Sometimes I feel like I should be in culinary school instead of a liberal arts college.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I like what I do. But I have this really strong emotional connection with food; not only am I an emotional eater (which I should probably stop), but I'm also an emotional chef, to some extent. Had a bad day and there's nothing good in the house to eat? Go to the store, grab ingredients and make a giant pot of borscht! (I did this earlier this week; it says something about my love for borscht that I've eaten six or seven servings since then and haven't even gotten close to being tired of it.)
Of course, the parts of me that probably shouldn't be a chef are 1) the lazy part that doesn't like to do things like sift flour, and 2) the selfish part that sometimes doesn't want anyone else to share what I've made. I mean, I like cooking for parties and things, but if I intended to make something for myself, nobody else better touch it.
THIS HAS BEEN A POST.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Sometimes I really miss London.
Particularly on days when I feel like I'm in such a rut with my life and can't get anything useful done. I'm on Tumblr a lot, as well as DeviantArt, and people on both of those sites seem to love taking/posting marvelous London pictures.
Muncie, as much as it has going for it at times, is really a boring-ass town; in London, if I needed a break, I could get on the tube and within half an hour or less be somewhere really cool. Even if I didn't feel like spending money I could go to a museum, or I could go to one of the shopping districts and just take pictures, or sit in the park and read and watch the locals and tourists merge with their million languages. If I wanted a fantastic crepe or a jacket potato or a shawarma, I knew where to get one.
I miss Kir Royal truffles from Hotel Chocolat. I miss Classy Chick crepes and Ben's Cookies and frozen yogurt from Covent Garden. I miss mushroom soup from Pret. I miss half-price theatre tickets. I miss wandering around Selfridge's and Harrods and getting sticker shock. I miss getting lost in Camden Town and connecting with the colorful people there. (I also miss the lovely vegetarian restaurant nearby.) I miss Regents Park Zoo. I miss Borough Market. I miss day trips on Wednesdays with Lyndon. I miss watching the BBC on Tuesday nights. I miss watching "Come Dine With Me" and "How Clean Is Your House?" every hour of the day. I miss getting off the Tube and being able to get anywhere I wanted to go by walking. I miss grocery shopping at Sainsbury and Marks & Spencer. I miss clothes shopping at Primark and Top Shop. I miss walking over Westminster Bridge on an April morning.
I regret not going out to more bars and clubs. I regret not traveling more. I regret wasting so much of my London time on the Internet. I regret not making the most of every moment I had in that city. I regret the one foggy shot of the London Eye that I missed.
Maybe I wasn't there long enough to be a native Londoner or anything, but I sure as hell am no longer a tourist. I have my favorite spots; I can identify the Underground line from the inside of the car; I know not to talk on public transportation and how to keep from being robbed during rush hour. I have this pseudo-English accent that tends to slip into conversation whenever I'm ordering coffee at Starbucks and the one English barista is behind the counter.
I will return. I don't know when, but I will return.
Muncie, as much as it has going for it at times, is really a boring-ass town; in London, if I needed a break, I could get on the tube and within half an hour or less be somewhere really cool. Even if I didn't feel like spending money I could go to a museum, or I could go to one of the shopping districts and just take pictures, or sit in the park and read and watch the locals and tourists merge with their million languages. If I wanted a fantastic crepe or a jacket potato or a shawarma, I knew where to get one.
I miss Kir Royal truffles from Hotel Chocolat. I miss Classy Chick crepes and Ben's Cookies and frozen yogurt from Covent Garden. I miss mushroom soup from Pret. I miss half-price theatre tickets. I miss wandering around Selfridge's and Harrods and getting sticker shock. I miss getting lost in Camden Town and connecting with the colorful people there. (I also miss the lovely vegetarian restaurant nearby.) I miss Regents Park Zoo. I miss Borough Market. I miss day trips on Wednesdays with Lyndon. I miss watching the BBC on Tuesday nights. I miss watching "Come Dine With Me" and "How Clean Is Your House?" every hour of the day. I miss getting off the Tube and being able to get anywhere I wanted to go by walking. I miss grocery shopping at Sainsbury and Marks & Spencer. I miss clothes shopping at Primark and Top Shop. I miss walking over Westminster Bridge on an April morning.
