Catching up with my journal a little late tonight. Tonight was a friend over for dinner to meet his new-but-not-that-new-just-lives-in-another-state girlfriend for the first time. She was friendly, pretty, and delightful. It's good to see friends settling in with people who treat them well and are fun. 

Getting past the boring details of my social life, have I ever got a recipe tweak on my french onion soup that I actually want to talk about! So - 1, I actually let the onions significantly caramelize. I'm talking upwards of 60 minutes in the pan, then wine and spices, a tiny bit of flour slurry, then broth. 2, I did the bread + cheese separately on a sheet of wax so people could add their individual correct amount of bread/cheese ratio and the whole thing didn't get soggy and weird. I feel like it was a real breakthrough on a recipe that's been hit or miss for me for years. 

Lordy, everything is about to get so busy. I want to keep up on updating this thing for as much of that time as I can, but it might be a little hairy for a bit. Friday is up to Luray for my mom's thing, then back Sunday, and getting up to fly out of Cville at like 5 am Monday morning. I need to figure out if I have anything to wear that actually might look good. I'm a firm Staunton 8.5, and a west coast 5. My vanity over my rapid aging aside, I think it will be nice to see the Pacific for the first time, even if I'm nervous. It's also really silly that I feel fully comfortable traversing literal miles of downtown Athens at 2am but am a little shy about going to a big city in California and entertaining myself during the day.

 What else? Still hoping for a nice villa dog date tomorrow if it's not pouring. I ran 5 miles today, embarrassingly sore after the 7-8 from yesterday, but good and steady and on track. I felt kind of puffy, but I also think I drank too much last night because I was stressed out from talking to my mom who found everything wrong about the extremely expensive hot tub cabin weekend I bought for her birthday. Thinking some about sex, about how quickly the snow all melted today, and about runs I'll run tomorrow. Okay, probably bedtime.