I really do like being in school

Just glanced over my last few entries and noticed that I only write when I am frustrated about something.  So I want to say for the record: I love being back in school! My classes are interesting and fun, I am meeting lovely people, and except for the occasional swine flu, living alone is not bad. Someday will manage to write about all of the good things going on. Besides the brownies (which really are very, very good, as it turns out).

test prep

I have my first exam of grad school tomorrow.

I just spent the last forty-five minutes making brownies.

I have to wake up in… eight hours? Ish. I was hoping that baking + doing dishes would relax me and get me ready to fall asleep, but I am just as hyper as before, possibly more. On the plus side, my apartment smells really good.

It has been a long time since I’ve taken a test like this (involving math, and formulas, and possibly a calculator). I am nervous not because I don’t think I am prepared – I understand the concepts, as far as we have gone over them multiple times in class and in the book – I am nervous because every time I try to do problems stemming from the concepts I trip up on some silly step along the way, usually involving algebra. I am not detail oriented. We have been assured that partial credit will be given if it’s clear we knew how to do it, but as the whole “exam” concept is a recipe for big, scary stress, this doesn’t help very much.

What a boring post. Time to stuff my mouth with brownies; that has to be better than whinging.

EDIT: Used this recipe as I did not have any baking chocolate in the house. Quite good!

nostalgia for the present

I’m moving to Berkeley in a month.  Berkeley and San Francisco are next door neighbors, but living next door is not the same as living in your very own lovely laughter-filled house.  I am going to leave mine, which I moved into so recently (six months, just).  Yesterday we had friends over to eat “gay cake” (rainbow-frosted) in celebration of Pride and warmth.  We sat around in the backyard drinking homemade mint lemonade and mimosas and eating food and talking and laughing.  At some point a guitar was brought and put to use.  The remnants of the party decided to make dinner, and we sat 10 people down for a feast just because we were all there and did not want to leave.  I tied an apron on to cook, and my friends in the dining room made up blues verses about each of us.  At dinner we argued and laughed and drank wine.  After dinner we cleaned up, crawled into bed.  My roommates came in to kiss me goodnight and gossip.  It was a glorious day.  

I won’t have a lot of days like that when fall hits.  There will be good moments, I am sure, and I know I will come back to my friends in the city.  But as a student, weekends are no longer enormous blocks of leisure time.  I will have to measure and worry and trade-off time.  It’s worth it; I am excited to do it; but days like yesterday remind me of what I’ll be missing for the next two years.

This is brought to the forefront of my mind due to the true beginning of my apartment search in Berkeley.  I went on Saturday and looked at three apartments, two of which were uninhabitable (one tiny, one too crowded by the residents of the adjoining house) and the third of which I would have to pay an extra half a month of rent for.  More will come, I know, but I am in the anxious stage now, where I don’t know where I will be in a month, I don’t know if this move will be an upgrade or a downgrade, and I am already nostalgic for the life I haven’t left yet.

day on

Sunday, traditionally my mental health day (and by “traditionally” I mean, for the past month while I have been working on the campaign), was today just another day of work.  I did manage to escape by 9 pm, so I could go to the grocery store and do laundry, but I only managed to make one dish (a rather haphazard concoction combining acorn squash and broccoli – good enough, but I wouldn’t make it for other people) to see me through the week ahead.

Things are heating up around here.  Tomorrow is the last day of registration in Pennsylvania, which means it is time to start thinking about getting out the vote (GOTV).  We have a brief pause for “persuasion” (vote Obama because he’s much much better than the other guy) and “voter education” (you will NOT get arrested if you go to the polls with an outstanding parking ticket!) and then it’s time to start bugging the hell out of everyone reminding them to vote.  At the moment we (in Youth Vote) are making a plan for those three stages, and trying to gather information from the big colleges so we know what they each need.

Yesterday Bruce Springsteen played an acoustic set at a rally for Obama here in Philadelphia.  The city shut down the parkway (a large road running through town) for several blocks, and I heard a crowd estimate of 30,000.  I went down to work the event early, helping volunteers with instructions (grab the people! make them register!) and passing out extra stickers and registration forms.  I was on my feet for about five hours before Bruce came on, and got separated from my fellow staff members, so by the time of the actual concert I was wandering around dazedly and found a patch of grass near the back.  I wanted to close my eyes and sleep right there, but I had my clipboard which marked me out as a volunteer, and I didn’t want to give the impression that Obama volunteers were sleeping on the job.  It was warm, but not hot, and there were little children and dogs and people selling T-shirts that said “No more drama, Vote Obama” and I registered a few people, and the Boss closed the show with “This Land is My Land.”  So it was a good day.

