Quodlibets

NaBloPoMo--Not a success

I did not post everyday.  I felt that it was futile to try by the end, because I had almost nothing to say, and reading myself blathering on about nothing felt like defeat too.  So I tried, and I failed.  (Oh! Words I hate saying/writing.)  Perhaps I didn't try hard enough to pull it out, but you know, it's blogging.  Not work or homework.

Speaking of, I feel rather under pressure with the latter.  I'm not a big homework stresser (never have been, honestly), and save for the insanity that was boot camp in Champaign (a semester in literally 10 days; who on earth thinks that this is a good way to begin graduate school???), I don't imagine I will be with this round either.  The only thing that is getting to me a little bit is the group work.  Group work, and I could rant here, is meaningless crap that doesn't really prepare you at ALL for the way the actual world works.  It forces people who don't know one another to judge each other and their respective work, and it often ends up that some loafers let other group members do the whole project, simply to eke out some sort of grade.  I hate it, and I bet everyone else does too, and hearing professors prattle on about how good it will be for you makes me want to scream.  I don't believe it will, thanks very much.

Anyway, even if this is noxious group work I'm dealing with, I'd rather not let down my group completely, and so feel some pressure to get things right.  This is directly antithetical to my new improved attitude towards grades, which is: anh. who cares?  I'm trying very hard to not sweat this stuff, because a) it doesn't matter, in the end, as long as you've got the degree and b) my mediocre efforts are getting As right now.  But again, I feel some pressure knowing a group is depending on me to get my shit in gear, and produce something worthy.

So I've finished the assignment, basically, but I'm sitting here looking for ways to make it better, or pump it up a little, or clarify things.  (I can only edit so much; I am not a naturally good editor of my own work, and often turn in first drafts just because...I can.  I made a much better editor of others' papers, in college.)  This is silly and pointless, and it is costing me time, time I could be spending on the two other homework assignments due before Dec. 17.  But I'm doing it because I'm really scared these people (whom I don't know! at all!) will judge my work insufficient and you know what?  That feels like crap.  Irrational.  But crappy.  All past experiences with grading should reassure me that my work is lovely and fine and will earn the full points available for the assignment, but still!  Still I persist.

I hope that by the end of this interminable process, I'll get over it, because if the people running things are right, I'm looking at a group project in every class.  Ever.  That I could ever want to take in this program.  Ooof.

Thankful

• My family.  Every year, they get the top spot, because to a person, they're amazing.  Sappy sappy sappy, but they're the greatest.
• The chance to earn a higher degree.  Sometimes, because I'm surrounded by people with them (or working on them), I forget how special it is to get a Masters Degree.  I'm very lucky to have the opportunity and ability, and at the #1 library school in the country, no less. 
• Our amazing condo.  Whatever the little hitches with it have been, we do love it.  We're so lucky to have parents that could help us achieve this little part of our dream.
• Bagels with veggie cream cheese.  Could not survive without them.  Obsession.
• Libraries.  I'm not joking; I read so much that without them, I'd be literally in the poorhouse.  Libraries are currently providing 99.9% of my reading material.  And of course, I'm employed in one.  Also grateful about that.
• My pumpkin cheesecake!  It is soooo yummy and came out perfectly.  I'm so happy, and guess what?  I'm totally making it for Xmas Eve.
• And of course, most importantly, my boy.  My wonderful, patient boy.  He brings a balance to my life that I desperately need, and loves me for me.  I feel so lucky every day, waking up next to him.

Ok.  Enough with the sappy already.  Blargh. 

