Quodlibets

It smells like high school in here

In a good way.  I cooked tonight, and I made something that my mom used to make all the time: chicken and asparagus.  It's a light, lemony pasta dish, something I loved then (and happen to still love).  The first time I lifted the lid on the skillet, to see if the chicken was done, the smell of home and high school hit me like a ton of bricks.  It hit my nose, and I could have been there.  And quite frankly, if the food had been crap (it wasn't, thank goodness!), I think I still would have inhaled it (in the um, oral sense).  Frankly, I ate it far too quickly than I should have, because it tasted so wonderful. 

Like always, I tweaked the recipe a little bit.  I put less pasta in (I don't need a lb. of pasta) and more asparagus (there's never too much asparagus), and used waaay less olive oil than recommended.  I also added a little bit of crushed red pepper with the thyme, which added a very muted heat (very, very small amount of pepper), which I love.  Instead of scallions, I used shallot, which is what I bought on accident.  And actually, I think I'll stick with it.  I loved the slightly caramelized taste of the soft shallot.  And my last tweak was to nearly double the amount of lemon juice at the end.  I can't get enough of lemony savory dishes (but oddly, I don't love lemony desserts), and I always thought, even as a teen, that there wasn't enough lemon, and if I do say so myself, I was right.  (Sorry mom!)

It felt good to be cooking again, and I'm wondering if there's some way I can get to the store at least twice a week, for the produce.  If I buy it ahead of time, it nearly always ends up going bad, but if I shop for it the day I want it, I generally am able to use it all up.  Which is what happened tonight.  I have some leftover shallot, but that might come in handy this weekend.  I have a bit of extra asparagus too, so maybe I'll make some turkey sausage/asparagus/lemon pasta.  I seriously can't get enough of the lemon.  Mmm, now I'm thinking about ceviche, which is non sequiter, but also usually very citrusy. 

Anyhow.  I feel like a better person because I cooked, and I know I have enough left over to bring for lunch, which is quite a treat.

Twitter is broken

Unless everyone you know uses it.  Otherwise, it's mostly just dumb and annoying.  And fat chance that any of my friends (let alone all of them) will use twitter.  I don't know if I am friends with the least tech-interested people on the planet, or if I just happen to be interested in tech things that most of the world isn't, but suffice it to say that my college friends are especially not into trendy tech stuff.  I don't even know if any of them has ever had a myspace account (okay, okay, I am not on myspace at all, but partly it's not important to me because none of my friends were.  It's feasible to think that if they had been, I might still be.), and I only have one friend (?) that blogs.  Besides my family.  Huh, maybe my family are just big gasbags....

Either way, and I don't know if this is universal or what, but it seems like S and I are really terribly bad at keeping in touch and making plans with friends.  Part of it is location, because almost all of his closest friends are in CA, and mine are fairly well scattered, but maybe it's also partly us?  It's sort of distressing, but in a vague, unmotivated sense, because I'm doing something (blogging) that I thought might be a good way for people to keep up with my life, and people for the most part DON'T read my blog.  Oh sure, there's a few of you out there, and that's awesome, and I love it, and I love it even more when you comment, because I like reading your opinions.  I love reading your blogs too, if you have them, and it should be noted that I am a religious reader of friend's and loved one's blogs.  Actually, one of my college friends once told me she thought it was preposterous for me to think that she would read my blog every day, and I mean, god, would I read hers every day if she had one?  I think I tried to be gentle when I told her that actually, yeah, I would read her blog every day.

Anyway, like I said, twitter might be fun if lots and lots of your peeps were doing it, because it might be interesting to know what Rita was doing right at this moment and maybe she would find what I was doing fascinating and wouldn't we both like to know what our friend in Boston was doing right now?  Then again, maybe not.  Maybe we'd end up boring each other to death within the first few days.   Twitter seems to be the rage right now, but I'm pretty much done with it, and I've only played with it for a few days.

