morning slob-out, morning prep

I normally sleep very late and wake up very late in Korea—one of the perks of working as a "creative" is the weird hours, and it helps to have an American boss. This isn't to say that I sleep longer than normal people: I get about 5-6 hours of sleep a night, which probably means I'm sleep-deprived. Being housed with a family, though, means you don't want to look like too much of a slob even if you might be feeling the lingering effects of time-zone dislocation, a.k.a. jet lag. (Frankly, I didn't feel too much jet lag, which I've heard is common when you're flying east. It's gonna be interesting when I go back west to Korea.)

Anyway, my alarm got me up at 6:45. a.m., EST, so I drained the dragon and promptly went back to sleep until almost 9 a.m., which means everyone was out of the house: Mike to his property-management company, the Missus to her elementary school, and the son to his job (the nature of which I've already forgotten, dammit... the perils of aging). I made my bed (a complex ritual that, in my own apartment, is much simplified), brushed my teeth, did my numbers, re-bandaged my big toe (still leaky), started a batch of my laundry (almost done as of 11:50 a.m. today, Thursday), and finished most of the rest of the prep work for tonight's dinner. This means I diced or sliced or chopped or minced up a bunch of olives, cukes, pickles (yes, both cukes and pickles), cherry tomatoes, etc. If the family wants raw onions for tonight's dinner, I'll slice those up, too. (Note to self: buy Mike a mandolin.)

The last bit of prep is to take out the frozen brick of ground beef/lamb, let it thaw an hour, then slice it into strips that can then be pan-fried (what I usually do) or broiled on a tray. The meat-cooking can then happen maybe 30 minutes before dinner—or, hell, I can do it earlier and just store the meat in its rendered fat until dinnertime, then microwave it just before we eat. Whatever works.

So that's been my Thursday morning.