Family Time

My brother (looking at the row of small scratches on my right arm): What happened to your arm?

Me: The fountain got me while I was trying to assemble it.

My brother: Oh. I thought you got mauled by a hamster.

Ah, family.

Of Pipes and Plumbs …er, Plumbing

This weekend my roommates and I experienced one of the worst things that can happen to one’s kitchen: a clogged sink. Actually, “experienced” is the wrong tense–we are still experiencing this horror.

I would liken a clogged sink to a natural disaster. Think about how often you use your kitchen. Even if you go out to eat, you still use plates and cups and silverware a good bit, and if you cook food, you use pots and pans and spatulas and bowls. The kitchen is a central place in the home, and a clogged sink throws the entire house slightly off kilter.

Saturday and Sunday we tried several forms of Drano and super-intense-heavy-duty-drano-ish substances. Monday morning it was decided that a test run was in order, so someone started the dishwasher. The dishwasher accordingly filled up with water and swished it around and did whatever dishwashers do to clean kitchenware. The trouble came when the water needed to drain so the contents could dry. The water had to go somewhere, and the pipes were apparently not an option, so the next best option was the kitchen floor. Ah the joy of stumbling into the kitchen on a Monday morning to find water dripping from the front of one’s appliances.

Apparently all our efforts of the night before did nothing to solve the problem. Whatever is in our pipes scoffs at our chemicals and seems resolute in its decision to remain in our plumbing.

Meanwhile, the rest of the kitchen is a mess. Dishes are piled high, and the cabinets are nearly emptied of dishes and silverware. Without the ability to wash them in the sink or dishwasher, we are severely handicapped, giving the room a distinctive disaster feel. It is amazing how quickly a room goes from clean to chaotic. I pray the plumber makes an appearance in short order.

This Week’s Lessons

1. Bath & Body Works’ “Cotton Blossom” hand soap leaves your hands smelling like dryer sheets. Mmmm.
I hope someone writes me a love poem someday mentioning the fact that I washed my hands with Cotton Blossom soap and now smell delicious, like freshly washed socks and towels. How romantic. And could you put that in iambic pentameter? Thanks.

2. I don’t deal well with stress. (This is actually not a new lesson, but a reminder of an old lesson that I forget often, unfortunately.)
My body holds up ok until I get through whatever it is I have to get through (a test, a big event, etc.), and then it quits. “Quits” is maybe a little too strong–I’m still alive, after all–but I always either get sick or have other physiological symptoms. It’s my body telling me I can’t ignore it any more, that I need to stop for a few moments and breathe and take care of it a little bit. I guess that’s what comes of being both a body and a mind (or is it a body and a soul? or just a body with consciousness? what is consciousness anyway? …why am I talking about metaphysics right now??).
Anyway, this week’s symptoms have been exhaustion and dizziness. How fun.

I think I need to learn how to play as well as work. I suppose I take life too seriously sometimes.

Fun Things At Work

At lunchtime I walked past the bathroom door and noticed this sign:

“Please do not flush any toilets after 1:30 p.m. today”

 

That’s ok. No one needs to use the restrooms in the afternoon anyway. Good thing.

The Horrors of Indecision

My computer is slowly dying. Slowly is the key word here, because it seems that every day it gets just a little bit slower and it functions a little bit less well. I suppose for a laptop to last 6 years (I’ve only had to replace the hard drive once) is fairly impressive.

It just takes a lot of patience to do anything on the slow machine. I press the power button to turn it on and I might as well go do some other short task while it boots up…. Then I come back and double-click the firefox shortcut, and it will be another few minutes for my computer to decide to pull up my email. So I return and enter my password, and glance away for another minute…you get the idea. Checking my email is a time investment. And then a 3 1/2 minute youtube video is about all the video card can take before getting choppy and impossible to watch.

So I think it’s about time to retire the Dell dinosaur and get something a bit newer (don’t worry, I’ve backed up my files just in case I should be visited by the blue screen of death).

But what should I get? A desktop? I’m not in school anymore, so it isn’t as crucial to have a laptop, but it’s so nice to have the mobility a laptop brings. Then there’s the question of what kind of capabilities I want my computer to have. And I live in Charlottesville, where it’s trendy to have Apple computers (which makes me not really want to get one because of that very fact). But I must admit they are prety sleek. Also, am I cool enough for an Apple? I feel like the computer might out-cool me, and who wants that?

Laptop? Desktop? Windows? Apple? Specs? Options?How much money do I want to spend?

So for the time being, I am trapped in indecision, dreaming of a computer with which checking my email isn’t a 15-minute time commitment (and I’m not even counting the time it takes to actually read and respond to email, this is strictly time getting to my gmail screen and being able to open up the first message).

Spring is Almost Here

I love springtime. Something about it makes me go a little crazy. After months of the world looking grey and dead (or at least in hibernation), new life appears.

The crocuses are almost finished, and the daffodils are out, with their bright smiling faces. The bradford pears are white, and the wild cherry trees are starting to be pink and white, contrasting with the rest of the trees that have not yet decided that spring is quite here.

There is a beautiful tulip tree on my drive to work that almost causes wrecks because it is showing off, and a few of the small shrubs outside my basement window are starting to turn pale green around the edges.

It’s so exciting! The weather gets a little warmer (but it is fickle — you never know what the next day will bring), and the sun seems warmer and brighter, somehow. Maybe that’s just because we had 5 days of rain in a row…I’m not sure.

Spring is so close; I know it happens every year, but it never ceases to amaze me that the world can explode with life again. Take 10 minutes, go outside on the next warm-ish day, and just look around you.
What do you see?
Look again. Now what do you see?

