Chronically Distracted

The view from Ivar's restaurant in Seattle (one of many, probably!):


My delicious meal?

Clam Chowder, Mmmm. One of my favorite meals that I can have even less often than before. Let's just say that I wasn't too worried about salt when I was in Seattle.


I am not a big fan of fish. I at one time loved eating salmon and sushi. I'm not allowed to eat sushi anymore, got kinda sick of salmon. Not this salmon though:


This was probably one of the more mellow moments of the Seattle vacation. A great vacation.

I've been watching some Anthony Bourdain No Reservations lately, and I wish I could just eat. Cook anything I want eat anything I want. Experience good food and know it when I taste it.
The problem is I don't have enough basic cooking experience to even know what to do with food after it's in the kitchen. I have to look it up.

The plan is to keep cooking new stuff so I can understand how it all fits together. That plus grad school? Yeah, grad school is definitely taking precedence.

Maybe after I graduate I'll start a 365 a la Julie&Julia but with just any recipe I choose. I would loooove that.
Hopefully with less break downs. Is it possible to be a fangirl for food?

Also, weird result of having to cut down on food and sugar and cooking almost everything on the pioneer woman's website is that I hate watching food network unless it's a contest show.

I haven't been feeling to so great. Let's just say that hearing too much about the environment is not a recipe for kitties and peanut butter candies. (read: sunshine and happiness).

But I'm working on it, trying to find solutions, and then I read my horoscope for the week:

CANCER (June 21-July 22): I have tuned in to your yearning for resolution, O Seeker. I know that your heart fervently wants the riddles to run their course, the mysteries to be revealed, the uncertainties to be quelled. And I have ransacked my imagination in search of what consolation I might provide to appease your quest for neat, simple truths. But what I have concluded, O In-Between One, is that any solutions I might try to offer you would not only be fake, but also counterproductive. What you actually need, I suspect, are not answers to your urgent questions, but rather, better questions; more precisely formulated questions; more ruthlessly honest questions. Dig deeper, please. Open wider. Think fatter. (http://www.freewillastrology.com/)

Which is part of what I need to hear. I'll let you know when I come up with some good stuff, or at least find a website that's just good news!

I've been gone, I know. I also started school yesterday, so my feat of finishing my list of books before school started is kinda *poof* right now. However, I plan on keepin' on, because I do want to finish reading all of those books, and hopefully writing semi-interesting posts about them.

Guess what book I did finish! Racism Explained to My Daughter by Tahar Ben Jelloun.
A very good book that I hope to write about soon. I checked it out from the library but hope to buy it because I think that it's a book that helps to keep in mind what racism is and the ramifications of it.

Anyhoo, gotta get to work on my school work (woo! Masters!), but I have a little question. There is a place on my online profile for school to put a homepage. Would this little blog of silly information be something safe to be advertise to fellow students and/or teachers? Or is it better to just keep the whole thing quiet? I'm gonna have to ponder it, but wouldn't mind some input.

Hope everyone's having an enjoyable summer! (And good luck to goraina fighting off the katydids!)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.

I started reading this book Fall 2008 in my Global Food Web class which started me on my whole “I eat grass fed and/or organic meat, try to avoid high fructose corn syrup, try not to eat meat in restaurants *coughnevermindtheantelopeburgercough*” thing.
Since it’s a class, of course, we only read parts, but given the ease with which I read it, sooner or later I knew I’d finish the whole book.

I’ve planned to finish books from classes before, but this is the first time I’ve actually followed through.

The book follows Kingsolver and her family as they move from Arizona to Virginia and begin an experiment where they only eat local food (with the exceptions of coffee, chocolate, and I believe cranberries for Thanksgiving). They do this by utilizing their new space to grow a great variety food, the knowledge (acquired from various places) to make cheese, can tomato sauce, freeze various kinds of food, harvest turkeys and chickens, make up new recipes, and work the farmers’ markets. The family even gave up bananas, which I cannot ever seem my family doing, given the addiction to smoothies.