No time for writing, since last I posted.  It’s funny to think back to when I planned this, and thought I would come in and work 30 or 40 hours a week, and have lots of time to write and get to know the city.  Ha.

eating update

Food seems to be of high interest to everyone – maybe I will turn this into a personal food blog. Anyhow, four days into my week, here is a quick report:

The zucchini pasta made about three and a half servings, and held up quite well – I had it for lunch every day so far this week, but it’s now gone. The roasted veggies turned out to be three large servings (usually I would serve it as a side which would make it go further) but were not as exciting as I had hoped and I have had trouble getting myself to eat the third serving. This could be a matter of which veggies I used (potatoes, eggplant, onion, orange and yellow bell peppers), a surfeit of seasoning, or the fact that I would usually serve them as a side dish and instead have been eating them as my main.

The baked tofu was not marinated long enough (Moosewood said to “toss it” in soy sauce and garlic, but that only ended coating the outside, so the whole cube is still fairly tofu-tasting, which is to say, tasteless) so it’s pretty boring… I might try marinating it in Trader Joe’s soy-vey sauce, which is very good on salmon and I think would be good with tofu also, and then baking it for longer.

All of these cooked things were supplemented with salad (mixed baby lettuce from TJ’s), cottage cheese, baby carrots, and string cheese, plus bagels and cereal for breakfast. And judicious pieces of dark chocolate.

All that said, I made it through Monday and Tuesday without any outside food. Yesterday (Wednesday) my co-workers asked if I wanted to get dinner and I caved and went out with them, but then decided none of the food at the high-priced deli they went to was worth it, and bought a $2 slice of pizza (supplemented with some roasted veggies when I got home). Today I ate homemade lunch, but bought Afghani roasted pumpkin for dinner – delicious, and totally worth it. Especially since a benefactor (my dear aunt) informed me today that she was donating to the Felicity-for-Obama fund, so that I can eat once a couple times a week. Hurrah!

So not a bad turnout overall. For next week, I need to:

1) Make more different dishes so I don’t get sick of them.

2) Make more food than I think I need, since what I eyeballed as four servings turned out to be three for both main dishes.

Recipe suggestions very much appreciated! I have a lot of leftover eggplant, so I will probably make an eggplant dish with mint sauce that I have made before and love… but that is really best as a piece of a meal rather than a whole meal, so I’ll probably need two or three other dishes to go along with it.

my brilliant plan

My plan for survival/financial solvency while I’m volunteering is not to eat out. Ever. I realize my plan is ambitious, and doomed to failure, but I am going to try my damndest. There is a math metaphor hovering just outside of my consciousness; something to do with limits and lines constantly approaching but never reaching their goal. (I plead eight years since I last took a math class.)

Maybe this plan does not sound very difficult, but let me outline some of the challenges:

I usually work until 9:30 or 10 (and it will probably get later as we get closer to the election), and therefore need to eat both lunch and dinner at work. Also my schedule leaves me very little time during the week to cook. I can (and did last week) come home and cook the next day’s meal at 10 pm, but it is not ideal. Failure to cook leaves me eating Trader Joe’s frozen food, which at $2.50 a rice bowl is cheap but generally unsatisfying.

On top of this, I am not a big sandwich maker or eater. In fact, I generally find uncooked and/or cold food a notch below cooked food. This is not to say that I don’t love bread and cheese, I really do. But I can’t have bread and cheese as a meal. Neither can I live on salad. I need what I consider “real” food (a cooked meal with protein and carbs, and ideally veggies), and I need it at least twice a day. This is not me being picky. If I don’t eat enough “real” food at regular intervals, I feel nauseous, light-headed, and all manner of other un-fun things which make it hard to work, or even function. Snacking helps but not does obviate the need for a cooked meal.

Luckily, as discussed in my last post, I am a volunteer. As a volunteer, I have some freedom in my schedule. So today – day off! – I cooked.

I’ve always meant to spend Sundays cooking up food for the whole week, but never got around to it in college or while working. The truth is, even when I’ve been busy, I usually can find time to throw together pasta and stir fry in the middle of the week, so the need has never been enough to drive me to actually spend all day cooking for myself (I have spent all day cooking for other people, but usually that food does not survive the evening).

I made (in chronological order starting at about 5:30):

-penne pasta
-shrimp with garlic and spinach (which I ate for dinner)
-a large pan of roasted vegetables
-zucchini, to add to the remainder of the pasta (along with a little goat cheese not included in the recipe)
-baked soy-garlic tofu (from Moosewood)
-chicken, to add to the pasta-and-zucchini

I’d say I made two full meals for four or so people (the zucchini pasta – which came out creamy and delicious – and the roasted veggies and tofu, maybe with a side salad). Since I ate only a tiny portion of what I made, I now have an insane amount of food. And it only took me 3 hours! Combined with salad and bread and snacks, I probably have enough food to last me the week… if I don’t get sick of it. Next week I may try three meals for three people instead, just to keep things lively.