I’ve been doing a lot of heavy writing about VERY IMPORTANT THINGS™ in the social and political arenas lately, so today I’m simply going to make mention of a few of the little things that don’t necessarily have earth-shattering importance.

This weekend, for example, I finally stumbled upon the missing element to cooking so-called “authentic” tasting asian meals. Sunday’s teriyaki stir fry (with some wonderful fresh vegetables from the local farmer’s market) was elevated to the next level by using sesame oil rather than the usual olive or (less often) rapeseed canola* oils. Assuming you haven’t already made this discovery, try it; I think you’ll enjoy the results.

I found tremendous pleasure and calm amidst this week of elevated workplace anxiety by taking a few hours to browse in the bookstore and take in a ballgame (even if said ballgame was likely to go down in history as phenom Stephen Strasburg’s worst. performance. ever.).

The homemade laundry soap (not sure if this is her recipie, though it’s pretty much identical as far as I can tell) Colleen made over the weekend does a really nice job washing clothes, even in less-than-ideal hotel machines. It doesn’t include all those strange perfumes (much like our beloved Charlie’s), and the per-load cost is amazingly small.

Based on my viewing of the otherwise awful horror flick The Unborn, I can say with conviction that the presence of Gary Oldman can class up damned near anything.

Overnight, I received a spam comment in my moderation queue promising a link to “Dexter’s Lab porn”. Now, I understand that rule 34 has absolutely no exceptions, but…GAH!

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* – “Canola”, of course, is made from a genetically re-engineered variety of rapeseed oil (it’s actually a former trademark, derived from “Canada Oil”), though it sells better under this name, because most people don’t understand latin roots.