mocha me.

I made myself a mocha today. It's a good use of the Peet's coffee I don't like and the remaining TJs cocoa powder.

I put a teaspoon of cocoa in a giant mug, 3 teaspoons of sugar, and a couple tablespoons of cold milk. (The coffee is in the French press, brewing.) I stirred until the cocoa stopped floating on the milk, then microwaved so it would dissolve the sugar and I could check the ratio. Then I added more cold milk and the brewed coffee.

Things have not been going well and there have been a number of locked posts about it. If you're lurking, that's probably why I appear absent. But I find that little moments of pleasure are more centering to share than the woe. So I will be attempting to do more of that.

Let me share a story that starts out badly but improves near the end:

Simon was really angry that I had lunch at home yesterday, mostly because we don't have a lot of lunch-speed food (we have ingredients for long-cooking meals, but really need to visit the grocery store for fruits and salad components and other fresh items.) I had cottage cheese pancakes for lunch. It didn't suck, but it wasn't my first choice. There were some reasons for staying home, I was waiting for a phone call and for someone to come over, but the main reason I ate at home is that Simon had said last week that pizza was too expensive.

This is completely ridiculous because we get three meals for 2 out of a $20 pie; so although it's not the cheapest meal we have, it's not ludicrous by any means. I think he was not wanting pizza whenever that was, or had gone for an expensive lunch (his coworkers are all young and single and tend to buy lunch with credit cards so they don't notice how much they spend... and I know when I go out with the coffee woman and my lunch hits $20+ that I do not go out to the store to buy pre-made lamb kabobs for grilling.)

But I felt like Simon was saying that I was wasting money. So I ate at home and had cottage cheese pancakes. Simon was disgusted.

He told me explicitly to go out for lunch today. I might circumvent that and buy something pre-made at the grocery store. It costs the same as going out, but I could watch the saved Criminal Minds... restaurants have really bad entertainment compared with eating at home in front of a whole TiVo full of things you've saved.

But I might go out too... I saved $5 on a mocha. That would make any lunch I wanted practically free.

Because I'm Old, Yeah Yeah Yeah.

huh. I think I might have to change my musical opinion of Katy Perry.

Having not really heard anything of hers before, I was going off Simon's impressions which are that he doesn't like her videos (which he skims on mute) and that modern music is generally done by people who can't sing and whose main goal is to promote their friends and guarantee that the music industry remains insular and stagnates of cruddy sounding songs.

Today I heard the song "Firework" 4 times. I wasn't in the car with music on for more than 30 minutes. I heard it 3 times on one station (albeit in three separate instances) and once on another station.

I hold to the idea that the song is not well sung and is musically anathematic to my ear.

But I love the lyrics and the non-subtle meaning of those words. Apparently it was actually written by a team of people including Katy Perry, so I can't even complain that whoever wrote it should have found someone with talent to perform it.

I just wish it was set to different music and performed by someone who doesn't need computer correction of her voice. (And yes, I can hear it, it's not continuous like people who have zero talent, but it's definitely there.)

I heard these lyrics and I thought, "Fuck, where's Elton John when you need him?"