A nice weekend so far. Got out to the villa for a bit even if it wasn't camping, built a little fire and cooked sausage and haloumi cheese, and let the dogs run. It was warm and the wind was swirling around, picking up the leaves and putting them down. In my head, I knew the atmospheric energy that was creating such a creamy, cloudy sky and warm breeze had killed a lot of people west of the Appalachians, but it was hard to hold in my head when being buffeted around so pleasurably by it. 

The villa is coming along nicely. Jay put up some plastic windows up in the rooftop part, and when the rain came in the structure was perfectly ample for the usual suspects to crowd in and avoid the damp. Sarah's boyfriend's dog came along - a big, beautiful white direwolf-looking thing that Bean was very afraid of. (Sven took one look and then tried to hump her head.) But Bean ran and and then watched from the ridgetops. Finally he got the courage to come down after he saw her and Sven playing, but every time he would get too close to her, he'd run over to me and hide between my feet. I found it pretty flattering from a shy dog, especially choosing me over his mom, but it was likely just because he knew I'd put up with his crybaby bullshit and Ali wouldn't. 

Last night there was caroling outside at Redbeard. To speak more of small things, my neighbors had brought the boys down and one of them was being irritable and upset about the boring singing. I was hanging out under the heat panels drinking mulled wine and my neighbor brought the kid having a melt down over to sit there too. He parked the kid beside me and said "okay, tell Jess if you need anything. Jess is your new mommy now" and went off to get back to the singing and his own beer. It was pretty funny. So in some ways, I have been an island to tiny fussy things (well, Bean is now horse-sized) having meltdowns this weekend. 

Let me see - what else? I made nice fake crabcakes out of the lion's mane mushroom Jay found the other weekend. I was pretty skeptical, but they were amazing. The texture was exactly like crab, except not so fishy, which I appreciated after my several mulled wines and Redbeard high octane dubiously-accurate percentage stouts last night. Tonight I'm going to try making a Caesar with homemade dressing and farmer's market kale plus some grilled chicken. I want something tangy and fresh after eating so heavily this weekend. Sausage with fennel at the villa, and Matt making insane sous vide steaks on Friday night. 

My hard work week seemed to have a pretty happy ending: my boss gave me a spontaneous 5% raise and mailed me little Moroccan copper string lights as a gift.