Along with all these great, informal, relatable details about what it’s like to live with such a close connection to the food, Kingsolver’s daughter includes many great recipes (there’s a zucchini chocolate chip cookie recipe is amazingly delicious, a classmate of mine made them for our last day potluck and they tasted so, so good) that the family made throughout their year, and Kingsolver’s husband includes great deal of information of the more statistical kind, like what is happening to our food sources, vegetable, fruit, and meat, and to our earth.
Kingsolver has a lot of information crammed in between personal stories about the hows and whys of what they are doing and their decision to do so.
It’s a great non-threatening (well, depending on who you are, her convictions might be a bit strong for some) introduction to the various environmental reasons for taking a hard look at what is going on with the food that is supposed to nourish our bodies and souls.

I just wish this kind of food was available to all people, no matter the income. What a wonder it would be to have the choice to eat like this accessible to all, so that eating healthy was not determined by class but by choice.

And! (on a hopefully more positive note)
If you’re interesting in checking out the recipes in the book, here’s the website full of recipes:
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

Next book up: Racism! More specifically Racism Explained to My Daughter by Tahar Ben Jelloun
A hundred pages into it (halfway through the book) and it’s been a real good read. Maybe I'll read something less intense after that.

My birthday this year had quite a magical tone to it, for me, even though the day didn’t go exactly as I planned it. I’m flexible, so as long as we cooked the dinner I planned, played scrabble, found out our ages on the wii fit, and watched the second episode of Firefly, I knew I’d be happy!

( Pictures! They are out of order. Just so you know. )

Finished the book, but I haven't finished my thoughts-written-out, so that should be coming up soon.
Good book too, makes me want to grow a garden.



Which I did!! There shall be pictures up soon. It's so purdy. Family planted it together, my dad built it (I helped), and together he and I picked out veggies and planned.
I am a lucky girlie.

I've probably shared this link before, but with my slowly increasing, if somewhat whiny, efforts to be healthy, looking at many of these pictures make my arteries hurt. Obviously I have to encourage others to check it out (which I found through mr. boyfriend thanks to kokopellinelli ): http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/page/1

Mini-update over!

ETA: To be honest, there are probably some things on that website I would eat if it were allowed. But it's not, thank goodness.

Man, after having a successful school career getting my B.A. I just tripped. up. registering for classes.

My perfectionism took over, I took too long to register (by three days). I totally got (most) of the classes I needed, just not necessarily the sections I thought I would get. Not a disappointment, because I figure it'll all be good, however I'm disappointed in myself for not taking advantage of the time beforehand to be ready for the actual day of registration.

But! Guess what? I'm going to try, in my perfectionist state, to let it go. Because I see what's happening, my brain has decided that since grad school is unknown territory the best approach is to dive in full of fear and drive using a perfectionist map where failure is not an option but the only one I can see.

It's easy to gather from that reflection that perhaps I shouldn't actually starting worrying about how difficult the classes will be until they actually start. So that way I can be rested and not nervous wreck in August. Rested and ready to Rock.

Plus, the upside to all the research I did is that I know more about the classes than I would have otherwise!

Now, to make up once again for Friday Kitty Video Day, here is a very short video, but with purr love for reallyginnyf:



(source: http://www.love-and-hisses.com/?m=200808&paged=10)

Today we all went to the zoo. :D. The Oregon Zoo.
Before that we went to the rose garden and the japanese garden, where everything is serene, beautiful, and luscious, depending on where you looked.

Now I'm watching the fantastic Tony awards, Next To Normal looks amazing. :D :D What can I say, it's been a good day.

And at the rose garden we found the name of a rose, on the lists and lists of the roses names. The rose plant named Cinco de Mayo. Obviously I had to investigate:



I like it. Not sure why it's named Cinco de Mayo, but it's quite an attractive flower.
It smells beautiful at the rose garden.

