Yes We Can.

Last night I took a break from not-working and obsessively refreshing CNN.com and took my computer downstairs (I was at Josh's) to sit on the basement steps and watch this one more time:


I watched it, and it made me tear up a little - yes we can, yes we can, we must, we will. And then I came back upstairs and found Josh's roommates watching McCain give his concession speech. I teared up several times during Obama's speech. Today is a good day. We won an election, and we're winning back this country.

I've been supporting Obama for four years, ever since he spoke at the DNC in 2004, but I never really believed we were going to pull this off. Up until the last minute I felt sure young voters wouldn't turn out or the GOP would pull some dirty trick. But we won. We won.

I'm so proud.

A visit from the Second Philosopher (Part II)

Wow, I got all caught up in the drama of my Big Decision back there and completely forgot the rest of my story. By the way, since I have no internet at home, I'm in a Christian coffeehouse that's having a Reggae Night, and there are some fratboys a few feet away from me talking about abortion and how Obama is never going to be president, Americans are going to come to their senses any second now, so to counteract all that I have Steve Earle coming out of my headphones really loud. (No lectures please.)

Anyway, Penelope Maddy and I discussed my future and so that's all taken care of, I'm probably moving to New York. Then she gave her talk, which was really good. Since I'd read the paper it was based on and I'm knee-deep in her new book, I was able to follow the whole thing, which made me super happy. I'd prepared a few questions beforehand and when it came time for the q-and-a I raised my hand, but before I was called on a visiting professor (a super big shot guy) asked my question! And then before I was able to recover one of the other grad students asked my backup question!! I was so upset and couldn't think of a third question, so I didn't get to ask anything. Major drag.

After the talk we went to the fanciest restaurant in Bloomington, Tallent, for dinner. I was especially glad to have had a chance to talk to Maddy one-on-one beforehand, because the dinner was attended by some of the biggest personalities in the department and it was hard to get a word in. I had roasted beet salad with goat cheese and rabbit served on a bed of something absolutely delicious. The thing about this restaurant is that the menu basically lists each ingredient in the dish, and they're all things I've never heard of: walleye, bagna cauda, harissa, ham praline. (What do you suppose ham praline is?)

I had an espresso after dinner (which wasn't very nice and had no crema (as Jeffery Steingarten says, espresso without crema is not espresso) because in addition to being Penelope Maddy Day, yesterday was also Halloween and I had festivities to attend. (I'd been so focused on Maddy's visit I'd honestly forgotten about Halloween and kept being surprised to see people dressed in kilts and John McCain masks - a costume that made my beau rather annoyed.) I went home, put on my pretty new shoes and a dress, and went with Joshua to a square dance at the home of one of the members of the Fatted Calf String Band. We only stayed for one dance, which was not very good - basically all I got to do was be swung, which made me really dizzy, especially since Josh always likes to throw in a twirl after we promenade, for flair and because on this occasion I was wearing a twirly skirt. After that we went to Susan's for a little bit of her party - I brought gingerbread made with Laurie Colwin's recipe, which was a big hit as usual. It was not really as much party as I would have liked but it had been a very long day.

Today was Free Soup Day at the Farmers' Market, which is awesome - restaurants give free samples and recipes of their soups featuring local ingredients. We went pretty late and most places were out, but I got to taste three soups, which is not bad, and I got a recipe for a butternut squash soup that I might try.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to volunteer for Obama, which hopefully I'll actually do. There were tons of volunteers out today, which is good. Home stretch!

By the way, today I was looking at some of my old Action Girl comics and thought to myself: "Wonder what Sarah Dyer is up to these days?" Turns out she's cooking, crafting, raising a kid, and writing a very enjoyable (to me) blog.

A visit from the Second Philosopher

Yesterday was Penelope Maddy's colloquium talk, which I'd been looking forward to for ages because I find her work very interesting (though I don't think I'll ever be a Second Philosopher myself), but also because she teaches at UC Irvine, where I'm planning to apply. I signed up to attend the dinner afterwards, but Josh had the good idea of asking her to have coffee, as well, and happily she agreed.

Maddy and I had met before when she gave the logic lecture my senior year at Smith, and she read some of my undergrad thesis and said very nice things about it. She's incredibly smart and really generous - reading the thesis of a total stranger is a mighty generous move, as is giving advice and time to someone with no claims on her at all. Maddy and I sat in the IMU Starbucks and discussed my future, and she had a lot of good things to say.

For one thing, she pointed out that grad school doesn't last all that long (she called it 'a blip'), so it's okay if the location is less than ideal. How long until I have my PhD - maybe five, six years at the outside. I can endure a little discomfort for five or six years if I have to.

She also disagreed with Joan, who said that I might make enemies if I apply to CUNY and then turn them down a second time. Maddy doesn't think I should worry about this, but she also thinks that CUNY is where I need to be. Apply to CUNY and Irvine, she suggested, and if I get into Irvine they'll fly me out to visit and if I love it I can go, but really I ought to be in New York. And in my heart I know she's probably right.

It's been suggested that I really just want to go to New York and CUNY isn't really the right place for me. This is backwards; CUNY is one of the best places in the world for what I want to do, and the thought of living in New York fills me with dread. But people have done much harder things than spend five years in New York on a shoestring. So now I am devoting a few minutes a day to positive visualization: I'm picturing myself running around Central Park, studying in the library, wandering through grocery stores in Chinatown, riding the subway. I'm thinking about how close I'll be to my family, and maybe Andrea will be in New York next year, and I'm sure TMBG will have the occasional free concert.

I'm looking at apartments. I'm thinking about budgets and jobs. I can do this.

(If they'll let me.)

Pumpkin carving and Quaker Meeting

Over the summer Josh and I gave a small dinner party for our friend Scott and his girlfriend Patty, who had just moved to Bloomington. They'd been saying for awhile that they'd love to have us over once they got a bit more settled, and then last night we finally got to go over to their place for a pumpkin carving party. Their house is gorgeous - I'm so envious of anyone who can make a space look homey. Patty's approach seems to involve a lot of textiles - they had fabric draped over their coffee table, quilts hanging on the walls, and blankets everywhere. Size also seems to help - they have a very large lamp and a huge comfy chair, which sort of fills the space. Also plants. I'll never be able to do that sort of thing myself. (Patty also decants everything into glass, like Holly Sturgis - their kitchen is full of Bell jars containing rice and lentils of various sorts and so on. I'm so envious!)

We had a very nice time carving pumpkins, chatting, and drinking hot cider. Socializing in couples always makes me feel so grown-up somehow, and Scott is one of my favorite colleagues (technically he's in HPS, like Josh, but his office is in our building and I always think of him as a philosopher) and Patty is very sweet and down-to-earth.

This morning I rode my bike three miles over hill and dale to the Bloomington Friends Meeting, which was very pleasant. I used to go to Quaker meeting regularly in Northampton, but the meetinghouse here is prohibitively far away; three miles isn't that far, I realize, but it's so hilly! I am afraid it's probably too much effort to go every week. This meeting has the children sit for the first 15 minutes, which is nice in theory, but these Quakers appear to be very much of the reproducing variety - for those 15 minutes a good 10% of the room seemed to be under 5. The traditional Quaker silent contemplation is, I find, not aided by half a dozen piping toddler voices. It's also hard for me to concentrate on anything when there are babies in my line of sight; all I can think about is babiesbabiesbabies. But then the babies were taken away and we had more the usual sort of thing, although even then these were the chattiest Quakers I've ever seen. Not five minutes went by without someone standing up and sharing. I am very pro-sharing in meeting, as a rule, but what with one thing and another I was unable to really get into a proper spiritual groove. Maybe next time.

