5/28/04
Well, I'm going home tomorrow, until next weekend. A cousin of mine is getting married, and I'd hate to miss the food fight.
I'll probably be updating here and there, but in case I don't, now you know that I haven't dropped off the face of the planet. Only the face of the Midwest. Which isn't so terrible.
Speaking of the Midwest, on the national news this morning they described storm damage in "the Midwest" and then showed pictures from Alabama.
Yes, Alabama. Which has coastline. Which is way, way south of here. Which is as different culturally from Wisconsin as it is from, well, everyone except Mississippi.
It makes me kind of glad to have spent some time living in Flyover Country. At least I'm qualified to make fun of the newspeople.
5/27/04
In true Wisconsin style, today is
take your bratwurst to work day, because obviously it's important to show German meat products all the career options it has available. Like being crammed into the mouths of sweaty overweight Packers fans.
I left for work at 6:45 this morning (I usually leave two hours later). And when I don't get enough sleep I typically end up vaguely nauseous. And at 6:00, with my bowl of plain cereal, I flipped on the tv to see live pictures of meat-stuffed intestines being flipped on a grill.
Why? Why do you hurt me so, Charlie Shortino?
5/21/04
I think the world is coming down around my ears.
I actually discovered today a reason to be glad I'm a woman in this society.
I have a mosquito bite on my inner thigh. A rip-roaring, huge, first-bite-of-the-season-which-makes-it-extra-annoying bite. It manages to be perfectly located so that the inner seam of every pair of pants I own rubs against it. Which makes it itchy. Which makes me swear.
So today, I'm wearing a dress, and I'm comparitively comfortable. Now when it itches it's the fault of my antibodies, not the cheaply made seams of my 10$ Gap pants.
(the secret to 10$ Gap jeans: have a 28 or 30 inch waist, with no hips to speak of. Then go to the men's section. Both J and I have uncovered numerous great pants using this method).
The fact that I can wear a dress for entirely pragmatic reasons without being stared at by strangers made me happy to be a woman, if just for the length of time it takes for the bite to calm down.
Of course, the people who know me well HAVE been staring, because when have I ever come into work wearing a dress? But that reaction is based on knowing me as a human being, not just as "random woman walking down street", so I can handle that.
So here I was, only half-ironically humming "I Enjoy Being A Girl" while taking care not to splash oncogenic virus-containing cells on my legs when, while taking a lunch break,
Anne goes and shows me
this.
And again I'm a grumpy, grumpy female.
It took me damn well long enough to be okay about being a masculine female--not a "none of the above", not a statistical freak, but myself. And 99% of the time, I'm a happy person. I've figured out who I am, treat everyone kindly and judiciously, and if the topic comes up I'll tell them about my gender bendfulness.
But once in awhile I do go through a rough spot, and it's usually caused by something like that pamphlet. I'm glad some people can laugh about it--they know that no amount of careful foot placement will change people's views of them.
But for me, coming from a somewhat more precarious gender place, I see that kind of thing, and one thought goes through my head:
YOU'RE NOT PASSING.
I'm not passing. Every time I sit down butt-first, every large hulky step I take, every time my face isn't bursting with feminine joy, the kinds of people who wrote that booklet (in 1992!) can tell that I thought I was going to turn into a boy when I grew up. They know I messed up. I can treat them all with friendly respect for years and years, but it's only on the day I have a mosquito bite blooming on my upper thigh that they'll respect me back.
And then I hate people for awhile. And then I go pester those virus-laden cells.
5/20/04
I started to write up a recipe for one of the most successful foodstuffs at this weekend's social occasion, but I didn't write any of it down, and then something wierd happened with the computer.
So let's try again. I've included every step of the process, just in case the actual act of worrying while making it is the key to its deliciousness.
Freakout Rice Salad.
Ingredients:
A mix of wild, brown, and shortgrain rice (this stuff is available in bulk at the Co-op, but if you don't have such a place, just put a bunch of different rice types together).
rice vinegar
garam masala, cumin, maybe some cinnamon
golden raisins
dried cranberries (aka craisins)
Walnuts
Some oil that doesn't taste like much (aka not olive)
Feta and cucumbers
red pepper (the hot stuff)
Set the rice to cooking in a pot.
