author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

OK I promise the actually writing blog will have actually writing content again very very soon. But today I'm just going to have y'all over for dinner again.

Tuesdays are when I pick up our weekly farm share. We're CSA members with Friends Farm. We pick up the weekly share at Jacob Springs Farm's co-op farm store, which we are also a member of. So today I came home summer veg from two different farms--and I hadn't hardly used up last week's bounty, neither.

Also there's shrimp in the freezer, so I guess we're making shrimp etouffee!

(Please imagine there's accents over the first and second Es. This is a completely hand-coded blog, which means it's got real live twenty-year-old bugs, and one of those is that something in my database barfs when I feed it an extended ascii character. One day I'll fix it. In my copious spare time.)

Fetch out the recipe, or, What We Talk About When We Talk About Good

One of the most important and treasured gifts my parents gave me when I left home and went away to college was my very own copy of Talk About Good! This collection of recipes from the kitchens of southern Louisiana was published as a community fundraiser by the Junior League of Lafayette in 1967. It is a MUST HAVE if you wanna get serious about cuisine out of Cajun Country. The recipes are inarguably authentic and sometimes baffling.

In 2017, The Washington Post did a great article about Talk About Good! Go read it, it's heartwarming. But for the love of all that's holy, don't follow their link to buy it from Amazon. Buy it directly from the Junior League of Lafayette instead, thereby supporting their mission "to advance women's leadership for meaningful community impact through volunteer action, collaboration, and training."

The recipe I'm following--very, very loosely--is SHRIMP ETOUFFEE by Elizabeth Gauthier, page 198.

Prepare the ingredients.

Ms. Gauthier calls for the yolks of two boiled eggs, mashed up in just enough water to make a paste. I put ten of 'em in the Instant Pot for the 5-5-5 method. If I'm going to boil eggs, I might as well boil enough to make egg salad. I mean, look, the farm share included a nice handful of dill. That's what I do with dill.

While the eggs are processing: Chop up that half a yellow onion that's been sitting in the fridge, one of those small red onions from Jacob Springs Farm's farm store, a bunch of peppers, both spicy and bell, from Friends Farm, and a couple ribs of that celery that's hanging on for dear life in the crisper drawer. Put this veg mix in a bowl and set aside.

Take about 8 ounces of fresh tomatoes from Friends Farm and chop 'em up. Put them in a bowl. Add a splash of dry sherry and, inspired by the etouffee recipe on page 199, a teaspoon of Better Than Bouillon mushroom base. I added salt and pepper but next time I'd leave out the salt. Or at least use less.

Put a 1lb bag of frozen shrimp into a sink full of cold water to thaw.

Once the eggs are done, crumble two yolks and whisk them into the tomatoes. Snack on the egg whites.

An interlude with egg salad.

Put the other eight eggs in a big bowl. Run each one twice through an egg slicer, first lengthwise then crosswise. Chop up that handful of dill from Friends Farm and add it to the eggs. Sprinkle on some curry powder, mustard powder, paprika, salt, and black pepper. Shake on some hot sauce.

Spoon in enough mayonnaise to get the texture you like best. I used three flings of a small pastry spatula--maybe 6 tablespoons? maybe half a cup?--to get a nicely thick egg salad. The Brennans, in Sugar Bust for Life!, call for 3/4 cup. I personally think that's excessive.

Mix thoroughly with a big fork. Scrape it into a container with a very good seal unless you want your whole fridge to smell like egg. Make sandwiches tomorrow.

"Etoufee" means "smother" and by God we gonna get smothered

Surprisingly, Ms. Gauthier's recipe does not call for a roux, nor even for tomatoes (aside from "1 small can V-8 juice or tomato sauce"), so I'm not sure what definition of etouffee we're going by. It works, though. And I am here to tell you it's delicious.

Melt a whole damn stick of butter in the pan. Saute your veg mix in it. While you're waiting for the veg to soften, you might make that egg salad. You might also chop up some green onion because why are there no green onions in this recipe? Ditto fresh parsley, if you have some. The recipe does mention dried parsley, but I feel like dried parsley is like dried basil: a weirdly metallic flavor of Why Bother. Add the green onion and parsley and continue sauteing until it be sauteed enough.

Add the thawed pound of shrimp to the pan and also the tomato mixture. Let everything get nice and bubbly. Add some hot sauce if your spicy peppers didn't add enough kick. Let the mess simmer and thicken while you make your rice. I do a wild rice blend following Amy + Jacky's Instant Pot method, and by the time it's done the etouffee is nicely thickened indeed.