Anti-Thanksgiving

Well, today is Anti-Thanksgiving.  On Thanksgiving, we think of all the things we can give thanks for, so the day before, we get to think of all the things we DON'T give thanks to.  In no order, here it is:

• Knee socks.  I'm hating them this year, though it could be because I hate all my shoes too.
• Cleaning.  Everything needs to be cleaned.  Fact of life.  But dude, why does it have to suck so damn much?  A clean house is great; the process to get there makes me want to scream.  It's constant!
• Pizza sauce.  I've gone on and on about this, but it's true.  I hate pizza sauce.  Officially.  I don't know where this came from.  It snuck up on me, and now I never ever want to eat pizza.
• Health care reform.  Maybe I will be thankful for it at some point, but right now it looks futile to me, because we're not doing ANYTHING about reining in costs.  How about we get smart and start setting the prices of things, like they do in Japan?
• The commute.  It seems to have conspired with the world to make sure I do not get home before 4:20 any day of the week, regardless of what time I leave.  Sometimes I leave at 3:40, and get home at 4:20.  Sometimes 3:20, and home at 4:20.  But never earlier.
• Modern Warfare II.  I'm sure many people are thankful for this game, but I hate it.  I hate hearing it, I hate watching it, and I hate the killing.  Something about modern times and war....
• IBS.  I'm sure I have it, and it's not so fun.  The thought of never eating meat at Fogo de Chao again makes me sad.

That's it for now.  I'm sure if I dug deep I could find many other things that fill me with rage and sadness and hate.  Tomorrow: things I'm thankful for.

Sigh

On NPR, on my way home, I heard a story about how Catholics are up in arms in some city (can't remember which; DC maybe?) because the city is considering passing some sort of law that would guarantee benefits to same-sex partners of government employees.  Catholics are up in arms about this because of the work Catholic charities do with the government; they might have to give their employees these benefits, and that's a sin!  It compromises their beliefs to offer these benefits, dammit.  Also, the spokesperson (bishop? charity chief? Dunno.) said something like this: this is just proof of the erosion, in society, of marriage and the family.

Errr, what?  I mean, I know people make this argument all the time, but isn't the fact that people WANT to get married and form families kind of proof of exactly the opposite?  I understand that these people believe that marriage = one man + one woman, blah blah blah.  But isn't the fact that people are lining up to do this in places where it becomes legal counting for anything?  People believe in marriage!  You're just a bigot! 

And that's what I really think: people who are "fighting for marriage" and fighting to keep gays from marrying are actually fighting for the rights to be bigots.  If we're concerned about marriage, then we should be doing everything in our power to encourage ALL people to get married, regardless of what consenting adult they're choosing to marry.  Sigh.

I'm not saying I think we should be encouraging people to get married.  I couldn't care less whether people feel they need to get married or not; it's their choice.  Except it's not, and that's the problem.

Thanksgiving dinner

If I was making Thanksgiving dinner (something I'd very much like to attempt at some point in my life), I think I would cook everything ahead except for the Turkey, the gravy, and the rolls.  Two vegetables: green bean casserole and cauliflower casserole.  Mashed potatoes, but the ones you bake after mashing, or potato filling, if I could learn how to cook it correctly.  (Potato filling, as I understand it, is a Pennsylvania Dutch thing, a dish my mom's mom always makes, because my mom can't master it.  I suspect that I might be able to, as I'm better at cooking by taste than my mom, and apparently, that is what one needs to do with potato filling.  Whatever; it's delicious, and I miss the presence of potato filling, not eating Thanksgiving dinner at my mom's.)  And of course, my mom's stuffing, with sausage and mushrooms, and deliciousness in every bite.  I'm fairly certain that is all I would need to make, since my Thanksgiving would be, out of necessity, small.  Sam and I can't fit very many people in our little condo, and small means I'd have a better chance of being successful--smaller turkey, too!

I'd never felt like I could handle a Thanksgiving meal on my own, but now that I have my own kitchen (which you know, isn't a luxurious one, but is still better than the kitchens were in both of our rentals), and I feel like...I'm a grown-up (sort of), maybe it's time to make an attempt, you know?  I'm 30, and it seems like it might be time to try it.  Just to see if I can manage it.  I'd be willing to make this attempt in my mom's kitchen, though, if I had to.  I just wouldn't want her there, helping.  I want to do it on my own!  I enjoy cooking, when there's some purpose to it, and it's not just for my own eating on a weeknight.  I like there to be some production about it, something interesting about it.  Thanksgiving would definitely provide that drama.  What if I failed?  Drama.