Cozy

Sitting in my well-lit kitchen, working at the small, round table with the brown and yellow vintage tablecloth I got at a garage sale, reading The Foundations of Arithmetic and waiting for my oatmeal bread, which is making the apartment smell warmly of baking and molasses, to come out of the oven. When it does, I will have a slice with gingered butternut squash soup and a cup of Earl Grey. I am wearing my soft new beige sweater and brown corduroy pants. Outside my window, the sky is pink and purple over my neighbors' rooftops. This is a good way to spend an October evening.

Before they make me run

Woke up at 5:15 yesterday and went to Indianapolis to run the half marathon. I'd been training for three months using Hal Higdon's training plan, so even though I had only ever run ten miles before, I was fairly confident that I could at least finish. My father suggested this plan, and I have great faith in structure; I truly believe that following instructions leads to success. And in this case it did.

The course was very pretty: the leaves are changing and we ran through some very posh neighborhoods full of McCain/Palin lawn signs and an agreeable park with a big blue lake. It was fairly flat, which was awesome because, having trained in hilly Bloomington, I was able to power up what few hills there were and pass a lot of people. In fact I spent most of the race passing people, which was fun - I started off in the 10 minute mile group and ended up running 8:44 miles, so the first four miles in particular were spent just passing everyone. Around six miles I started to worry that I had gone too quickly. I wasn't wearing a watch and, much to my dismay, there were no pacers at the mile markers, so I really had no clue how fast I was going. Once I hit seven miles everything was smooth sailing, and I spent the last mile and a half or so just letting it all out. I had an excellent iPod playlist - I crossed the finish line to "Reach for the Stars" by S-Club 7, which was fun - but for the most part I was so much in the zone I barely noticed anything. Except the pain in my knees and ankles, a little bit.

It's kind of sad, but Josh, who had driven me to Indy, didn't see me cross the finish line. Partially this was because I was merely a blur, but partially it was because neither of us expected me to come in under two hours. At 1:57, when I finished, he was still looking for a spot to watch from. (1:57, I might add, was merely my clock time; my official time, which started when I crossed the start, rather than when the gun went off, was 1:54). I was pretty tired and stiff afterwards, but after an afternoon of watching Scrubs, napping, and reading Frege, I was in good enough shape to attend my colleague Andrew's cowboy-themed hootenanny. It was a good party: the Werewolf was there, fresh from his new job at Ohio State, and as much of a sad sack as ever, and there was a small bonfire and some friendly, highly allergenic dogs, and some decent beer.

Today I woke up shortly before ten, then slept from about eleven to 3:30. I am honestly pretty appalled by this but I suppose a case could be made that I needed it. My next athletic goal will be to run a full marathon, which I suppose I'll start training for after I find out where I'm living next year. Part of this training will include another half marathon, and I'll be moving up to Higdon's intermediate training plan. I'd really like to try to get down to 8 minute miles - can the runners in the audience indicate whether this is possible?

Weekend

A pleasant weekend, largely spent in nesting-mode, which I enjoy although I sometimes miss the hard-partying days of yore. On Friday we went to see two guys in my department play at a Christian coffeehouse. They were doing selections from Phil's concept album based on The Great Divorce. Like so many things, it was much more religious than I would have liked, and although Phil is unquestionably talented I resented being made to think about hell on a Friday night. Cufflinks was more enthusiastic than I was; he compared the music favorably to Jars of Clay. This is my life now apparently - spending time with people who think "This sounds like Jars of Clay" is a compliment.

After the set we came back to my place and watched Goodbye, Lenin, which I'd been wanting to see for a long time. It was quite good, although I think it says a lot about Germany that they consider it a comedy. Of course, science has shown that Germans find everything funny, so perhaps that explains it.

To the market on Saturday where I purchased apples and a pumpkin (don't yet have any plans for it, though), and where I snapped these gentlemen engrossed in conversation:

On Sunday I ran ten miles, which was actually pretty okay although it was very hot (I cleverly decided to go out at 1, so it was the heat of the day and the sun was in my eyes half the time) and I had counted on the Rail Trail having water fountains, which it did not. I had long wanted to go there, but it's miles away. This of course made it perfect for yesterday's purposes. Now I'm in taper mode and on Saturday I will run the half marathon! I am pretty excited although I don't relish having to wake up at 5 to drive to Indy.

Today I don't have class so I'm baking bread and this afternoon I'm serving at the Community Kitchen. My apartment smells like sourdough rye. I'd better go check the timer.

More thoughts on protesting

Just got back from a 9-mile run. As my runs have gotten longer, I've had to face the fact that I live in a pretty small town, and it's hard to map a route that's long enough without running into a highway or a twisty-turny confusing suburb-place. I tend to get lost a lot. So for today, instead of trying to find a 9-mile loop, I just did my old faithful 4.5 mile loop twice. I was afraid this would be discouraging - it was not so long ago that 4.5 miles seemed pretty long to me, and to get to the end and have to start over sounded awful - but it was not. Though my legs hurt a lot now and around the halfway point I got a serious stitch in my side, I felt pretty good and finished strong.

The annoying thing was that on this loop I pass the Catholic church where I sometimes attend, and today they were having a big anti-abortion protest. CLA posted recently on an anti-gay protest at her school, and when I read her post, I was pretty quick to condemn the school's Pride organization for turning what sounded like a small, harmless demonstration into a big confrontational scene. No one profits from this, I argue, because no one is ever going to change anyone else's mind.

But these protestors, who were just standing quietly and holding signs that said "ABORTION KILLS CHILDREN" (no bloody graphics, though, for which I was grateful), really got under my skin. I spent the next seven miles rehashing every argument, retracing my steps. I do this quite often - I would say I do a good thorough think-through on the abortion issue at least once or twice a week. I read about it online. I (very rarely) discuss it with people I know. It's important to me not to become set in my ways on this topic - I don't want to be pro-choice out of dogma or habit. I want to stay freshly convinced.

I had a frustrating conversation with Krista the other day. She remarked that even though she was personally pro-life, she didn't think that abortion should be illegal, but that it should be an individual decision. I tried to explain that this was the very definition of pro-choice, but I'm not sure she was convinced. It was frustrating, because it seemed like she had pretty much the same instincts I do, but she's swallowed some party line and absorbed a lot of misinformation on the mainstream pro-choice position, and so she allies herself with the anti-choicers.

Anyway, now I'm thinking - what's the point of protesting? It's really not a forum in which meaningful debate or exchanges of information can flourish. Is it basically a collective version of a bumper sticker? I used to protest the war in high school, and it seemed like a good thing to do, but what was the point? What were we hoping to achieve?

In a way, of course, the protesters outside my church today did achieve something - they made me go back through all my arguments and see if they still hold up. And they do. I found it almost irresistably tempting not to shout out: "Banning abortion kills women!" but I refrained. There is almost never any point to rudeness. Still, this event has unsettled me, and I'm still feeling that there's little point in trying to meaningfully exchange ideas with anyone, because people tend to be so stuck in their ways that by the time they're in high school they're sold on their whole life philosophy.

Recipe: Savory Squash Bread Pudding

One of the many nice things about Smith was that, unlike some colleges you hear about, we really had pretty excellent food and it was served in a pleasant, homey environment. One of my favorite Smith desserts was the coconut bread pudding. Whenever we had it, I'd take a big paper cupful back to my room for later and end up chirring it all within the hour. It was good.