I don't worry too much about overcooking the shrimp during this process. In my experience, the shrimp can take it.

Dinner time!

Devour two bowls of deliciousness. Finish this blog post. Fall over in a happy food coma. See you in the morning.

Good evening. Today and yesterday have been a little low energy, with not as much writing as I meant to have done. (The Friday Fictionette for August 14 will just have to come out a day late.) But the new delivery from Wild Pastures was arriving today, and I needed to make room in the freezer, which meant using up what still remained of the previous delivery, which was frozen chicken drumsticks.

What the crud do I do with frozen chicken drumsticks? A-ha! I've got it!

Low-effort Instant Pot Chicken Paprikash
(adapted from a slow-cooker recipe I found online but don't seem to have the URL for anymore)

Defrost two or three 1-lb packages of bone-in dark chicken meat just enough to get 'em out of their plastic packaging. The recipe calls for 3+ lbs boneless chicken, which I see the point of, but 1. frozen chicken drumsticks was what I had, and 2. including bones is gonna make a richer broth. (A higher effort version of this recipe has involved hacking up a whole chicken and browning the parts in oil.) Anyway, pop 'em in the sink and let them soak in cold water while you do the next bit.

Slice up an onion and a red bell pepper into narrow strips. (The recipe calls for shallots instead of onions. I have onions galore and very little patience for peeling shallots.) Put them in the Instant Pot insert. Add to them a tablespoon butter (salted or unsalted will not greatly matter), a nice big tablespoon fresh and coarsely ground black pepper, a whole honkin' quarter cup of paprika, and three tablespoons tomato paste. I suppose I might have added some fresh tomato. I didn't think about it.

The paprika I used was Smoked Spanish Hot (acquired at the downtown Savory Spice store). I was introduced to this particular dish via Dracula Daily, and especially its Tumblr following who guffawed at Jonathan Harker's "white boy spice tolerance" for considering a paprika dish anywise hot, and then the "well actually" responses that pointed out that hot Hungarian paprika is, in fact, quite hot. I'd have liked to try the Hungarian version, but Spanish was what was in the store.

Finally, take your just-barely-defrosted chicken out of its plastic wrapper and dump it into the Instant Pot on top of all those goodies. Pour in a cup and a half of water or chicken broth. I just went with water, because broth seemed redundant. Seal the pot, begin PRESSURE COOK - HIGH of 45 minutes (the formula is 20 minutes per pound of frozen chicken, I went a little extra), and go run away and do something else.

The "something else" was the beginning of a new short story that's been rattling around in my head. I originally meant this idea for a flash story to submit to Manuscrypt Magazine, but 1. today was the deadline for that, and 2. I wanted to develop it more substantially than the flash length (and a last-minute effort) would allow. I got about a thousand words of potential opening for the story, which was fun.

When the Instant Pot beeps, and the pressure begins to naturally release, it's a good time to "prepare your carbs" as the recipe puts it. My carbs was four ounces of penne pasta, so here's where I started the water boiling for that. If I were feeling more energetic, I might have made spaetzle, using a cheese grater for my spaetzle press. Maybe I'll do that when I'm ready to eat the leftovers.

While the pasta cooks, combine a half-cup sour cream with a tablespoon flour and 3/4 teaspoon salt.

When the Instant Pot's pressure valve drops, take off the lid and start a SAUTE - HIGH mode. Take the chicken out and set it aside. Add the sour cream mixture and whisk it as smooth as you can. If you've got sour cream granules that just won't go away, don't worry; the ensuing cooking action will finish it off for you. Get all the chicken off the bone and add it back. (With drumsticks, this is very easy.) Let it simmer vigorously for about 10 minutes or until things thicken up a tad. Scoop a three-drumstick helping over your cooked pasta. Devour.

If you used a hot paprika, grab something to blow your nose on, because, if you're anything like me, even a modest amount of heat will clear out your sinuses. Only don't actually be like me and absentmindedly grab the same paper towel you used to blot your fountain pen with this morning, or you will wind up with ink on your nose. (Picture withheld to minimize the embarrassment.)

I have, of late, and possibly belatedly, become aware that "prompt" is a word with multiple meanings, even in the context of writing. Or, indeed, "writing."

