Ask you anything? Easy. Why is it so bloody hard to change a default icon? What's so great about it?
Or is that just me?

The spouse works for a newspaper -- open-plan office, no cubicles. When the phone rings, you tend to grab whatever phone is closest. Not a lot of private property, in other words.

He has a co-worker who gets upset if someone rearranges his pencils.

Having said that, I'm very glad I don't share a kitchen with anyone but the spouse. Who, hm, tends to wash my sharp and expensive knives, walk right past my lovely knife block, and toss them into a drawer. Where they make one another duller by contact, much like certain kinds of fans.

Is it? Maybe it's like giving yourself a facelift. Only worse, because you see your own icon a lot more than you see your own face.

Hey, I never promised I was going to respond in an interesting way.

I finally purchased a Cook's Illustrated website subscription, and thought of you, since you were the one that mentioned a website subscription didn't come with a magazine subscription. And, lo, the website has all the magazines ever, searchable. It's awesome.

What's your favorite vegetable to cook with in the spring?

That was you? ... ooops. Forgive me, fairest friend, for I have indeed been fantastically forgetful! May I be smitten by Zeus' wrath, for the good-looking Greeks were indeed impressive, but nowhere near as alluring as your face glowing in the moonlight (hope that sunburn didn't scar?). Ah, I hear the lapping of the waves, water gurgling down the gullies as we first made the city rise, rise up, only to have to submerge it again (who'd have thunk those mermaids had such sharp teeth) ...

I like big glossy black ants, except when they're in my kitchen showing me the location of poorly wiped counters. I like black swallowtail butterflies. I like lightning bugs. I like earthworms, which are not strictly (or at all) insects.

I like paisley, but dislike polka dots.

I like the sweet domesticity of an upside-down kiss over the back of the couch (one person sitting with a book, the other standing because she's getting ready for bed).

Well, real life (upon which a pox) is going to make it impossible for me to plan anything till July anyway, so all you've done is denied me the opportunity of saying, "Nope, can't make it."

But hi anyway! (waves vaguely eastward, or is it northward?)

A house a little ways down the street caught on fire last weekend. I wasn't home at the time, but dh caught the experience on the digital camera. I was happy that no one was hurt and that it wasn't my house.

In the asking theme, have you given up on HP fic or do you think you will get back to it sometime?

That's their traditional Japanese look. They are demons, monsters. ... Huh. Wraith <-> mermen? Illusions, horrid teeth, painful death, ...

We just got Best Light Recipes. Now, we need light recipes, because the spouse has very high cholesterol, so I've been happy with it. If you don't need to cook light, I don't know.

Here are the things I've made so far:

Reduced-fat vinaigrette: Very good, but way more trouble than the original, on account of all the mincing of shallots involved.

Reduced-fat blueberry muffins: Noticeably not as good as the full-fat kind, but still pretty good.

Soy-glazed salmon over rice: fabulous, totally wonderful, an immediate addition to our regular dinner rotation.

Vegetarian stir-fry recipes: These are complicated and kind of hard to use, because of their method -- pick some vegetables from List A, and some from List B, and some from List C, and a sauce from List D ... I made one with the lemon sauce and didn't like it at all. But other sauces may be fine.

Oh, Evanston -- it's been so many years since I've been there! I used to love cheddar-broccoli soup at Yesterdays, which is long gone; I used to love the old movies at the short-run theater, which is long gone. There was a Middle Eastern restaurant way up north on Dempster, which I could only get to if someone else drove, since I didn't have a car and it was too far to walk; don't remember the name, but the Baba Ghanoush was to die for. Platypus Books was lovely. The Mexican Shop was lovely; I got a purple dress with a square collar which got lost somewhere along the way, but for a while I wore it every single week.

There was a little offshoot of the lake on campus which was generally called the Lagoon, lots of fun to walk around. Honestly, I don't remember campus well at all, which is odd considering how much time I used to spend walking around it.

Beautiful! I don't need more than one, and I can't decide which I like best, so will download 'n' upload when I get home.

My former job was writing about art done on computer, and one of the last pieces I covered was a beatiful still life with some stalks of asparagus. This was shortly after I became a pornographer, and I'll tell you, I read that thing about ten times to make sure I always sayd 'stalk' and never slipped up and said 'shaft' instead!

You haven't had artichokes or asparagus but once?? What do you eat??

Back when I used to have roommates, my biggest roommate conflict revolved around metal tools in the Teflon egg pan. I totally understand.