This is one of the oddest things about pregnancy so far: that I have copious amounts of time, awake, late late in the evening. I’m usually dead asleep by at least eleven, and yet that has become the earliest time I actually turn in. I’ve spent, or tried to spend, a lot of that time online, usually reading message boards and hoping someone would post something, or hanging around in a chat room or eagle-eyeing both my Twitter feed and Google Reader, just in case someone posts something I can sink my teeth into, or at least amuse myself with.

I really don’t know what to do this late at night. I’ve never really done it before.

But, you know, I’ve had this thing called a blog for some time. Were I so inclined, I could, you know, write something.

I’m getting to the point, post-move, of having enough energy and concentration to start thinking again — real thinking, the kind I can devote to study or self-examination or pondering the universe. Being eight months pregnant is (much) tougher on my body than my mind, and, although I spend a lot of time being tired or sleeping because of the strain of carrying around a rather localized 25 lbs., I also am starting to get a little stir-crazy for something to sink my mental teeth into. I’ve considered brushing up on Latin/Yiddish/[Insert Language Here], or finding something to translate, or going to the library for some good feminist theory or general history to study, and yet the time hasn’t quite been right for any of these things yet.

There is yet much organizing to do, unpacking to accomplish, and I could theoretically do some of that in the evenings as well, although Joel might find it rather difficult to sleep while I’m bustling around. Besides, that’s not quite the kind of pursuit that my mind is looking for, although making things fit into spaces does get my analytical side going somewhat.

I feel like I’m waiting to settle down a bit, like there are a few more pieces that need to fall into place before I can act. It’s odd, because I don’t have any sense of panic or hurry; it’s just Not Time Yet.

So I write, here, in the hopes of getting going whatever it is needs to be started; in hopes of finding whatever it will be that will be enough.

Made a few edits to the FAQ, minor adjustments for the most part, but I did add one link, to John Scalzi’s take-down of trolls who try to invoke First Amendment rights to justify hate speech and other violations of comment policy on other people’s blogs.

Go ahead and read it, if you haven’t come across it already. It’s pretty much all there.

Before too long, you (my ones of readers) will be seeing what may very well end up being a slough of new Philly-based posts. I have a whole new city to explore, and much of that exploration is going to be the myriad cafes, diners, restaurants and sweet shoppes in (get this) walking distance from my front door.

These will be tagged, thusly: The Geek Recommends.

Today’s very-quick recommend: Ants Pants Cafe (2212 South St., Phila), specifically the drink called an iced chocolate. The combination is decadent: vanilla ice cream, milk and house-made chocolate sauce, topped with whipped cream. It’s basically the best chocolate milkshake you’ve ever had, but layered, not blended. Banish all thoughts of Hershey’s from your mind: the sauce is not very sweet at all and lightly spiced (possibly with nutmeg, further research is needed), and when combined with the milk and ice cream is it surprisingly refreshing for what is basically all my vices rolled into one.

The cafe itself serves Australian fare, and the iced chocolate is one of their “Aussie” drinks. This is most certainly worth a return trip, and further reports will feature pictures, especially of any more ostentatious dishes.

That’s how long I’ve been here. It feels like at least two.

Friday last - entirely devoted to air travel with a very scared orange cat. I did manage to have enough energy to walk down to a little restaurant a few block from our apartment called Mama Palma’s. We had beautiful, delicious pizza (Margherita) and salad (spinach with bacon, walnuts and Gorgonzola) and discovered $7 beer (yay for the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board).

See the pretty pizza and my serious tired.

Saturday - We headed out to IKEA (for furniture, because we didn’t bring so much) about 9:00 Saturday morning, and, lo and behold, there was a farmer’s market not 100 feet from our front door.

Taken from my front stoop, looking north to Fitler Square.

Sunday - Sunday was a long walk through our neighborhood up to Rittenhouse Square, where we were hit up by petitioners with voter reg forms (I filled out the voter registration, and neglected the petition itself), had brunch at DiBruno Bros. (which was pretty good), and took a walk from there to Trader Joe’s. By the time we walked home, we’d gone about two and a half miles on foot, not including the places we went into and walked around. Needless to say, preggo-woman was tired, and dinner was take-out.

Monday through Wednesday - I began my independent exploration of the neighborhood, taking some time for internet browsing at the Good Karma Cafe, a neat place a block from the house, which serves Equal Exchange coffees. I hadn’t quite caught up on rest, though, so I pretty much stuck to the cafe, the hardware store, and the grocery three blocks down. We cooked the first meal in our house Tuesday night (a pasta and chicken concoction). Another farmer’s market was running Wednesday afternoon at a park four blocks away, and I got a LOT of organically grown (if not certified) produce there, most of which is still waiting to be used in the fridge. We also discovered a halal butcher shop a block from the house as well, and managed to cook some chicken chops for dinner Wednesday night that we’d purchased there.

Thursday - One of Joel’s coworkers, Liz, took us on a driving tour of Philly that afternoon, which was really quite fun. Parking the car when we got back, however, was quite the feat — or rather, finding a parking spot was. Joel dropped me off and it was a full fifteen minutes before he found a spot. Reason #72: Why We’re Selling The Car. It’s really more trouble than it’s worth.

