Mystery of the Day

Why can I walk into almost any kitchen, be presented with a bunch of random ingredients, and throw together something delicious, and quick -- except my own?  In my own kitchen I stare into the refrigerator piteously and wonder why the idiot in charge of purchasing hasn't been sacked.

This is exacerbated by the end of the quarter.  I have been putting in long days at school, and I come home at night wanting a lamb roast, new potatoes, a slice of pie, and half a bottle or so of something dry and red.  Needless to say none of those things are waiting for me. It's already eight o'clock, so no time to cook a lamb roast (if I had one).  So it's frozen ravioli, pasta sauce from a bottle, and a handful of frozen spinach in the sauce to keep me from biting the neighbors.  It's not bad...

 I think I'm going to interest a friend or two in the idea of roast lamb sometime soon.

So Tired

An online thesaurus offers these synonyms for tired: all in, beat, bone-tired, bored, burned out, bushed, dead tired, dead, dog-tired, done in, drained, drooping, drowsy, enervated, exhausted, fagged, fatigued, flagging, out of gas, overworked, pooped, punchy, ready to drop, sleepy, spent, taxed, wearied, wearing, wiped out, worn out, zonked.  Most of these are applicable.  I am once again facing the reality that if I were getting paid for the time I spend at school, I would be pulling some serious overtime, and that's not counting the night when I was up until one am doing research.

But that's me whining.  Have some random bits and pieces instead. 

1. To your left you see the doodle that happened when I was supposed to be paying attention to a lecture about paper.  Those of you who have "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" burned into your brains may notice that there are two problems with this quotation.  One I figured out on my own, and one a friend* pointed out to me.  Only the latter was fixable.  

I should try to remember to update the image tomorrow with the fix.  I should also try to remember that I now want to do a gigantic Prufrock poster when I have time and energy.** 

2.  The second item is vaguely related two the first.  My shoddy memory dropped "sirens" into Eliot's deathless verse in place of "mermaids".  I drew a mermaid anyway.  (I like drawing mermaids, and have been drawing more or less rubenesque mermaids since sometime in high school. This may be because I don't particularly love drawing feet.)  A quick google image search, which I don't actually recommend, will show you that most sirens in the popular imagination are fish tailed temptresses (or else scantily clad women lounging on motorcycles).  However, the ancient greeks, imagined the Sirens as bird women.  Often just a woman's head on a bird's body.  Sometimes a winged woman with duck feet.  The webbed feet are fairly constant though (or possibly, they are the most memorable).  Temptresses with duck feet.  Get your head around that.  

Now consider this, the Ancient Greeks adorned their funerary monuments with images of the Sirens. Yes, at least some Greeks apparently hoped to be conducted into the afterlife by duck footed women.  This fact is not mentioned enough during the acquisition of a liberal arts education.   

3. Today is the 110st anniversary of my great grandmother's birth.  Today I learned that she, like me, loved canned peaches.  I also learned that, unlike me, her first name was Alvira (I've probably been told this fact before).  For reasons that are probably obvious, she went by Belle instead.  

4.  The strangest search term to find me in the last 24 hours was "Happy Giant poems."  Apparently this search points you at the Giant Cephalopod Awareness Day post, which does contain links to poetry.  And yet somehow I don't believe it was what they were looking for, although what they were looking for puzzles me.   

5. Breyer's ice cream at my local safeway is $2 a carton this week.  They have found my Achilles heel.


*To the best of my knowledge, this friend does not have Prufrock burned into his brain.  The fact that there are people in the world with perfect pitch for scansion would be the a cause of much teeth gnashing if I were not all of the things the thesaurus claims I am.  

**I do have Prufrock burned, however imperfectly, into my brain thanks to a college habit of dramatic reading duets with my roommate.

In Which Our Heroine Is Sick and Whiny

After a day of running around Volunteer Park, working on a film for one of my classes, I came home with a sore throat and the abiding conviction that my friend Ben, who actually is a filmmaker, deserves more respect even for attempting such a thing. That was Wednesday. I went to bed early. I woke up with the sore throat, and the nagging feeling that I was in a very low key way running a temperature. I went to bed again early. Friday I woke up with a sore throat, a fever, a nasty cough, and a voice that had dropped an octave. I went to bed really early -- before ten o'clock -- and woke up this morning feeling even worse. I have lost my sense of smell, and thus most of my sense of taste. Everything is variously textured nothing. If I'm lucky it's salty or sweet nothing. It's all vaguely nauseating, and I'm really hungry because a fever burns calories like nobody's business. I hate being sick.

It's hard being interested in the world on a day like today. I want to go back to bed and stay there -- even though I crawled out of bed on the early side this morning because ten hours horizontal is about all I can take. However, I have things that need doing. Rather a lot of things actually. I have finals to work on. I have an apartment to clean, which needs it rather desperately. So I must get on with it, even though my everything hurts, and I could quite reasonably start singing baritone.

Obviously under the circumstances the best choice is to write an exceedingly whiny blog-post.

In an attempt to redeem myself and justify the self-indulgent whining, I offer my favorite recipe for when I'm sick,. It's pretty tasty when I'm healthy too.

Savory Rice Porridge

1 cup or so good quality chicken broth, homemade is best, but not always available. In any case it should be something that actually tastes like chicken and vegetables were implicated in the creation of it.
1/4 cup rice
a sliver of butter (approximately a tea spoon) or an equivalent amount of chicken schmaltz (which you might be lucky enough on hand if you don't skim the fat off your chicken broth before you freeze it)
1 clove of garlic chopped in half
a smallish chunk of ginger root, or 1/2 tsp of powdered ginger, or to taste
salt and black pepper to taste.


Combine everything except the salt and black pepper in a sauce pan, bring to a boil.
Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until the rice has broken down to a porridge consistency (an hour or more).
Discard the garlic.
Add the salt and pepper.
Eat while maintaining a pose of listless ennui. This may be difficult because it actually tastes good if you can deal with the texture.

In some cultures this is juk or congee, and a normal breakfast food, garnished with various exciting things.