The thing is, I think I wouldn't.  I think I've watched my mom do it enough times to know what happens when, and to make sure it happens when it's supposed to.  I'll tell you what, though.  I don't have the equipment I'd need for this.  I just thought of that.  Certainly, I don't have enough casserole dishes, because I'd need at least four, and I've got...two.  And they're not the right sizes, I don't think.  I don't have a roasting pan, so I've got no way to cook the turkey.  Erm, I don't have a gravy boat.  I'd be serving the gravy out of a bowl.  That's classy.

Actually, you know what?  I don't even really like turkey.  Is that blasphemous?  Can I make a thanksgiving pork roast instead?

Oh the day

You know what terrifies me?  People driving cars with cell phones.  I'm not proud to admit that I've texted and driven, and I will never, ever do it again.  I would never THINK of getting in a car drunk, and texting and driving is worse than drinking and driving.  (So don't YOU do it either!)  But I'm also nervous of drivers simply talking on their phones; today there were 3 crashes on the way home, two on Lake Shore, and I can't help but wonder if phones were involved.  It seems like, more and more, when I pass people on the expressway who are driving erratically, they've got one hand holding up a phone and they're yapping away.  I can't lie--it scares me!  What if that person is behind me, and we have to stop fast?  Will they be paying enough attention to?  It's frightening.

I don't talk on my phone in the car very often (and when I do, I just want to get off as quickly as possible), and the only reason I don't have a headset is because I just can't find one that fits.  It's not the little speaker that goes in the ear that's the problem, it's the thingy that curls over the ear to theoretically hold the headset on that doesn't work.  They're always comically big for me, and that just leads to the headset falling off if I move my head at all.  That doesn't make for safe driving.  Are there headsets for kids?  I bet one of those would work.  Something tells me that they don't, though.

Anyway, it was a really BAD commute home, and I started out shaking my head at all the drivers on phones, and when I got to the city, I ended up wondering if phones played any role in the accidents.  Cell phones + driving = BAD.

Mad Men Spoilers Ahead!

Sam and I have been big fans of Mad Men since we found out about it, a few weeks before the 2nd season started.  We watched the first season obsessively on DVD (oh the pain! of waiting for the next disc) and did the same with the 2nd.  This year, we've mostly been able to keep up with it as it aired, but we just finished the 3rd season last night.  Wowza!

I felt considerable Mad Men fatigue around mid-season this time, because it was just so relentlessly awful, all the time.  There was just nothing good happening, and everyone was behaving hideously, or having people behave hideously towards them.  I like the show, but I'm not a big fan of a show with literally zero to be happy about, or zero to laugh at.  I think the tone of the show took a real dive midseason, and things got bleak.  I expected a bleak tone around the assassination of JFK, but was pleasantly surprised to find that the show's writers had balanced that event with the hope of a young married couple (even if it is Roger's unhappy daughter).  It was the episodes before that, maybe three or four of them?  There was just NOTHING.  I seriously wanted to stop watching.

And I probably would have, except that I am a bad girl, and I read all the recaps of the last few episodes as they came out.  So I knew the last episode would be awesome, and I was right.  It was.  It was fun, and there was hope.  Regardless of Don's personal situation, which is...not good, the new agency promises fun storylines next year, and very interesting questions about the cast.  Will Bryan Batt come back as Sal Romano?  What happens to Cosgrove and Kinsey?  And!  Is Betty less of a presence on the show?  She certainly can't be off for good, as the children and Don's private life will still have to be part of the show.  I'm interested to see where it goes, and this morning Sam and I were laughing at the idea that now Don and Betty can have an affair with each other!  As it is, I don't think she'll be any happier with Henry Francis.  It's still a prison she's entering.

