22 April 2009

Am I Really Okay with This?

Doing some editing on a dissertation, and the references have no style. Fashion police, no; they adhere to no one school of style. And this really bothers me. BOTHERS ME.

But they are mostly consistent to themselves. And the dissertation committee members apparently do not care.

However ... I care. Poor little unstyled citations, I care about you. Because I know three different schools of style and can recite them. Honestly. I recognize them on sight. I am an editor. This is what I know.

I am leaving them alone. I am. I am. I am. Breathe.

And should I capitalize "with"? I am undecided on that one.

14 April 2009

Squash, Rotten, with Deceit and Broccoli Pesto, Updated with Photos of Railings

I slow-cooked a spaghetti squash today. Set it out last night and everything. Made this broccoli pesto with generous amounts of parsley. Tossed and ... tasted and ... it was totally rotten! I should have surmised that from the weird root looking things inside it with the seeds when I cut it open.

Definitely the first time I have cooked something ROTTEN without knowing it was rotten. Oh squash and slow-cookers, so useful, and with a hidden currency of deceit. Deceit!

The broccoli pesto was tasty with some whole-wheat fusilli, though.

Should I walk to the library now? Yes I should.

Update: Kaffe Fasset's book, Glorious Color, makes me wish I was twenty years older, living in Fasset's pattern photos; Gary Paulsen published a book for adults in 1992 that I picked up, fell in love with, and thought sadly, No one publishes books like this anymore, on great paper with full-color paintings, with no real plot; David Sedaris is really funny but I keep hoping for a happy ending anyway; and these photos of railings make me feel indelibly peaceful. LA, maybe? I don't know.

13 April 2009

Oh Hai Guyz

Aren't you always thinking in lolcat?

Let's see ... hosted a Passover seder, chopped things with few painful repercussions. Went to a large Easter brunch full of excellent largess. Am making the second batch of chocolate matzo crack right now. Dyed yarn; feel like I'm getting somewhere on my dye trials. Good lord I am the same girl I was in college, mostly; I think in the same trials, I record results the same way (haphazardly), I try to be kind of scientific about all of it, and I freak the hell out when I encounter toxic materials.

Oh, toxic you say?

The dyes I use are only toxic in their dry state. Once water is in there, well, I wear gloves and wouldn't drink it, but it won't kill me anymore. But, let's say, a container full of dyestock leaks and leaks through the plastic bag and leaks into the large bin it's inside of and ... all the liquid evaporates. And there's dry dye everywhere. Oddly enough I moved so fast I forgot to wear gloves during the whole ordeal. And given the lack of migraine or sinus freakout, I am assuming I have not absorbed too much toxicity.

In college, I used cyanide to make cloth blue in the sun. I crushed glass and didn't wear a mask or gloves (bad idea) with a hammer inside a piece of canvas. I mixed clay in a room with an incorrectly-installed vent fan, which pulled nothing out of the room. Yay clay so light it floats on air, living in your sinuses for a few years. In grad school, in my ceramics class, I angrily and kind of crazily left the clay lab in a blaze at the end of the semester ... and forgot my beautiful particulate filter mask.

Well, I'm sure I'll get a new one soon enough. Because I have sinus trouble and I don't want to die. From my dye ...

I think I just forgot my laundry. Uh, bye again!

01 April 2009

Darning Socks, Insulting Peasants, and Food

Perhaps I am overly excited about this, but I just watched a video on darning socks, and let me tell you, I have more socks that need darning than I want you to know about. I am a bit of a sock lover, a sock-wearing fool, and I decided in college that it would benefit me far into the future to amass as many high-quality wool socks (Smartwool, really) as possible. And to love them forever. And hopefully own enough to only do laundry every two weeks ...

Anyway, few of my to-be-darned patches will match, you know, at all, but the holes will be filled!

Brief interlude: younger cat Eto just brought home another maimed bird, two in two weeks; I am closing the blinds again, as I cannot take such violence. I think some of my neighbors are witnessing this as well ... I hope it's the dog-owners whose dog maybe, hopefully, scared Eto away and hopefully didn't see him and his bird-victim, or maybe one of the many immigrant neighbors, who I imagine are not as freaked out by this, since they cook a lot of cabbage and peanut oil and onions, which I find to be earthy, like peasant/farm earthy. I am revealing all my assumptions, aren't I? In other words, maybe peasants don't mind animals eating animals? I am two or three generations removed from farming, so I should be more realistic about this. And the main neighbor in question is a graduate student in physics with a gigantic Apple TV or iMac thing.

Since I am not making a lot of things right now except food, and am insulting my neighbors, all farmers, and all peasants, I will change topics. I plan to write more about those foods I am making in days to come.

SUCH AS:

--Mole skillet pie with greens, teamed with sauteed corn, red onions and kale
--Chinese noodles with stir-fry vegetables and orange pan-glazed tempeh
--No-knead bread with steel-cut oats, served with roasted carrot "fries," garlic tahini sauce, sun-dried tomato hummus, and parmesan-yogurt sauce (which is exactly what it sounds like)
--Lentil soup with spinach, teamed with poppy-seed polenta (accidentally made with 3 tablespoons, not teaspoons, of poppy seeds, postponing all possible drug tests by necessity)
--Almond-quinoa muffins with dried cranberries (they are a bit weird, almost too health-food for even me)
--And lots of nori rolls, when the mood strikes, rolled by Noah the master roller

We are eating more home-cooked food because my arms are a little better and I am chopping a little more. Yum, food. Yay, lower food bills. Yay, food that is more real-ingredient-centered.

It's NaPoWriMo and I am not participating. Go elsewhere.