Another Monday down. I keep killin' 'em, but they still keep a-comin'.

Had a nice weekend, starting with finally getting to cleaning out the spare room so it doesn't look, to quote Master Shake, like a flea market threw up in there. I hadn't really planned on doing it, but there I found myself on a fine Saturday afternoon, hauling our antique wicker table out to shop-vac it free of pink fiberglass and drywall, and it all kind of spiralled out from there. So it's now habitable. Which is good.

And then the Marthas called to say they were jonesing for a visit, and I went and picked them up at the Metro and then drove down to Virginia for Caren, whose gran is in the hospital and not expected to last out the week. She's holding up as well as a person can, poor girl, but she's flying up to Buffalo tomorrow night and I'll be going to and fro to Falls Church this week to make sure her cats have food and a clean place to poop. But we all had a pretty good time on Saturday night, aided slightly by the slacker's Holy Communion of beer and pizza (or in the case of the Marthas, who have the gift of lesbian natural class, rum-and-coke and pizza), though I'm afraid I had to derail a conversation about strippers that was begun rather enthusiastically by Martha L. and was threatening to get entirely out of control. Caren wound up staying the night, for which all were glad, and the earlier effort in reducing the biohazard in the spare room turned out to be well-spent indeed.

Last night I made a batch of red-pepper-and-cilantro-enhanced salsa which was pretty successful, and which I think may have improved by a night in the fridge and undergoing whatever strange alchemy takes place in tomato dishes during hours and hours of sitting in the cold. I've been seized by odd urges in the culinary department lately, most of which seem to involve making sauces and then spending a week or two finding things to put them on. But so far the results have been positive, so I'll see where else it takes me.

And this weekend brings my mom, and another peace-rally in our fair town. The one last weekend managed to get Alice Walker arrested, for which the Dubya regime can add some more tally-marks to its lousy karma scorecard; this one's bringing down the Smeds from the wilds of Pennsylvania, and I don't think those GOP-brains know who they're fucking with there. And if Bill brings along a spot of Old Fart Pale Ale, they may have cause to fear me too. We shall see.