I do feel as if the season ended on this enormous up note, with Don looking around at his new fledgling agency and seemingly excited about what's to come.  (The Betty scene wasn't hopeful; it was like watching a prisoner walk the plank.)  I'm interested to see the time jump into the next season, and I'm REALLY interested to see, if we're going late into the sixties, how the hippie thing plays out.  I'm looking forward to next season, and damn it!  It's so far away.

In which I hurt myself

I am very, very klutzy.  I am constantly tripping over nothing and hurting myself, for instance.  If there's ice, I'll slip on it.  If there's a slippery floor, I'm guaranteed to find my way to it, and fall.  Today, when stepping up into the shower (our bath is deep, and it's HARD to step into, for a short girl), my foot slipped and I banged the knee outside the tub into the tub.  It didn't feel good, and when I tried to get myself back into a position to get into the shower, it happened again.  Which also didn't feel good.

On Friday night, I bent a fingernail back at a very low spot, and watched the blood well up beneath the nail, in the nail bed, and cried while the finger throbbed.

Also today, I managed to pinch my stomach with the can opener while opening a can of tuna.  This is incredibly embarrassing, as how does one manage this?  I honestly can't tell you, except that the counter is tall, and I was concentrating on what I was doing. 

I'm really horribly unaware of where my body is in space.  I'm constantly knocking my knees and elbows on things, because I simply can't place my body in relation to other items in the room.  Once, I elbowed Sam in the head because I can't control how my body moves in relation to where he's going.

I'm not sure if this is related to my inability to visualize anything at all in my head, though it seems likely.  I'm sick of it, though.  I mean, pinching my stomach?  This is really getting stupid.  What's next?

What I eat

So.  I eat.  As does everyone, as it is a requirement to live.  When I quit the blog, I'd been doing the eat-what-I-want thing for a little while, and that's continued.  I truly do eat only what I want.  Although, I will say this:  I have restricted myself to a vegetarian diet two days a week.  It's not a big deal; I do it because I recognize that eating lots of meat, and especially meat that is farmed in conventional ways, is detrimental to the environment.  If everyone went meatless two days a week, I think we could reduce pollution by some crazy amount, so that's why I do it.  It's really NOT a challenge.  Most weeks, it naturally happens, as I'm almost always eating meatless at lunch, unless I've got meaty leftovers (and leftovers aren't always meaty; this past week I ate leftover cream of tomato soup with pastina in it).  Some weeks I have to be more mindful of it than others.  Some busy weeks, I don't manage it, because I like very much to eat meat when I go out to eat, for some reason.  It hasn't really changed my life at all, and I didn't expect it to.  I also won't be giving up meat full-time.  I don't want to end up at a restaurant like Frontera and not be able to eat meat.  That would be near torture.

So I guess I do restrict myself, but just a teensy bit.  Everything else is fair game.  I've basically stopped eating sweets, is what has happened.  I don't like them.  (I ate no desserts or sweet treats at all in Vegas.  Literally, not once.)  When I do want something, I eat it.  But my favorite things in the world are savory--cream cheese and bagels.  Vinaigrettes and salad dressings of all kinds.  Sour tastes--pickles, capers, olives.  I cannot get enough green olives.  They are so damn tasty.  More sour/tart: ceviche.  I love limey fish, cooked by the acid in a citrus fruit.  I don't like pizza sauce anymore.  Or most red sauces, for that matter.  Most days, I really don't want to go near Italian restaurants.  I still don't like most shellfish, but I'm obsessive about King Crab Legs, chilled.  I'm completely over the moon for guacamole at nearly every place I can get it and the spring rolls at the Thai place down the street.  I'd rather eat more salad and more appetizers, and no dessert.  I'm starting to develop a strong taste for raw red onion and green onion, but no others.  I can't eat red meat anymore in the form of a steak.  It makes me sick.  I can't eat most processed meats, in the form of corporate sub sandwiches (Jimmy John's, Subway), so I stick with the veggie, always.  My desire for fries ebbs and flows.  Mostly ebbs, depending on how good they are.  I don't love mashed potatoes, or baked potatoes, or roasted potatoes, unless they're done really well.  I love toast.  And croissants with butter and jam.  Eggs are hit or miss.  Sometimes, they make me nauseous, other times I crave deviled eggs and egg salad.

