Stuff I Done Today

2009-07-28T21:08:00.000-07:00

today i wrote the most beautiful song i'd ever heard,
and then i promptly forgot it

Baby Birds.

2009-06-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

Today I found some baby birds outside the laundry room.

When I took their picture with the flash on accident, all five of them opened their mouths like in that picture! Their little eyes don't even open yet!

Then they went back to napping.

They are little Robins! I know because their Mama Bird just tried to peck my eyes out.

2009-06-24T21:45:00.000-07:00

Basic flower. I'm going to work on making them more symmetrical.

2009-06-16T09:16:00.001-07:00

OH goodness. This will be an addendum to the last post. I also went to my cousin's wedding in Michigan. On the ride there, my train passed a couple having sex in the woods. They tried to hide behind a pine tree, but let me tell you, pine trees are not the least revealing of hiding places.

Ben Said So.

2009-06-16T09:05:00.001-07:00

My mom came to visit! It was freezing almost the whole time she was here, but we got to go to the museum of Science and Interesting which is awesome.

I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo! In case you don't know, that's a free zoo that's AWESOME. This zebra was given to them because he happens to have epileptic seizures. I wonder, when he's seizing, does he look gray?

I made this a few weeks ago but didn't get around to uploading it. Sad puppy in a double latte.

2009-05-26T15:42:00.000-07:00

this is what I'm making for dinner tonight. I stole the idea from an article in Self a while ago.

Lentil Tacos::::

Take some onions (like, 3/4 of an onion, or a whole onion if that's your jive), some garlic (as much as is nummy), half a green pepper (or more), and sautee them in some olive oil until they get soft. Then put in a packet of taco seasoning. Then add a cup of lentils, then 2 and a half cups of vegetable stock. Then cook it until all the stock gets absorbed and the lentils are soft. Then kind of mash it up. Then put it in tacos. I made some quinoa tonight too, just to add more protein, but it's real nummy.

Lady Parts Post

2009-05-21T15:12:00.000-07:00

This is weird, but I got a great pap smear today. Usually I really, really hate them and feel like I'm going to throw up when they're doing the scraping, but this one was really great. Last year I cried because I went and got one and it was HORRIBLE, and I got home and was like, well thank god I won't have to do that for another year, and then they didn't get enough cells and I had to go back the next week and it was horrible all over again. But this time, it was great. Very quick. Very easy. Only slightly painful. I didn't want to puke at all. I think I'm going to become a gynecologist so I can give such great pap smears.

I made a tres leches cake for Eddie's birthday yesterday. I should probably state for the people who read this who aren't as familiar with my food hangups, that I. Hate. Eggs. And any food that tastes or feels like eggs, I also hate. But I really like baking. I decided to bake the fancy pants cake this time, which I will put the recipe for. The recipe called for six eggs, separated. I bought a whole carton of eggs from whole foods; twelve large, beautiful brown ovules. To do the first one, I remembered how the dad of my best friend growing up used to cut open eggs with a knife to separate them. I tried to do that, and wound up covered in egg, on account of I have no idea how the hell he did that. One egg down. So I cracked five more eggs, separated them beautifully and carefully, and got lazy on the sixth egg. I cracked it over the bowl of whites and the inside was completely. rotten. and bloody. Chicken lood. and rotten eggs. all throughout my nice egg whites. Thankfully, the yolks remained intact. So I had to crack and separate six more egg whites, which, if you do the math, winds up being the whole entire carton. Hateful little devil orbs! My house still reaks like rotten egg.

The cake turned out really great though!

Tres Leches Cake:::

Take 6 egg whites, minus rotten eggs. Beat them on low until they thicken up and form what Emeril calls "Soft Peaks." This took me about 5 whole minutes.

When they are thick and white and fluffy, slowly add in two cups of white sugar while you continue to beat the whites. Then add in the yolks one by one and beat continuously.

