Today was Miss Jenny's turn. Miss Kitty and I went out with her for a few drinks last night. Very low key and girly, which was great. I don't get to have many girly evenings, so I appreciated it even more.

Another month or so, and I won't have anybody left to have girly evenings with.

We were talking about this the other night: our numbers are dwindling at an alarming rate. This happens, to some extent, every summer. It's a popular time to change jobs, change countries. Of course, we'll meet new people, people who have just changed jobs, changed countries. The problem is, will they be the sort of people we want to hang around with? It's a crap shoot, and time will tell.

Miss Kitty and I drove Jenny to the airport. As my reward for keeping her company (and navigating-- Miss Kitty might still be driving around the airport, stuck in a permanent departures-arrivals loop, if I hadn't), she drove me to Jumbo on our way home.

I got me a new microwave!

I've missed having one. I don't really like to actually cook with the dang thing, but it sure is handy for warming things up without warming up the kitchen as well. Very important, that is, especially when there's no air conditioning. We do have a unit in the bedroom, and it will leak its lovely cool air into the area around the couch in the living room if you don't shut the door, but when it comes to the kitchen we're shit out of luck. And since Elvis has gone into insane hours mode at work, it'll be handy for him as well. When you get home at 10:30 or 11:00, you don't really feel like waiting around for your food to be ready, especially if you have to get up early the next morning.

To celebrate our new arrival, I made chicken noodle soup. I did not, of course, make it in the microwave. I made it the way I usually do, the proper way, on the stove: there's a vat of it simmering away right now. It's a bit humid in there, but not too hot since I didn't start it until fairly late in the day. It should make Elvis very happy. It's already made Calliope ecstatic, since I always feed her scraps from the carcass when I'm picking off the meat to put back in the broth.

I don't really like chicken, so I probably won't eat any myself, although I did have a small bit to check for seasoning and so forth. Not a bad batch; not bad at all.

What I will make in our new microwave is popcorn. I love popcorn, I have a bag of kernals in the cupboard, but I'm too damn lazy to make it the old fashioned way on the stove. Soup, yes: Popcorn, no. But while I was getting the microwave I came across a microwave popcorn popper. For added fun, it comes with the sort of directions that sound as if they were translated from the Chinese by a hermit yak farmer armed with nothing more than a dictionary and a short attention span, despite the fact that the corn popper was made in Spain. You put the kernals in the cone-shaped recesses at the bottom of the device, add butter, snap the cover on, and bung it into the microwave. "Once the pockets are filled up, we will get the corn popper grammed (sic) full of popcorn." The butter appears to be optional, so you can leave it out if you're feeling virtuous.

I rarely feel virtuous. Rather unfortunate, but occasionally I surprise myself.

Put it in the oven on maximum power for three minutes. "The time can be changed by giving seconds up or down", which is nice to know, provided you have never operated a microwave before and are completely devoid of common sense. Then again, a bit farther on (in the section helpfully titled LOOK OUT!), it tells you to "Please have in mind that the popcorn make never must be into the microwave oven more than 3 minutes. So you will enjoy your popcorn maker a long time." So no giving seconds up, then.

Later on in the booklet, they write, in a general sort of way, about "recommended cocking times". Alas, they fail to give instructions for that. The longer the better is what I say.

Then again I would, wouldn't I?

Elvis just called, and he's heading up the hill. He'll be wanting his soup when he gets here, so I'd better get setting the table and preparing the DVD player.

I wonder if he'd like some popcorn for dessert?