Since then, I've had one or two other delicious bread pudding experiences - Susan brought a pumpkin bread pudding with cream cheese sauce to a dinner party I hosted and Amity had a really good bread pudding with bourbon sauce at her St. Patrick's day bash - but until Thursday I had never tasted a savory bread pudding. My excellent new cookbook "Simply in Season," written by Mennonites and given to me by my Aunt Grace, contains a recipe for savory squash bread pudding, which struck me as an admirable use for the butternut squash I got at the Farmers' Market last week.

The only trouble with this dish is that it's hard to reheat without a microwave. Steaming it for a few minutes seems to work okay - it keeps it fairly moist. However, if you have a microwave you won't have this problem. It also makes the house smell really nice.

Peel and cut into 1/2 inch pieces:
3 cups butternut squash.
Bake at 400 degrees until tender, about 12 minutes. Remove from oven and reduce temperature to 350. (If you are so inclined, it might be a good idea to puree the squash. I did not do this because I didn't feel like dirtying the food processor. It's certainly fine to leave it in chunks, but it might be neat to have it more integrated into the custard.)

In a frying pan, saute:
1 cup onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
with a bit of olive oil until tender. Remove from heat.

Whisk together:
3 large eggs
2 large egg whites
2 cups milk
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
salt
pepper
nutmeg or other spice (I used garam masala, which worked well)
Stir in squash, onion, and garlic.

Pour this mixture over:
9 cups day old bread (I used French bread from Wal-Mart because not even I am going to bake a whole loaf of bread just for bread pudding. Sourdough might also be good.)
Stir gently to combine and let stand 10 minutes.

Sprinkle on top:
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese.
Bake at 350 degrees until custard is set and top is lightly browned, 45 minutes. Serves 4-6.

This would be a nice dish for an autumnal dinner party if you are not inviting anyone with a phobia of plant-based foods or soggy bread. A spinach salad or some bitter greens like kale or broccoli rabe would help to mitigate the heavy breadiness of it all. A fruit or bittersweet chocolate dessert - nothing too heavy and nothing cakey - would make an admirable conclusion to the meal.

The need to sneeze

Systems can be constructed. But what is once standing must remain, or else the whole system must be dismantled in order that a new one may be constructed. Science only comes to fruition in a system. We shall never be able to do without systems. Only through a system can we achieve complete clarity and order. No science is in such command of its subject matter as mathematics and can work it up into such a perspicuous form; but perhaps also no science can be so enveloped in obscurity as mathematics, if it fails to construct a system.
-Gottlob Frege, "Logic in Mathematics"

The man loves his systems. You know, I respect that.

Finally met with Joan yesterday about transferring, a meeting I'd been dreading for months and months. Unlike the Badger, who seemed dismayed to think I might leave and who wanted to think of ways to keep me, Joan seemed highly unsurprised and indifferent. Her reaction was basically, "You really aren't doing amazingly well here, so maybe you should go." This of course I already knew, and if I were doing amazingly well here I'd be much less inclined to leave. The bad thing is that my lack of amazingness means that Joan can't write me much of a recommendation. The pressure is on for me to do something spectacular in this Frege class. As if that hadn't already been my main priority. Joan was not terribly positive about my chances of getting in anywhere but CUNY. She says maybe it won't be so bad, and maybe even if it is it will be worth it in the long run.

I am sick. I've missed several running days and I feel a constant desperate desire to sneeze. Last night for dinner I had ready-made soup from a box, frozen garlic bread, and Jello Cook and Serve vanilla pudding. I just had the exact same thing for lunch today. Now I am so full of preservatives I will never biodegrade.

Stolen Persimmons

The other day I was running and I noticed a smashed persimmon on the sidewalk in my neighborhood, which lo and behold had fallen from a persimmon tree on my neighbor's (unfenced) lawn. There were, in fact, many persimmons on the ground, and I didn't take them but I did take note. Today there were persimmons at the farmers' market, but I couldn't quite justify buying them. There were, after all, FREE persimmons just a few blocks from my apartment. They were FREE, of course, only in the sense that they were small enough to carry and not nailed down, but still, the combination of two persimmon recipes in my Mennonite cookbook and perfectly good persimmons rotting away on my neighbor's lawn rankled, and this afternoon, stymied by my Frege paper, I went over there and took them. After all, the Mennonites say that "Giving someone a persimmon pudding is giving them a gift of love." Surely there could be no wrong in saving these persimmons from the sin of waste. I barely even had to step off the sidewalk! And, since I didn't end up with quite enough pulp to make the pudding in question, I'm probably going to go back tomorrow. Possibly in the dead of night.

But this experience, combined with my making apple butter last week (out of legitimately purchased, not stolen fruit), makes me really want a food mill. A food mill, it seems, can simultaneously mash and strain things. After forty five minutes trying to force persimmons through a fine mesh sieve with a soup spoon, I'm thinking a food mill is just what's needed. Apple butter is so easy (apart from that detail), so cheap, so universally beloved, and so low in sugar compared to other home jamming projects, that I see no reason not to make it every year forever, so a food mill might be a good investment. Or birthday gift.

Last night I went to Amity's for a debate party that turned out to be just me, Amity and her beau and her roommate, and one other HPS student. Cufflinks is in Indianapolis for a wedding (those X-ians sure are marryalish - a word Spellcheck has just approved, though Google does not) so I was able to let loose at during the debates with my liberal commentary. This made me feel excitingly daring - I should have thrown in a few "G.D."s for good measure. The debate itself was less exciting than I would have liked, though I think our guy did a pretty good job and it's nice to see McCain sticking to his strategy of misrepresenting and distorting Obama's record and positions instead of talking about his own. Amity has invited me over for the VP debate as well, which ought to be exciting. Especially if they get Tina Fey to be Palin again.

Weekend

The beginning of the fall semester is a pretty great time. Everyone's around, but no one's too busy yet, so there's a lot of time to just sort of enjoy things. On Friday afternoon I met a bunch of colleagues for beers at Bear's, which turned into pizza, after which I rode my bike over to Cufflinks' for a poker game. We had a decent table - seven people - and the game took hours and hours. I kept going all in, hoping I'd get out so I could go to sleep, but each time I tried it I ended up winning the hand. Even though I didn't get any really good cards all night - I think I had a straight at one point but that's it - I actually won! It was my second time winning at poker, which makes me really happy.

On Saturday Cufflinks and I went to the Farmers' Market, which is beginning to herald the fall with pumpkins, apples, and red peppers. I bought five pounds of Jonathan apples and when I got home I made apple butter from the Fannie Farmer cookbook. There's not much that's nicer than apple butter, and now I have seven jars all ready to be eaten on oatmeal pancakes and given away as gifts. I only have two jars left and I'm so tempted to buy more - there are all kinds of other exciting things I'd like to try making, like tomato marmalade and pumpkin butter - but at some point I guess enough is enough. It's such a fun activity though!

Last night Cufflinks and his roommates and I all had pizza and watched the Muppet Movie, which I actually haven't seen in years. Thom's girlfriend is visiting and she'd never seen it, which is astonishing. She didn't even recognize any of the characters. Being in the presence of someone who has never experienced the Muppets is a strange experience.

Today I have to run 8 miles, and then tonight Thom and his girlfriend are making dinner for everyone, which should be fun. I have a bunch of reading to do today but I don't feel too pressed. Plenty of time for a leisurely breakfast and coffee. I love this time of year.

You'll say Yes'm and you'll like it.

This is my first semester as an A.I. (what at most schools is called a TA) and it should have started off great. I really like the professor I'm assisting, and the course is Thinking and Reasoning, which for the first three weeks or so is just propositional logic, which I could do in my sleep. I lead two sections a week, grade quizzes and homeworks, and hold office hours to which no one ever shows up. No problem, right?

