serinde

So, a few developments for those who are not living in my brain.

1) I have a new job. My last day at Hunter was Friday, and I'm starting at Barnard on May 10th, where I will be Director of User Services (shut up). This is a big promotion-like thing, and I have moments of shrieking panic, but in my more rational moments I feel tolerably sure I can handle it. I also had the smart of giving myself some time between jobs, which I didn't really have last time 'round; I intended to spend it frolicking around in spring weather, except...

2) So that thing where I hurt my ankle at aikido and then some more in a mosh pit? It was feeling mostly better, so I kept going to class, and I kept going to yoga, and then it started to hurt somewhat when I walked, and then started hurting a lot when I walked, and I did the HMO referrals dance, and the referring ortho couldn't see me til July, and I went back and bibbled at Callen-Lorde's referral dept., and they sent me to the NYU walk-in clinic on Friday who tell me I have a chronic sprain because I haven't just let the stupid thing heal. So I have an air cast and crutches, and I'm supposed to keep off it as much as possible, and wear the (extremely ill-fitting) air cast when walking, and etc. I am coping with this with my usual grace and serenity: which is to say, hanging on by the skin of my teeth and being a whiny little bitch. I seem to have an enforced staycation, except the part where I still seem to be running around a lot. But I'm taking the bus whenever I can, and that's something, yes? In spite of the fact that some of the M66 drivers are rotten fucking people, to the point where one actually closed the doors in my face as I was about to put my foot on the step. (Some of the others are really nice, though, so I guess this evens out.)

3) I still have not hung my curtains. I faithfully swear that I shall call the landlady tomorrow and ask if we have a ladder. I have to change a light bulb anyways. Watch, I'll get them finally up and then hate how they look.

4) As far as I'm aware, we're all still supposed to put our plastic/glass recycling in clear plastic trash bags. So why do none of the stores around me sell 'em?

5) I'm having mental hysterics off-and-on that the progress I'd been making on the weight loss front will now be utterly destroyed by enforced inactivity. Because what can you do without a leg to stand on?

6) I went and asked a boy out, for a number of reasons, not least of which was to confirm that I was capable of doing so. I was ready for "yes", I was ready for "no"; I was not prepared for utter silence. The entire situation has led to numerous reflexions, including that my dating brain appears to be stuck at age 16.

7) I have Rock Band again, which makes me happy, except I really want to drum, but it's my right foot I hit the kick drum with, and that will just not do; and I prefer bass over guitar, but you can't have a solo career as a bassist (tell that to Lemmy, jerkweeds).

8) In spite of all of these bees, I'm doing pretty okay.

0. Stare blankly at about 1.5 cups of cooked brown rice.
1. Take a glob (~1 Tbsp) of the duck fat that has been sitting in the back of the fridge. Melt in cast-iron skillet.
2. Chop a bit of onion and garlic. Start it frying up in the duck fat.
3. Cut up two boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Add them to the pan.
4. Chuck in a bunch of fresh thyme that's reaching end-of-life. Grind some pepper in, too.
5. After the chicken is browned, add in the rice. Let it all fry up a bit more.
6. Add 1 cup of mushroom bouillon. Turn up the heat, let it reduce.
7. Realize that's still a lot of liquid. Chuck in a handful of dried lentils (about 1/3 c).
8. Cover and hope this works. Distract self with list of Rock Band download choices.
9. Liquid is almost gone, lentils are a bit firm yet. Add a splash of white wine.
10. Wait til that evaporates. Dish up.
11. Yes, that will do nicely.

3/30: Professor Foo forwards a phishing attempt of the usual vintage (OMG UR OVER QUOTA, click here to fix) to the college mailing list, saying "Phish warning!" in the Subject, and removing the trawling link, but otherwise unedited

4/7: Professor Bar responds to the college mailing list, asking "Thank you but I do not see a link or password in order to do what you request. Is this still necessary?"

4/7: Professor Foo responds to the college mailing list, saying "I hesitate even to reply to an email, for fear that's a phish. Hopefully Dr. Bar is a real member of this list."

A conversation with the PFY, upon the sharing of this old Geocities ad:

Your humble correspondent: "Oh, Geocities. How I do not miss you."
PFY: "I had a Geocities web page once."
YHC: "I'm so sorry."
PFY: "Don't be. I was a little kid, it was right for me to have an awful web site."
YHC: *head go foom*

last night's dinner, a birthday celebration with (and courtesy of) sweh, at Gotham Bar & Grill:

YELLOWFIN TUNA TARTARE
japanese cucumber, shiso leaf and sweet miso
asian ginger vinaigrette

SEARED FOIE GRAS
tangerine marmalade, roasted cranberry, pain d'épices
maple sugar consommé
[this was the BEST THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD]

ROASTED RACK OF BERKSHIRE PORK
wild boar crepinette, caramelized endive and sweet potato
pear cider reduction

MASCARPONE CHEESECAKE
apple linzer tart
cassis sorbet

With a Last Word before, and a bottle of Viognier during, and coffee after.

