an endoscopy and found that I had 4 polyps in my stomach. That's where the bleed had been. The problem was with the blood thinners I'm on, they can't be removed at this time. So, I have to take special care about what I eat and take medicines to coat and protect my stomach.

I was sent home and then on the 22nd of October, I went in to get a Watchman device in my heart which will help prevent blood clots caused by my persistent AFIB/AFlutter. I'm now recovering from that procedure along with a TEE, which is a trans esophageal echocardiogram which made me feel like I'd swallowed a tree trunk. The point of doing this Watchman procedure was so that I could cut back on the blood thinners, down from three to one, which I have.

All in all, I've been saved twice this month by medical intervention and been in the hospital 12 days. Thank good I've got good insurance and praise the miracles of science.

I see the doctors again on the November 11 and December 16. The next step is to get an ablation which, fingers crossed, will stop the AFib/A flutter. But I can't do that until the heart heals from this last procedure, which is about 6 weeks.

All this is to say, I've not been writing. I'm spending my time recovering and trying to get as healthy as possible.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Louisville, Kentucky
Current Music: "Go Easy on Me" by Adele

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personal

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