Planning Ahead, Much?

so, the church i'm going to. i don't usually read all that extra-service stuff in the bulletin, unless i'm home. today, i went ahead and perused the thing during what i must admit was a painfully boring sermon on the ... development of halloween and the dangers of letting kids wear sheets and believe in the ghosts of tooth rot and corn candy. but the point of this is not to shake my head at the halloween-is-eeeeeevil crowd. the point is that i was looking at their calander for the month of november. these folks are really thinking forward.

there are two thanksgiving dinners, one the sunday before, and one two sundays before. wow. they've scheduled the sunday between dinners as the budget planning congregational meeting. not sure what that says about the bountious sunday dinners.

the *real* real reason for this little ditty, however, is on the 26th. they've got a two hour rehearsal of the christmas eve program right after the late service. two hours. and they're already rehearsing. this isn't lets-start-using-sunday-school-time-to-get-kids-singing-on-key. this isn't gosh-it's-time-to-pick-out-our-songs-and-costumes. they know what they're doing. they've got it planned out a month in advance. they're ready to rehearse a month in advance. this would indicate that by the time school started, they've had this in the works.

i guess i recall hearing little bits and pieces of this in the betty-jo-won't-you-stand-up-and-tell-us-all-about-XYZ time right before the service. but nothing to indicate a master plan this far progressed. maybe i'm not fully versed in this stuff [having done my damndest to avoid having any part in these somewhat silly events since the fifth-or-so grade], but i seem to recall the month of december being scramble time. as in scramble-to-get-this-planned-and-rehearsed. i must say, i'm deeply impressed.

so impressed that if i weren't going home for christmas, i might actually take the initiative to attend this program to see what kind of show power-planners can put together.


in other news, i just heard from a CUA friend [who was reading my blog for some reason]. i didn't even know she knew i had a blog. her card made my day, though, and probably my week-to-come. hi, mb!


this weekend, i have read about 20 chapters of ada [and still have 20 to go for wednesday]. i vastly enjoy the book, and had to stop myself from reading at a few points to go back and take notes over chapters. that's a good book. nevermind that i still don't know exactly what all the codes mean. [book is written by two lovers who take turns narrating, include their own notes in the margins and throughout the text, argue with one another over how things really happened, and wander off into french, russian, german, portugese, and twin code. yeah, they aren't twin lovers, but they are brother and sister. it's bizarre, but you tend to forget about the sibling thing for whole chapters until someone mentions it. then it's jarring all over again.]

i finally got the library lined up to talk to my classes, so lesson planning will be a handout on how to do their assignment. i already taught them a lot about the databases, but there's always more to learn, and this relieves me of the hassle of coming up with yet more to say about obvious assignments.

i'm thinking of my memoir. how i want to write it. etc. next semester's memoir course will produce at least five chapters of the thing, but i run into this problem. see, with any luck at all, my life is only about a 1/4 over. kind of pointless to write a memoir over that, right? so maybe i throw in some N-like tricks. tell it backwards, or from a stream of conscious pov. toss in a brief play, some uber cheesy and utterly metafictionalized poetry. have fun with the format. or maybe just stick to things like eggplant and cats.

the remainder of the weekend needs to include: retrieval of laundry started before even changing clothes; preparation of clam chowder from a starter bag; second load of dishes; creation of a DQ handout for presentation; rejecting of several stories for IH publication; vacuuming up of cat hair in the living room; taking out of much trash; lesson planning, and grading of some truly horrible student reviews [seriously, these kids don't know the meaning of "reflect"].

i'm thinking i can do it all. i did, after all, gain another hour in the middle of the night. this is my 25 hour day. i can do anything!

love and peace

oh no! i have lost my fingerless gloves. do i chop up one of my two purple gloves [both of which i like with fingers, and both of which are useful to me as-is], or do i go out and purchase another pair of cheapo gloves and butcher them? decisions, decisions.

