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This bumped into my head during the golden hour this morning (that's the time between getting into the shower and finishing my tea) and knocked around until finally I got it down on paper.

Just a test drive. Honestly.

Title: Meeting The Constituents
Fandom: Studio 60

Commentary post-hack: Archived on Storyteller. I had forgotten about the Golden Hour, and wanted to preserve the post.

(no subject)

This whole "eating" habit I've developed is going to bankrupt me.

This morning I had to stay in and wait for Fed Ex, so I finished assembling my Ikea dresser and cleaned up the bedroom, stashing all the clothes in the dresser and all the linens in a corner until I can figure out what to do with them. I also assembled all the stuff I needed to mail and signed some papers for Renter's Insurance, so I really did accomplish quite a lot.

I got on the El for the first time since the day I arrived, because the nearest post office is a few stops down from me. I decided to make an afternoon of it, so on the way back from the post office I looked around in "Shake, Rattle, & Read", a stunningly ghetto (just how I like 'em) second-hand book and record shop northwest of the Lawrence stop. I also decided that I would continue south on the train and hit up Old Town, a shopping district just north of Clark and Division. My curiousity had been piqued when Femme and Arsenic located a spice store there.

Old Town is a fun, slightly yuppie little shopping area filled with pavement-dining bistros and tchochke shops and gourmet food places -- for those of you who are thinking Old Town, Sacramento, you're pretty wide of the mark. :) I looked in a lot of windows but didn't venture inside any until I found The Spice House.

Now, similar to many English-tea-houses-in-America, you get your goods with a free side order of Surly at The Spice House. Most of the time my fumbling lack of social graces is nicely covered by my ability to laugh at myself, because generally people laugh along and forgive you for being a bit harebrained. This time, however, the woman who dished out my spices was efficient, formal, and totally indifferent to my self-deprecating charms. Can't win 'em all, I guess. Anyway, I got my spices and cocoa mix, so I'm happy. I may have spent a little more than I intended to, but I feel it was a good reward for my restraint in not buying a second-hand copy of Never The Sinner, one of my favourite contemporary plays, at Shake, Rattle, & Read.

I bought turkish bay leaves, hot cocoa mix, natural chocolate powder for baking, California paprika that is just brilliantly red (it's nearing the colour I always imagined for A&C's wings in Some Strange Race), and Chinese Mustard Powder. I was going to buy some Powdered Sumac Berry, which is a middle-eastern salt substitute, but I forgot. None of it ran me much more than it would coming from the grocery store, and I know it's fresh, and everything came in neat shaker bottles.

I walked back to the El by a slightly different route and happened to stumble on a Western Union, which was a blessing since I needed to fax the gas company (they think I'm illegal or something, and needed a copy of my Social Security Card). So really I've gotten a ridiculous amount of work done today. I've just finished making an early dinner of reheated deep-dish pizza, and I declare it Much Tastier The Second Day, because it's had time to congeal a little.

SO. Who's got some paprika-based recipes worthy of my beautiful red California Paprika? I'm already plotting deviled eggs...