Then, later at the Zoo, I saw this beautiful creature:

A barn owl up close.

These too:




Later, I shared an amazing burrito and nachos with mr. boyfriend at http://www.laughingplanetcafe.com/, and I'm extremely jealous that there isn't one where I live. Tomorrow is back home where I'll only have wistful memories of Portland to cling to until my next visit.

Oh the drama!
Ups and downs of emotions, the highs of graduation, the lows of moving, the low of mis-counting the days of the 365 so I have to go through the 350s again, the highs of getting things done, the lows of having more things to get done.

Time for an up!

Life after graduation, it's been pretty sweet. My room is messy, but that's normal. My closet is becoming a baby step closer to being organized; see I have all these plastic bin/drawers in there with no idea what's *actually* in them, but now! I'm labeling, and it's real nice to actually have some clue as to what's hiding behind the closet door.

Even though I probably decided on the purple window decoration, the purple flower print comforter, the purple window spinny thingie, when I was in my tweens and teens, it's a surprising soothing color (more lavender than purple, I guess). The room looks purdy, and I feel comfortable in it, which didn't happen as much before. I'm converting it back into my space, and not the holding room for me and stuff between dorm rooms. The purple may be why I've been craving lavender, or I just really want to relax. I'm not entirely sure what craving lavender means.

There's this nice concrete motion forward, 'cause I have classes I'm going to get into and things I'm going to learn and organization that I'm going to make happen all because I want to, because it will feel good to know where everything is and how to get to it. That includes stuff in my room and knowledge in databases.

Also, I cooked something good!! My summer plans consist of crocheting, video gaming, cooking, and organizing. An reading.
I cooked this yummy-ness, some artichoke dip whose only non-vegan ingredient (as far as I can tell) is the parmesan cheese: http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/baked-artichoke-dip-recipe.html
I made it all in one pan. It's nice and light, not heavy like artichoke dip usually is. Mmm. Garlicky too. Yummm.

And I hung out with Ms. M, she knitted and I crocheted, and wow it was nice to hang out with a friend I hadn't seen in a few months.

Really, looking it over, I'm off to a good start!

Details.
Packing and details.

All of my things, except a few cleaning supplies, are back in my parents home, my home, and the only strange part is doing things I've done forever in dorms and the recent apartment, habits I've picked up living alone that are going to be re-adapted to living with the two people I've known all my life.

I've been watching shows that are usually my lunch and dinner companions as I eat at my desk in my room, entertainment and company at the same time. The only difference is now it's not just me and the tv show, my attention absorbed as I wonder what two of my favorite bloggers at http://www.projectrungay.blogspot.com/ are going to say. There's two other people who are going about the daily life. It's a conversion into living with two people I have interacted with all my life and adding a dynamic that has been all mine to the mix. That doesn't happen very often amongst the tight-knit family unit that we've become and have worked to maintain. My new balancing act, trying not to act out like a toddler trying to figure out independents (toddler, not teenager, 'cause I didn't really do that as a teen), trying to be "grown-up" without forcing myself to act like a stereotype that I hate. I want to be cartoon loving, fashion reality TV watching, listening to punk music and broadway show, girly girl who would love to own a pair of vegan steel toed boots, figuring out how to do this adult dance of taking care of the details. And the unpacking.
It's work to just let myself be and not assume judging eyes are always upon me, but either I learn from this or I get stuck in a rut of putting myself down just because I don't measure up to my idea of perfection. I gotta quit this addiction to wanting to be the perfect so-and-so for many situations.

It's gotta change at some point, if I work at it. Might as well add another learning experience that I actually want on top of all the ones that I don't want to deal with (she said with as much positivity in her voice as she could muster).

There are boxes to unpack and things I need to find places for. I wish I had a momentary infinite amount of space just to store everything so I can go through it easily and without hurried stress.