meeting today. grammar-centric. ugh. will need to grade more… up here since there’s no guarantee that cox will fix the cable by midnight tonight. ugh-ugh. and have to work it stuff for a bit as well, since there is something of a time crunch to get a project done, and i apparently am the only one of us who knows what to do and how to do it. this isn’t too bad, actually. so no-ugh.

halloween is near. it signals the return of house to tv. soon, i’ll be a tuesday slave to the tv for this show. both looking forward to that and dreading it. i’ve never in my adult life been one to tie myself to the tv for a show. childhood, well, that’s different. x-men was a watch-or-die situation, i recall.

back to grading.

love and peace.

slumber party

there are some odd results that go along with all-nighters. this last one, for instance cranked out a paper fully two pages longer than i had intended for it to be. thankfully, i had been shooting for the bare minimum, or i'd have gone over the page count and had to cull my beautiful words.

it all started with an idea that fizzled and died. followed by another failed topic. and an extremely sickly one. until finally, i resigned myself to a topic that was not at all interesting. or rather, to a set of chapters that was not at all interesting. in order to find something to actually say about these chapters, i had to re-read them. and still, not much came to me.

after three or so hours of this, i decided to pull a jesus. this is duder terminology for: 'you have heard it said that X, but i say unto you Y.' or rather, everything you've heard/read/thought about these five and a half chapters of don quixote is way, way wrong, and i'm going to set you straight after reading them four times.

so i found an incredibly incredible [in the way, way out there kind of way] thread running through them and spun it into a web of lies argument about the dark side of don quixote. it's probably completely false. likely, i would be laughed out of academic circles for saying such unRomantic things about this very Romantic hero. but it's original. [note: so was the first sin, but did that make it better?]

anyway, i took a two hour nap [was supposed to be one] at around one, woke up again, and put some meat on my sinful little outline. two pages too much meat, but a fleshy paper is not bad. five+ chapters were just too much to bite off for the tiny paper, i guess. at least, with the [too]close reading i did.

the strange thing is this, though. my back has not felt this good in ages. i didn't even realize it was hurting before. i mean, if figured it out a couple of weeks ago, but it went away and i figured i'd pulled something. but i woke up from that nap feeling so good, and i still feel so good from it, that i think i'll sleep on the floor again tonight.

not the least bit because i've another paper to crank out and about 20 chapters of ada to read for tomorrow.

ah well. to clas with me. gotta turn in my original sin.

love and peace

stress dreams

i'm standing against the strawberry box planters on the old ca patio, and there's a layer of white frost over the blackened brambles of our plants. the cherry tree from around the corner by the broken up concrete of yesteryear's porch has been moved just off the patio where the old thermometer was, and i wander over to it, see it just as withered as the strawberries. there are two blackened globes the size of roma tomatoes on it, and one wizened tomato that i pick and hold in my hand. it's red, in this dream world of greys.

there are no animals around, no people. it's just me and our porch area. the latticed patio looks like people were there just yesterday, and there's a tea cup on the ledge that supports the lattice at about mid-person height. it's cold. the old trough where we used to swim in summer, where we used to rescue young frogs swimming the breaststroke until death or salvation, it is filled with wrinkled leaves in grey and black. mostly black. i see beyond the storage sheds that the emu pen has no hay, but the fence nearby looks in good shape. i go to climb over the gate, but at my touch it falls. i tuck in the ends of my scarf and walk back over crunching gravel to the patio.

i cannot see the house, or any of our land beyond the house, but i know it's there. just not what my dreaming brain wants me to focus on. my waking brain remembers how sam's tail would thump against the corner of the house, how my brother and i would climb the lattice supports and get up to the roof. how a weedwacker spat a pebble at the glass door and shattered it, how the glass all came down in a sheet, stuck to the duct tape either mom or dad put up against it. i remember the old computer where we used to make crosswords and those squares of letters where words hid in every direction. i remember playing king of the concrete out to the side, balancing on cement ice flows in the ocean and jumping from iceberg to iceberg. so many things in that same area that are absent in this dream.