Start cutting up the feta and cucumbers.
About 10 minutes before the rice is done, throw in a handful of raisins, craisins, and walnuts.
When the rice is cooked, put it in a strainer and rinse with cool water to make the whole thing less gluteney.
Taste, realize that the feta and cucumbers will taste awful with this. Set them aside and make something else with them.
Put plenty of rice vinegar, garam masala, and cumin on it. The garam masala I have right now is pretty heavy on the cinnamon, so you should maybe add some. The flavor you're going for is an unholy union between noodle kugel and a very mild curry.
Put some oil on it, and taste.
Ugh. Nasty, huh? Too astringent, too cumin-ey, too sweet, all at once.
Give some to your husband. Apologize when he gets a wounded look on his face, having eaten something awful without any warning.
Look at enormous bowl of wasted food and sigh. Then cover and put in the fridge overnight, pretending that it tastes fine.
Come up with contingency plan--if I coat it in red pepper, no one will be able to taste the awfulness! Excellent!
Eat some the next day, and marvel at the transformation. It tastes GOOD! The vinegar has calmed down, the flavors are suddenly complimentary. Hooray!
Set the fistful of red pepper aside.
Pretend you knew it was going to be fine all along.
Eat lots.
5/18/04
I've noticed that the Bush campaign has lately been trying to discredit Kerry by describing things he's said or done that I think are great. "Some blahblah group described Kerry as the most liberal person in the Senate. More liberal than TED KENNEDY! More liberal than HILLARY CLINTON!" Or, "John Kerry has the deluded notion in his head that increasing gas prices will result in less gas consumption!"
Isn't this what they do in Europe? And they have great public transportation, and fewer, smaller cars? Where do I sign up for that foolish notion?
Apparently, I'm not their target audience. Imagine that.
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A momentary lapse into politicalness. Lapse #2:
Yayyy!!!!!!!
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Lapse into knitting:
I'm working on
this pattern, with some adjustments that should give me the illusion of a waist. It's great--easy to follow (if you've ever done short rows, especially), not difficult knitting overall, but it actually shows thought put into the pattern that's
not just a horrible sack.
I have no idea how it'll look on me, but it's moving far more quickly than my jacket (which I still need to weave in ends on--I'll wait for a cool day to do that). So I'll know soon.
5/17/04
The party went well. Good food, the friend-variety was such that we didn't end up talking about Ithaca, or the bosses, or knitting, or any other in-joke excessive topic for too long. A nice rambling-conversation kind of party. At the end, J pointed out that every single person there was either persuing or has some post-graduate education.
It's been a while since I've felt so class-traitorous.
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This morning I ended up in a foolish but blindingly jealous rage about something so pointless it makes me more angry thinking about it.
I like to pretend that I'm less shallow than the average bear, wanting the best for all my friends, even if growing for them means growing away. I'm mama-bear fiercely protective of the people I love. But I also expect that loyalty to go both ways.
And I suddenly found my inner lonely 6th grader lashing out when I realized that I'm more replacable than I thought.
I'm going to go be angry about my painful and stupid weakness now.
5/13/04
Nothing gets me ready for two weeks of bone-crushing levels of lab work as a really good productive lab meeting--the type of meeting in which the word "sexy" is used to describe an aspect of scientific research without irony. The sexy research? Mine.
Bring on the pain.
5/12/04
I have a new made-up word for the world which I will find very useful: Loave.
No, not like bread.
To loave someone is to have a feeling I frequently have towards my husband. I love him, sure. But then he sends me
this sad story (go read at least the title first, it's necessary to the rest of the story, I'm not going anywhere).
And then he says, and I quote: "She should give the state MA program a piece of her mind. Oh, wait . . ."
And I am filled with loaving.
Love + Loathe = Loave. See?
Use it with my blessing.
5/11/04
I haven't talked about knitting much lately, have I? Let's have some of that, then.
I like working on pretty large-scale projects for the most part: things that take me more than a month to finish, projects that require me to pay attention for every row. St. Brigid fit that bill nicely, and I was thrilled that I made very few mistakes on the pattern that required ripping back.
