Notes from a wonderful day

• monshu and I had today off; I'm sorry if you didn't.
• It's hard to think of a holiday where there's more of a gap for me between how much I appreciate the significance and how much I dislike the observance. Don't get me wrong, I love cookouts, but the only reason we have them on the 4th is that it--like Labour Day or (some years) Memorial Day falls during Midwestern grilling season. The distinctive element to Independence Day is fireworks, and I agree with niemandsrose when she says, "I feel the same way about them that I did about alcohol in college, which is that they're something I only want to do with people I really trust." It's been my special joy for years to live in areas full of people I don't trust using both alcohol and fireworks. No thanks.
• Why have I waited so long to try sev puri? I could eat them all day, at least the way Uru-Swati serves them. A crisp puri with onion, potato, chiles, and spices, all topped with fried chickpea vermicelli? Amazing!
• What kind of ghetto Home Depot do we live near? monshu called about having a screen door installed and they told us we had to come to the store to arrange for an appointment. Once there, the guy told us we would also have to come back in order to pay for it. When we asked him the justification for such a retarded system, he explained that they'd had so much credit card fraud that the companies would fine them for taking numbers over the phone. Unbelievable!
• We bought a huge box of manilla mangoes because that's the only way Patel Brothers sold them. Having had to lug the thing home myself, all I can say is that they better be fucking fantastic.
• Poor monshu was so sleepy last night that he actually fell asleep before I could make dinner. I went out to pick up a couple ingredients and came back to find him fixing a PBJ. So I put everything into the fridge for the next day and had sprats on crackers and farmer's cheese with chive on toast.
• If I ever get tired of sloe gin fizzes, it's nice to know that the stuff makes a lovely g-'n'-t as well.
• Tonight I breaded the sirloin tip I bought for steak'n'eggs and turned it into Naturschnitzel, which I fried in a mixture of butter and the oil from last night's failed sofregit. The crema agria I bought for the scrambled eggs became a cream sauce and I topped the whole mess off with a fried egg and sprats. Did you know that the Germans have no word for "heart healthy"?