because these are not what my dreaming brain remembers. all it has eyes for is the winter death of everything on that porch, and the cold wind that seems to have blown in--and me with it--all the way from dirt town. and i'm not sure what my dreaming brain wants me to get out of this.

there is, i suppose, a reason that i have no desire to return to that home. it can never be the same, and the disappointment of seeing it changed would shatter all my fond memories. but i revisit it in my dreams, walk the corridor with the ship in storm painting at one end and the old stone heart with its four legged black stove at the other, winking it's lacquered eye. i still and always will sprawl in my memory on the pulled out couch-bed, where the family gathers in power outages to hold a slumber party until water and electricity return. the sturdy kitchen table, where we dined, and where sam with a flop of his head could single-chompedly abduct an entire bologna sandwich. swim practice in the summers, packing our lunches and driving off. lunches today can never equal those shivering car meals after practice, with the tupperware beverages and sandwiches, and chips. the banter.

perhaps all my dreaming brain sought to do was to spark this reverie, providing an incentive to prove it wrong about the death and cold. I can provide my own shining sun for these memories, and let my waking brain wander down sloping hills and wade through rain-watered tadpoles. but only sometimes. i love my past, but cannot dwell for long. the present calls, and the future beyond it. it's time to answer.

love and peace.

oh the due dates, they're a closin'

but that's really nothing new, eh?

i'm getting better at anticipating the wrist. today, round mid-morning, some tweaking. means all it will take is one slight overextention and we're back to the brace for a few days. messaging the dang thing will help some, and the brace whenever i'm sleeping or typing. can't take notes with the brace, though. can't write fast enough, and the tension of holding the pen just so with the brace on actually hurts worse. so tomorrow it'll be brace outside of class, and lots of crossed fingers for an uneventful end-of-week.

softball game this friday. a deparment divided. who can say who will emerge victorious from this bloody battle of pens? it isn't even like there's a sword involved in an english department... my guess is that the lit, cw, and ling will win. but that's just because i'm pulling for my peeps. those tecommies are mighty imposing (hi km). i signed up to be a spectator long, long ago, so i'm going to try to be there. i hear there's a prize for the best spectator. hope it's a bottle of sleep or a headband of have-read-for-class.

it's looking more and more like this weekend will be house-free. insert all kinds of obnoxious sad-frownie faces here. i'd say "if x and y get done by sunday night, monday will be an episode of house and good night's sleep", but there's the problem of x and y being papers that will take much longer than that. and there's a z. so no house, probably.

i went grocery shopping with km. we spent something like three hours in the mecca of all food stores. bought lots of food food, and lots of quick food [yes, there *is* a distinction]. i love to cook. [my family might not have noticed this much, because more than cooking, i love to eat my mother's cooking] but i just don't have the time for it right now. and it wasn't like my pantry was stocked with ingredients anyway. i had run out of pasta, for crying out loud. there's only so long a person can live off of peanut butter. km said i should post the bit about man not living on peanut butter alone, so there it was.

no. i bought some fruits that don't need cooking, some veggies that don't need cooking, some potatoes that do need cooking but which can be boiled and fridged up for a snack. i bought yogurt. i bought lunch meat. i bought canned fruit and two bottles of cranberry juice [because the occassional twinge is too much twinge]. i bought tums. i bought a variety of frozen breakfast foodstuffs. yes. i've been demoted to eating breakfast out of a freezer. because of late there has been no breakfast at all, or a quick granola bar at the office.

and today, i ate good food, and enough of it. some frozen tidbit that tasted vaguely "western" and had more potato than egg. it was pretty good. it was quick. it was filling. it was 99 cents, as i recall. then i had a sandwich [not peanut butter] for lunch, along with a cup of yogurt. a second sandwhich of the meat-not-nut kind and a banana for dinner. it was kind of odd having three meals in a day. i'd gotten to the point where really, food was more of a distraction or an appointment that was sort of optional. not the best place to be. i remember it vividly from the master's experience. same time of year, too.