Notes on Being Alone

For the five days preceding my trip out to CA for the wedding, I was alone at the apt. without S.  He went out early to visit with friends, and attend the bachelor party (hiking!  in caves!  with no strippers!).  I was mostly not okay with it, because I'm a big fat scaredy cat.  And that first night was terrible, with very little sleep, and lots and lots of jumping.  I was afraid to wear two earplugs, so I just wore one, which contributed mightily to the bad sleeping. 

Clearly, I lived.  In fact, every day got a little bit easier, in terms of sleep, at least in terms of fear.  It still sucked to be missing S, but at least by the end I was sleeping with no trouble.  I do feel like I did talk less, simply because there was no one to share all my little thoughts with.  And it was lonely, I can't deny it.  I think I strong-armed my sister into going to dinner one night, because I was super-hungry for company.  It was such a relief, both to talk, and to have someone talk to me.  It's half pathetic and half sweet--I do miss him when he's not around, but my need to have someone around is a little humiliating.  I don't think I'd necessarily be like this if I wasn't with S, and hadn't been with him for almost 5 years, but those conditions exist, and so I can't really take away those factors from my life, and dude, I was lonely.  That's all there is to it.

It isn't as if S and I spend every waking hour talking, or even acknowledging that the other exists, because we don't.  Often, we coexist, both of us on our computers, doing our own things.  And that's pretty normal, I think.  Except every once in a while, one of us will throw a comment out about something, and the other person will respond, and seriously?  That's the shit that I missed.  I missed him holding me, and I missed kissing him, and I really, really missed hugs, but I also just missed having him around.  This is sappy and gross and I'm sorry, but he's my closest friend as well as my boyfriend, and when you take that away, you have a big lonely. 

Half pathetic, sure, but I still think it's at least halfway sweet.  Oh, and that first hug in the Sacramento airport?  Like the best candy in the whole entire world.  For just that minute, it was worth it.

Weekend Over

Home sweet home.  After a very, very long weekend, S and I are home safe and happy.  We're both taking off tomorrow, because we need things to get done.  Such as laundry.  And bringing edible food into the house.  I'm tired, head-achey, and (I think) a little heavier than when I left.

The wedding was simultaneously the worst and one of the best, most fun I have ever been to.  It was a completely DIY affair, minus the photog and the DJ, and that made it very hard.  Though we were guests, we also were pressed into service, setting up the ceremony site, running errands, making sure every little thing got done.  The couple who got married have fantastic support systems, because their families and friends pulled together and made what was a hellish comedy of errors come off perfectly.  The things that went wrong?  Too many to list.  But honestly, every single thing that went wrong ended up being corrected somehow in time for the wedding.  The last problem?  Corrected 15 minutes before the ceremony, when S's pants were delivered by the groom's landlord, as they had been left in the closet in the apt. that was an hour (at least) from the events.  Crazy.

At the same time, the wedding was beautiful, down a dirt road on a hill in the foothills of Northern CA.  Idyllic.  Gorgeous.  Sunny and 70, with a mild breeze, and just lovely.  Everyone was radiant, and the bride and groom were so deliriously happy it was hard not to be as well.  The reception hall (the town hall in the small town the wedding was in) ended up looking lovely as well, which is a testament to how hard the bridesmaids and mothers worked.  The food was amazing; it was done by some family friends whose parents had a restaurant.  And it was Mexican, very basic.  Two dishes, a salad, and rice and beans.  It was perfect.  And by the time the dancing started, everyone was loosened up a little bit by the beer (two kegs) and the margaritas (one of those premade bottled things that get poured over ice), and it was FUN.  I danced, even, and I was not even drunk.  That is a total rarity.  There are five million reasons it happened, but suffice it to say that it just ended up being a blast.  The only other wedding I've ever been to as fun was my cousin's, which by dint of the family there, makes it by default the most fun.  Still, I didn't expect the reception to be as fun as it was, because of the build-up to the day.

Some other things.  It was nice to see S in a wedding party, and it was nice to know it wasn't torture for him.  The groomsmen all wore nice white Mexican wedding (?) shirts and brown slacks, and boy, did they look sharp.  And like I said before, the couple was so happy, and their friends were so happy for them, and that just really showed, all night.  It was lovely.  Just lovely.