I know people will wonder how this eating has effected my weight, because that is always a question.  We're obsessed with weight.  The truth is, I've maintained my weight pretty much evenly since I started this thing.  I definitely haven't lost weight.  But for the first time in my life, pants from last season fit this season.  I'd been going up and down (and up and up) for so long that I forgot that you don't have to buy new pants every winter and summer.  It's amazing.  Yes, I'm fat.  I'm not in the dark about it, and I understand what it means.  But I don't care.  I still have ups and downs with it, but mostly ups, to be honest.  I am who I am, and I'm really pretty good with that.  If it means I can eat like a normal human being, and not obsess about every damn thing I put in my mouth?  I'll take it.  It's a hard fought peace of mind. 

My Reading Year

I didn't read as much as I could have.  That's for damn sure.  I think I read somewhere right around 100 books this year, though I re-read probably around 15-20 in the month or so during the closing on the condo, and the house.  I don't think those re-read books are on the list.  I also lost about ten days in July, due to boot camp in Champaign; I didn't have much time or will to read there.  I stole chunks of time when I could, but it didn't add up to much.  I've put the list after the jump, if you're interested.

Highlights:

Definitely the Stieg Larsson books, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Girl Who Played with Fire.  Compulsively readable, and though they're not like anything else I usually read, I was able to get into them.  I generally don't like thrillers, and though these were...they were also different from most American thriller novels in a way I can't quite put my finger on.  About half-way through each one, I just couldn't stop.  I mean, I literally just read straight through, because they are that addictive.  I can't WAIT for the last in the trilogy, next year.  I suspect it won't end definitively, though, because Larsson died unexpectedly after dropping the three manuscripts at his publisher.  Sigh.

Of course, I loved Klosterman's newest essay collection.  I love him anyway, and in this book he wrote about football, which makes me love him even more.  Other good non-fiction: Chris Farley Show, Nine Lives, When March Went Mad, The Great Mortality.  I really enjoyed the last book, though at times it was a bit heavy.  I don't know why, but I am fascinated by the plague.  I think I originally wanted to read it because I listened to A Company of Liars, by Karen Maitland (which was also very good), and that book made me more curious about the plague.  (In fact, while I was looking for the title of the aforementioned audiobook, I found a list of books tagged plague in LibraryThing, and now I want to read some of those.)

The other noteworthy reading thing in my life: my booklist.  At the beginning of the summer, with the help of a blog that compiles links to all kinds of summer reading lists, I made a list.  A long list.  I think there were 60 or so books on it.  I enjoyed reading from the list so much (I feel a sense of guidance and order when reading from a list, and I'm seldom unsure of what to read next.  I like that.) that I created a GIANT (over 100 books and counting) list for myself that I see as existing in perpetuity.  I'll have to re-write it (it's on paper, which also makes me inordinately happy) over and over again, and omit the books I've read and add new books, but this also makes me happy. 

I suspect the coming reading year will be much like this one.  Right now, schoolwork isn't intruding on my reading time too much, but next fall, I'm going to have to ramp it up a little bit, and take a couple more credits a semester, so it doesn't take me five years to finish.  I am not doing school this summer, though, because my wedding is during the on-campus weekend.  Aw shucks.  More reading time?  Quite possibly.

November 12th is one of my favorite days of the year.  I love dialing the clock back to zero and starting again.  (Incidentally, as I don't keep spreadsheets separately per year, but just build upon the same one.  Have been since...November 12th, 2004.  And I've read 933 books (give or take) in that time.  That's not so bad.)  Starting a new book today. 

Edited: Okay, it's not letting me have a jump. Coming back to Typepad after being away sucks, because shit DOESN'T work the way it should.  ALL THE TIME.