Since I often talk about writing from prompts, I want to be extremely clear about what I mean.

I write from prompts. It's a daily practice. But when I say that, I do not mean that I input a prompt into ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini and use the chatbot's output as a starting point for the day's writing. Or, heavens forfend, an ending point.

Apparently there are writers who do this. Apparently there are writers who "co-write" with LLMs. Or "brainstorm" with them. Or "ask" a chatbot to "edit" their work.

I am not in the business of decreeing that other people are writers or not writers. As far as I'm concerned, a writer is someone who writes. But I would not call this business of inputting a prompt into a chat bot and receiving probabalistic output "writing."

(There is a legendary and oft-repeated encounter in writing circles wherein the author receives a business proposal consisting of "I've got a great idea for a book. If you write it, I'll let you take half the profits." Presumably authors are receiving less such proposals these days, as the innovative entrepreneur now has, in their chatbot of choice, a willing "co-writer" with whom they do not need to split the take at all.)

To me, writing from prompts means this: Inputting a simple story idea, randomly chosen word, evocative image, etc. into my brain, wherein associations occur, memories resurface, and more complex story ideas emerge. Each of these gives rise to further associations, other memories and ideas, questions about the budding plots and premises. What arrives on the page is a verbose record of my asking and answering those questions, my "what if"s and "what about"s and my "and furthermore"s. It's a transcript of me talking to myself about the developing story. At some point, enough details feel "real" for me to move from "and then X character does Y, or what if they do Z" into actual narration, something that looks like the very rough draft of a story. From there, the final draft is a matter of revising and rewriting.

That's my process. And writing must be involved, at every stage. I can't develop ideas fully in my head and then spit out a completed story draft; there's only so far that thinking about the story can take me. When thinking hits a dead end, I just have to write and see what happens. There is some alchemy that happens on the page, some neural pathway activated by typing each letter and watching each word form, that unearths the story I didn't know I had inside of me to tell. It sounds like magic. It feels like magic. But it works. For me, it's the only thing that works.

And it wouldn't work if I outsourced any of that labor to a chatbot.

Now, there are some who would say it's the same process: Whether you enter a prompt into a chatbot or into your own brain, the text comes out just the same. These people would also have you believe there is no difference between your reading a text and adding that experience to your store of memories, and an LLM ingesting that text and adding it to its training data. I can only surmise that such people have a very low and reductive opinion of what our brains actually do, necessarily dismissing the importance of memory and experience and sensory input and hormonal flow and how tired we are at the time or whether we've just made love or built a fence or eaten the whole bar of chocolate in one sitting or driven 600 miles in hundred-and-four-degree weather. I am sure such people would say that all those factors just amount to training data, no more, no less, and that if we could give an LLM a similarly large and varied amount of training data, there really would be no difference between a chatbot's output and the words produced by our own thoughts and reasoning and sustained awareness.

Needless to say, I disagree. A chatbot has no thoughts. It does not reason. It has no awareness, nor emotions (whatever this yo-yo's on about to the contrary). It cannot sustain a logical throughline. Slush readers evaluating AI-generated manuscripts (invariably submitted in full violation of the publication's submission guidelines) have noted a lack of there there, a hollowness at the center of all that fine prose, metaphors that are more madlib than meaning, an emptiness that comes not of speaking from the heart but rather choosing the next word based on what word, statistically, algorithmically, is most likely to follow the previous word.

It has been suggested to me that while of course one shouldn't use a chatbot to generate one's manuscript, why not use one during the brainstorming process? No. No, that will not do. To put it glibly, there is no brainstorming where there is no brain. The whole point for me of writing from prompts is for my brain to respond with those associations and memories unique to my own personal human experience. It's why two different writers will come up with vastly different stories in response to the same prompt, even if it is a very detailed prompt.

Meanwhile, the LLM's response to the same prompt will be a sort of flattened-out average of that vast stolen and degraded treasure of human thought on which it has fed. It's been called "spicy autocorrect" for a very good reason; all it ever gives you is the most likely continuation of the text it's in the middle of generating. It cannot rise above mediocrity. It cannot surprise, nor tell us anything new, or true. Like the faerie tricksters who kidnap human bards, they cannot create. They can only steal.