but the point of that is that i have re-tracked the train, and the wreck was not fatal. it was caught in time and reversed with what i hope is minimal damage. i'm eating half a honeydew melon for breakfast tomorrow. sandwich halves with fruit and veggies for lunch. probably the same for dinner, sub fruit for yogurt. i have food again. i might as well enjoy it until i run out again. friday, there's a fajita-from-freezer with my name on it. a bean and cheese burrito for the second non-morning meal. with adequate food comes adequate stress-handling.

let's get this train going.

love and peace.

classes

fun times next semester.

old english (followed by beowulf and hist of eng lang for the philology thing)
workshop on memoir (the only night class of the bunch)
teaching literature (because after two and half years of topic, i deserve abreak, damnit)
narrative theory (in case one of the above falls through, and possibly regardless of that, only in audit form)

half an hour of discussion showed me that my "life-long" dream of getting the coursework out of the way in three semesters will not work. i'll need the full two years. while this is upsetting, i am relieved to know that that fourth semester can be filled with glorious reading hours to balance out the hist of eng lang.

then quals (which look happier every class period) and freedom to write the dissertation.

than that's it.

i mean that i seriously want to abandon the ivory tower for a job selling insurance. or maybe i just want to do nothing. whatever it is, i return more and more frequently to the notion that leaving work at work is what heaven is really about. it doesn't matter how golden the streets or how bright the lampless city, working all day every day is not going to do it.

ugh. i'm now going to eat my lunch (and breakfast), and then get ready to teach again.

then... meetings! again, there is a meeting i have to go to, and again, it will be pointless and boring as hell, on top of wasting time i could be spending on coursework i no longer find enticing.

love and peace (and the mood shifts, oh, the mood shifts!)

and now for a real post

yeah, so with that last one and some turned in "fake" papers, i managed to get a feel for how this next assignment should look and how to make it look that way. students everywhere rejoice.

taught my kids html bullets. looking forward to lots of crazy mistakes when they attempt it themselves. [no, this is not mean of me: there are several drafts in the system with everything underlined after the title of a book because of a crazy mistake]

this weekend bordered on hell for me, but i'm looking forward to a slightly better week. grocery shopping has moved nearer to the top of my list, and should be accomplished tomorrow after work. there's just so long one can live on what's currently to be found in my kitchen.

mittens make great potholders for the office.

and canned soup is on the list of things i need to start keeping both in the office and at home, instead of leaving only at the office.

this phd thing is actually a lot like the ma thing, in that the first little bit is murder. i wasn't figuring on that. "been there, done that" is what i'd been figuring on. oh well.

good news: i am going home for thanksgiving AND christmas. both. yeah, i know. i haven't been home for thanksgiving once since this grad thing started. i'm really looking forward to it.

i'm also going to go try to sign up for next semester's courses in the next few minutes. sorry, students. my life next semester is vastly more important to me than your paper next week. short break from office hours is to be expected.

love and peace

format test...no content worth reading

Topic: here's topic one
Pure Knowledge: whatever the hell should be written on a pure knowledge basis

• sub point one
  
• sub point two
  
• sub point three

Practical Application: ditto to the whatever the hell above

sub point one

sub point two

sub point three
Values: because the system cares so much about values

sub point one

sub point two

sub point three

Topic: and here's topic two

Pure Knowledge: whatever the hell should be written on a pure knowledge basis

sub point one

sub point two

sub point three

Practical Application: ditto to the whatever the hell above

sub point one

sub point two

sub point three

Values: because the system cares so much about values

sub point one

sub point two

sub point three

Ah, perspective

there is an unbelievable amount of relief to be found in the realization that something which needs to be done simply *cannot* be done. when something can still be done, there is pressure to do it. when something cannot be done, there is no point in worrying over it.

i cannot finish the reading for tonight. even if i skipped work and read all day long, it could not get done. so there is no worrying over it. not anymore.

