So the No-Pudge clone recipe I found online turned out to be disappointing. It never cooked through even after I over cooked it by about 40 minutes. I don’t believe baking should have cornstarch in it. The things were just gluey and sodden.

So I just tried my own recipe that I inferred from the weights etc. on the No-Pudge box. And it turned out a fair bit better! Still not the same though. And I’m wondering, why would you put the egg white part into brownies but not the egg yolk part? Or in the case of No-Pudge is that just for storage/packaging reasons?

By the way, the scary sax solos have actually gone decently well! Though I was in a fair panic before beginning. Tonight is our last practice, hopefully we’ll do run-throughs of them all, and then next week is the gig…

Linux has been sucking for me lately. Or maybe it’s Firefox. Something is causing massive slowness and such. You can’t win…

I’ve read Charlotte Bronte before, of course (ah, the good old days of Winsor and Jane Eyre) but it’s only been in the past few days, when I re-read The Professor and am now reading Villette, that I am brought to realize just how much ol’ Charlotte had an antipathy for Catholics and Catholicism.

For example, on page 120 (Bantam published):

A strange, frolicsome, noisy little world was this school: great pains were taken to hide chains with flowers: a subtle essence of Romanism pervaded every arrangement: large sensual indulgence (so to speak) was permitted by way of counterpoise to jealous spiritual restraint. Each mind was being reared in slavery; but, to prevent reflection from dwelling on this fact, every pretext for physical recreation was seized and made the most of. There, as elsewhere, the CHURCH strove to bring up her children robust in body, feeble in soul, fat, ruddy, hale, joyous, ignorant, unthinking, unquestioning. “Eat, drink, and live!” she says. “Look after your bodies; leave your souls to me. I hold their cure–guide their course: I guarantee their final fate.” A bargain, in which every true Catholic deems himself a gainer. Lucifer just offers the same terms: “All this power will I give thee, and the glory of it; for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine!”

I laughed for about 3 minutes after I read that. I also have a fierce antipathy to Catholicism (Constantine should never, ever, have joined church and state), and without denying that there are a good many true-hearted, sincere, and God-loving Catholics in the world, I wholly agree with her assessment.

But regardless, it was very funny to come across something so baldly put. When I read Charlotte Bronte when I was younger, I think a fair bit of it went over my head. It is fairly sophisticated writing for our (nowadays) spoon-fed minds. So many of her characters seem these aesthetic, smothered types: it takes somewhat careful reading to identify/realize the passion and humor that pervades.

Austen is easier.

WOO! We came in third

Of course, there were very few all-women teams: so it wasn’t highly competitive, but still, considering that L. was quite sick this past week and still feeling under the weather, and also given that I haven’t trained at all, we did awesome. No nav mistakes this time. In fact the main thing that hurt us was not being optimistic enough about our skills! We could have done more in the time allotted.

But, I’ll write it up some other time. Soooooooooooooooo tired. My legs don’t feel like mine and my head is spinning. Didn’t eat enough this time either.

So my hand is feeling a bit better, but is oozing the most disgusting gluey yellow goo. I’ve been soaking it a lot and changing the bandage, but it’s still really gross. When I lift up the bandage this long mucusy string of goo comes up with it. You wanted to know that.

The race coordinator lady sent out the race info! It is taking place in Kurwongbah QLD, which is northwest of Brisbane, next to a couple massive lakes. Lake Kurwongbah is where we will be doing the two hours of kayaking, and it has eels in it. I never liked eels since I saw Princess Bride. I hope I don’t fall in… I’m excited to note that there don’t seem to be any really tall hills/mountains nearby, so maybe we won’t have to run to the top of one like in the last two races!

This is what the race info sheet says about the race format:

‘The format of the Round 4 course is a “linear rogaine” style adventure race. The course has a number of consecutive legs each with a designated latest finish time. For each of the legs, you try to collect as many checkpoints as you can, in ANY order, within the time allocated. To test your strategy though, each checkpoint is assigned a value. CPs numbers starting with a 1 are all worth 10 points, starting with a 2 all worth 20 points, 3 are thirty points etc (Test – what would CP 67 be worth? Sixty points!!!). At the end of the race, the values of all your checkpoints are added up; the highest total is the winner!’

Route planning will be interesting. I wonder what happens if you get back to HQ later than the time it says?

Today is Wednesday, meaning band rehearsal is tonight and thus my first attempts at improvising in public. I’m looking forward to it in a sickening kind of way, because at least after this evening I’ll have something of a better idea if this is totally hopeless or not. I’ve actually been having nightmares about it. What a high-strung pansy I am!