Oh, and I messed up the inside of my cheek and I think bit it in my sleep and it's been huuuuurting. Hopefully some salt water will heal it up fast.

quick post since tonight I'm going to a graduation celebration for Raza! (a.k.a Latinos).

This website is beyond cute and too much fun to read, with videos of kitties meowing defiantly because they're being taken to the vet, hee. It's written by a woman who fosters kitties and cat families before they get adopted.:

link: http://www.love-and-hisses.com/

Vid:

I've been going through archives, I love it.

One more vid from the site, the end is le super cute, watch kitties mouth:


Happy Day Before Graduation Everyone! Eeeeeee! So Exicted!

If you are like me and enjoy cheesyness (metaphorical cheesyness, not the food) and musicals and watching the same tired stereotypes doing the same weird stuff, pretty please go check out the pilot episode of Glee. I watched it on Hulu (http://www.hulu.com/watch/73740/glee-pilot) but you can watch on the Fox website, which is who's gonna air it when it comes out on the T.V.

Much to the contained eye rolling on mr. boyfriend's part I am a bit in love with cheesy musical stuff. Probably one of the reasons I love high school musical, and Hairspray is one of my favorite movies. I mean, jazz hands can be fun, when done properly!

So hopefully the rest of the show is a super duper fun as this is. For whatever reason the bright cheerfulness of these kind of shows, and a Nick movie like Spectacular make me happy, even when I know that they're oh so silly and cheesy.

It's annoying when people make fun of this stuff when they know I genuinely like it, not when they point out how silly the faults are, critical stuff I can usually take because being friendly with me doesn't require like every single thing I do. That would be creepy. ick. Just outright calling it stupid is really annoying though. It's more fun to be like, there's room in the entertainment world for your stuff I don't like, and there's room for the stuff I like. So get outta my face about it.

That's rude. Still, I like the cheesy. I like the fun.
Without the cheesy life just seems less sparkley. I guess I just rather have the dramatic be more or less harmless, and not so painful.
Living in a world where breaking out into song gets out all the stuff without actually throw off the rest of the world.

And all of this is probably why I liked watching high school musical after a friend from elementary school died, why I can watch VanHelsing thinking it's just good fun and not appalling, why watching Wolverine wasn't an exercise in futility. If you give me a storyline that has parts that work, parts that move together, and I get something out of it emotionally, I can't help but like it. Which means I shouldn't put down other people's likes and dislikes, but I'm human, I learn. I'll try to be more open-minded, maybe someday I'll watch the first episode of Lost. I suppose that I could be a bit more thick skinned, but poking fun and calling something stupid with a note of contempt in your voice is different. I gotta remember that one, like other people should, I think.

So with all of that, I give you my favorite song from Nickelodeon's Spectacular! a silly t.v. movie about kids who want to be stars. Ready with the Jazz Hands?



p.s. Tomorrow at 4 I will be all done with my classes and ready to graduate. *gringrin*

http://www.dramabutton.com/

Don't have your sound all the way up when you press the buttons or it could really freak you out. Thanks to http://twitter.com/reallyginny for this.

I currently have homework, pressure to keep up straight A streak (all coming from myself), going to graduate have to turn this in on friday Drama (it could be worse, I know), so posts will be short and youtubey this week.

Because finding cute, fun, and/or musical stuff on youtube for posts helps me relax a bit. My blood pressure is creeping up a tiny bit, and I think I need to relax and maybe not eat half a chocolate bar today because I'm so worried about not doing this essay right. I know you all are looking forward to the end of this 365 when I won't be insessantly whining about homework and finals. 'Cause I sure am!

Maybe they'll even be a picture or two! Or not! We'll see.

Remember, breathing is important when stressed and when working out!

This is from Hairspray. I like this song. It's a clip of the movie. It makes me happy.



(really, you should be happy I didn't post the Zac Efron zong ;D )

Did anybody else see the season finale of How I Met Your Mother?
Hee, I loved it. Those writers know what they're doing.