i will simply bring the book to work and spend any down time slogging through it. that's all that can be done, so that's all i'll be doing.

it's kind of odd how a disappointing revelation like that can still be freeing. this will be the first of the n. classes where i have not read. but it isn's as though i wasted the time. no house last night. or tuesday, or monday. over the weekend, one episode a night. very responsible.

the stipulation last night was that if i finished my paper by 10, i could watch an episode of house. but i finished it at 4 am. so, no house, obviously. it was all i could do to go to bed after printing it out.

and, since there really was no way to accomplish the reading task, i let myself sleep to 7. there's a sleep-in right there. it was nice to wake up and not have to leave the apt while it was still dark out. i ate a sit down breakfast and read a while before driving up to the s2 lot. i got into the office around noon. i ate a granola bar and a cup of fruit for lunch. i checked student email and the teaching listserv. we're all being asked to make up for the system's inherent problems by doing more than our shares. but this is usual.

and now i'll be going to work. when i get off at about 4, there will be canned soup, canned fruit, and steady reading until class. then, silence. because this is what i am capable of right now.

a single mug of tea last night sent the evil twinges of doom through my bladder. if that's all it takes at this moment, i need to spend more time watching my health than cramming for class.

this is my perspective. and it's a relief.

love and peace (and drink up, me hearties, for the uti threatens)

Holiday

Happy Slaughter of Indiginous Peoples Day!

Some of you readers got the day off. Not me. I got to teach. It's not that bad, though. I let them out before the half hour mark. Just nothing to say today. They have two easy assignments I have to go over, and I can't start on the next until the prompt is complete (should happen later this week, much, much after my classes).

Woo. On a happy note, I'm thinking I'll be able to go home for Thanksgiving. A possible car swap will eliminate the need to purchase a new car, and an offered ticket will keep me in groceries. Only thing I'm a bit concerned about is the cat situation. Got to look into a sitter or a boarder. Costs and all. My available peeps are either out of state, without transportation, or giving birth. Not exactly at beck and call, in other words.

There's a possibility I could set them up with tons of water and food and hope all is well, but I'd like to be home for more than a few days if I'm going to go.

Perhaps I could come for the near-week in November, and then for only a little over a week in December. That would cut the cat costs, but it would drastically increase the "missing of family" costs.

Ah well. The students commeth

Love and Peace

Firsts

Today, or the journey home anyway, was a series of firsts.

The first first: a complete arrest, from first to last

Lo, as I stood waiting for the bus, a truck zoomed by and was promptly pulled over. A cop asked questions at the window, talked for a while, went back to her car and made a call. A second car came up with a different flashing pattern. By the time this car arrived, the first cop was frisking the driver. The young chickie passenger got out of the truck and was yelled at. She skipped (skipped!) back to the truck and got back in. A cop SUV pulled up to join the crowd. By the time this one arrived, the giggling (giggling!) chickie was being questioned, and the guy was in handcuffs. The guy was placed in the back of the second car, the chickie was placed in the back of the first car, and the bus came. So while I saw the arrest, I still don't know whether the cops stay around until the offending vehicle is towed.

The second first: forced into the "oncoming traffic" lane by a meandering cement truck

I am fine, and so is my car. Oncoming traffic lane was at the moment not filled with actual oncoming traffic, and my brakes work wonderfully. That was the next lane over that had the cars in it, and the folks behind me also stopped, giving me room to get back in my lane when the cement truck swerved back into its own lane. This took place on Brownfield (my friend) and there is no turn lane on Brownfield, because the lanes are screwed up due to continual construction. A turn lane would have been very nice today. But thankfully, no one was hurt; only very frazzled.

The third first: mom of four reading novel at the wheel

An SUV filled with kids in the back and a carseat in the front was behind me at a light. As soon as the vehicle stopped, the mother driving pulled up a bodice-ripper from the car-seated child's lap and propped it open on the steering wheel. This novel was pre-opened (no page-flipping necessary), as though she'd been doing this for a while. She continually inched closer to my bumper while she read and the kids bounced around in the back. I was very thankful for a green light.

