HFCS: effika’s blog

Last week I did quite a number of things, including a quantitative analysis exam and a presentation for my ecology/path lab. Jay and I had an impromptu date on Friday, and on Saturday I picked up a pair of new shoes and made some stew. None of the following paragraphs read nicely together, so pretend these are posts that I should have made separately throughout the week. :-)

The quant exam was on Thursday, but the homework needed to be done by Tuesday, resulting in much last-minute scribbling. The result was that I’d crammed half a stats course and something about acids into 2 days. I think that cramming worked well, for I felt great coming out of the exam.

My presentation for lab on Wedensday was excellent. So excellent, in fact, that it reminded me why I loved debate in high school and how I was a fool for setting it aside once I found out we had cross-ex here. I got such an andrenaline rush presenting my case against chlorinated phenols that I was hopped up the entire rest of the day. It was something I hadn’t felt in a heck of a long time, and I think I’m going to have to figure out a way to remedy that.

Usually Jay and I game on Fridays– dice, delivery food, and friends are great ways to spend an evening. When we showed up at the usual gaming venue we found out everyone had other plans, so Jay and I decided to see a movie and get some chow. The movie was Goodnight and Goodluck and the chow was Misal’s. The movie was a great little intellectual piece, and didn’t make me angry at the end like I thought it was going to. The other movie we were thinking of seeing was Brokeback Mountain, but I know that one’s going to make me sad so I’ve designated it a rental + kleenex and icecream affair. I was expecting to be angry at the end of Goodnight and Goodluck because of its content and the parallels (or lack thereof) to the current state of media, but I was left with the feeling that maybe everything won’t go to seed. Maybe.

Misal’s was wonderful (when is it not?) and we spent a good chunk of time there while waiting for the movie. I’ve decided I must learn how to make potato bhaji for myself. While I’m very willing to pay the heavy cash for their wonderful food, sometimes I don’t have that cash nor the will to drive across town for it. The evening was wonderful, Jay fulfilled his Valentine’s Day obligations, and we might even do something generically date-ful next weekend (since Tuesday is a terrible day for both of us to do Valentine-y things). Dinner and a movie may be clich, but it’s clich because it’s a good formula for an evening.

I’ve been needing new shoes for quite some time now. This semester I’ve been doing a lot more walking, and I’ve been doing it on increasingly inadequate shoes. The heels were falling off my old Nikes and the insoles were hard as rocks. Last week I developed shin splints due to muscles over-compensating for the lack of arch support, so I braved the mall Saturday afternoon. I visited every store that possibly sold shoes, and came back with one pretty pair of new shoes. I require the outside of my shoes to be simple yet not entirely one color, and I have some oddly-placed arches to compensate for. I think I bought the only pair of shoes in town that was even close to what I was looking for. Well… I actually found a pair of shoes that was even better than the pair I walked away with, but I couldn’t justify spending over a $100 on shoes when the $50 pair I found worked almost as well. I think most of the $170 was in the styling, anyway.

I also made some stew, although it was mostly potatoes. I got on a roll chopping vegetables (spent over 2 hours on it this time) and filled 2/3rds of the crock pot with 3 different kinds of potatoes before even moving on to anything else. As a result the stew took 2 hours longer to cook than usual and had a very starchy taste. Starchy, but quite good. I thought I’d done very well with my stew this time; the dumplings were fluffy and perfect, even. I wish I still had it to enjoy– it wasn’t put up like I’d requested of Jay before we left the house last night before OUI practicet. I found it this morning– it was cold, with some mold on the dumplings, sitting on the counter where I’d left it. I was devastated that all my hard work was wasted (stew was going to be meals for the next several days) and cried a little as I started putting it down the garbage disposal. Well, until I jammed a spoon in the disposal and Jay came to see if I was OK, what with the loud squealing metal sounds and all. He saw my state of despair, promised to make it up to me somehow, and shooed me away so he could clean it up instead. It was a lot easier letting him deal with it, plus he ran the dishwasher.

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