Today was pre-graduation giddiness, 'cause I got a dress.
A super pretty, wrap, floral print, pink and other colors, dress.

I'm gonna wear it with my boots. And probably fishnets. It's going to be awesome.
I also swear there will be pictures. 'Cause there will be lotsa people taking them. :D

My favorite jacket is also gone. I stupidly lost it. Gained a dress lost my favorite jacket.
I guess I'll have to be on the search for a replacement favorite jacket.

There's an obstacle in my way, an essay, and I've been working on it very, very slowly. There's a lot of information to accumulate and organize. And I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing. Like the first time I crocheted a pair of fingerless gloves and couldn't figure out what was going on until I finished most of the construction.

So, ya know. We'll see.

(pretty dress!! so excited!! guess that's motivation to get this paper done.)

Today! was my last Saturday at the library.
I woke up this morning smiling because in a week I'll be graduating.
Finally found some lovely lip balm and lotion that's healthy over at https://www.bubbleandbee.com/index.html and think I'm gonna get the lip balm/lotion bar combo.
Working on my sociolinguistics final essay has made my brain flatline a little bit. Somehow despite all my mini breaks I think I managed to make get started pretty well.
I'm still confused about what it is I'm doing, since there are so many parts to it, like how Identities are being represented through discourses and Discourses, how Relationships are being acted out and made important, what being bilingual has to do with everything.
As always writing bios about my parents is awkward. I don't know why but I always feel strange writing about them, like I'm intruding in their privacy.
Which doesn't matter because I've written about three or four papers about one of them or both my entire school career.
I'm immensely excited about graduating and kind of can't believe it. Summer will hopefully be fun and full of activities and I'll be able to get a head start in my classes for next semester.
Which I have to sign up for next month and I haven't quite figured out which sections to take.
Which is my next task after graduation (along with following up on some health stuff).

I have no classes next week, just a few hours of work, and I'm going to work hard on this paper. And couple of other things that I have to wrap up before graduation.

p.s. GRADUATION! Didn't realize I'd actually be this excited about it.

There are oh so many book about making your life greener, as in more eco-friendly, or what I found myself calling in my 'net bookmarks EcoHappy, and I finally got one at Borders (haha, yeah, that might not be ecofriendly, but whaddya gonna do?).

It's written by the method guys (http://www.methodhome.com/). You may have seen their handsoap, that's where I recognize them from. I didn't realize it was written by them until after I bought, but it was a nice simple, book. Not total information overload, but enough to make me want to replace every cleaner, soap, and lotion if it had all the really bad for me stuff they talk about in the book.

Since I've developed a drive to be as healthy as I possibly can be, as a sort-of revenge for all my health problems and side effects of health problems and side effects of medications, blah blah blah, I've also been interested in making my habits eco-friendly, green, whatever the term of the moment might be.

Thusly! I checked out some of the sites at the back of the book (yay resources!) and found: http://www.treehugger.com/ whose multiple links and articles and sections and quizzes I have yet to exhaust.

For example, I discovered that there is a laptop cover/holder that has solar panels on it, and with half a days sunlight you can charge your laptop or ipod or phone. (the one that charges a laptop is $499.)
http://www.treehugger.com/galleries/2009/05/green-gift-guide-techie-types.php

Unfortunately I'm really on information overload now. And a little turned off by their sort of insistence that being a vegan is the best thing ever, not because I think being a vegan is bad ('cause I think vegan stuff is real cool), but because I've learned that being vegan is not the be all end all answer to eating healthy.
Anyways (heh, that wasn't my point), it's just great information, but overload of information, some of it knowingly conflicting because there is so much wrong, so many answers, and so many wrong answers that seemed right at the time.

Okay, this post is getting long, I can feel my internal "people are gonna start losing interest" alarm going off (you develop one when you realize you sometimes talk a lot), so here's what I'm getting at:
I love the idea of being happy and skipping through the well composted, pesticide free garden during the day, and then sleeping on my organic cotton sheets at night, having organic lotions that don't make me feel like I may be slathering on poison, but that's gonna take some (a lot) of time.