Not a first: picked up the strap to my bag, and ended up bending my thumbnail in half. While I wouldn't call it lots of blood, there was certainly enough to warrant a trip to the bathroom, a wad of tissue, and trip down to the secretaries for a bandaid. Still stings, but I think if I leave it alone long enough, it will deal with itself like other bent back nails.

...

I have House.

Love and Peace.

Crazy

As in, the world's gone stark raving bonkers.

First, I got up uber-early today to get House from the apt office, avoid the glaring sun-in-face drive to campus in favor of the timid sun-just-peeking-up drive, catch a bus to Grad Admissions, fill out and hand in paperwork, walk across campus to my office for a student meeting (No-show bastard!), and then head off to all that other crap that dragged me here today. Now, that's just a crazy-filled morning, right?

The apt office doesn't open until 8.30. I had to do stuff. I do not at this moment in time have House in my grubby little hands. But no problem, right? I can get it when I get home. Except that the office closes before I'll be able to get in. How frustrating is that? I'm sitting here trying to figure out exactly how to most quickly get home, because I need to watch House tonight. I've built this up in my mind as the penultamate post-stress bribe, and the continual delays are making me anxious. If I didn't have to be up here for a no-show bastard, I would have been able to have my House. I am holding this kid personally responsible for this. [not really, he's just a no-show bastard, after all, and not that important]

The paperwork took a whole two minutes, so I could have done that later today and stayed to get House. But I didn't know that, and gave myself plenty of time to do paperwork and still get to my meeting with the no-show bastard. Woe, woe! to the responsible grad student.

So this crazy place threw one more at me. One of two things happened today:

A) Halloween skiped ahead several days and is actually taking place today, Friday, Oct 06. This would make all the events of option B perfectly normal and not worth an eyebrow twitch.

B) She and her kin were crazy, or crazy-weird. There's a girl walking around campus with a pair of fuzzy white butterfly wings strapped to her back, who is handing out fliers filled with I'm not sure what because I was afraid the crazy was catching and tred a wide path around her. There was another on the bus, only with a bobbled antennae headband in sequined green. And a cauldron full of gum and hard candy made its rounds as someone went off to teach class.

But yeah. And in more sane news, I have a plan. If I can catch the bus at 4.30, leaving only a half hour early, I can be at my car by about 5. And if I then go directly home, I may just make it in time to collect House. It usually takes me an hour to get home, but I usually leave at 5. So maybe if I head out earlier, traffic won't be a bitch to me and I'll still get home in an hour. Maybe I should leave at 4. I could come in next week Friday and work 8 solid hours. The time's got to be made up, but the question of when is considerably more open than it would be in other jobs. I think it could work. I do, after all have to pick up a package by closing. It's a valid excuse. And maybe I won't go crazy if all this evil waiting stops.

I'm a procrastinator when I let myself be. But rewards should never procrastinate. That's wrong.

Love and Peace (and counting down to ... 4. yeah, it'll be 4)

I Know Why the Grad Student Sleeps

Yeah. The title up there means nothing, at least not in relation to this post. Heh.

I just now turned in the midterm thingy, and according to my schedule, am going to watch House episodes until dark.

[sounds of heavenly choir descend into sreams of dying] GLITCH [eyes widen in horror]

There's a sign. The apt office is closed today. My House is inside that office. While I *have* entered an apt building at night and without invitation before (hello my apt-hunting-helper of yester semester), the situation was entirely different than this one, and there was nothing to gain but an appreciation for the townhouses off Slide. This time would be all kinds of illegal.

So, my reward is not to be found. Instead, I'll spend the night grading as I would have on Friday. Get done early and all that. Really earn a few episodes of House. I'm not grumpy enough to be a danger to students, and there are only a handful of hugely long and utterly wrong-headed preliminary essays to be graded yet. I can suffer through them.

