a hard-headed woman... and special topics in calamity physics

Part of what I'm doing this weekend when the lovely Carol is gone... is something she's been after me to do: transfer the content of old vinyl records into digital form so we can burn CDs. The sound quality of a 128kb/s MP3 file is adequate, given the quality of most of these originals, which we left behind in 1993 when we went to Japan and for the most part haven't played since.

One of the records, "Tea for the Tillerman," has "Hard-Headed Woman," and I especially like this part:

I'm looking for a hard-headed woman
One who will make me do my best
And if I find a hard-headed woman
I know my life will be blessed

Proverbs 18:22 (sort of)
as paraphrased by Cat Stevens

That is something about being married to the lovely Carol: she spurs me to growth. Hearing this song, and thinking about his rendition of "Morning Has Broken," I wonder if Cat Stevens was a Christian -- oh, I see from this article in Wikipedia that he converted to Islam in 1977; wonder if he was before.

This afternoon I decided to prepare some food for the next few days. I bought and quartered a chicken, browned it, then added saké, shoyu, ginger, garlic, green onions, sesame oil and simmered for a while. In a separate vessel (a wok) I stir-fried (sorta) a heap of baby bok choy, added some oyster sauce and some shiitake , then some cornstarch to thicken the sauce. Very nice if I do say so myself.

I picked up Special Topics in Calamity Physics at the library -- I'm not sure why. The title was intriguing for sure. I quickly ran out of interest and skipped toward the back. Whoa -- there is a BIG surprise there, and something really surprising about the relationship between the protagonist and her father. Now I see I will have to return to the beginning (basically the whole book is a flashback) but I've got to see how it turns out.