Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Precipice


This face wants to see the world changed.

It is an ordinary sort of face, really, prone to laughing, being overly serious, and sleeping at inopportune intervals.  
Thinking it is somehow unique, it is at present feeling as though something is missing.   
Most of its activities--even productive, essential activities like classwork--have become haunted by the sensation it is doing too much of the wrong things.

In many ways, this is not a content face.  
The things it has are good--but it knows it has too many things.  
This face knows that there are other faces out there that need good food and water, but have no hope of ever receiving aid.
It knows that there has to be some way to change the world, but it doesn't know where to begin.

The mind behind this face is dissatisfied with much of the current order of things, and tries to see how to perhaps fix the system.
It knows it has skill and intelligence, but worries about applying them correctly.

Watching and reading about the world's state of affairs have brought it to realize that concerns are misplaced.
Billions of dollars are spent advertising a handful of presidential candidate faces even as millions of faces are lost each year to treatable diseases.
Child faces vanish by the hundreds because of lack of water.
This face knows that billions of its fellows have slipped away due to carelessness, ignorance, and inactivity.


This face wants to change the world.
It is working out where to begin.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

A Sunday

It's been extremely lazy, and I didn't get up to go exercise (as threatened).

Instead, I have been working on homework and paperwork and watching movies.  First was Get Smart, which I like, but not as much as the second.  The clever among you will have taken one glance at the above picture and laughed at me.  Well, laugh away.

Yes, I watched The Last Unicorn.  And yes, at twenty years old, I still love this movie.  The speaking, drunkard skull is still a little freaky* but I love this movie.

I would write a review, but I can't think of anything classy or not reeking of sentimentality to say.


*With his blushingly drunk zygomatic arches.  His anger, and his glowing orbital cavities.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Intervention Needed (?)

Some days, I just feel like this.
Replace the chips with pie and corn dogs, beer with water, and remote with a MacBook Pro,
and you've got it about right.
Now mind you, it's been a while--probably with good reason. This is the first Saturday in forever that I didn't have enough to do to warrant a crazed, hurried day spent dashing about like a decapitated chicken.  I did not clean much, I did no laundry, and I didn't have to make a grocery run.

However, I have taken the last three days off from exercise.  I have eaten somewhere between 4 and 6 corn dogs** and 1/4 of a pie.  Also, I have been excavating said pie from its plate--or cake pan*, I suppose--with a spoon, like the uncivilized college student I am.
That is not my hand holding the spoon: it is a friend's hand.
However, notice that the section of missing pie under the hand is
significantly smaller than the gap on my side of the pie.
That is last night's picture.  As of now I have eaten approximately two-thirds of a poorly set-up, gooey rendition of Momofuku's Crack Pie.***  The worst part of it is that only a small, exercise-driven part of my brain objects this fact.  All the rest brain is lazing about, contentedly swollen with cheap sausage, corn bread, and pie.

Analyzing the pie post-baking, I can think of 3 reasons the pie did not set up properly.
A) It was baked in a 9" cake pan*, whereas the recipe calls for a pie tin.  As it should.  Stupid WalMart.
B) It was not baked long enough, a fact that could not be avoided due to being baked in the wrong container.  Ahem.
C) I did not do a good enough job separating egg white from egg yolk, and it messed up the filling's consistency.

Regardless, it's a freakishly delicious pie, all butter and cream and sugar and GOODNESS I HAVE EATEN SO MANY CALORIES TODAY.

But they were tasty, tasty calories.  :'(

This justification tactic was not required until very recently when I noticed that I was spooning myself pie in a ridiculously style-free outfit while watching a video about scarf-wearing.+  Maybe if I felt less ridiculous, I would be more forgiving.  I don't usually mind being fashionably inept.  But the gap between creator and watchee has rarely been as wide as it has been tonight.

Is sad.

However, I think I have a self-issuable intervention.  Tomorrow morning I will rise with the dawn, go to the local exercise center, and do cardio and lift weights until those long-since digested calories are forgotten in a wave of sweat and misery.  No, wait: not forgotten.  Merited.


But then again, I might just sleep in and do the whole thing all over again.




*WALMART.  WHEN WILL YOU LEARN TO SELL THINGS I NEED FOR MY BAKINGS.^  LIKE DECENT PASTRY BLENDERS.^^
ALSO.
NO PIE PLATES?  SERIOUSLY? ^^^ 
FOR THE LOVE OF MUSHROOMS.^^^^

^I used to sort of like WalMart.  It had all the things I needed to make food--even all the nice little need-to-bake tool bits that other places don't always carry.
The local WalMart has taken that liking and smashed it into tiny, keening, bloody bits that ooze resentment and pure fury.

