Oh, precious, precious, silver and gold

I am obsessed with Jeff Buckley's CD "Grace" right now. That's a line from the first track. I heard "Hallelujah" in the car back around Christmas time, and remembered how much I loved it, then requested the CD from the library, and have listening to it almost daily since it came in. Obsessed. Absolutely. And, uhm, making out in the kitchen with this in the background....very, very nice!

Speaking of kitchens, this is so not poetry-related, but I made the most amazing feta dip tonight. Really. I've made feta dip three or four times so far, and it's always different; I made up the recipe the first time, and I'm not really one to measure everything, so it's more of a "flexipe" than a recipe. I looked for some "real" recipes online tonight, and got the idea of adding some cream cheese to the mixture, and, wow, the results might actually qualify as poetic. Here is the basic formula I used, taken from my own brain, and a couple of different places online:
1 6 oz. block of feta cheese, crumbled
1 8 oz. package of lowfat cream cheese, softened
a good 1/4 cup of fresh parsley, minced
an equal amount of fresh cilantro, minced
a slightly smaller amount of kalamata olives, minced
about a Tablespoon of minced garlic
Combine all those ingredients with an electric mixture, then add maybe 1/2 cup of fat free plain yogurt, just to get the right texture. It is truly fantastic!

And, in actual poetry news: I got a super nice email from the editors of Qarrtsiluni today about the collaborative poem S and I submitted. They suggested a change to one line at the end, and asked us to record it. Changing the line should be no problem, but recording might be, as I have no microphone. Hmmm. Apparently there are ways to do it via phone. We'll see.

And, I also got a super nice email from the folks at Penn State today saying that they've got all of my application materials and thanking me for getting everything in on time (odd? I didn't know that was an option) and saying that they'll start the reading process next week, and will notify their first round by the end of February, which is a full month earlier than I had been led to believe anyone did notifications. So that was excellent.

So, with that poetry stuff buzzing around my brain I opted to skip going to the gym and just came home, walked the dog through 3 degree weather on permafrost-like sidewalks, then sat down at the computer and fired off one of my two remaining applications. I am so close to having them all out of my hands. It's terrifying but liberating at the same time.