I'm too forgetful and keep losing my post-its :(

Disregard most of this post, I just feel like listing all of the things I need to do to give me some focus.  It's the home stretch of the semester and always the time that I get fed up and fall short.  I do NOT want to do that this time!  Endurance!

Unfortunately, my random autoimmune problems have now decided to make themselves known once more.  Great.  At least my food is now digesting! (knock on wood!)

This semester:

Japanese:

1. Homework x 6
2. Quiz x 5
3. Exam x 2

Immunogenetics:

1. Exam 3
2. Final Exam
3. Read  around 1,000 pages of "supplemental" material

Calculus

1. Final Exam
2. Homework x 10
3. Learn trig substitution

Chemistry:

1. Homework x 3
2. Exam 4
3. Final Exam
4. Attempt to learn everything I was supposed to have learned in this whole semester in a hail mary attempt at making a decent grade.

This is not an exhaustive list, but really, it's not necessary to put "read pages blah blah blah" as it's own separate thing.   This is a lot of work.  I'm pretending that I'll get a lot of work done over Thanksgiving, but that's such bullshit.  I'll be lucky if I'm able to study for the quiz that I have the Monday after the holiday, never mind all this other junk!

The snooty gay manager at Panera burned the cookies today and for some reason I feel really vindicated by that.  Like "hah! So what if you judge my fashion sense and physical appearance!  I can at least not burn cookies!".  I spend way too much time here.

Why am I not knitting something?!

I am a domestic ninja.

I at least FEEL like a domestic ninja. I'm making roast chicken, spiced apples, and honey ginger glazed carrots for Brooks and me and the total cost of cooking it myself versus purchasing this meal at a restaurant is staggeringly low in comparison.  And I buy good ingredients!  If I wanted to I could save even more money by getting groceries at Wal-Mart or some other non-Whole Foods store.

Seriously. This whole meal is around 4 dollars a plate.  If I'd wanted to order this from a restaurant it would cost me at LEAST 12 dollars.  The only difference?  Personal effort.  I must admit, after doing 14 hours of schoolwork (or more) on any given day, the LAST thing I want to do is cook.  Often I just eat bananas or celery or something else that can be eaten raw. However, cooking can save me so much money and lead to me eating balanced meals.

I can make homemade CULTURED butter for 75 cents per 1/2 cup!  Retail price for that is 3 dollars per half cup or more.  Again: I have to actually take the 20 minutes to MAKE butter.

I'm knitting a variety of scarves, hats, and plushies for my friends and family for Christmas.  Every year I make and old-fashioned clove-apple air freshener and it lasts for YEARS.  I really enjoy domestic activities and I'm pretty good at them.

I just wish that being domestically inclined were more socially acceptable.  Or rather, I wish that preferring to do household work than money-making work were more socially acceptable.  Not that I have a great love of cleaning house, but I think it's actually IMPORTANT to do those things to take care of my family.  When I'm married and have kids I think it's just as important to make sure my family is well-fed and that the household is running smoothly as to have a paycheck coming in.  If it's financially feasible I would PREFER to stay home and make sure that shit gets done!  Maybe not forever, but at least while I have small children.  I don't want the whole 'Mom gets home from work, is too exhausted to cook, it's McDonald's for dinner again' scenario to strike my family.

What do I consume?

Brooks got Netflix a couple of weeks ago.  As a result, I have watched more documentaries in the past two weeks than in the entirety of the rest of my life.  I like being informed, but generally if I'm watching television it's because I want to turn my brain OFF for a while, not think MORE.

I've been thinking about my consumption.  Of food, of resources, of time.  My body is not very resilient, so what I put into my body and the quality of what I put into my body is very noticeable.  I need to keep track of what I eat and what nutrients are contained therein.  Since I've began buying more organic and locally grown foods, my mood, health, and general wellbeing have all improved (recent autoimmune problems excepted).  I used to eat cereal every morning for breakfast.  It's cheap and quick.  I used to eat lots of Special K cereal, thinking I was being heart healthy and losing weight! (That is what they advertise on the box).  I was very disturbed to find out that Special K spikes your blood sugar faster than eating sugar straight out of the container.  I used to crash every morning a couple of hours after breakfast, and I just blamed it on the caffeine wearing off.  I now fix my own (generally carb free) breakfast every morning and I don't experience that crash.  This whole time I was feeling like hell and it was from my bowl of breakfast cereal!

Excessive carbohydrate intake is very correlated to diabetes.  I have diabetes on BOTH sides of my family, so I have to get this under control.  I still eat carbs, they're delicious!  But I have gone from eating carbs with every meal to only eating one a day on average.  Some days I eat no carbohydrates at all.  Instead, I eat more meat, fruit, and veggies.  I feel SO much better on this diet, and my random GI problems are vastly improved.