Cooking Adventures, Again

Be careful what you put in your microwave. Microwaves are not built to handle very much, though they do a decent job at warming things up if used correctly.

Yesterday, however, was a lesson on watching food. I put a mug with instant oatmeal and some water in the microwave for a minute. All was well. I took it out and stirred it, noticing that it was still quite soupy and not cooked. I had added too much water, so I thought I should put the oatmeal in for another minute.

I knew I should be watching the oatmeal as it cooked, and I did watch for the first few seconds, but then I got distracted by something else and looked away for about 25 seconds. That was all the time my oatmeal needed. When I looked back at the microwave, I saw with horror that the oatmeal had exploded all over the microwave!

It had completely overflowed the mug and almost all of it was now covering the turntable of the microwave. The next few minutes were spent cleaning out the microwave and wiping off the outside of the mug, which seemed to have more oatmeal than the inside.

Alas, my breakfast was gone.
And I hadn’t even had coffee yet. Now that I think about it, both my recent cooking snafus have taken place prior to the consumption of coffee. Perhaps I should learn something from this. Actually, in this case, I learned two important things:

1. Watch your microwave oatmeal like a hawk.
2. Drink coffee first (though perhaps this tip should come first…).

Adventures in Baking

Baking powder and baking soda are not the same thing. Neither can they always be substituted for each other.

I discovered these important cooking facts this morning when I tried to make pancakes for breakfast. I zipped through the recipe, adding ingredients to my glass bowl and stirring them together. 2 cups of milk, 2 eggs, 2 cups of flour, baking something-or-other, salt, vanilla extract, etc.

The batter seemed a little more soupy than usual, so I added a little flour to compensate, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. That is, until I took a few bites of my pancakes.

At first everything seemed normal. The pancakes tasted pancake-y, but I noticed a strange almost metallic aftertaste. I tried to ignore it and kept shoveling down bites of syrupy goodness, but eventually it became impossible to ignore: my pancakes tasted slightly like tinfoil. I sipped my coffee to wash down the flavor, and tried to figure out what happened to make the pancakes such a disaster, and finally realized something important:

I had added 2 tablespoons of baking soda to the recipe, instead of baking powder.

Mmmmm. No wonder my breakfast had that slight Arm & Hammer Toothpaste flavor. Clearly, baking powder and baking soda should not be substituted for one another. As I sadly threw out the rest of my batter, unwilling to subject anyone else to this particular batch of pancakes, I thought that perhaps it is best to begin cooking after having a few sips of morning coffee, not before. And perhaps double checking the recipe before blithely throwing in ingredients would help too. Or at least thinking about the crucial differences between powder and soda.

Introvert/ Extrovert

I am prone to making piles of things, some of which is an attempt at organization, and some of which is laziness; I’ll just put it in a pile and deal with the pile later. Or I will put it in a box, to rifle through at some later date, and hopefully put things in better order.

This tendency carries over into the realm of mental categorization. I even slap labels on things I do myself, and later wonder why I am dissatisfied with the result.

“Introvert.”

I stick the label on myself, notice how it seems to be un-American to be quiet, how awkward it sometimes is in social situations to be at a loss for conversation with people I do not know well, and sigh. Then I watch other people and marvel at their ability to make conversation seem so effortless. They seem to have a stream of questions ready, while I struggle to conjure anything to say. It isn’t that I am uninterested in the person opposite me, quite the reverse, but conversation does not flow naturally.

So people tell me to practice: “You won’t get better unless you try more.” And I am. This year I have had many awkward interactions with people who I know only slightly. They are nice people. I wish I knew them better. But the places where I am around people are places where there are a large number of people, which immediately intimidates me. I try for a while, and then often become quieter and quieter… I think I may actually be shrinking physically into the chair… soon no one will see me and I won’t have to try to think of anything to say. If only I could find a small group of people to talk to. But people my age seem to travel in packs.

Society favors extroverts. Or perhaps it is my skewed perception thinking that it is true. I will keep trying to talk to new (and new-ish) people, but oh for a gathering of friends (and potential friends) that is small and less threatening to those of us who think and listen more than we speak.

Rain and Rain

Rainy days are often dreary and make one feel as if the world is a sad place; the very weather mirrors the tears of the unhappy. But other rainy days are merely reminders that it cannot always be sunny, that the earth must be watered somehow, and gives one an opportunity to sit inside and enjoy some things that are sometimes overlooked on sunny days.

Today seems like the latter kind of rainy day, at least to me. You may disagree (and rainy days are seen by different people in different ways, largely dependent upon season, mood, and the number of rainy days in succession). Small things are what make the difference. Here I sit in my office, lit only by the soft light of lamps, eating warm broccoli cheddar soup and sourdough bread. They are such a happy combination. The sourdough bread has a tang that is beautifully balanced by the creamy soup and the flavor of cooked broccoli. The only sounds are the steady tick-tock of my wall clock and the click of the keys on the keyboard, and I wish my lunch break was long enough to take a nap, lulled to sleep by the clock’s ticking and the mental image I have of the rain falling quietly (my office, alas, does not have a window, so all images of the outdoors are just that, images).

My lunch break is nearly at an end, and I will have to return to the world of spreadsheets, tallying receipts, and registration forms, but the few precious moments of relaxation in the middle of my day have been sweet.

And although I do not quite feel like this today (though I might tomorrow if the rain keeps coming), here is a poem about rain for your enjoyment. It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve read much poetry, and I miss it, which is why I’ve been putting poetry on here today I think. Without further ado, here are a few lines from Mr. Longfellow:

The Rainy Day by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.