So I don't use chatbots. I don't use LLMs. For this and many other reasons, I don't use anything in any software product touted as "AI." One of the first things I did with my new laptop was to uninstall Copilot and Office 365. I ditched Firefox for the Waterbox and Ironfox forks when Mozilla went all in on AI. I don't use Google for web search anymore; I use DuckDuckGo with AI turned off. In the one Slack workspace where I have admin privileges, which is the Boulder County Roller Derby slack, I disabled (with the leadership team's agreement) all the AI features, because our community values each other's words enough to actually read them rather than to ask a chatbot for a summary.

And I absolutely do not use "AI" in my writing, nor ever will.

There you have it. If you suffered from any uncertainty as to what exactly I mean when I talk about writing from prompts--now you know.

Further reading: "Another Reason Not to Use 'AI' for Your Writing," John Scalzi, Whatever, July 31, 2026. "Why I Don't Write with Generative AI," Jason Sanford, Apex Book Company, July 7, 2025. "I'm Begging You: Never Write With A.I.," Bret Stephens, New York Times, August 4, 2026. "Our AI Policy," Ebooks DIRECT.

I swear I'm trying to get more regular with my blogging and but so anyway HOW ABOUT A RECIPE FOOD THING

I call it... Shakshoukatouille!

Ingredients

• Half a quite large yellow onion, or one if yours are reasonably sized
• Several cloves of garlic
• A couple glugs olive oil
• A quantity of summer farm share veg that otherwise threatens to overwhelm your kitchen capacity
• Ground cumin, coriander, turmeric, paprika, black pepper. Also salt.
• Two eggs, or more if you're not the only one eating

Method

Olive oil, large frying pan or skillet, medium high. Probably hot enough by the time you're done dicing/chopping that onion.

Onion goes in, so does a quantity of salt.

While onion softens, mince up yer garlic. In it goes.

While alliums continue to cook, chop up anything pepper-like. Today it was two spicy peppers somewhere on the jala-serrano spectrum and a small handful of shishitos. Add them to the slowly softening/goldening mess in the pan, then give them a good little while to cook an' mellow. Five minutes? You decide.

Eggplant! Slice the fairy tale eggplants into thin rounds, and the little purple ones into, I dunno, thin quartered rounds. Add 'em in. They won't take long to get tender, so go ahead and...

Chop up that huge zucchini that came in two weeks ago. Skin it, slice it several times lengthwise in each direction, then crosswise to get comfortably spoon-size pieces. Add it to the ongoing project and then give it a nice little while to cook.

One more veg needed here, and that's enough diced tomato to sorta layer over the whole mess.

Then, depending on the quantity and juiciness of your tomatoes, add some 6 to 8 oz water and bring to a boil. We're looking for stew, not soup. When you shove veg chunks aside you should see liquid bubbling, but the veg shouldn't be covered per se.

Everything tender? A good simmer achieved? Did you add the spices at some point? OK then. Shove aside some veg to make little wells into which you can crack yer eggs. Poach those suckers. When they're almost done, maybe turn off the fire, cover the pan, and let them finish cooking on residual heat and steam.

Scoop those eggs into a comfy big bowl, scoop some veg and broth on top, and spoon it all into yer maw. Best enjoyed in front of the AC or in a cool breeze while listening to an entertaining audiobook. (I just finished up a reread of Caitlin Rozakis's Dreadful. Very much recommended. A farce of a premise that nevertheless sinks its teeth into some really chewy moral dilemmas. How much responsibility do you have for evils you can't remember committing? What does it mean to be a good person? How much is it even worth trying? Also, why TF did your past self order the live moat squid and what TF are you supposed to do with it? Go get you a copy. Of the book, not the moat squid. It's good stuff. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to the next novel from Rozakis, The Grimoire Grammar School Parent-Teacher Association.)

Hello the blog! How abouts we do a little Friday Fictionette round-up?

I haven't done one of these for a long while, what with being perpetually behind schedule and kind of ashamed about it, but hey! No time like the present to start things up again. I've just now finished up all the June releases, and here they all are:

Friday, June 5, 2026: "Rise in Defense" (ebook) | audio) In which we wake, and wonder why--not to mention when.

Friday, June 12, 2026: "A Werewolf at the Island Avenue Starbucks" (ebook | audio) In which the new trainee demonstrates some unexpected qualifications for the job.

Friday, June 19, 2026: "The Cover-Up" (ebook | audio) In which we discover the lengths a parent will go to protect her child from the world.

Friday, June 26, 2026: "They Made a Pact" (ebook | audio) In which an oath sworn in childhood consoles us. Sort of.

