I spent some time in the booth this morning, recording some pickups on an audiobook I still can’t believe I was chosen to narrate. I believe it will come out in March, around the same time as two other books I narrated.

March could be a big month for me, professionally. A project I have been developing and working on for almost two years may be ready in March, as well. After years of gratefully doing what I call “other people’s work,” I have been focusing intensely on something that is all mine. I’m even spending my own money on it, something they tell you to never do.

Whatever. They aren’t the boss of me. It’s worth it, and I believe in it.

Anyway. Since I’m coming home to my blog, how about one of those old school posts about random stuff I’ve been doing? It’s on the other side of the thingy.

* The news is all terrible, and it’s all overwhelming, so I’m looking for the helpers. I’m doing my best to be a helper when I can, too. I am fiercely proud to be from Los Angeles. I love our culture, our diversity, our endless collection of unique neighborhoods that generally coexist in harmony. Nearly everyone who lives here knows someone who was affected by the latest firestorms. It’s been so wonderful to see people from all over the county come together to support and help people from other communities who have suffered terrible losses and traumas.

It’s equally infuriating to see so many despicable people (who absolutely know better) spreading so many lies, and so much disinformation, all to get clicks and clout. I say this with all sincerity and full offense: Shut the fuck up forever, you pieces of shit. And to the incomprehensibly stupid people who credulously believe those lies: the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.

* I’m about halfway though The Ministry of Time, and I continue to love it. The way Kaliane Bradley uses her words is inspiring me to level up my own writing, which is nice.

* In November, I was talking about video games with a friend. I’d been in Fallout 4 for nearly 800 hours, and my experience in the game had shifted from story missions to building settlements. She asked me if I’d played Fallout 76. I told her I had not. I really don’t like games that require me to interact with other people, given the overwhelming volume of loud, angry, unaccountable, toxic masculinity I encountered literally everywhere. Hearthstone? Toxic men. Destiny? The MOST toxic men. WoW? I don’t like anything about this, and it’s not worth crawling over the broken glass toxic players kept scattering in front of me.

Like, I know that not all games are like this, and maybe I was just unlucky, but … it just wasn’t worth it to me, navigating all that shit for games I didn’t even like that much.

She told me how Fallout 76 encourages cooperation, how I can just mute other players and only use emotes, and her experience — as a woman, no less — was in a community of overwhelmingly supportive and chill players.

While I was processing this, she told me about settlement building, crafting, and her conviction that I would love all of it.

I saw that it was included in my PlayStation+ membership thingy, so I decided I’d spend at least an hour in it, using the settings she advised (turn off pvp and mute all players). I will admit that, at first, I wasn’t getting it. I was very skeptical about a game that wanted me to spend money on it every month, because most of the games I have played that have a “you don’t have to pay to play” option also have a “you must pay if you want it to be fun” requirement. I’m going to jump ahead and tell you I have about 120 hours in 76, haven’t spent a dime, and absolutely love everything about it. I am absolutely going to be spending some Fallout 1st money on this game, so I can design and build settlements.

It’s been such a fun escape for me. I feel like there’s a ton of story left for me to explore and uncover, and I haven’t even been into all of the areas on the map. I figured out early on that a lot of my fun and joy comes from just wandering the map and seeing whatever I come across. I haven’t yet done the Nukashine (is that what it’s called?) challenge where you ditch all your gear, get blind drunk on it, wake up in a random place on the map, and try to find your way home without using the overview map. That sounds epic, and I want to do it when I have an hour or more because who knows how long it’ll take and I think it’ll be more fun if I do it in one session.

And the community I have encountered has been awesome. People keep giving me really good gear and mods, and every player I come across either ignores me (best) or exchanges hellos (second best).

I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of what is available in this game. I hope I’m right, and it’s going to be as much fun and as satisfying as I think it’ll be for hundreds of hours.

* Speaking of video games, I’m building the NES LEGO set. I have completed the console, and started on the TV yesterday.

Check out this Easter Egg that’s hidden inside!

When I’m done with this, it’s either Endurance or the Batmobile.

* Did you hear about the rumored TNG LEGO set that’s allegedly coming out next year? It’s the bridge of my Enterprise, and it includes minis of all of us — including Wesley! — and I hear a rumor about a GWP shuttlecraft with Ensign Ro. Dude, if LEGO goes nuts with Star Trek the way it has with Star Wars, I could be in some real trouble.

Good trouble, to be sure, but still. I’m running out of space and … oh, I hear myself. Never mind.

Earlier this week, I made the most amazing chicken soup I have ever made in my life. I wanted to write a post about it, but I couldn’t get it to a place where I thought it could be its own thing … so here it is in its imperfect form:

In every partnership, a division of labor emerges over time that allows each partner to play to their strengths, stay out of each other’s way, and efficiently get shit done together.

In our house, I do most of the cooking, because I genuinely love everything about it … with one very important exception: I always fuck up the salt.

So I’ll do everything in a recipe until the “salt to taste” step. At that point, I summon Anne (usually with my voice, though in my imagination I am using a bat signal that projects the Morton’s girl with the umbrella) and she uses whatever weird magical skill she has to put in exactly the right amount of salt.

A few weeks ago, I was making soup. Anne had to run to the store when I got to the “salt to taste” step, and I would be lying if I told you that I did not panic, hard. I mean, a normal person would be, like, “Oh, I guess I’ll wait until she gets back,” but not me! Bill Junior was a DAREDEVIL! Just like his old man.

“Look on the Internet,” a mysterious voice echoed in my head, “look for ‘how much salt for two quarts of soup’ and math will save you.”

The voices in my head have never lead me astray (well, except for all those times they did), so I did a quick search.

This is where I tell you that this post isn’t about the salt, but I know at least one of you wants to know the answer, so I’ll also tell you that it’s about a teaspoon, which is what I put into my soup, with trembling hands.

Fuck yeah, math! It was perfect.

But that’s not what this is about. This is about an entirely different recipe that I saw a little further down in the search results; it’s about the Martha Stewart recipe for basic chicken soup.

Martha Stewart always makes food in such interesting ways, I was curious to know what her take was on chicken soup.

Oh my god, it’s incredible.

She tells us to buy a whole chicken, cut it up, and use it to make the stock. Then we pull it out of the stock, cut the meat off the bones, and return that meat into the stock we just made.

Quick aside: this is the point in writing this post that yet another voice in my head asserts that this isn’t interesting and I should just delete it. I’m doing my best to push on through, though.

I showed the recipe to Anne when she got home (after I asked her to taste my properly-salted soup — she loved it) and then texted it to our family chat, because Ryan likes to cook as much as I do (I love that I passed that along to him, without even trying). We all agreed that it looked amazing.

Last night was the first opportunity I’ve had to make this recipe and HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS.

It’s so much fun, it’s so satisfying, and the resulting soup was so magnificent, I almost couldn’t believe that I made it.

And yet, I needed to go further. I needed to make some matzo balls.

That’s also something I’d never done before, but I knew it was simple enough. So I made some matzo meal in the food processor, followed a simple recipe, and ended up with something that wasn’t too bad for a Gentile’s first attempt.

I put it all together and …

It was so good. The matzo balls were a little too big, but that’s an easy fix for next time.

Oh, and the most important thing? It was perfectly salted.

Have a good weekend, everyone. Enjoy the last few days of America, and stay safe.