Thank you, belovedest pet!

Having determined to go down and restart aikido today, I was gifted with raving anxiety both before (heart racing, explodo brain) and during (wacky dreams involving trying to get downtown via skateboard to meet people for brunch and being delayed by, first, an SCA fighter practice/hangout involving Their Majesties processing in with elephants, and then by getting into a fight with trucker guys who were unloading their shit into a bike lane) sleep. I have no idea what is triggering this bullshit, but I will none of it.

Today I also intend to shed the stigma of my NJ driver's license; the express DMV is tolerably near to the dojo, so that should work out nicely. For a trifecta, I shall either start the process for my 2nd pair of glasses, or shop for a vacuum (requirements: 1. small, 2. ACTUALLY WORKS) as my current fur-management system is wholly inadequate.

I commit to starting aikido again next month; I commit to going at least twice and preferably thrice a week, even if this means getting up at fuck-off o'clock to make the 6:45am class or scaling down my evening entertainments (yet more) (since I keep backsliding anyways) to go to the 5:30pm class.

We have some several small-form-factor PCs which we were testing for use in the student terminal 2.0 roll-out. One such is a Dell Optiplex 760, which was way too big for the job at hand; and since trying to run Windows in a VM on my desktop iMac eats all my computrons, on spride's advice I snarfed it to stick under my desk and remote into when I have the need to be plunged into the warm gelatinous mass of Redmond.

While I'm at it, why not see if it will PXE boot and talk to our management console? So I hook it up at our testing bench and turn it on.

1. No BIOS, it just
2. goes directly to a crippled XP configuration screen
3. THAT PLAYS REPETITIVE HORRIBLE MUSIC REALLY REALLY LOUD THAT YOU CANNOT TURN OFF UNTIL YOU GO THROUGH IT ALL

Ensued then a Three Stooges-like routine involving me frantically searching it for a volume control (there isn't one), or an "off" tickybox on the screen (there isn't one), or a physical control on the machine itself (there isn't one), or failing that A PILLOW TO STICK IT UNDER (none of those either) so as not to disturb the fifteen other people in earshot.

Eventually it booted to XP proper, and hopefully this will not recur on the next reboot; but I have procured a heavy coat to throw over it just in case.

Yoga has been really, really good for me over the past year; and since sometimes the exigencies of duty have kept me from going, it seemed to me that I might profit greatly from doing some at home in the morning. I have found many excuses not to do this thing, ranging from "bleh morning snrk argh" to "wood floor is haaaaaaard". To deal with the latter whinge, I bought a Real Yoga Mat (which has koi on it! How can you not be inspired by staring at koi? ... ) about a month ago, which has sat idle since; the new excuse being "but I'm doing morning pages! I can't spare the time for both, not unless I want to get up super super early, and then what's the point of living so close, wah wah wah wah and anyways I'm going thrice a week and that's good". Well, okay; but the last several weeks, between vacation and the student email migration and lack of personnel and what-not, I haven't been going thrice a week. Sometimes I've been lucky to go once a week. And lo, yesterday I was up a pound from the holiday festivities; and I am feeling sniffly in my head, which I never seem to get sick if I'm exercising regularly; so this morning I had a nice tall glass of Shut The Fuck Up, rolled out the mat, and did a 20 minute workout from yogadownload.com. And it was Good, although lord does my balance and flow ever suck rocks right when I get up.

Failing to escape the gravitational pull of the Hungarian Meat Market on 81st and Second, I entered one of those fugue states and came out with a half-pound of an unlabeled paprika-dusted entity described by the shop girl as "bacon, but you don't have to cook it". (Research indicates that this might be some variant of szalonna.) It's more than 50% fat, and the meat bits are rather shreddy in the way corned beef gets. There is no rind.

Not being a starving Hungarian peasant, I'm not gonna just eat the stuff--I think it will make a better flavor-enhancer (shechameleon has already proposed using it as a base for potato soup, and I was seeing it in a pot of beans)--but I can't be arsed to make soup tonight. Therefore, my intent:

~2 Tbsp of maybe-szalonna, diced fine
1/2 of a red pepper, sliced in strips
1/4 or a bit less of onion, sliced in strips
A potato, which happens to be rather lambently purple-red, scrubbed and sliced thin

Render the maybe-szalonna in a skillet, nice and slow. When it's good and drippin', add the potatoes, then after a few minutes, the other veg. Serve as soon as the taters are nice and brown, or whatever color they get when they start out porphyros, with a hunk Brooklyn Brewery Dark Rye bread.

I shall report results anon.

Edit for results: The veg didn't really take up the bacon flavor (or the paprika flavor), unfortunately. I am perhaps executing the rendering stage incorrectly. It's fine and all, but the units are not, in the words of one of the plaques we saw at the Saarinen exhibit today, entering into a dialogue.