Mix together two cups of flour and 2 teaspoons of baking powder. Then add these to the egg/sugar mixture slowly, along with a half cup of milk. Then add 1 tablespoon of vanilla. Pour into a greased pan (I floured it too) and bake at 350 for 25 minutes or until the cake is done.

When the cake is done, let it cool. When it is completely cool, poke little holes all over the top with a fork. Mix together a can of evaporated milk, a can of sweetened condensed milk, and a cup of heavy cream. Then pour the three milks over the top of the cake. It helps to do it slowly so the cake absorbs the liquid. Also, kind of tilting the pan back and forth helps it get into the bottom.

I usually top these cakes with whipped cream and shredded coconut, though a lot of recipes I found made buttercream frostings with fresh fruits. I think thats a big much. This cake is crazzzzy good though.

Becca Dang sent me a dreamcatcher in the mail today. It's my new favorite thing.

I went to the petstore across the street after work today, and were you aware that you can get a prairie dog as a pet? They are hella cute. Big bellies. Big eyes. Big noses. ADOORBELL. I just want to play with cute animals all day.

It's finally summer in Chicago. Winter ended like, last week. I don't really know how to respond to that.

2009-05-19T22:04:00.000-07:00

-booked tickets to my cousin's wedding in june. amtrak, what what?
-scanned through four of the magazines i found yesterday. i cut out some pictures that were appropriately sized for making postcards out of, then made postcards. cut out a billion more that were too big which I will probably use to decorate my apartment. one of my favorite spreads was about a woman who traveled across the desert in australia with her pack of camels. another was about yugoslavia, with lots of pictures of little old men stomping grapes with their feet to make wine. another was of mexican folk art. it was kind of interesting reading an article about mexican culture written before the US had, you know, completely destroyed the economy and effectively plunged most of the nation into severe poverty. another highlight of the magazines were the ads for coal, which promised that "in the years to come, the US dependency on coal will only increase." and that to be smart, forward thinking individuals, we need to invest in coal powered electricity. mahahahahaha.
-mailed postcards. waiting on addresses.
-work work work work work. must feed the hungry vegetarians.

2009-05-18T21:06:00.000-07:00

today i started summer school. my lab partner is a hoot, in the totally brotastic way. like for instance, he says things like "Who has two thumbs and loves bryophytes? This guy," or "Lets go get on that study train."

the bike ride to school is 3.1 miles. for the first part of this, i can ride along the lake, on a nice little path, and it is very very beautiful. then things go bad. the lovely little path dead ends, and you have to ride on the most evil street everrrrr! it's full of potholes, and people drive about a billion miles an hour. bleeeeck! i was super duper proud of myself though, on account of that i rode there in half an hour, and didn't even have to take my inhalor once, so suck it asthma!

when i got home, i rapidly did laundry. i'm developing a light friendship with the lady upstairs, on account of we are on the same laundry schedule and are often vying for the dryer space. its kind of a love-hate thing. when i went down to do the laundry in the creepy basement, i discovered the holy grail of all dumpster finds! about a billion old national geographic magazines from the mid 1970s. most of them don't even look like they've been opened ever! but someone dumped their old floor sweepings in the middle of the stack, so i only took 9 of them. if you want custom made postcards, let me know.

anna said i should put my macaroni and cheese recipe in here, so okay! i don't really measure things, so bear with me.

take a stick of butter. cut it in half. put one half in a pan with high sides. put the other one back in the fridge. melt the butter. cut up some cloves of garlic, like 4 or 5, and put those in at some point during the next few steps. it's flex.

then take some flour, or cornstarch if thats what you have, maybe a small handful. i have small hands, so thats probably like, 2 or 3 tablespoons. stir it until it gets real pasty, then put in some fatty milk. i prefer heavy cream, but half and half works just as well. i usually put like, one pint, and probably one more pint of whatever kind of milk you have.