The trouble is that my students don't seem to know how to behave in a college classroom. I have people talking when I'm talking and even talking during quizzes. What's worse, I have one student who's been making what seem like inappropriate comments - pointing out chalk on my skirt, using "I buy you coffee because I think you're good looking :)" as a solution to homework - and bringing it up several times in class. It was clear last week that at least one of the other students was put off by this guy's attitude towards me.

I told some of my professors, who were sympathetic and had some good suggestions. There was a common thread, however - Jonathan said not to wear high heels. Sandy said to wear pants and a jacket. Joan said she'd never teach without shoulder pads. If you want respect, they seemed to be telling me, you're gonna have to butch it up.

On Thursday, Jonathan was out of town, so my co-AI and I had to lead the lecture - 80 students. I had nightmares the night before, and the day of the lecture I wore pants, sneakers, and a jacket with shoulder pads - small ones. And that day my students hit a new low.

I was whistled at. In lecture.

I didn't know what to do; I was struck dumb. I gave the class a cold look and started blushing. I was burning up in my stupid jacket but I couldn't move to take it off.

J stepped in and told the class that there would be none of that, that no one deserves to be treated that way, and that if such behavior persisted he would have to take disciplinary measures. I was so grateful to him and from then on the class was all right, but I was terrified about my sections today. Now they'd seen that

1. They could get to me
2. I needed someone else - a male - to step in and defend me. I hadn't done it myself.
   

Since the butch thing hadn't worked, today I showed up for section in high heels and a lacy blouse. I did, however, have a plan to keelhaul all mutineers. If Problem Guy (or anyone else) gave me guff, I'd ask to speak to him after class. He'd come up to my desk, where I'd be sorting through the quizzes. I'd look up and say, "My job is to teach you. Your job is to listen respectfully. If you don't do your job, neither I nor your classmates will be able to do ours. So get it together."* If he'd played dumb, I would have given him a withering look and said, "Don't do that."

But nothing happened! My sections went off like a dream. I was brusque but not bitchy, and they acted like civilized humans. I didn't even have to give my speech.

I don't know if my problems are over. But for today, I am feeling so much better about things.

*Does my speech remind you of something? Perhaps Father's speech in Bedtime for Frances? Me too. Oh, well.

Election

Grandma A. observed recently that there has been very little on any of our family's blogs regarding the election. In my case, this is because the subject makes me frothingly angry. I am hoping to run the half marathon next week wearing an Obama t-shirt, partially because I imagine it will inspire onlookers to call out, "Yes you can!" I'm also probably going to go ring bells and talk to morons swing voters with my friend Susan's beau. (How could anyone possibly not know whom they're voting for? Don't these people watch TV?) In the meantime, I find this very cheering:

Magic Beans

Living with others is, unsurprisingly, quite difficult at times. Most of my vexations living with K come from the fact that I am a total control freak - I would really rather do absolutely everything myself than run the risk that things will not be done My Way. Last year, this meant that I did all the cooking, since I didn't want to eat nondelicious things, and all of the grocery shopping, since I was doing all the cooking. I also washed most of the dishes, because if things were left in the sink I'd have to wash them before I could use the sink.

This year I decided we should try to figure out some more equitable arrangement, but already I am regretting it. K did the grocery shopping one week and came back with brownie mix, Value butter (one step below store brand, it comes in a one pound block instead of nice measured 1/4 pound sticks), and some shriveled yellow apples. "These were really cheap," she said. "They're not very good, but I like 'em okay, so I'll eat them if you don't want to." Gee. Thanks.

I recognize that we're grad students and therefore need to pinch the occasional penny. But how is one to use butter that doesn't come in demarcated sticks? What is the point of spending any money at all on bad apples?

The only thing I have seen K cook for herself all semester has been frozen corn. I think she puts cumin on it. Need I say more?

Gentle Reader:

The other day I found myself in the section of the public library containing all the books on etiquette, and, because I am fond of that sort of thing, I took one out - Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, by Judith Martin. Later that day, Joshua came over to watch some Twin Peaks (we watched the final episode last night and oh, my goodness, it was terrifying!) but he picked up the book and was immediately hooked. We spent the entire evening reading about correct forms of address, formal dinner parties, and thank you notes.

The correct fur to wear when one is in mourning is sable. It is considered vulgar to so much as dip one finger in your finger bowl, which is brought in on the dessert plate. Footmen are generally addressed by their first names. This book is wonderful!

The next day, Joshua went and got a copy of Miss Manners' Guide for the Turn-of-the-Millennium from the library, and we spent some of last night and several hours this afternoon reading side by side, occasionally laughing out loud or sharing a particularly interesting fact or witty remark (I love it when she's mean to her readers). Today was also the day I noticed that all this reading had begun to alter the way we're talking to each other, which is kind of hilarious. I was left on such tenterhooks by the last episode last night and now I really want to watch Fire Walk With Me, but it is by no means certain that we will be able to tear ourselves away from our reading.

I wish it were easier to find appropriate gloves these days.

Progress

Today I told the Badger that I'm thinking of transferring. I'd been dreading this, since I don't relish telling my professors that I think I can do better, but it kind of slipped out - he was giving me a ride home after our German group, and he asked me (apropos of an offhand comment I'd made earlier) whether I ever considered leaving the program. I said yes.

The Badger told me that he believes very strongly in academic freedom, which means that if I want to leave, he will support me and help me. He also said that if I don't get into any other programs and have to stay at IU, he will still work with me and help me in any way he can, and he won't think less of me or think that he's only my second choice. This meant a great deal to me.

However, he also made it clear that he does not want me to leave, and the one condition he put on his helping me is that at some point, when I'm ready, I must tell him exactly why. Even if it means naming names. (Thankfully there are no names to name - that is not the problem. It did, however, give me pause.)

He also indicated that he will take steps to keep me here - he wants to talk to Joan about how this might be accomplished, though he promised to wait until I've spoken with her. He also suggested that I might be loaned out to CUNY on a trial basis, to see whether I like it. If he can somehow help me arrange that it might be a very good idea. After all, I can't move around indefinitely, and I can't keep CUNY forever on hold. If I transfer there, I strongly feel it must be forever. So if I can test the waters first - see if I can live in New York, if I can see myself working with Priest - that would make the decision a lot easier.

I've been so lucky to have such good mentors throughout my academic career. Even as early as middle school I had smart grownups looking out for me and helping me, and I am profoundly grateful for that. I am especially grateful that Jay, my college adviser, is still willing to help me now that I am no longer his student, and that the Badger is willing to help me even though it may mean that I won't be anymore.

And Promenade!

I just got finished making pesto from farmers' market basil and garlic, co-op pine nuts, Kroger olive oil and Wal-Mart Parmesan cheese. The cheese may not have come pre-grated from a jar, but it's not the best I've ever had and it makes me think about the futility of combining good ingredients with less-good ones. It seems wasteful. Like mixing $40 French gin with Rose's lime juice (I'm thinking the only drink that would properly make use of fancy gin is a martini - otherwise you may as well drink Seagram's. But I may be wrong.) I also feel bad about using the food processor instead of chopping by hand or using a mortar and pestle like it says to here, but what're you going to do.

The pesto is for tomorrow, when Cufflinks and I are having our friend Scott and his girlfriend over for dinner. Once again, Cufflinks' annoying food issues mean that I can't have everything exactly the way I want it - once again he wants to have mashed potatoes, even though it's in the 80's. I am excited about the wine I got, though - they were having a tasting in the store and it was really good. I like having dinner parties and I like these people, so I am excited. It's really tempting to make the dessert now, but instead I'm writing this and then working on my Frege paper.

