I just finished writing Year of the Dog ! It had a massive plot hole that I had to fix which turned out to be more work than I expected. Here’s a snippet: “Hey, Auntie Nell.” He wrapped his arms around her, bussing her on the cheek and breathing in pikake flowers and shortbread cookies. And suddenly he was nine years old again, and her solid presence had made his chaotic world stable once more. “What are you doing here?” He usually took her to dinner on Wednesday nights, but today was Tuesday. The edges of her smile faltered a little before brightening right back up again. “What, I can’t visit my nephew?” She angled around him to enter his home. “Is this your new house? Looks lovely.” Which was a blatant lie, because the fixer-upper was barely livable, much less acceptable to a neat-freak like his aunt. She also left four matching pink and purple floral suitcases on the stoop behind her. Only then did Ashwin notice the cab driver standing slightly to the side of the walkway. “Can ...
I had a really bad allergy attack yesterday (so did Captain Caffeine) and so I did some internet searching and found this article on cayenne pepper tea to clear sinuses from allergies or colds . However, being a wimp about pepper and also knowing that my stomach is rather sensitive to it, I knew I couldn’t take a tea like that straight even with food, so I came up with this recipe to disguise the pepper in Chai Tea, soften it with milk, and adding extra honey. Also adding the cayenne in twice the amount of hot water (from the original recipe in the article) helped make it less painful. The article also warns about this, but drink this tea with food. I ate some Snyder’s pretzels in between sips and that helped to keep my stomach from getting upset by the pepper. What also helped was drinking some baking soda in a glass of water. If you have problems with acid reflux, I wouldn’t suggest you try this recipe. Also my lips were burning pretty badly from the pepper, but my throat and t...