But not relaxing.  There was nothing relaxing about it, and hence, I've lost a weekend.   Work seems like the worst. thing. ever. right now.  I still need a vacation.

Italy, I'm ready for ya.

Phew

Here. Safe. Must go dry hair now; boyfriend setting up chairs at ceremony site, and then the day really begins.

It's been.....busy.

This Weekend

I have the nervous.  My flight's leaving in 5 hours.  I'm a horrible alone flyer.  Horrible, unless I'm drunk, and I ain't paying $5 for the pleasure of being drunk on airplane.

(The only time I flew drunk, to be fair, was home from Rome for my grandfather's funeral.  The wine was free, I was 19 and legal over international waters.  I can't remember if I was drunk when we landed, but I know I was on the majority of the flight.  Sad.)

The nervous involves the stomach and the shaking of the hands.  The nervous isn't good at driving or being rational.  The nervous is going to get a manicure in 15 minutes to try to calm down.  It won't work.  Though my nails will look pretty.

The nervous also promotes worries that are lame, like about luggage and turbulence and extreme crankiness upon landing. 

I don't like the nervous one bit, but it ain't going away for probably....nine hours.  The nervous doesn't go away until your bags are collected and stowed in the rental car and you're on your way to a nice hotel.

Le sigh.

Oh sweetness!

Did you know that Chuck Klosterman writes for ESPN the magazine?  He does.  Klosterman writing about sports is for me, right now, like being told not only have you won the lottery, but you and everyone you love will live forever.  That might be a slight exaggeration, but I've known about Klosterman's sports work for a while, and have been foaming at the mouth to get to his columns, all of which (save the current, I think) are behind a pay screen.  Soon, I will be a person who has access to those, and you can bet there will be frantic Klosterman reading, but right now, I'm limited. 

The current column is really, really interesting.  I can't really say much more about it, because I'm conflicted.  I'm not quite sure how I feel about the subject, save that I've almost always been very vocal against steroids.  I mostly object to them because I think they're unhealthy and damaging, and I don't think Klosterman would say otherwise.  And his arguments that we need to rethink the way we think about sports and drugs are interesting, except that I'm not sure I agree.  I'm not sure that knowing the Beatles were high when they made their seminal albums sits quite right with me either.  Plenty of other books and albums and paintings and so on were made without the influence of drugs, and plenty of them are great pieces of work.  I don't know, I just know that I can think about this issue all the time, constantly, and I'll never come to any solution in my head.  I think that steroids does tarnish sports, but I can't say that the drug use does in quite the same way in the fields of music.  In fact, I view it as quite shameful in sports, and I can't pinpoint if that's the right way to think, or just the way I've always been taught to think.

Either way, it's not happy to think that somehow, me being a fan is going to contribute to a culture where men do really scary things to their bodies, for whatever reason they're doing them, and however they're doing them. 

Sunday Torture

I've just spent a half hour torturing myself by watching a travel tv show about Rome.  Which actually wasn't the worst torture; the worst part of the torture was when I decided to look my favorites up on the internet.  I never really connect my Italy with the internet, because when I went, it was right before the Internet was really, you know, omnipresent.  It would have never occurred to me to look up the restaurants and cafes when I got home, because there wasn't really...surfing like there is now.  The school itself had no computers, and we were advised to not bring out computers with.  We all bought a varying amount of internet time from a little bookstore in Trastevere, and most of us managed to send weekly emails home.  Mostly, though, we bought phone cards and called home.  Oh, and all of our papers were handwritten. 

Anyway, I think that's why I've never looked up my places on the Internet; I think I just didn't even think about it.  But I did today.  Not everything is online, and since a couple places are little, out of the way, non-touristy places, I didn't expect much.  But I did find L'Insalata Ricca, which is a little chain, but a chain that I probably ate at once a week when I lived there, and hope to eat at a few times at least when we go in a month.  (Hoooooooly shit, it's essentially a month away!)  The menu is online (though hard to find, just be aware) and I just spent fifteen minutes reading it.  Oh god, it's awful.  I should have just put the longing aside and kept to my vow to not get overly excited about this trip.  If I'm not careful, I'll be utterly useless in a few weeks, as I prepare for it.  Oh, who am I kidding?  I'm already useless whenever I think about it.