But after spending almost 3 months working on it, I was ready for something quick and stupid, so I started working on the
Fog Chaser Jacket (pattern's way down there at the bottom, I got it from the book
Knitter's Stash). I have some tree trunks that got me close enough to gauge with the 4 yarns held together I'd been collecting for it, and I took a perverse pleasure in casting on 30-odd stitches for the whole back.
The only problem is, it's a little *too* quick and mindless. I cast on, knit for an hour, measure my progress, and I've knit 4 more inches than needed. The critical words "at the same time" were left unwritten, and it was only until I got to subheading #4 did I realize that I was supposed to do two different things listed under subheading #2. I've undone more knitting on this jacket than any other thing I've worked on, I'm not a fan of big gauge, I HATE worrying about 4 yarns held together--
and that was before I even decided the thing needed pockets.
So now it's mostly done--I have half a pocket and 3/4 of the seaming left to do. But I find even looking at the thing to be angrifying, because I had the mistaken opinion that this thing was going to be mindless, didn't pay attention to it, and got lost every 20 minutes as a result.
Compare this situation to the foolish doily (which my mother-in-law got for Mother's day last weekend and enjoyed very much). I finished that thing in a week, understood every step, and tick-tick-ticked off the pattern until it was over. Needing to pay attention constantly prevented me from making dopey mistakes.
So I guess I'm limited to either lumpy squares or insane lace. Not that problematic, really. But good to know.
5/10/04
My computer is better--the whole office got hit by the
Sasser worm, and it took a few days for the poor computer guy to get through them all.
Now back to our regularly scheduled grump-fest.
This was what outside looked like 8 days ago.
That afternoon it was sunny and glorious in the 50's.
I know that New England's weather is supposed to be bad, but this place is far worse. I'm hoping that the weather will be non-wintery next week, 'cause I'm working on a little party.
Maybe not so little. I'm in the middle of a wierd life-transition time, where adulthood and studenthood cohabitate, which is demonstrated by my reluctance to call this social thing a party.
Because it's not a party, not really. I still define "party" as a social situation in which at least one participant throws up alcohol by the end of the night. Nudity is usually involved. Food is pizza, chips and Jello shots if the hosts are feeling exceptionally motivated.
I hate parties. I don't party hearty, or in any other way.
What I like is seeing people I like outside of work, introducing people that have heard stories about each other, figuring out who happens to know the same people, or who lived in the same building at differen times. I like feeding friends a nearly Thanksgiving-esque spread of deliciousness, listening to music, laughing, telling stories. If alcohol is consumed, it'll be out of our 4 wineglasses with "Dryden Mutual Insurance" etched on the sides (Our Best Woman's dad works there, they were wedding gifts).
And so, I'm having a Get-together this weekend. A Shindig. A Thing.
A Little Party.
Yes, a little party. A teeny party with a grocery list a page long. An itsy-bitsy party that may involve me leaving work early on Friday to start cooking (people are coming over on Saturday night). A small, wispy party where I emailed an invitation to 25 people, and keep remembering folks I forgot.
It's a rather large Little Party.
But still not a Party.
At least, I hope not. There will be children there.
5/4/04
I feel like writing bad poetry for you all about the sorry state of my computer at the moment, how I have to go find a computer lab to check my email, and how it may be a day or two before things get back to normal here (including pictures languishing on floppy disks, which I know you will enjoy).
Unusual spacing and punctuation would have been involved.
I may even have included blood, gore, and Dickinson-esque rhyming structures.
(This is one of my pet peeves, by the way, and you will never change my mind. Her poems are BAD, with the aren't the Flowers lovely and the my Loneliness is a horse-drawn Carriage and the hoyven-RHYMING of the SEE and WHY-en flaven. Sorry, started channeling
Professor Frink there. But you get the idea. She did the right thing, keeping them hidden.)
I started to write the poem, but realized that I'd be doing a disservice to the truly bad poets throughout the world. And, jokingly or not, I'd still be exposing the world to more bad poetry, of which there is already far too much.
So. I'll be back soon, and if the computer continues with its narcolepsy I'll just have to come down here more often.
But till then, no pictures, and snack-sized entries.