I regret not going out to more bars and clubs. I regret not traveling more. I regret wasting so much of my London time on the Internet. I regret not making the most of every moment I had in that city. I regret the one foggy shot of the London Eye that I missed.
Maybe I wasn't there long enough to be a native Londoner or anything, but I sure as hell am no longer a tourist. I have my favorite spots; I can identify the Underground line from the inside of the car; I know not to talk on public transportation and how to keep from being robbed during rush hour. I have this pseudo-English accent that tends to slip into conversation whenever I'm ordering coffee at Starbucks and the one English barista is behind the counter.
I will return. I don't know when, but I will return.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
A therapeutic list of reasons my roommate annoys the fuck out of me.
Warning: This could get long.
T is on my bad side right now because she basically screwed me over on the party weekend (see previous entry) and when I finally confronted her about it she basically ignored the entire point I was trying to make and made some totally bullshit excuses instead. So I'm definitely predisposed at this point to look for things to be annoyed about. I think this is a human reaction.
1) She leaves her dishes in the sink for forever. On that same note, she's constantly making remarks about how "we" need to clean up something or other, but never does it or makes any attempt to arrange a time when we can.
2) She makes random remarks in Japanese and always expects me to ask her what they mean, I guess so she can show off her AWESOME JAPANESE SKILLZ or something.
3) She comments on things like jokes in movies that EVERYONE gets and therefore nobody else feels the need to comment on. She acts like it's the first time she's seen any movie joke ever. (For instance, in Ghostbusters, when the marshmallow man comes on: "Oh, that would be a really silly way to die!" And then she laughs hysterically.)
4) She is apparently completely helpless, and so her mom or both her parents will show up at random intervals, unannounced, to do things that she could easily do herself or don't need to be done. Like taking down our Halloween decorations or helping her clean her room. She basically has her parents jumping at her beck and call. Also, if she goes home for a visit, her mom always sends her back with tons of useless shit that takes up room in our kitchen. (Her mom annoys me too, but that's another list.)
5) She does not know when to end a conversation and cannot take a hint. She'll come into my room and start talking to me about something, and will keep going on and on even when I'm obviously busy doing something else, like homework.
6) In the same vein, she'll talk endlessly about some new anime DVD or something she got and expect me to show the same level of enthusiasm even though I know nothing about it and have no interest in it.
7) She apparently is one of those people who still believes that going outside with your hair wet will give you a cold. GERMS EXIST, OMG. Also, she apparently thinks "Susan B. Anthony" is spelled "Susan Bianthony", and that a silver dollar is the size of her palm. What.
8) When she makes a reasonable request of me, like placing a DVD face up when I take it out of the player, she'll spend like the next five minutes explaining why she wants me to do that.
9) She sits in the living room doing homework and she'll have the TV on, but she won't actually be watching it; like, maybe it will be paused. So she's hogging the TV for no reason.
10) She has very faulty cause-effect logic. When we first moved in, she thought the mildew buildup in the bathroom fan was a result of us leaving it on all the time.
11) She will text me from the next room about something totally inane.
12) She's always complaining about how she never sees or talks to her boyfriend and talking about all these other boys she flirts with at parties and things. I want to tell her to just break up with him already if he's such a burden.
13) We had this conversation the other day about how I don't want kids because I just don't have the patience, even when they're someone else's kids that I can give back when they get cranky or annoying. She went off on this whole spiel about how it's different when they're your own and sooner or later the maternal instinct will win out because EVERYONE has one and it's IMPOSSIBLE to fight. It really pisses me off when people make that argument. I told her if everyone had that unstoppable parental instinct, there wouldn't be a single child abuse or neglect case, and you wouldn't have those crazy moms who punt their kids in the river or kill them for interrupting Farmville time. (Also, this isn't an annoyance exactly, but I found out through that same conversation that she is very anti-abortion while I am vehemently pro-choice. Awkward.)
14) She texted me today asking if I had any Raid because she found ONE spider that she perceived as too big to hit with a flyswatter. Dude, we do not have to pray pesticides all around our apartment for that. I don't want to be asphyxiated in my sleep. Just hit it with a boot or a big book or something.
