I really love that that was my mom's take on it as well.

Thank you for the recipe, -t

Fistbump, aurelia.

And you're welcome, Burrell.

BALTIMORE: I would live there if I could.

Tom thinks the talent pool in Seattle will make it impossible to get a job. I think he has little faith in himself. (He's really good at what he does.) I think he's nervous about being a small fish in a big pond, which is sort of the opposite of New Orleans.

Woes about my niche skill set aside, I am really well networked up here. And, because of recruiting bonuses, my connections have a vested interest in pimping candidates. He should, if he hasn't already, connect with me on LinkedIn. Sure, I can't help myself get a job that doesn't suck, but I can assist people with desirable skills in their hunt.

There's always Houston, but who moves from New Orleans to Houston unless there's an act of God or a job involved?

I just want to stay in my bathrobe and eat soup and read murder mysteries.

Oh, that sounds lovely. Sadly, I'm too busy for that this weekend. And tomorrow I'm going for a hike with a friend. Now I have to vacuum, and then go buy dog food and pick up Dad.

St. Louis is great, but I feel it suffers from the same increased-likelihood-of-inspiring-a-procedural-episode problem as Baltimore.

Matt speaks truth.

This Sunday not at work thing is odd but lovely. I slept in, then went to breakfast--forgetting that today is a holiday where people take other people out for meals--then drove out to the lake for some silence and emptiness. I would not be able to swear that there is a lake out there, though logic dictates that several dozen square miles of water have not disappeared. But what's near to shore and not moving much has frozen over and has snow on it, so only the fact that there are buoys and docks sticking out into it suggests that the snowy expanse is not, in actuality, a field. Past the stone jetty is nothing but haze/fog, so the Loch Ness Monster could have been cavorting out there and I wouldn't know it.

But it was quiet. Except for the occasional bird, and the ice bits falling down through tree branches as they thawed, and the sound of the freeway through the mist. A surprising number of vehicles drove out to where I was, though most didn't stay. I wondered if I was interfering with nefarious meetings. One pair of people was down on the ice near one of the docks, kind of scuffling around the edges. On the other side of the inlet, a couple was throwing snowballs at each other and doing the kinds of things couples do on Valentine's Day in the daytime when they don't want to court lewdness in public charges. There weren't any warnings about thin ice or general danger, but my writer brain kept going into ominous areas, so I came home and spent an hour sorting through the DVD rack.