I bought a game called Fate of the World.  It's a bit of a lame name, but hey, they're English.  The premise is that you have been made president of a worldwide organization put in place to bring global warming under control.  This is the hardest game I have ever played.  The company that made it worked in conjunction with Oxford University using real data and models of everything. The amount of research and data that went into this game is staggering, and as a player you have to interpret that data to bring emissions down while keeping the people happy AND preventing economic crisis.  It's not easy.  "Change transportation from fuel-powered to electric"?  Surely that will bring emissions down!  Well, did you remember to check to see how the electricity in that country is generated?  If it comes primarily from coal-burning power plants, emissions just went up, and you're totally boned.

What this translates to is that the world is totally boned. The amount of waste and uninhibited consumption is disgusting.  I've been playing this game for months and have YET to be able to bring global warming down to +3 degrees of warming by 2200.  This game has really gotten to me.  Changes MUST be made.  I spend a lot of my down time trying to think of new solutions to our problems.  I'm limited on the things I can change now, being a poor college student living in an apartment, but once I have more freedom I want to change my lifestyle to be less of a consumer.  I want to have a compost bin, drive less (or never), buy local produce, use less goddamn plastic.  What I would really like is to have a garden and some assorted farm animals.  What I really need is to be able to inspire other people to change, too.

We're wasting our lives, filling them with twinkies and cellophane and easy mac and thinking that we're not doing anything wrong.

More Cooking Adventures

This weekend I really felt like cooking.  A lot.  I made: honey wheat bread, apple butter, pizza margehrita, and ginger honey glazed carrots.  The apple butter in particular was super good and really easy to make, it just takes a loooong time.  It'd be even easier if I had a crock-pot, I've been meaning to pick one of those up at the store for weeks!

Here is the recipe:

5.5 lbs apples (10-14 apples)
3 cups sugar
5 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp salt

1. Peel and dice apples very finely, and place into a really big pot/crockpot along with all other ingredients.
2. Cook on medium (stovetop) or high (crockpot) for one hour, then reduce heat to low and cook for 12 hours covered, stirring occasionally
3. Remove lid and cook on medium low for one hour, stirring with a whisk (if you don't have no, no big deal)
4. Puree in blender until smooth

Makes approx 6 cups

This is a very forgiving recipe, you can add whatever spices you like (for instance, I added a dash of nutmeg, just for kicks).  You can also use whatever kind of sugar you want, though I find that dark brown sugar provides the best flavour.  I would not recommend using honey or any other kind of liquid sweetener, it might make the apple butter too syrupy, plus 3 cups of honey is waaaay more expensive than three cups of sugar.  Other apple-esque fruits can be used in this recipe, but really, apple butter is superior ;)

Dinner tonight

I just made the best macaroni and cheese I've ever had in my liiiiife.  Seriously.  It's so good.  AND it doesn't take that much longer than the Kraft blue box kind, just about ten-fifteen minutes longer (and the deliciousness is waaaay waaaaaaay worth the extra few minutes).

The recipe is as follows:

1/2 lb macaroni
dash of salt
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 lb grated cheddar (or whatever) cheese
1 12 oz can evaporated milk
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp mustard (optional)

--Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

1) Cook the macaroni until just under done
2) Drain macaroni and toss with melted butter in a 9x13 baking dish
3) Add the eggs, 3/4 of the cheese, and 2/3 of the evaporated milk, mix well and bake 20 minutes, adding the remaining cheese and milk every FIVE MINUTES.

Makes 6 servings.


Soooo good!  I was originally going to add bacon bits, but then I got lazy.  The original recipe called for sharp cheddar, so that is what I used, but I think next time I will use medium or mild cheddar, it's got a bit more kick to it than I'd like.  What makes this recipe so delicious is the combo of evaporated milk and eggs.  Evaporated milk can handle higher temperatures than regular milk or cream, so don't give into the temptation to use regular milk if that's all you have on hand.  Don't doooo iiiittt!  You'll be sad at having wasted an entire pound of cheese.

Later this week I'm making tiramisu, not a dessert that I have liked thus far, but I've only had it from chain restaurants and such.  I'm hoping that when I make it for myself, it will be delicious.  If I STILL don't like it, I have plenty of people to foist it off on :)

I'm also going to make margehrita pizza (which always reminds me of Elizabeth), honey wheat bread, and homemade apple butter.  I might blog about that, I might not.  Apple butter takes like....14 hours to make, so I'll get up super early on Saturday to put it on.  Maybe I can have some on my honey wheat toast for breakfast on SUNDAY!  I'm excited :)

All I really want is to be able to buy nice groceries, cook delicious food, and share it with the people I love.  <3

...Do I have something on my face?

People have been staring at me all day, I'm beginning to worry if I look funny :-\  Yeah, I'm kinda dressed up, but it's Valentine's Day!