The Friday Fictionette Project, ongoing since August 2014 but not exactly punctual for that whole time, is a new flash-length story-shaped object theoretically every first through fourth Friday of each month. Patrons at the $1/month tier have access to all the ebook editions, which come in HTML, epub, mobi, and PDF flavors. Patrons at the $3/month tier additionally have access to the "audiofictionette," narrated my me.

At the end of each completed month, I turn off the paywall on one of those four releases. For June 2026, the Fictionette Freebie is "A Werewolf at the Island Avenue Starbucks."

I also offer a $5 tier wherein you get mailed a Fictionette Artifact, which is one of that month's releases lovingly and about 95% accurately reproduced via typewriter and illustrated with grade school level watercolors. I am not primarily a visual artist, but I do have fun doodling little sketches and making elaborate illustrated capital letters. There will typically be a little note from me in the envelope along with some sort of tiny surprise inside: stickers, beer mats, dried flowers, tatted motifs, whatever occurs to me to shove in there. Because this particular item takes a non-trivial amount of time and effort to prepare, only three people total can subscribe at this level at any given time, one for each fictionette that doesn't wind up being that month's freebie. At this time, there is one slot remaining.

I suppose I should mention the highest tier, which I'm only offering one subscription on, and that's for me to make you a little chapbook of all four fictionettes, but given how far behind I am on just the basic monthly schedule, I probably shouldn't encourage anyone to subscribe to this sucker. (I do make a lovely chapbook, though. Sewn binding and everything.)

Since I am behind on everything, I have this pie-in-the-sky goal of getting All Caught Up by releasing two ficitonettes a week and two sets of Fictionette Artifacts each month. This has not been happening on a regular basis, but I have hope to improve.

...So! That's about the State of the Friday Fictionette Project. I was going to continue this post with a round-up of everything else I'm up to right now, especially as pertains to writing, but I think I've gone on long enough already just on this one subject. So stay tuned for more tomorrow, or at least later this week. I really am determined to return to a regular blogging schedule, I swear.

Welp, here I am! At the end of my 2-day drive, and checked in at the hostel. It's tempting to just settle in here, hang out all evening in their Commons or their Cafe - but I mean to head over to wander the Northwest District just as soon as I've figured out where in that rather large swathe of fun I want to go.

I had to drive through The Dalles to get here, which felt vaguely inefficient; I'll be driving back to the Dalles tomorrow. But I did not wind up stopping to charge there. Once again, ABRP offered me a faster route, I accepted, and next thing I knew it was saying that my next stop was Portland in 3 hours.

Apparently I don't do 3-hour shifts very well. At least not midday. I started to get very, very tired about an hour in. So I wound up taking the exit for Arlington and spending a lovely hour at the park there. Finally did my Morning Pages while a pair of ducks took a nap in the grass next to my picnic table. It was oddly like being at home and writing at my bedroom writing nook while Holland loafs near my feet.

But anyway so, YAY, I made it here, I have tonight to myself and then tomorrow it's ROLLER DERBY AT ALL TIMES what with carpooling with teammates and staying at the team AirBnB and playing in the tournament and all. Do you want to watch the tournament? It's gonna be livestreamed and I think it's gonna go live here when the games start on Saturday. Our games are at 6 PM Saturday, 10 AM Sunday, and 4 PM Sunday (all times Pacific Daylight / GMT-7).

All for now. Talk to y'all soon!

I was right about La Grande being the next planned charging stop. However, shortly after I began driving, ABRP offered a route that was "7 minutes faster." I thought, sure, why not, and tapped START DRIVING. The new route had me bypass La Grande and head right into Pendleton. (Again, this has a lot to do with charging to 90% at that Starbucks rather than stopping at 75%.)

In Oregon, the mountains are softer. They're rounded, curvy, and gentle where the Rockies are sharp and imposing. Many of the formations look like a giant sleeping late on a Sunday morning, all snuggly under the covers in bed. I remember this from when I used to live in southern Oregon. Coming into the state on a highway bracketed by snoozing mountains feels like coming home.

I have so much appreciation for the Arrowhead Travel Plaza branded EV charging stations. First off, there is no app involved. None. There is a HUGE screen with VERY clear instructions, a credit card reader that tells you when it's ready to read your card, and a call button on a drive-thru style speaker for in case you get stumped and need assistance.