^^This was actually my first run-in with this Wal-Mart.  A pastry blender is a very useful tool when mixing flour, sugar, salt, baking soda/powder or any combination thereof with butter.  When implemented correctly, the end result is a light, fluffy, evenly buttered mixture that easily adheres together because of the butter--though a little water (in pie dough) or half and half (scones) helps too.  However, not all pastry blenders are created equal.

THIS                                                           THIS.


       DOES NOT 
    EQUAL







I wanted the one on the right.  Did WalMart have one?

OF COURSE NOT.



^^^This is a wrong I only realized after some post-occurrence mulling`.  I mean, seriously!  No pie plates!  Not even the chintzy little glass 8" plates.  NO PIE PLATES.  AAAAAAAAAAAGH.

`Right now.

^^^^The entire point of this footnote was to explain the cake pan bit.  The incompetent WalMart had no pie plates: but it did have two 9" cake pans on sale for $.50 each.  Good deal, right?`

`This fact was enough to soothe my wrath over the pie plate thing until now.   Fifty-cent cake pans are a big deal.

**I honestly can't remember if it was 4 or six corn dogs today alone.  I've been eating them two at a time, but two(?) of the microwave trip(s) are phased together in my head.

*** http://momofukufor2.com/2010/02/momofuku-milk-bar-crack-pie-recipe
I cannot slice my pie, and I have to eat it with a spoon.  I do get the basic idea of what this lady's talking about.  I also hear the gods of healthy eating sobbing with helpless terror.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?src_vid=bKu5UL8DYmg&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_224494&v=5LYAEz777AU
Great, informative video, right?  I didn't feel quite so ridiculous until I was watching its sister video.^  And.^^

^http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_709694&src_vid=5LYAEz777AU&v=ssJdyck8rlY
WHY OF COURSE, MISS I-FELL-OUT-OF-THE-PRETTY-TREE-AND-HIT-EVERY-LEAF-ON-THE-WAY, I WILL LOOK AS FABULOUS AS YOU IN A SCARF.  ALSO, I CAN IN FACT AFFORD A LOUIS VUITTON SCARF.

^^"*hee hee!  I wear this sometimes walking around the city!"
The more I watch this chick, the more I resent her careless flamboyancy.
"Silk will do."
That is making the vast assumption that silk is both affordable and available.
"I got these on sale for $35, I think, or something, but they fit really, really well.  Can I get another?"
Honey.  Sale, as in the great deal kind you're currently thinking, is under the $10 mark.  $35 is a pricy original charge.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Needing/Getting

I've had a lazy-feeling day, with some stress on the side* but nothing I haven't been able to deal with.  Coffee shops fix everything, you know.  A cup of tea, a baked somethingorother**, and you're in perfect repair.

Or at least I am.

This particular location is one of my top picks, coffee shop-wise.  The Blue Moon in Hastings is only slightly superior, but then again this shop has more class and less casual.  It is the 1920's repainted farmhouse where the Blue Moon is the 1990 chic modern.

I don't blog enough any more.  I don't write enough anymore.  I'll start trying again.  But we'll see.  There's so much I think, and I don't get half of it out of my head.  It bangs around and cries and moans and throws hissy fits until I'm grumpy and self-absorbed.

Speaking of not speaking, I still haven't told my mother I put my car in a ditch.  Yes, readers, I have had my first accident-ish.  Ish because, quite honestly, both me and the car are for all apparent reasons fine.  I did take the Doc to the shop for a checkup: I'm headed home tomorrow, and want no problems for that four-hour drive.  But I had no trouble getting him there, which was promising.

I hope.



*My botany professor stopped me, nearly shouting "This is a wet lab.  If you get information from a classmate, it is a dry lab and that is not acceptable" when I tried to leave the lab class on account of a Residential Advisor's meeting.  I wouldn't have minded, except that I'm already having some issues with the RA staff^ and so missing this meeting was not what I wanted to do.  I spent a few minutes on the verge of tears.  But I finished the ever-loving lab.

^I'm a late person.  It really doesn't matter:  I am late to events, my homework is late, my paperwork is late.  Maybe by only a few seconds, but if there's a time limit I'll be on the far side of it.  RA-peoples do not like this, and so I am on probation due to tardiness. I'm working on the situation, but it's not going as easily as I'd like.

**I eat all kinds of somethingorothers.  Scones, muffins, tarts . . . the list goes on.  If there's anything I love about my coffee spot right now^, it's the baked goods.  Today's other was a chocolate croissant.  An oven fresh chocolate croissant.  Oh, yes.^^

^After the drink menu, which is a given.

^^Also worthy of note was the baker of said croissant, who I know and like in a platonic way.  He has very nice curly brown hair.

UPDATE: Doc is fine.  The car-man said so.  :B

Wednesday, February 29, 2012