Which leaves me with today. So far I haven’t done much of anything, and I don’t really plan to. Energy has been sporadic lately, and I’ve been sleeping more, from pure physical exhaustion (yay pregnancy!). I’ll be figuring out something to cook for dinner (not a problem, with the surplus still in the fridge from the farmer’s market Wednesday).

Besides, we’re going to the Reading Terminal Market tomorrow. I plan to bring lots of yummy stuff (including pictures!) back from that.

JT, who modded this for use in the Gigcast recording studios (aka the back room with the comp in it):

Growing up in Arkansas, there was a definite drive, especially once July rolled around, to make meals that were eaten chilled. My mother’s so-called “Summer Salad” was one; the ubiquitous canned tuna / pasta combination that was rolled out probably once a week.

One slightly more rare treat was chicken salad. Basically my mother made it the same way as the pasta stuff: a mayonnaise (well, Miracle Whip, actually) base with pickle juice or relish, with some sort of chopped veggies thrown in, usually celery and cucumber, and maybe a little something sweet-ish, like apple, raisins or grape halves.

When given the excuse to stew a whole chicken this week, I was determined to make it stretch into at least three separate dishes*. The first night Joel made chicken pesto pasta with some of the meat, and the rest was removed from the carcass and kept in the fridge until I mustered up the will to do something with it. It was a pretty typical me-version of things: dig around in the refrigerator until I found enough extras to throw in. What I found was a little more than normal: celery was there, but no cucumber; eggs, bacon and some Australian sharp Cheddar were on hand, however, so I went for more savory than sweet, as Joel isn’t the sweet fan I am. You could add chopped onion of any kind if you like, or bell pepper, or just about any kind of vegetable you’d eat raw.

Here’s the version I made a few days ago, and finished just before writing this post.

These are actually what little remained of the batch for my lunch today.

“Everything” Chicken Salad

The Basics:
Chicken, chopped into bite-sized pieces
Mayonnaise (or Miracle Whip), to taste and desired consistency
Sweet pickle relish (or juice, or chopped sweet pickles), to taste

The Add-Ins:
celery, chopped
grape tomatoes, sliced
egg, hard-boiled and chopped
bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled
sharp Cheddar cheese, cut into 1/4″ pieces

Combine basic ingredients until the chicken+dressing tastes like you want it to. Stir in add-ins as desired. Chill and eat.

*The third, incidentally, will be dumplings. Not chicken and dumplings, just dumplings, cooked in the broth. Comfort food extraordinaire.

In the midst of a perfectly serious examination of modern prose, including Junot Diaz’s The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao on Feminist SF — The Blog!, I find this:

Is anyone else suffering fits of lit-geeky laughter like I am?

Rainbow Girl cracks me up with her take-down of a self defense (for women!!!11eleventy) website.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging laziness.

First, the updates:
1. Kiddo kicked hard enough to visibly shake my belly last night. It was kind of surreal, and definitely made me laugh.
2. We’re probably staying in Lawrence, provided Joel can get enough of a job for us to live off of here. As soon as he’s hired somewhere, I’m going to start looking for cheap apartments for August.

Also, I’ve found yet another two patterns to try to knit, but I think this time these are the right ones for my next projects: a summery cardigan for myself (knit like mad, woman! there’s only three months of the summer left!) and the other is a colorwork project, a pair of gorgeous fingerless gloves.

The sweater (as seen here, on the pattern author) should work nicely for me and my preggo belly:

The mitts will be a challenge, because they involve some pretty serious colorwork, and are on (for me) Tiny Needles:

The afghan should be finished by July 1 (ambitious, I know, but it is going fast now!), so I’ll have a month (or so) to make the sweater for myself.

I also noticed what looks like a Ravelry widget in the sidebar on flintknits’ site, which is powered by WordPress. Must investigate this.

Yes, nothing to report on either food or fiber geekiness, except that the butternut squash soup is still sitting in my fridge (project completion grade: EPIC FAIL) and I’m gradually plugging away at the afghan, waiting on that crucial One More Color so I can finish all the strips I’ve started so far. It may be that I just do without it in the afghan (the woman from whom I bought it just had knee surgery, and it has yet to appear in my mailbox) and do some minor rearranging in the order of colors I’ve written out for the seven strips as yet in existence.

Otherwise, I’m starting to feel like I need to have some really good thinking time, possibly informal study, possibly just reading something challenging in German. I’m still in need of the hiatus from most of the feminist blogs I’ve been reading over the last year and a half or so, simply because it’s taking all my emotional energy to take care of myself during the last three months (yes! really!) of pregnancy, and a hyper-awareness of how shitty the world is isn’t exactly what I want to be obsessing over when my child comes into it. This is partially the reason why so many of the last posts here have been about physical projects: there are serious claims on my mental energy, and these projects are a form of release or distraction. I’m basically keeping busy to stay sane.

And it is helping. A lot. Which is why I don’t particularly feel like changing things up right now.

So, there will be more pics in my Flickr account of the afghan, and maybe some more cooking projects documented, although I’m not going to get into anything big when I only have one day for planning and execution before having to go back to work next day. Standing on my feet for 8 hours pretty much does me in these days, at least for the rest of the evening, anyway.