And the stations are all under a shade awning, and each one has a windshield-cleaning station with squeegie, cleaning fluid, paper towels, and a trash can. Right there! Actual car-and-driver car infrastructure, right next to the charging station! Most of my stops, if I want a trash can or a paper towel, or indeed shade, I gotta walk over to the gas pumps, and that's gonna be a good long walk because no one wants to store extremely flammable substances next to their high-voltage appliances.

Next stop after this one will be Portland, and there's no hurry. I can't check into the NW Portland Hostel until 3 PM anyway. Might as well let the car charge all the way up and enjoy my morning writing tasks, and wait for the McDonalds kiosk menu to change over from breakfast to lunch.

Good morning. I am in Idaho.

Spent the night at a rest stop because getting a hotel room just seemed like a lot of work. Woke up around 5:30 when the birds started mouthing off. Watched the moon set orange over a different collection of mountains than I'm usually seeing it set over. By the time it was gone, there was a slow sunrise beginning in my rearview mirror.

The thing about setting off from home on a road trip is it doesn't quite feel real. Like, I can tell myself, in my head, "I'll be in Idaho before I stop driving for the night," but my senses are telling me that all I'm doing is leaving the house and driving to Longmont, like I do multiple times every week. Even once I'm passing Loveland and Fort Collins, it's still nothing special. I don't really believe it until I've crossed a state line.

The thing about waking up in the back seat of my car at a rest stop is, there is absolutley no doubt that shit has indeed got real.

Last night's dinner with my friend was lovely. She introduced me to a little bistro called Cafe Trio that makes some pretty amazing focaccia. It was nice to have some lengthy downtime. After we parted and I got back on the highway, I felt refreshed. Of course, that lasted right up until the sun went down.

Just about ready to get back on the road now. The car's done charging. I've made myself a new thermos of tea. (The Starbucks baristas were so helpful, and also so confused - I kept telling them, they don't need to fill my electric kettle cup by painful cup from their steaming water machine. It's an electric kettle! Just stick it under the tap, it'll take care of heating the water itself!) Finishing up my coffee and about to brush my teeth.

Next stop: Once again, not sure. The words "La Grande" stick in my mind, but I've had to re-program ABRP several times since Salt Lake City, it might have changed its mind about where to send me next. Wherever I end up, I hope to hit my first writing task of the day.

(I'm going to be in Portland a lot earlier than I expected.)

Excuse me. Coalville, not Coalton. And I wound up skipping it entirely. It turns out, if you keep charging your vehicle to, like, 80% or 90% despite ABRP telling you that 65-70% will be fine, eventually it decides you don't need one of the originally planned stops.

Which, OK - great! Made it into town like two hours before my friend will be ready to meet me for dinner. Hooray! On the other hand, I probably didn't need to drive 3 hours straight. But I MADE IT HERE, to this corner table in a Starbucks in a Target, so, hooray.

I've been meaning all day to do some freewriting to a prompt, and these past two stops I didn't really feel I had time to do more than this travel blogging stuff. So now I get to sit and do that. I'm thinking the November 3 2025 writing prompt from Julie Duffy's StoryADay might be fun.

Also, I'm finally getting a chance to transfer the words of the day so far into 4thewords, extend my streak, and knock out a couple special event monster quests.

Next stop: I forget. Not getting there 'til well after dinner anyway.

Self-check assistant: "Would you like me to get your your bag credits?"
Me: "Oh, thank you... I only have the one bag, though."
Self-check assitsant: "Eh, I'll give you extra. I feel like I always miss you when you're here."
Me: bites tongue and stares in Colorado

Saw the first sentinel cliffs when navigation told me I was 23 miles out from Rock Springs. I don't know what they're actually called. They're mostly vertical, blocky, greenish, and they always look to me like there are faces staring out over the highway. Like sentinels, standing guard.

Sometimes the blocky bit starts above a sort of erosion skirt, as though the mountain is being worn away to reveal the true faces buried underneath. Sometimes the skirts have the look of paws, like those of a giant reclining beast. They make me think of sphinxes.

Look, just going in for groceries used up the time it took to charge to the recommended percentage. I could almost resent that. I wanted to spend more time writing. Next stop, I guess, now that I've got my Waterloo and cheese and salami and crackers. Also "juicy Nerd clusters," a variation that will be of high interest to my roller derby team. I felt obliged to buy a sample bag and report.

Well, no, I haven't tried them yet. Hold your horses.

Next stop: Coalton UT.