Woo, weekend. The quicker bread turned out all right, not great. I may try it again. More kneading and more rising time are needed. But that’ll bring it to over six hours. Gr.

I sewed batting onto Kuro’s head accents on Thursday, and Lydia and I covered them with red fabric on Sunday.

I’m tired. I’ll finish this tomorrow.

Dear lord, it’s been hard to motivate myself to write this.

I’ve got bread in the oven. I really don’t think this is the kind of recipe that you shorten the times on. I had a hell of a time dealing with the ubersticky dough. I guess the long, slow development of the starter in the fridge is really necessary. I like this bread, I just wish it didn’t take so long. Oh, well. Weekend-only bread it is.

Spent the weekend at Lydia’s… again… well, I’m glad her couch is comfy. We went to see Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on Saturday. I strategically covered up the “Faculty/Staff” title on my Stanford ID and got the student discount. We enjoyed it. I think it’s worth seeing. There will be purists who complain about things being dropped and things being added. To this I say, well, Douglas Adams changed a great many things in each variation of the Guide. Characters and plotlines were dropped (who remembers Lintilla from the radio series?), new non-sequitur-y bits and plotlines were added. It seems to me that if it had been an exact translation from page to screen, it wouldn’t have been in the same spirit as the other Guide iterations. And about Trillian. Adams didn’t really write good female characters. There was Trillian, Lintilla, Fenchurch, and Random (whose character note was “angry existential teenager”). Out of these, the only one with really even the slightest bit of personality was Fenchurch. Lydia and I were talking after the movie, and we decided that what the writers had tried to do was combine the good aspects of Fenchurch with Trillian. And it didn’t really work, but they tried. (I really didn’t understand the inclusion of Zaphod’s vice-president, but I guess they needed him to have some sort of ending outside of the whole Trillian thing.)

Oh, and we both really want Marvin figurines. He’s desperately adorable.

Watched the fourth episode of Tsubasa Chronicle on Sunday. This show is making me sad. They’ve got pretty good source material, and they’re mucking it all up with pointless filler. It’s the fourth episode! It shouldn’t be filler! I really want to like the series, but they’re making it difficult.

Also watched a couple episodes of Bleach. I actually had been prepared not to like it- it’s been overhyped to me. But actually, I enjoyed it and would not object to reading/watching more of it.

I brought Lydia and Zack a loaf of my bread plus a loaf of challah that I got at a bagel place while waiting for my hair appointment. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a new Yakitate! episode out. I was annoyed. This time, I was prepared!

Before the movie on Friday (yeah, I know, I’m skipping around a lot), Lydia and I ate at a place called Zao in Emeryville. Disappointing. I had coconut soup as an appetizer, and it was quite good, but my main dish (Ginger-Garlic-Chili Chicken & Prawns) was bland and unexciting. They didn’t overcook the shrimp, though, so I guess that’s a plus for them. Lydia stayed basic and got chicken pho. I felt bad for her when I tasted a bit- the broth was just awful. Not recommended.

And speaking of not recommended, I have to mention where we ate lunch the next day. Joe’s Crab Shack is a seafood restaurant that Lydia quite liked when she went to their location in L.A. We went to their Fisherman’s Wharf location in San Francisco. I hate to be critical of a friend’s favored eatery, but it was not worth it. Terribly overpriced for mediocre food. I was astonished at the prices on the menu, and ended up going for a crabcake sandwich. It was good, but not $10.99 good. Maybe $7.99. It would have helped if they hadn’t chosen the squishiest bun available. It practically disintigrated in my hands. (And sidenote: my brother makes better crabcakes.) Zack got a large platter of shrimp and a starter of clam chowder. The chowder was $6.49. Ridiculous. We could have gotten better (and bigger) for less at one of the many Boudin stalls that line the piers down there. The place just screamed “tourist trap” to me, and I would prefer not to go back there again.

I think that’s all.