Rawr! I am the clutterbeast!

Ah.
Yesterday I relaxed supremely, along with getting a LOT done about the house. My house is now all homey and inviting again -not a train wreck of clutter with random fluff and crumbs everywhere and papers scattered about.
Most importantly-there are muffins.
!

Tonight I can work off the kitchen table (which you can now see the top of) and sip tea as I start typing up drafts of my first assignment of the semester and get down to business with the long stretch of writing, reading and data munching and crunching that will fill my next few months.
I am ready now to dive in with flippers on...:)

Knucklemuffins

Last night, besides other stuff I've been meaning to get to, I got on a "make healthy snacks" kick and made some homemade granola bars and some blueberry cornmeal lemon muffins (at the request of his sickness). Being my usual dexterous self, I managed to grate all 4 knuckles on my right hand while grating zest from my (organic) lemon.
Ow.
Then (after washing my hands) I squeezed the juice from the lemon into the batter.
Oh lordy...my mumbles of pain could be heard about the house. One cat hid. The other came to comfort me. J was napping so he didn't know..altho I gave him permission to mock me freely when he woke.
Kindly he did not and we enjoyed the knucklemuffins.
They're really good you know (and 99.9% knuckle free)

Checkmate my good man

I got to hang out with my brother last night, which is always fun. My brother and I have always been close, and it's been great since he moved back into town, as I get to see him more often. We're both pretty busy, but for Christmas I gave him "Muffins of the Month" - essentially I'll bring him a dozen fresh baked muffins of his choice every month and then we'll hang out for the evening. He's happy as he gets muffins, and I'm guaranteed to get to visit with him at least once a month, which doesn't sound like much, but is definitely a good thing as it's hard to find a time we're both free to get together.

Last night after diddling around and playing with his new electric guitar that he got himself for his birthday (he's an aspiring blues guitarist) we got it into our heads to play a game of chess and realised neither of us could remember how to anymore...a lot of the moves and rules were very foggy, so Internet to the rescue! We found a site for teaching kids how to play chess and after reading up on it, although we both felt a little silly, we're both back in the game with castling and an passant skills a plenty. My brother was kissed on the butt by the Good Games Fairy when he was born and usually beats everyone at everything, so I was quite pleased when we ended our first game on a draw with both of us only having our kings left.

Next time however I will be victorious...