• Marcus broke a glass and sliced the tip of his finger picking up the pieces.
• Rebecca threw a glove onto the stairs and then slipped on it on her way down, knocking the wind out of her.
• We knocked the ice out of the gutters. The gutters may be goners. (They were goners anyway, they are just even more so now.)
• The kids learned that tunneling through packed snow to build a snow fort is not as easy as the movies make it seem.
• I learned that snow sucks.

• I drove the kids to Costco and got garbage bags, milk, juice, and coffee. Lots of coffee. (Instant coffee.) When the world ends, we will at least have coffee to keep us from becoming zombies.
• During Rebecca's ballet lesson, I walked down to J.E. Rice with Marcus, Madeline, and Abby; we ended up spending $20 on clearance LED Christmas lights.

• We did schoolwork for the first time since Christmas. Things went smoothly, except that Marcus had apparently stayed up way too late Sunday night so he was a total grouch until threatened with an enforced naptime. Asking Madeline to be quiet is an exercise in futility—I told him that it wasn't her fault he stayed up too late.
• I went to ballet class for the first time in two weeks. Pain! Agony! And midway through class, my arms got all spotted, like prickly heat but smooth. I have serious doubts about the crab soup I ate beforehand.

• I made a plugin options page for my whatever-the-heck-it-is and started sorting out shortcodes from filters from configuration settings.
• I upgraded three more installations of WordPress to 2.9.
• I made an options page for my framework/theme thing. It updates options! It has multi-dimensional arrays!

• The house heat broke. Then Matthew fixed it. (Because, actually, he broke it in the first place. Minor detail.)
• I picked up some LED Christmas lights from the hardware store for $2 per string. Madeline and Becca now have colored crystals all over their bunk bed; Marcus used his to decorate the Nerf gun hanging on his wall. (I totally want to go back for more on Monday.)
• Chinese food did not agree with Abigail at all. More laundry. Lots and lots of laundry.
• I made guacamole. Mmm, guacamole.

• I converted most of http://bajada.net/ from Textile to Markdown. Certain behaviors in Textile were giving me conniptions, like enclosing perfectly fine <div>s with <p>s just for the heck of it. I was in the midst of recoding shortcodes as filters to avoid this behavior when I threw in the towel. (Yes, I know about notextile... No, it was not sufficient.)
• I made mongolian beef for dinner. Zakk came over, we remarked on how Kenny vs. Spenny has totally jumped the shark.
• I resolved some issues with my tab shortcode. It just needs some JavaScript tweaking and for me to sort out how to do nice ids.
• Madeline and I watched Alma together. Sweet and horrifying at the same time.

• 4-6 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 T olive oil
• 8 oz cream cheese
• 14 oz can artichoke hearts, chopped
• 1 lb frozen cut leaf spinach, thawed and drained
• 8 oz fancy mixed Italian cheeses
• 1 T salt
• ¹/₄ - 1 ts cayenne pepper

Procedure

1. Sauté garlic in olive oil until golden; immediately remove from heat and add cream cheese to the pot. Stir until melted, then add artichoke, spinach, and Italian cheeses. Salt and pepper to taste, and stir to combine. Adjust seasoning as needed.
2. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes.

Serving suggestions

Serve with carrot and celery sticks if you are naughty, chips or crostini if you are nice. Top with buttered panko and parmesan and broil for a few minutes at the end if you're exceptionally awesome.

• ¹/₄ C corn starch
• 1 lb beef, sliced thinly
• 2 T oil
• 2 T ginger, grated
• 2 T garlic, minced
• ¹/₄ C tamari
• ¹/₄ C water
• ¹/₄ C brown sugar
• oil for frying
• ¹/₄ C San-J Szechuan sauce
• ¹/₄ C water
• 1 carrot, peeled and sliced
• 1-2 ribs celery, sliced
• 2-3 napa cabbage leaves, chopped into 1" squares
• ¹/₂ of a yellow onion, sliced
• 1 bunch of green onions, chopped into 1" long pieces
• 1 T salt
• cornstarch

Procedure

1. Toss gently together to coat beef and cornstarch.
2. Heat oil; add garlic and ginger and sauté until garlic is golden. Immediately add tamari, water, and brown sugar. Stir and bring to a brisk boil; reduce heat and simmer the brown sauce for a few minutes to thicken.
3. In a wok, heat an inch of oil. Fry beef in small batches until crisp and browned on the edges; add to a bowl containing Szechuan sauce to marinate once cooked.
4. Remove wok from heat and discard oil. Return the wok to heat and add ¹/₄ C of water to deglaze. Using a metal spoon, scrape up the fond from the bottom of the wok.
5. Add vegetables to the wok and cook until carrots begin to soften, 5-7 minutes.
6. Add back to the wok the beef, the Szechuan sauce marinade, and the brown sauce. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer. Add salt to taste. If the sauce needs additional thickening, use a few teaspoons of a cornstarch and water slurry.