On Friday I went with some philosophers and cog sci folks to the drive-in to see Batman. My colleague Matt and his wife and 3 month old baby were there, so a lot of the pre-movie conversation was pretty baby-centric. Babies are so engrossing. Apparently babies can read now - isn't that distressing? Why would you need your baby to be able to read? Can't we just leave the pre-verbal children alone to do their drooly thing for a bit before starting in with the academic pressure? (My colleague's baby can't read, for the record, and they have no plans to start him any time soon. He is therefore doomed.)

Last night Cufflinks and I went to a square dance hosted by the old-time band we see every week at the Runcible Spoon. It was a ton of fun - we danced every dance (well, Cufflinks did - I sat one out) and by the end we were totally experts. Practically every hipsterbilly in town was there including a bunch of little kids with far-out names like Meridian running around on the dance floor. We didn't know anybody there (Josh knows the band only slightly) but that doesn't matter much at a dance.

Quick Linkage

A very moving essay on late-term abortion, the Achilles heel of the reproductive rights movement, from a woman who learned that her child would not be able to survive outside the womb, decided to terminate, and eventually got infected when the fetus died. Stories like these, from actual women who have lived the experiences the rest of us feel free to opine about, should be required reading.

On a similar note, I have already contacted my representative about this proposal, which could severely limit low-income women's access to contraception. You should, too.

Nausea

It's been a week since I started my new medicine, and I have been nauseous almost the entire time. I haven't enjoyed eating anything or wanted to eat anything in seven days, a depressing situation. I'm sure the medicine wouldn't make me quite so ill if I took it on a full stomach, but I can't bear to put anything in my stomach since each day I'm still queasy from the previous day's dose.

What this means is that if there is anything I can stand to put in my mouth, I think I'm entitled to do so, even if that means subsisting on pancakes for days at a time. This morning, in a fit of optimism, I went to the farmers' market and bought peaches, tomatoes, and rhubarb, and when I got home I baked two gorgeous golden loaves of whole wheat bread. When they cool a bit I am going to make every effort to have a tomato sandwich.

When I got back from my trip to Buffalo, I found that my apartment had been invaded by fruit flies. This is enraging since my apartment is sprayed for pests every month. If I am going to be subjected to constant doses of poison which will lodge in my fatty tissues and deform my children, I had darn well better get a pristine, bug-free apartment out of the deal. But they are damnably resilient. I got some fly strips, but the only kind they had at the store are meant to hang, which means that I keep getting my bangs stuck in them. I also can't open any of my cabinets, since the fly paper hangs from precariously hung chopsticks and corkscrews. Very annoying.

This weekend is a conference on philosophy and robots, which it seems unlikely I will attend, but Susan has invited me to join her at the party afterwards so I guess I'm doing that. I strongly hope no one asks me about any of the talks; if they do I will say I was busy translating Schiller all day. If I put in half an hour or so that ought to be enough to make it true. In a way I'm eager for the semester to start because I am awfully unmotivated these days.

Poker and Plans of Escape

On Wednesday Josh organized a just-for-fun poker night with some of his colleagues. He plays for money once a week with these fellows, but I had never played before and he wanted me to learn how, so an exception was made. It was mostly HPS students, but Kari and the Werewolf came along as well. Kari just watched, but the Werewolf cleaned up - he was really really good. I was not very good, but I won a couple of hands and at least I wasn't the first one out. It's really quite fun, and I'm hoping to get another chance to play sometime.

I've also been sort of pre-training to run the Indianapolis half marathon in October. I had planned to run the half in Bloomington, but it was moved to the spring. It had been my plan to run my first marathon in Australia when I started studying there, but a recent email from my college adviser reveals that all of the logicians at Melbourne are leaving or have already left, and their department is being merged with Anthropology. I was thrown completely for a loop by this information, as it had been my plan to study in Melbourne. I've since rallied, however, and am currently considering a transfer to one of the following schools:

1. University of California at Irvine
2. Colombia
3. Pittsburgh
4. St. Andrews
5. City University of New York

I had been thinking about New Zealand, as well, but at the moment it looks like just these five, and I'm not sure about CUNY. As some of you may recall, I had pretty good reasons for turning them down the first time - mainly, that they could only offer me $20,ooo a year, which is not a lot to live on in New York. (Not to mention that this time around they would most likely offer no more than $18,000.) That's why I'm thinking Colombia might be worth another shot - I'd be in New York, where my logician idol is headed, but I imagine Colombia could offer me a better grant - if they let me in. So that's my new plan, and it'll all be swell if I can just get up the nerve to ask Joan and the Badger for recommendations.

This is such a terrifying prospect, and I spend a lot of time these days mentally composing speeches to explain how it's not IU, it's me, and I owe it to myself to find a better fit if I possibly can. And maybe I can't. The above list contains two schools that rejected me the first time, and it's unusual for graduate students to transfer, so it might be even less likely now. Nevertheless, I am going to try. I know I can be a better scholar than I will be if I stay here.

Sour Cherry Jam

Today was Strawberry Jam Day, something I'd been looking forward to for weeks. I had finally gotten over my disappointment at not finding any rhubarb, but when I got to the farmers' market I found two stalks, the only ones left, and snapped them up instantly before making my usual recon round. If I had waited, I would have seen that strawberries are SO last season, and there wasn't a one to be found in the whole market. Strawberries are out. Pinstripes sour cherries are in.

I don't know what I'm going to do with the rhubarb.

I bought three pints of sour cherries and spent a good part of the morning pitting them with a paper clip, a trick from the Joy of Cooking. My mum told me that if I follow the directions on the pectin box EXACTLY I will get a proper set, so I used the Sure-Jell recipe, which I think is too sweet, based on the drops that spilled on the counter as I was filling the jars.

The second worst moment came after I'd filled the jars and they were cooling on the counter. I heard one little POP, then another - I was sure the lids were popping because I didn't seal them properly, but then later when I pressed them, they actually had sealed.

The worst moment, however, was just a few minutes ago when I realized I hadn't wiped the jars before putting the lids on. This means they're going to be full of poison bacteria. This is, needless to say, deeply irritating. I guess I'll just keep my beautiful ruby-red jars in a dry place and hope for the best? My mum said they might get moldy, but if so I'll be able to see it, so it should be all right.

Right?

When will this feeling go away?

I test quickly and I'm good at tearing band-aids off in one quick motion, so in college I was usually among the first to go home at the end of the year. My senior year, however, I had to stick around an extra week or so for festivities, culminating, of course, in graduation. I remember watching all my undergrad housemates, pals, and acquaintances trickle off one by one, and knowing I'd never see most of them again. I think I watched a lot of Due South during that period, and felt vaguely numb.

I remember the end of my first semester in China, too, when almost everybody was getting ready to go back to America, back to their families and their own comfortable culture. I kept thinking that I was going home, too, but in fact I had many more Chinese adventures still to come. I remember the day Lili, my best friend in China, went home, and lying on my bed watching Jeeves and Wooster and wishing I were anywhere but Beijing.

I don't mind Krista's absence at all, quite the contrary. As much as I like her, and as easy as she is to live with, it's nice to have the place to myself. I check for murderers in her room and behind the shower curtain when I get home each day, and apart from that I'm good. Plus Cufflinks is here a lot, and when he's not, he's just a text message away. But this morning he left for Alabama and now I am truly alone, just waiting, once again, to see my family.