Tomorrow, early in the morning, I have a student meeting (at least, he never said he *wouldn't* be there, and my email stipulated that that was the signal for "yes, I'll be there"). Before that meeting, I have to deliver paperwork to the Grad School. After the meeting, I have to sit in on a technology committee meeting. After that, I get to decide.

A) begin making up for work missed this week and go home exhausted at 5
B) attend a third meeting held for "professional development" reasons, *then* go make up for work missed this week, and go home *more* exhausted at 5 having made up *fewer* hours

I'm really hoping for A, but I have to go to three of these PD meetings, and a lot of them are held when I'm not available. So I'd hate to [insert cliched phrase here] and not make all three. I know that, logically, I'll end up doing B. Curses. I'm really, REALLY earning that Housefest.

So, I'm off. One more push tonight, and I can crawl away.

Love and Peace (and hey, exhaustion *does* relate to the title!)

Odds N Ends

1. The Graduate School is insane, and their website is a nightmare of broken links and mislabeled tabs.

2. Rosa's was a delight in all ways imaginable.

3. Sunday I was at school until around 9 at night. On my way out, I came to a light that had turned red a few seconds previously. It remained red for two songs on the radio. And a lengthy commercial break. And some commentary about a band. And a third song from that band. Finally, the car behind me and the truck behind him swerved around me and illegally sped into the intersection because they were tired of waiting and no one had been coming from the steadily green-lit direction. A cop hidden around the corner shot out and zapped them both at once. The light turned green shortly after, and I casually (read: gleefully) made my way home. They waited much longer for their impatience, and I felt vindicated.

4. Since about noon today, my lower back has been hurting on the left side. I think I pulled something. Walking is twinge-y as the left foot hits the ground, and riding on a bus was sheer misery. My car is better, and I will be sure to lie on my back tonight when I sleep. It's, now that I've thought about it, similar to the back pain two years ago minus about a half month when I was taking a workshop on Mondays. That time it went away after two or three fairly miserable days.

5. I do not plan on attending class tomorrow. Or work.

6. I have a solid idea what I'll be writing about for this midterm. And I have done all of the reading I'll need to do for that topic.

7. I'm actually going to bed after sending this up the blog, because I only got three hours of sleep last night, and have been steadily moving about since a tiny bit before 6 this morning.

8. I don't feel at all bad about that.

9. It might not show on the time stamp, but it's after 12:30 now.

10. That's why I don't feel bad about this illicit little rendezvous.

11. Love and Peace, y'all. Love and Peace.

Spelunking

There is a cave, and I am in it. Or that is to say, I have caved in.

My friend Amazon has informed me that my horrible abandonment of non-consumerist principles has paid off post haste, and that I have waiting for me at the apt a package of glorious distraction.

Instant gratification has never felt so good.

Of course, I'm here at the office, and cannot go home to get the package until after class. And top that off with a mid-term test to write for tomorrow. So I don't actually get to open the package until Thursday night. But when I do, there will be House. Glorious, distracting House.

And no, I will not open the package "just to look at it" tonight. I know myself. If I were to so much as take out the gift inside the box, I would, ahem, go all the way with said gift. There would be no self control involved, and I would end up spending all night and most of the morning indulging in House episodes until the deadline loometh and the paper is due. Oddly, I am not capable of looking at a DVD I'm dying to watch without watching it, but I am capable, incredibly so, of leaving that DVD in an opaque cardboard box until I have a spot of time, or need a reward. I don't recall being one of those kids who are desperate to peek at a Christmas gift, though SR will be able to comment otherwise if that's the case.

I have finished fully one half of the reading I need to have caught up on for this midterm. And I'm prepared to BS my heart out over this chapter of Pnin. Loved the book. Not sure what great important concepts are to be found, though. Mainly, I just have a grand old list of N's word games. On tap for the next two or so hours is the completion of Biblical reading, and the note-compilation of Monkey-an reading. Then class, and a teeny-tiny reward. A fill-up on gas, and a trip to Rosa's.

