That knight's butterlicious

Played chess for the first time in ages last night. Brilliant fun. Old fogey stuff with cigars and brandy. My opponent won one and I won one, and we decided to leave it at that under the guise of a gentlemanly result, though the real reason was that we were tired and drunk. Got home very late and read some awesome recipes, including a new one for the perfect chocolate mousse. I may well have to test this recipe, though I'm suspicious as it eliminates butter from the proceedings. Love butter. Which made cooking last night difficult as I had to make mashed potatoes with something called "butterlicious". It didn't taste like butter and it wasn't delicious, so I feel the name was misleading. Hate fake butter. The real thing is so unbelievably wonderful, how could anyone want to fake it? Fake stuff is worse for you than the real stuff. I'm sure of it. So are quite a few doctors. Something that is definitely bad is smoking, even if it's cigars. I'm not very good at smoking cigars, mostly because they bore the shit out of me. The first couple of puffs are great, but then it all goes downhill from there. They also give me hangovers. And cigar hangovers are mingin'.

So:

play chess

don't smoke cigars

eat real butter

Oh, and have an apple. I'm having one right now and not thinking how I could be eating Green & Black's Butterscotch.

Oh - tried Green & Black's ice cream for the first time last night. Boy is that some seriously good shit. Gonna be gettin' myself some of that action.

Exercising nearly killed me this morning. It's very cold in London at the moment. Today's escapism during the exercise was nothing to do with the book, oddly enough. It was to do with Boston. I started recreating my old apartment in my head, trying to remember how my parent's room was laid out, how many burners my mother's industrial cooker had (bloody thing had its own skillet - crazy stuff), how the furniture was laid out in the living room - all that sort of stuff. It ties into another book idea I have in some ways but was really just a stationary cross-country ski down memory lane. It was nice how vivid everything still seemed.

It took 3 1/2 songs to warm my hands during the work-out; usually only takes 2. I time my workouts through songs on my iPod. Better than looking at a timer going slower and slower the more exhausted you get. And sometimes I sing along, though usually I'm too out of breath.

So:

work out. it sucks but somewhere there's a sense of accomplishment.

daydream.

Night dreams have not been treating me well of late. Last night I woke up screaming and threw one of my pillows across the room. No idea why. Creeped me out a bit though.