So far in my aloneness I have gone for a run in the rain, gone to the library for comic books (Brian K. Vaughan is so my new favorite), read the comic books in Soma with a cafe au lait, and made spoon bread. It's thundering, as always, and I'm listening to the Katie Rose Mix. Later I will watch Back to the Future, and tomorrow I will make strawberry jam (NOT strawberry rhubarb jam, grumble grumble). I just have to stave off the loneliness for a few days. I can do that.

(I've disabled comments on this post so that no one will tell me to call my colleagues.)

Alas

There is no rhubarb available anywhere in Bloomington. I am disproportionally saddened by this.

CafPops: Surprisingly Undelicious in Practice

It's hot, and pretty much all I feel like eating these days are Popsicles, to the extent that I am seriously considering eating my wontons and frozen red beans and rice in their current frozen form. Yesterday I went to Target and got some Popsicle molds and some nice-looking pomegranate-blueberry juice, and then went home and set about making CafPops, as described in the film Coffee and Cigarettes. They're just milky coffee in Popsicle form, and although I had two of them today (one more and I can make some Popsicles with juice!) they are strikingly non-delicious, which I guess shouldn't have surprised me.

Last night we went bowling with a few of my colleagues, which was fun although I am a terrible bowler and did embarrassingly badly. Afterwards I made some of these pancakes, which are so good, and watched Twin Peaks. I have been making pancakes from scratch quite often and I think I may actually buy some proper buttermilk instead of just souring milk with vinegar as I've been doing.

Tomorrow begins my last week of German and I'm awfully glad; I started working on my Fulbright application today and it's clear that I need to be doing more, even though I'm hot and tired and don't feel like doing anything at all.

Midwesty!

I'm sitting here in my swelteringly hot, roast-chicken-smelling apartment, willing myself to refrain from eating all the skin off of the chicken before Cufflinks gets here. ("When I said I was trying the recipe that promises the best skin, I meant 'best' in the sense of, uh, 'healthiest'! Because there isn't any!") I'm having a glass of the Clois du Bois Cabernet Sauvignon, which is good, but I wish I'd gone for their delicious Reisling instead because it is hot and sticky and a glass of cold white wine would be nicer than a chambre red.

So there's that.

Today I went to the gym - it's my weight-training day - and as soon as I got there the tornado siren went off, so we were herded into the women's locker room in the basement. It was very warm and it threw me off my precisely-timed schedule, but it gave me a few minutes to read the book I'm teaching from next semester, A Beginner's Guide to the Scientific Method. I'm assisting for Jonathan, the professor with whom I went to Memphis back in February, which is an extremely pleasing result - Jonathan is young, he's smart, he's approachable, and he is really into food and comic books. Added to that he is going to put a lot of emphasis on helping me and JH, my fellow assistant, become better teachers. This sort of hands-on mentorship is just what I need for my first semester in the trenches, and I have very high hopes for the experience.

Today we had our German reading group at the Badger's beautiful house, and it's amazing how different the tone of the group is when Luke is there; last week he couldn't make it and I felt I had done a great job translating, mainly because I had prepared more text than either Mike or Matt. But today Luke challenged me on my translation of almost every sentence. This is fine, as it helps me learn, and next week I will prepare even more rigorously so as to meet with his approval. I have the least German experience of anyone in the group, but I think I'm holding my own.

Peak-Season

Have you seen this? It is cool! It claims that asparagus, collards, peas, spinach, and strawberries are all currently in season here in the Hoosier state, although the only strawberries I've seen at the farmers' market so far were $6 a carton. I'm sorry, I cannot afford to pay six dollars for strawberries at the market when I can get them for a dollar at Walmart (If I were truly ethical I would forgo strawberries altogether rather than buy them from Walmart, but that's not happening) or $2.50 at Kroger.

I'd been hoping to try my hand at preserving this summer, since I love jam so much, and I'd thought of maybe making strawberry-rhubarb preserves, since those are nifty, but when you think of how much the fruit reduces, it's clear that such a project would bankrupt me. I think instead I'll wait until July, when peaches are in season. You can make peach jam, right? I'm not sure I've ever *seen* it, but I don't see why it wouldn't work; store-bought pectin heals all wounds, right?

This entry's kind of dull, but relatives keep complaining about the dry spell

I am. So tired. I woke up this morning to the sound of someone knocking on my door, which was odd - I padded sleepily to the door in my boxers and Wolverine t-shirt and called out, "Who is it?" There was no answer but I opened the door anyway to find my building maintenance guy, here to change the filter in my furnace or something. It's kind of embarrassing to be caught sleeping until 9 by someone who has no doubt been up and working productively for hours, but what can you do.

I've been going to the gym a lot, which is good, but if there's anything duller than spending two and a half hours a week on the elliptical machine I have yet to hear of it. I know I ought to be running outside, but the elliptical gives me data, which is nice, and it's located in the same room as the weights, which is convenient. Today I worked out with free weights for the first time, following the instructions on one of the posters with the hair band bass players with brightly-colored musculature. I can bench press 20 pounds 30 times, which is deeply unimpressive but I'm afraid to do more because if I go to failure my arms will give out and I'll hit myself in the face.

Today was my weekly serving shift at the soup kitchen. Because people's assistance checks run out, we're always really busy at the end of the month - last week I think we served 187 trays. Not quite so many this week but still a very decent turnout, and not much downtime. Sometimes it's slow enough to grab a bite to eat (last week we had an AMAZING fruit salad with fresh berries and pineapple) but today there was a steady stream of patrons. I love absolutely every part of this job, from pouring coffee to mopping, but it certainly takes it out of me. The three-mile walk doesn't help, either.

My German class is still achingly dull, though yesterday we had an amusing reading passage about bears - all about how the baby bears are suckled, and then the Mama Bear (this is what it said) teaches them to fish, swim, climb, and pick berries, all the while keeping a lookout for the male bear, who would kill the Bährbabys if given the opportunity. (Is the German word for baby bear not the cutest thing ever? And how I love that irregular plural!)

Yesterday I had my German reading group, which met at the Badger's house out in the 'burbs. It is completely lovely, his house, filled with books and a big piano and an attractive tapestry. He had laid out a variety of German beers for us as well, and urged me to taste a horrid smoky one.

So that's what I've been up to. It's not much, but it's keeping me pretty busy - I don't know when I'll have time to draw the comic J.H. recently commissioned; hopefully tomorrow.

Meme: Michael Pollan's 12 Commandments

I recently read Michael Pollan's book The Botany of Desire, which was really good - I learned a great deal about apples, tulips, weed, and potatoes. I'm looking forward to reading his other books as well.

Michael Pollan gets a lot of press from Serious Eats, a food blog I read regularly. Today there was a link to Pollan's 12 Commandments. I have to say, some of them are pretty tough for me.

1. "Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." Grandma, you read this blog - what sorts of things do you think this means? Blue yogurt from a squeeze tube? Saffron foam? Scorpions? I have eaten only the last of these, and I stand by that decision, but on the whole I expect my grandmothers would recognize what I eat as food even if they might not enjoy it.

2. "Avoid foods containing ingredients you can't pronounce." Yeah, I violate this one, in one particular way - I eat vegan margarine. I got into the habit when I was staying with my aunt and uncle in Northern California and I just like it. I know it's wrong. Feel free to shun me. I'm also not great at prononciation in general - nicoise olives are out, I'm afraid.

3. "Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot." Except for honey - the honey buried with the Pharaohs is still technically edible.