I still like green, but I'm just gonna filter all the information into what I can process, ignore the fanatics, and do what I hope is best.

Which is pretty much the same thing I do when it comes to medical stuff.

Happy Mother's Day everyone!! (nvm that it's practically over at this point)
'Specially to all the mama's (and by that I mean those who love and care after others) who need rest and love and recuperation.

If anyone needs a nice laugh this mother's day or just want to see some loverly pictures, and silly pictures, go on over to http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/, they've had some great mother's day theme posts.

And since my family and I have had a nice jazzy mother's day, with the cd's I bought for my mom (oscar peterson Skol-EP and putumayo women of jazz), and the great musician at the restaurant who played great jazz guitar (not sure what kind of guitar it was) here's an oscar peterson youtube vid I found to give your evening/night/morning after mother's day some jazziness:



Love!

The only good things about today were the vegan banana walnut muffins (Mmmm) and seeing Stark Trek with the parents.

It was really, really, really good. Like, totally AWESOME.

I loved it, my parents loved it, so great.

And that's all I got for today. (My brain has been kidnapped or run away for greener pastures. Let me know if you see it.)

Oh! Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w4vk5OZmn8

If you haven't been watching Dollhouse you are missing out. It's amazing.
Totally check it out on DVD if you can! (click! http://www.fox.com/dollhouse/)
Love, love it, so many great philosophical debates and thoughts come out of that show, makes me happy (and beautiful people of different shades in crazy awesome action scenes.)

On to the kitties!!

Kitty + large box + ingenuity = great fun



And I just LOVE this one. Hee hee, clear box.

I . . .
have been utterly failing at feeding myself again.
Once again, I admit that I go to weight watchers meetings ("lifetime" member, weigh ins once a month, not as weird as it sounds. I think) and have recently felt the need to count points again. But whenever I count points I end up getting anxious about eating just the right amount and then I don't eat food that's filling then i'm hungry all day. rargh.

I realized yesterday, what with the potluck frenzy, and because of goraina's lovely comment yesterday, that people's reactions to my food restrictions or my attempts to reel myself in from indulging are interesting.

By that I mean I had a conversation where a person was teasing/joking with me that not being able to eat too much salt and watching the saturated fat content just made life so bland (which I don't think is true because my mom makes crazy delicious low salt low sat fat food all the time). This didn't bother me much, but like I wrote to goraina in the previous posts comments, it's a little like being a non-drinker in a society that pretty much embraces it all the time.

People either get defensive or can't believe it. I've had someone shake their head in disbelief over my dislike of drinking. Not that the above situation is exactly the same, it feels like a much lighter reaction to food compared to how defensive some people get around people who don't drink, but it had similar tones. Like you're not living the way you "should."

Not that I've really done that much! Being the nerd school girl who's not a big fan of the partying high school/college lifestyle. (not strange, I know, but I get a lot of looks).

At the potluck I mentioned not wanting to get too much dessert stuffs and someone commenting that it looked too good to hold back. It really did, but I didn't think until later that I didn't have to eat some of everything just because other people did (or seemed to). Duh.

The more I learn about food and agriculture the more alluring being super healthy is. And while I have a great way to go to get the hang of feeding myself successfully (it's so pathetic that I haven't gotten the hang of this yet. I blame end of semester stress.), I am starting to embrace the healthy attitude. Even if the food restrictions make me angry sometimes.

Good thing is so many other things are stressing me out right now that working on being healthier is such a nice thing to concentrate on!

And if you got through all this and thought, what would a Stephen Colbert interview about the topic of food and health be like? You're in luck! Dr. David Kessler, author of The End of Overeating, Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite is interviewed by Mr. Colbert, and it's very interesting what he has to say.




Hopefully I'm not writing this topic to death, but it's just fascinating how food and health comes up in so many places and what strong reactions people have.