Sunday Update - Week 1

Well, the first week of 2021 didn't go so well.  But I really don't want to talk about all that this morning, so I'll just deal with me and my stuff.

On the writing front, I plugged along for most of the week, except for Thursday when I hit a stride and wrote 3100 words.  After that, I hit a wall.  All told though, I wrote five out of seven days for 6461 words.  Not bad, but not the best week I've ever had.  I'll try to get some words out today.  I might've thought of a way around the wall.  :fingers crossed:  I'm thinking if I keep my head down and write, I should be able to finish the book this week.  Current word count: 41531.

No marketing to speak of.  Someone bought each of the last three books in the genie series (Once Upon a Djinn) one day after the other.  I assume they got a free copy of the first and liked each of the successive novels enough to read all the way through.  Yay.  I wish that would happen more often, but I'll take what I can get.

I had an okay reading week for the start of the year.

On the baking front, I made stew... yeah, that's not baking but to go with it, I made drop biscuits.  I started out with my usual recipe, but in the beginning, I had a major brainfart.  For some daft reason, I thought a stick of butter was only a quarter cup, and the recipe calls for a third cup, so I added in two more tablespoons of butter and started cutting that in.  Partway through cutting in the butter, my brain turned back on and I realized that instead of a 6 tablespoons, I'd put in 10 tablespoons.  Ack.  In an attempt to save my biscuits, I added more flour and, after I cut all the butter in, 1 1/2 cups of milk instead of 1 cup.  I dropped them onto the baking sheet and crossed my fingers.  And they were the best biscuits I'd ever made.  Recipe below.  I also made a chocolate oil cake with peanut butter frosting yesterday.  Yummers.

Let's not talk about activity.  I started the week out pretty good with a big trip to the store and a 1.6 mile walk.  And then nothing.  Weight unchanged at 181.6 lbs.

In Kira news, this cold has been kicking her furry gray butt.  I probably didn't mention it, but we got another round of antibiotics for her a couple weeks ago and it didn't do squat.  Which led me to believe that she did not, in fact, have an upper respiratory infection but rather some kind of virus.  I hit the internet and discovered that cats can get colds.  It's a different virus from the ones humans get, but it acts the same.  And as with humans, the quicker you catch it, the sooner it goes away.  Well, since we were treating her for something else, the cold dug in deep.  Plus, she's like 86.  (17 equals 84 and two years for the half.)  Anyway, the internet said L-Lysine might work, so we're trying that.  250mg crushed into her food twice a day.  I also did the steam thing, which seemed to help.  And I upped the temperature in the house.  And I started warming up her food.  Some combination of all of that seems to be working.  She's breathing easier and starting to walk around the house more.  And eating way better.  It's hard to eat when you can't smell your food, doncha know.  

And there's my week - writing, reading, baking, cat slave.  What went on in your world in this first week of 2021?  (I don't want to know about the rest of the world.  I mean, I know, but I don't really want to know, if you catch my drift.)

Recipe:

Drop Biscuits

2 1/2 cups flour
1 T baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 T white sugar
1/2 cup + 2T butter (cold)
1 1/2 cup milk

Preheat oven to 425F. Sift the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Cut the butter into slices, drop them into the dry ingredients, then use a pastry cutter until the mixture is crumbly. Add in milk a third or so at a time, mixing well each time, until you get a uniform, sticky dough. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet. Bake for 12-26 minutes or until the biscuits are just starting to brown around the edges. Makes about 12 biscuits.