4. "Avoid food products that carry health claims." What about oatmeal? The Quaker Oats canister sings the praises of whole grains and heart disease. But in general I agree with this one - food is neither medicine nor poison.

5. "Shop the peripheries of the supermarket; stay out of the middle." The middle is where they keep peanut butter, jam, pasta, beans, and flour. I need those things.

6. "Better yet, buy food somewhere else: the farmers' market or CSA." This one I do.

7. "Pay more, eat less." Okay, so here's where it gets really tricky. Krista and I are, I am proud to say, on the USDA's Thrifty Food Plan (note: that link is to a PDF file). That means that this month I am supposed to spend $33.60 on my food. (It's based on age and sex.) This is the cheapest food plan the USDA has, and it's my goal to stay as close to it as possible.

8. "Eat a wide variety of species." I'm not sure what this means exactly but I don't think I'm doing it. There's not really all that much variety to be had out here. I did have bison the other day, on a pizza.

9. "Eat food from animals that eat grass." I don't buy beef, and chickens don't eat grass. Neither do lentils.

10. "Cook, and if you can, grow some of your own food." I do cook, but my apartment is too dark for even a windowsill basil plant. This makes me really sad.

11. "Eat meals and eat them only at tables." That I do.

12. "Eat deliberately, with other people whenever possible, and always with pleasure." This is the most important, and it can be hard - I tend to mindlessly graze, and there's never anyone to eat with, especially now that Krista's gone. But now I'm going to have a turkey burger and some baked yam fries (from a Serious Eats recipe!) and some local spinach, and I will eat it with pleasure.

Summertime

So after my very brief slacking off time (last Wednesday afternoon through this Monday, inclusive), I have begun the summer semester. I am only taking one class and, as we will not be learning how to say at any point, es ist für Babys. I really did not mean to sign up for German for Reading Knowledge, as the idea of only learning one aspect of a language strikes me as stupid and wrong. Speaking, listening, reading, writing - these are the tasks involved in learning a language. We are only learning ONE of these. What a waste of time! I don't have any burning wish to go to Germany to talk to anybody but my Tante Claudia and her family, but still. Plus it's a language-learning style that's completely alien to me. Normally when I learn a language, I memorize hundreds of vocabulary words and a few verb conjugations, then automatically pick up a sense of the grammatical structures and sentence patterns. This is what I've been doing since high school, when I learned how to learn Spanish. But all we're doing in this class is learning to recognize grammar structures and translating text. This is not how I roll. And I do not like to roll in ways other than the ways to which I am accustomed. I am not flexible that way.

On Monday I am having a dinner party. This was sort of unexpected - I had promised my beau that I'd roast him a chicken to celebrate the end of exams, and it got put off for awhile, and then he asked if we could invite this couple we sometimes socialize with, Amity and Tawrin (Amity's the one who has the splendid dinner parties) and then I suggested we make a thing of it and invite Kari and the Werewolf, too. The trouble is that my beau is the world's fussiest eater, and apart from the chicken he might not eat anything I would make. He balked at roasted potatoes, for instance, and suggested that he make mashed potatoes using his mother's recipe, instead. I feel that this is a very heavy dinner for this time of year. He also wants to make No-Bake Cookies for dessert, and I am hoping I can convince him that these are not a proper dessert for a dinner party and I will make a pie as well, or pots de creme, or something. Then he can have No-Bake Cookies and the rest of us can have something else. Feel free to chime in with suggestions!

(He also said in the invitation that there would be "drinking, maybe some smoking, maybe some games" at the party, and now I will have to tell the guests that no, there is no smoking in the apartment, please. Also that the only games we have are chess and Set - not even a deck of cards or a game of Scruples.)

Krista's mother and father and elder sister and younger brother are all here for a visit. Tomorrow they're going to go down to Chicago for the youngest sister's graduation. In the meantime I feel very out-of-place in my apartment - I've been keeping out of the way, but other people's families are so insular and take up so much space, literal and figurative. I will miss Krista over the summer but it will be exciting to have the apartment all to myself.

Upcoming plans include a Futurama marathon at someone's house tomorrow, farmer's market on Saturday, dinner party on Monday, IU's last home baseball game on Tuesday (peanuts, a flask of bourbon, and possibly necking under the bleachers - maybe I can compromise on the No-Bake Cookies), and a soup kitchen shift on Wednesday. Plus I've been to the gym every day this week! Summer is off to a good start.

Reach for the stars

On Wednesday, just as I turned the corner into the last leg of my run, SClub7's song "Reach for the Stars" came on my iPod, giving me exactly the jump-start I needed to finish my run in stride. That 99 cents is now officially worth it.

I'm now done with everything (unless Joan decides to make me redo my Tarski paper, heaven forbid) and it's clear that vacation does not suit me. It's nice not to feel like I have to be doing philosophy, but I really don't know what to do with myself. This morning I went for a run and got caught in the rain. Now it's still raining and I can't think of anything to do besides read or watch more Heroes. I mean, what are you supposed to do with leisure? I can't even go for a walk. I wish I still played with toys.

Also I want to buy ingredients to make chicken with green sauce and fish tacos (they have a lot of the same ingredients, and I picked up some tomatillos at the Asian grocery store yesterday) but a) it's raining and b) we're in need of many heavy staple items (flour, vegetable oil) and I know I won't be able to carry everything. I'd make Cufflinks drive me but he's in Missouri for his father's graduation. Krista's sister is coming to stay with us tomorrow (when did I find out about this? Oh, about ten minutes ago) and I want to cook as usual, but I really don't want to cook for three people when probably two of them won't notice what they eat. (This was a source of tension when Krista last had a guest - they ate my pasta alla puttanesca but nary a word of praise, nary a yummy sound.) It makes me feel (irrationally, I know) resentful. So I'm not sure what I'll be doing. Maybe I'll make chicken with green sauce and then make lots of leading remarks about how I don't think it's poison.

Das Baby

I like this line: ''Everyone,'' he said inaccurately, ''loves rice pudding.'' Oh the effect of a well-placed adverb!

So in addition to Runaways I have now become a fan of Heroes, which can be watched for free from Netflix. Since when were they allowed to show stuff like that on network TV, though? Goodness gracious, it's so gorey! But after the first episode, which I found a bit dull, it's been one cliffhanger after another and I just keep watching them. Also Hiro is adorable.

I had my first epic bread baking failure this weekend. I was trying to make Pilgrim's bread, a hearty multigrain bread I've made several times before, but I discovered too late that I didn't have enough flour and it died. This makes me really sad, and I felt so guilty for throwing out the horrible dough, especially with the food shortage and everything. Wasting all that flour was not cool. I know everyone has the odd kitchen disaster - Laurie Colwin has a whole chapter on disasters in Home Cooking - but it still bums me out.

I'm big on making things from scratch, but there are three convenience foods I find absolutely miraculous: Jiffy corn muffin mix, Kroger baking mix, and instant pudding. The Jiffy mix, especially, was a revelation - 47 cents, an egg, and 1/3 cup milk and you can have hot corn muffins for tea whenever you feel like it! The Kroger mix makes very presentable pancakes and biscuits (other stuff, too, like waffles, which I've never tried because I don't have a waffle iron) and instant pudding is fat free if you use skim milk, takes ten minutes start to finish, and is an excellent source of calcium! I mean, I like baked rice pudding with milk and rice and eggs (the Joy of Cooking recipe is my fave so far), but when I just want something sweet and easy, stovetop pudding from a box is the way to go.