before this happens, you should grate about three blocks of cheese. you could probably do less but i've never made this for less than a million people, so i'd say 3-4 usually works best. they can be any kind of cheese. i like to add in some pepper jack, and sharp cheddar, and i've done leftover feta and parmesan, these are all good options. the best one i ever made was with the tillamook smoked pepper cheese, that was freaking gastronomical.

when the milk gets hot and thick, but not boiling, maybe just bubbling slightly at the sides, start adding the cheese slowly. stir it forever and ever until it melts. then add more. this process takes quite a while. i do it handful by handful.

i also like to cut up some green onions and put those in. that's reaaaaaal nummy. putting them in towards the end seems best because they don't get quite so mushy that way and make it have a nice texture. also, black pepper helps, and a teeny bit of salt, and maybe some cayenne.

stir stir stir stir until all the cheese is melted. then pour it over your favorite noodles. you should probably make the whole box.

this is like my favorite food ever.

Sometimes my job is not a complete waste of time.

2009-05-03T19:34:00.001-07:00

(I think you have to click on the picture to see the whole thing.)

I made this teddy bear in a latte the yesterday. I followed it with a bitchin' tiger. ZOOLOGY!

2009-04-24T14:17:00.001-07:00

I decided today that the best way to write a term paper is to expand on an analogy from some cited text. Not only does it give you lots and lots and lots of room for bullshit, it allows you to say some really incredible things. For instance, I wrote about over-prescription of antibiotics for my philosophy term paper, and expanded a metaphor about how prescribing them for everything is like being a rancher and letting your cows overgraze a pasture. I wrote that the difference is, when the pasture is overgrazed, the farmer can take his cows to the slaughterhouse and get paid lots of money for nice, fat, happy cows. But when you overprescribe antibiotics to kids, you can't take them to the slaughterhouse afterwards. Now I'm writing a paper for my Jesus class. I just called him a naked sheep.

We'll see how grades turn out.

2009-04-18T22:33:00.000-07:00

I am really just dreadful at posting about the stuff I done today. My intention was that if I knew I would be able to go home and write a blog about it, I'd do awesome stuff every single day. Interwebsibitionism fail.
Here is what has happened since I last posted:
Last Tuesday I walked into my bedroom to go to sleep, and there were tiny poops all. over. my bed. So I cleaned them up, and went to bed at a very appropriate hour, like, 8 pm or something. By morning, the bed was covered in bloody kitten diarrhea. Mostly blood. And Mucous. Some diarrhea. I obviously freaked out, and made an appointment to take Miss Rubella to the vet. This was a little tricky, on account of the fact that we had to take the train with smelly, bloody, poopy little Ruby. The doctor gave her some antibiotics, but by the time I got home with her, Smallpox was puking all over the house. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.
The next day, I left the plague house for Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh has been given an unfairly bad name previously by yours truly. Pittsburgh is actually pretty awesome. My dad took me to get a massage by this lady's feet, and I ate lots of awesome yummy food, and I got to go to the cheese counter at Penn Mac, and I'm pretty sure that heaven is the cheese counter at Penn Mac. Here's what that's like: You get to walk up to the counter, and you say, "Hrmmm. I'd like a cheese that goes well with ______." And then the cheese savants behind the counter think for a moment, and then use these ridiculous machetes to cut you off a sliver of whichever cheese would be perfect. There is a also woman who works there called Dearheart. She is called this because she calls everyone Dearheart. She calls you Dearheart, and then gives you cheese that goes well with pink champagne, or sesame crackers, or whatever. I also got a chance to explore the South Side. I was quite pleased by the bar called Dee's Diner, that is mostly very dim and smokey, but has very cheap drinks and an electronic juke box that has every song ever by Slayer in it, and lots of other songs too. Also, I went to a ridiculous bar that had a sink system where the water poured through an empty fishtank into a basin shaped like a seashell imbedded in a coral reef, and that, my friends, is awesome, and reason enough to think Pittsburgh is alright.
I flew home on Easter, and by that point most of the poopies were gone, although Ruby shat ON THE WALL, just for fun, this one time.
Then, I went to work. And Worked and Worked and Worked. I enjoy my job about 70 percent of the time. The rest of the time I spend wishing that people would not be horrible, terrible people, who treat their servers worse than they treat their dogs, and missing my old job where I got to play with cadavers and teach people helpful anatomy hints all day, and watch cool videos, and dissect things. Sigh. I am not working up to my potential.
I also went to school. School is interesting. Currently, at my school, they are tearing up all the concrete and putting in grass, which is funny to think about in terms of somebody, once upon a time, having gone to the trouble of putting down all that concrete.
Last night, Shauna threw me a surprise birthday party, which was awesome! There were grilled cheese sandwiches, with alllll the fixins! It was very fun, even though I was dead tired.
Today: slept 'til noon. Woke up. Ate toast. Fell asleep at 1:30. Went to work. Worked, Worked, Worked. Rode my bike home in a warm little drizzle. Ate steamed kale, and black beans, and brown rice, and squashes, and salad, and talked to friends from home. Miss them real, real hard.