I am justified in Rosa's. Really. I've had a crappy weekend, followed by a crappy week. I want to spend some time chatting with KM, and the happiest place I can think of for that is Rosa's. Since I plan to call in sick tomorrow and stay home all day, I don't have to worry about being up till 3 again. It will be okay.

My main reason for blogging now is twofold. First, I had to admit to purchasing a non-necessity, and to planning another for tonight. I do not feel guilty or anything, but the whole point of blogging the unconsumerism stuff is to keep me on track with it. So full disclosure and all that. I guess.

The second thing was to share this incredible pot of spaghetti sauce. Because KM told me to do it. Now. Not later. So here it is:

You will want to have in your kitchen:
-an oven
-a large (really large) dutch oven
-a knife
-a wooden spoon with a long handle
-a cutting board
-a can opener

+roughly 2lbs of incredibly lean, lean, lean ground beef. I'm talking 97/3.
+2 medium onions
+something like a pound of carrots, the long, grown-up, spindly ones
+a tomato
+half an orange bell pepper
+a head of garlic
+1 can of cheapo, non-chunky spaghetti sauce
+1 huge ass can of whole tomatoes in juice
+1 can of sliced olives, though 2 would be better if you've got them
+1 can of green chilies, ditto to 2 cans
+bay leaves, 3-ish
+italian seasoning, more than several healthy shakes
+italian herbs of choice above and beyond the aforementioned
+cayenne pepper of the nearly tablespoon amounts
+ground cinnamon of the heaping 1/2 teaspoon variety

Now, you're going to brown your meat in your pan on top of your oven, using your spoon. You want to chop up one onion (mince, really) and half your carrots (coin those) and add them to the cooking meat. The onion is juicy, but since the meat is practically fat free, as meat goes, there's no need to drain. Cook until everything is pretty done on the veggie side and all done on the meat side. Now you'll add those bay leaves and the italian herbs of both kinds.

Then add in your garlic, all separated and chopped into pencil eraser size bits. Add the cilies, pepper, tomato, all chopped into similarly thumbnail sized bits. Stir it around for a bit, and spend some time chopping your other onion into chunks that are somewhat between nickle and quarter sized. You want them to be less cooked than the other onion. So keep em big. Coin the rest of your carrots, too. I ended up using about 7 carrots. But then, I had that 2lb bag I had to use up. I like carrots, and they make a new-tasting sauce. Add the can of cheapo sauce, and the juice from the tomatoes. Then get your hands all dirty tearing up the tomatoes into your pot. Chopping will waste juice. So tear over the sauce. Add the newly chopped onion and carrots, along with the cayenne pepper and cinnamon. No olives yet.

Simmer the stuff for a good two hours. Then add the drained olives and simmer another hour. If you really want it more tomatoey or more saucy, add another can of cheapo sauce. But I don't think you'll need it. Taste it. If it needs something, add it. Trust your judgement here, because you'll have a very large pot of this and you want it to taste good. I ended up adding more cayenne pepper, and a little bit of papprika. I found no need to add salt.

I ended up with a glorious, freezable sauce that is quite spicy, while still retaining a spaghetti sauce flavor. And I got to smell it all night while I read.

If you are like me, you'll want pasta to go with the sauce. Don't bother cleaning out your pot. Just tupperware up your sauce, add water to the pan and boil for pasta. It isn't gross. The sauce and pasta will mix eventually on your plate, so why bother with segregation now? The pasta will have a mildly saucy flavor, which is good. I made a ton of it, and packaged up pre-mixed sauce and pasta meals for the week. If I need lunch, I reach into the fridge and grab a gladware of main course and a fruit cup. It's well worth the time spent chopping and stirring, because in the morning there's no time (or brain power) for making/assembling a lunch, and at night, I'm too tired to contemplate the next day's meals.



So. There you have it. My glorious gift, and a dinner idea. Now I can rest having assured the world that I live. Back to Judges.

Love and Peace