It's a really great feeling, turning in homework and knowing that your homework kicked everyone else's ass.  I was watching you, fellow members of my pseudoscience class, and your homework was only about three pages long.  Mine was NINE.  That professor has a list posted outside the classroom for everyone to read of students that have a poor attendance record.  I'm glad I've only missed one lecture!  Next to this sheet is a (as of yet blank) sheet labeled 'sucky grades on major assignment one' (the one I turned in today).

It's beginning to be that time in the semester when I feel like my work is reaching the 'unpleasant' level.  Most days, I'm on campus around twelve hours, and I cannot bring all of the work that I could be doing with me, the books are too heavy.  Damnation.  However, when taking 21 hours, by this time in the semester, I've reached the "kill me now and put me out of my misery" level.  Unpleasant is quite manageable.

Remind me to make an appointment to meet with an academic advisor to work out exactly what classes I need to take.  I'm taking Japanese in the fall, most definitely.  I may need to enlist the aid of Brooks' friend Audrey in my studying.  I think that there may be a higher percentage of nerdy people taking Japanese, and that thought is vaguely comforting.  I really would like to live in Japan for a while, but would not enjoy living there nearly as much if I couldn't communicate effectively or read any of the signs.

Genetics is a very intellectually engaging course, I'm loving that.  However, there is an almost obscene amount of studying that goes with it.  In addition to a weekly discussion group, there are now weekly study groups, in addition to my own personal studying...and the 200ish pages of assigned reading every week.  200 pages isn't a lot by itself, but it takes forEVER when the material makes you look like this: @_@

I made an A on my first exam at UT, yippee!  Though ,it was considerably more difficult than the exam from the previous semester.  The snow day threw off the lecture schedule, and at first the professor said that we were still going to be responsible for the missed material, but right before the exam he changed his mind and substituted questions about material covered in class but that was MUCH more in depth than anticipated, so I only got a 91.  There was talk of a curve, but I don't think it will happen.  Boo.  I need at least a 94 to get an A in that class, and homework/attendance only have a combined total of 10 percent of my grade, so I must redouble my efforts!  Working to get a 94 or above is exponentially harder than working to get a 92, and getting a 92 is hard enough, sometimes.

I really like having Dr. McCord as my chemistry professor.  I honestly don't know why most people complain about how difficult he is, he makes perfect sense to me, and uses examples that make sense.  There's no talk of giant hamburgers on skateboards.  I hate that crap.

My pseudoscience class is interesting, it's the only class in which I don't check the time a zillion times.  Dr. Coker is interesting, even though he haaaaates psychology (and education majors, don't even get him started on those!).  He does demonstrations of various magic tricks and such, and I have no idea how he does them, but he's been teaching the class over 30 years.  I think he's a wizard.  He looks like a wizard, with his long, white hair in a ponytail.

I fixed my hair to go out for Valentine's with Brooks.  It takes sooo freaking long to fix my hair because it's sooooo long.  Also I hate hairspray.  It's itchy and smells funny.

Days like today make me really really miss walking to the square in Denton to get some Beth Marie's.  I want to do that SO BAD.  Especially on Valentine's Day!  Walking to the square with it all pretty outside to get delicious ice cream cones... Awww. :(

I need encouragement to keep working hard toward my goal!  Being sick all last week has me a bit behind where I want to be, and super worn out, to boot.

Misadventures in Apartment-ing

In mid-January, I selected an apartment complex, and got the green light from Mom to apply to live there, so I did.  A couple of days later my father said that they weren't going to pay for me to live there.  My mother talked to somebody from the Villas (the apartment complex) and told them that she wasn't going to sign the guarantor forms and to discount my application.

I'm upset that I can't live where I'd wanted, and am discouraged of finding an apartment within walking distance of UT for a cheaper price.  I finally find one that's marginally (50 bucks) cheaper, I apply to live there, sign my lease, everything is peachy.

Yesterday evening, my mother got a phone call from a representative from the Villas saying that I was liable for a 1-year lease with them.  They didn't even call me!  They claim to have called me yesterday and sent me messages, but I didn't get any messages yesterday.  I called and talked to somebody (presumably the manager?) today, and he said that I was screwed, and spouted a bunch of crap at me.  I pointed out that I did not go to the office and sign a lease, and my parents DECLINED to sign their forms (and that they knew that), so my application should have been rendered invalid and that there was no way that I could have any sort of binding contract with them.

I think that just made him angry. :-\  He then just kept insisting that I owed him 15000 dollars.  Awesome.

Ironic: the Villas is where I really wanted to live in the first place.  The only reason my parents declined allowing me to move there is because my mother has no analytical ability and misinterpreted the data that I sent her.  She told my dad that it cost 1700/month, when it is really 1250/month, not very much more than Jefferson26 at all.  ::headdesk::