I'm going to start a project, as soon as the weather stabilizes a bit. It's going to be good, if I actually get off my butt and do it.

Now, Kittens, and Bed.

2009-04-07T22:04:00.000-07:00

big cat small cat!

Stuff I Done This Weekend

2009-04-05T19:45:00.000-07:00

-Green Mill Jazz. The bouncer looked like a circus man, with a curly waxed moustachio and some cowboy boots and a bald, bald head, and a fringey jacket made of leather, like a black and white t.v. indian. He liked people to be very, very quiet, and listen to ridiculous drum soloes, and be very, very quiet. He did not like Asians. Not one bit.
-Gotta table. Then gotta little kitty! A girl kitty! Her name is Little Rubella Tuesday! She's great. She slam dunks her mouses. She and Smallpox didn't much like each other but now they're really high on catnip together and I think after tonight they'll love each other. The cat house, the adoption agency I guess, it was insane!!!!!!!! Lots of middle aged lesbians run it, and there are cats EVERYWHERE. My kitty came from Florida with two of her brothers, and they looked like Rorschach Ink Blots all together. When they moved around each other all snuggly like, you could see balloons, or a clown, or some penises or something. There were also these two kitties who I really liked, they came from a house that was full of NINETY FIVE CATS and they were a brother and sister, but they were a little inbred, so the boy cat who I loved so much had a funny underbite and his fangs were stuck out all the time on his bottom jaw, and his eyes were kind of funny, and his face was all squishy like a pug dog, and he was SO DAMN CUTE I JUST WANTED TO EAT HIM UP but he couldn't be adopted without his sister, and three cats is just way too many cats. Anyway, so we got a little girl Rorschach cat instead and she's a sweetie even though she nervous farts all over and it smells REALLY REALLY BAD. She's also six months old only she's like, the size of Smallpox's thigh.
-Then after the kitty house experience I decided I want to rescue kitties someday, and build them a really big house where they can all live and play with mice and snuggle in piles, and then I got home and had a massive allergy attack after rubbing the sleeve of my shirt on my face when it had the hair of like, fifty kitties all over it, and decided maybe I'd think about that plan a little more, or maybe be in a warm climate where they could be outside all the time instead.
-After the kitty house, I went to a potluck!!
-Then I woke up early this morning and Allison Clark, who is the best thing ever, was in this really unfortunate situation where her wallet got stolen on a trip home to Kentucky, and Adam and I were carsitting her car, and it was horrible!! But it enabled me to drive to the aeropuerto to pick up my biggest sister for a conference and we ate so much good food and played with still cranky kittens and then went downtown to her hotel and shopped and ate more good food AND THEN IT SNOWED ALL. OVER. And it still is. I'd like to remind you that today's date is Sunday, April the Fifth, 2009. It is April. And it is SNOWING. And that, friend, is just silly.

04/01/09

2009-04-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

-make blog.