15) She turns up the baseboard heaters as high as they will go, so I come home to a completely sweltering apartment.
Edited to add:
16) She found a ring at the mall that appears to be valuable and instead of turning it in, she kept it and is now calling it her gift from God.
17) She stands outside the closed door to my room and tries to talk to me without raising her voice at all. I pretend I don't hear her at all.
I'm sure I can think of more, but my supply is exhausted at the moment.
T is on my bad side right now because she basically screwed me over on the party weekend (see previous entry) and when I finally confronted her about it she basically ignored the entire point I was trying to make and made some totally bullshit excuses instead. So I'm definitely predisposed at this point to look for things to be annoyed about. I think this is a human reaction.
1) She leaves her dishes in the sink for forever. On that same note, she's constantly making remarks about how "we" need to clean up something or other, but never does it or makes any attempt to arrange a time when we can.
2) She makes random remarks in Japanese and always expects me to ask her what they mean, I guess so she can show off her AWESOME JAPANESE SKILLZ or something.
3) She comments on things like jokes in movies that EVERYONE gets and therefore nobody else feels the need to comment on. She acts like it's the first time she's seen any movie joke ever. (For instance, in Ghostbusters, when the marshmallow man comes on: "Oh, that would be a really silly way to die!" And then she laughs hysterically.)
4) She is apparently completely helpless, and so her mom or both her parents will show up at random intervals, unannounced, to do things that she could easily do herself or don't need to be done. Like taking down our Halloween decorations or helping her clean her room. She basically has her parents jumping at her beck and call. Also, if she goes home for a visit, her mom always sends her back with tons of useless shit that takes up room in our kitchen. (Her mom annoys me too, but that's another list.)
5) She does not know when to end a conversation and cannot take a hint. She'll come into my room and start talking to me about something, and will keep going on and on even when I'm obviously busy doing something else, like homework.
6) In the same vein, she'll talk endlessly about some new anime DVD or something she got and expect me to show the same level of enthusiasm even though I know nothing about it and have no interest in it.
7) She apparently is one of those people who still believes that going outside with your hair wet will give you a cold. GERMS EXIST, OMG. Also, she apparently thinks "Susan B. Anthony" is spelled "Susan Bianthony", and that a silver dollar is the size of her palm. What.
8) When she makes a reasonable request of me, like placing a DVD face up when I take it out of the player, she'll spend like the next five minutes explaining why she wants me to do that.
9) She sits in the living room doing homework and she'll have the TV on, but she won't actually be watching it; like, maybe it will be paused. So she's hogging the TV for no reason.
10) She has very faulty cause-effect logic. When we first moved in, she thought the mildew buildup in the bathroom fan was a result of us leaving it on all the time.
11) She will text me from the next room about something totally inane.
12) She's always complaining about how she never sees or talks to her boyfriend and talking about all these other boys she flirts with at parties and things. I want to tell her to just break up with him already if he's such a burden.
13) We had this conversation the other day about how I don't want kids because I just don't have the patience, even when they're someone else's kids that I can give back when they get cranky or annoying. She went off on this whole spiel about how it's different when they're your own and sooner or later the maternal instinct will win out because EVERYONE has one and it's IMPOSSIBLE to fight. It really pisses me off when people make that argument. I told her if everyone had that unstoppable parental instinct, there wouldn't be a single child abuse or neglect case, and you wouldn't have those crazy moms who punt their kids in the river or kill them for interrupting Farmville time. (Also, this isn't an annoyance exactly, but I found out through that same conversation that she is very anti-abortion while I am vehemently pro-choice. Awkward.)
14) She texted me today asking if I had any Raid because she found ONE spider that she perceived as too big to hit with a flyswatter. Dude, we do not have to pray pesticides all around our apartment for that. I don't want to be asphyxiated in my sleep. Just hit it with a boot or a big book or something.
15) She turns up the baseboard heaters as high as they will go, so I come home to a completely sweltering apartment.
Edited to add:
16) She found a ring at the mall that appears to be valuable and instead of turning it in, she kept it and is now calling it her gift from God.
17) She stands outside the closed door to my room and tries to talk to me without raising her voice at all. I pretend I don't hear her at all.
I'm sure I can think of more, but my supply is exhausted at the moment.
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