But I just want to not torture myself anymore.  We'll see.

In Which my Education Comes in Handy

My major in college was a pretty unique one, as far as I can tell.  Humanistic Studies--an invented discipline in which women placed literature within the context of cultural history.  A pretty fancy way of saying we read lots of "great" books from the canon, and studied about the things going on in history from the eras of the books.  Legendarily light on courses (2 required courses each semester Junior and Senior year, and I think...three required electives in two years plus those.), it gave you plenty of time to take other courses, which I gleefully did.  And I didn't even manage to rack up a minor, because I sort of just picked and chose, and of course, the year in Rome really did limit what you could do. 

Anyhow, I loved the major, and I'm glad I did it, though of course there is little practical application for it.  No one's quizzing you on Pascal and Voltaire and Decartes and Diderot and so on in a library.  I don't think I've ever even discussed any of those writers with anyone save the women in my classes back then.  Maybe it's a weird view of things, but it seems like the kids on this college campus aren't reading these authors, and it seems like maybe they should be--or maybe it's that if they are, they're not using the library.  Which come to think of it, makes a lot of sense, because I can probably count on one hand (two if I'm being generous) the number of times I used the libraries at SMC and ND.  Honestly, I don't remember ever looking in an academic database.  So maybe I don't see the kids who are reading Freud and Nietzsche and Goethe.  Either way, the point is, the education I got was definitely education for education's sake.  I really enjoyed every single thing I read (and I read every single thing I was assigned) even if I really didn't like the book.  I basically enjoyed the process of reading and learning, and if I liked the book, bully for me.

But the other day, I made an astounding connection that I simply never would have made were it not for my expensive, useless education.  I'm listening to Jane Smiley's Ten Days in the Hills right now, and I'm really enjoying it, but I have to tell you, it is full of sex.  Just chock-a-block.  I was telling S how sometimes I feel embarrassed to listen to it, even though I'm in my car, all alone.  I was telling him how weird it was, how the sex was so explicit sometimes, and how none of her other books were like that.  And I was explaining the book--ten characters, ten days, lots of stories--and suddenly it popped in my head.  This book is a modern Decameron.  I mean, it was like a shaft of light broke through the clouds over my head.  I knew that I was right before I had any confirmation of it, because it fit SO perfectly.  And frankly, it's making me enjoy the book even more, knowing the Decameronic background of the book.  It's also making me want to read the Decameron again, because that was a pretty enjoyable read.  I don't think I've ever re-read one of the academic books from my college days, so that would be interesting.

Either way, mom and dad (and grandparents) aren't you glad you helped subsidize an education that's finally showed some use?  Yep, I'm using my education to provide the background for a popular fiction title.  Totally worth the 100 grand or so it probably cost.

March Madness

If Georgetown loses, I'm screwed.  No chance to win for me.

Also, I made that choice because I didn't think that Oden could take Ohio St. all the way, and I don't think Florida can repeat.  Those are not scientific choices, mind you, but gut feelings, which mean fuck all really.  This is the first year every that I've not had to guess for every single pair-up in the thing, which is quite a victory, since last year, I literally picked teams with names that were nice.  This year, the fact that I can name a player from any team is pretty much a miracle.  But it might just be because S and I saw a profile of Oden on some news show (I think?  I can't remember.  But we did see it.), and he's very memorable.  This isn't really dance related, but I really hope Oden stays in school.  I know he could make buckets of money playing in the NBA, but it just sucks to throw away an education.  And I know he could go back and this might be his big chance and all that, and blah blah blah, but I just think it seems like he should stay in school.  And maybe he will if they don't win it all this year.  I don't know.

Anyway, I have just proven that there is some benefit to reading SI and watching SportsCenter for football news, and that benefit seems to be that by osmosis, I seem to have picked up on a very few tidbits about college basketball.  Which unfortunately is more than I can say about S, who has watched SC with me and seems to have picked up nothing.  I hope he doesn't come in last in the pool.