One more paper to turn in and I'm on summer vacation! At least until Monday when I start my German class. To prepare myself, I am reading Gitta geht zum Buhne, which my mum got at a flea market in Germany (I think). Gitta has just gone to a super fancy dress store where she bought the prettiest dress. My favorite part so far is when the mother says she doesn't need a new dress because she has a perfectly good one, and one of the sisters says, "Mother, you've had that dress since I was a baby!" I like that because my favorite word in German is the word for "baby": Das Baby. That cracks me up.

Runaways

I often go on a comic book binge around exam time, and this year my obsession is with Runaways. Yes, it's Marvel. Yes, it was made after 1992. Yes, they have done the coloring on a computer so it's full of gradations. But I do not care, I love it madly, especially because after the first few issues they start in with all the references to 80's-era Marvel, which is great - they make fun of Cloak and Dagger (one of the characters calls Dagger out on her ludicrously skanky outfit, which was great) and Power Pack (Julie Power is now living in LA, apparently, trying to break into show business). Plus, it's currently being written by Joss Whedon. What's not to love?

Typecast:

Saturday night: reading "Existentialism is a Humanism" on the couch, barefoot and wearing an ancient, holey men's sweater, and drinking instant coffee.

I'd rather be watching Mystery Science Theater 3000, though.

Multifruit Povidel

K and I are both very frugal and subsist largely on bulk dried beans and legumes, but we each have our moments of indulgence where food is concerned. In K's case this is usually cheese: she'll occasionally buy a wedge of brie or this weird, chalky cheese with ginger and mango in it. Me, I'm a huge fan of nice jam. I bake all our bread of course, and to my mind, nice bread requires nice jam. So I get currant jelly or strawberry-rhubarb or blood orange preserves, or just nice, low-sugar raspberry or strawberry jams, and they make me happy.

On a recent trip to the supermarket I saw that one of the jams I'd never tried was on sale - something called Multifruit Povidel. I took it home and spread it on a warm, fresh slice of Pilgrim's Bread and it was awful - really it doesn't qualify as jam at all. Closer inspection of the label revealed that it was rose-hip flavor and also from Poland. Now, the Poles make good logicians but when it comes to food, I'll pass on the pirogies and what-have-you - that stuff is gross. The Multifruit Povidel has been on the door ever since, next to the large jar of store-brand strawberry jam we bought back when economizing on jam seemed like a good idea (that was probably September; I wonder if there's even jam in there still or just mold).

I couldn't bear to throw the Povidel away, though. That's just not the way I roll. Krista's a very good sport and generally doesn't care about food, but after awhile she started expressing a desire to get another jar of jam. But we can't do that until we finish the Povidel, and since it can't be used on bread another method must be found. Hence, Surprise Muffins.

The Surprise Muffins came from Krista's Betty Crocker cookbook - they're just plain muffins with a boop of jam in the center. You're supposed to bite into them and find that Surprise! they're full of multifruit povidel! In fact, there's an additional surprise, which is that they're not that bad, especially warm - the povidel's texture is nicer hot. I put very generous boops and used up half the jar. We're going to do this thing. There's a jar of Smucker's in the cupboard waiting for us.


(Okay I lied: my list of food luxuries is actually pretty long: I buy name-brand graham crackers, Minute Maid orange juice, Triscuits when they're on sale (the black pepper kind are soooo good), fair trade coffee and cage-free eggs. All of these are luxuries. But they're so much nicer than the store-brand versions - I especially notice this in the case of coffee. Kroger ground coffee just can't compare to fresh ground, French roast coffee.)

Baby, take my hand.

Tonight is the department's end-of-year bash at our chair's house. I remember the beginning-of-year bash at this same professor's house back in September - sitting on the porch with a bunch of people I didn't really know yet. Now I know some of them a bit better. One of them is my beau. One has shared an apartment with me for eight months. I've had drinks with them, and classes, and conversations.

I'm listening to "Don't Fear the Reaper," which I would say is the Official Song of my first year of graduate school. We listened to it around the campfire at Luke's Halloween party and my sisters and I twisted to it on Christmas night while cleaning up after the party.

A lot of the time I wish I could either up and leave this place or hit reset and try this year again, because in some ways (mainly socially) I kind of messed everything up. I made some bad decisions and I made some changes a bit too late. But neither of those is really an option (especially the latter) and anyway, the lilacs are in bloom, and it's hard to hate someplace that smells so darn good.

Yes We Can

I remember watching Obama speak at the Democratic National Convention back in 2004 and writing in my journal that I would vote for him for president some day. And now I have. It's nice when I'm right.

The Indiana primary isn't until May 6, but Obama campaign workers have been hawking this early voting thing and I figured why wait? They set up a temporary clerk's office in the Student Union and today people can go there and cast in-person absentee ballots. It crossed my mind that this would be a very clever scheme for some undercover McCain operatives - get all the Democratic college kids to cast fake ballots before they leave town for the summer, then swoop in for the kill at the actual primary. But this, I think, is fairly unlikely.

There was a long line at the polls this morning, and when I left it had grown longer still. There are also shuttles taking people to other polling places a couple of times a day, every day this week. It's really heartening to see such turnout, and it was also nice to see, as I signed out, the long list of D's on the signout sheet. The Dems are voting early in Indiana; let's hope it's enough.

I read a good piece on Obama recently in Commonweal, in which the author - I forget who it was - pointed out that speaking well is often a sign of thinking well, and that it will be much easier for McCain to dismiss Obama's rhetoric than to match it. Certain people I could name have said that Obama is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, or as Cufflinks put it, that he says nothing at all but he says it really well. Whatever. I'm rereading this speech, and I feel the same way I did back in college when Obama gave me a glimpse of my America. I don't care that it's just talk - every time I see a chalking on the sidewalk that says "Yes We Can" it puts a spring in my step. So they're just words; well, this country was built on words. We're going to take America back. This is going to be great.

Wine

In other news, I am completely incapable of opening a bottle of wine. Last time I tried (I needed a bit of red wine for Laurie Colwin's beef stew recipe, which was disappointing, but did you know they sell $3 bottles of wine nowadays? Crazy) I actually broke our good bottle opener. Tonight when I tried to open the wine for the risotto I found I simply do not know how to use a corkscrew. Krista tried to help me - one of us would hold the bottle and the other would pull - but to no avail. I eventually managed to shove the broken cork down into the bottle, allowing me to pour the wine out, with bits of cork floating in it that did little to mitigate the awesome deliciousness of my risotto. But a better solution will have to be found.

The G.D.

First, you should really go make this and eat it, as soon as possible. It is amazing like the Mets.

Second, and unrelated to food, here is an interpersonal relations question. Last night Cufflinks and I were watching Road to Brazil and I used the word "goddamn" in conversation, as I occasionally do, possibly as a result of reading a lot of Salinger in my formative years. I try not to swear in front of Cufflinks because of his extreme religiousity, but I guess I don't think of what he referred to as "the G.D." as serious swearing. I guess this is because when I was younger and was considering incorporating swears into my vocabulary, my father told me that profanity was okay, but scatological swears were not.

Cufflinks said that he wasn't okay with "the G.D." and I apologized, but it rankled a bit. On the one hand, we are supposed to say when something bothers us so we can talk it out. This is a good policy that has been serving us fairly well, considering what an odd match we are, each of us finding all of the other's values anathema and appalling. So on that count, I am glad he said it bothered him, because now I will know not to do it again.

But on the other hand, I feel that Cufflinks should not be allowed to tell me what words I can and can't use. It feels a little infantilizing. Not to mention, now I'm worried that the other Batman-and-Robin-style non-swears I use in his presence, like "Holy cats!" might also be unacceptable. I don't know how I should react to this. My inclination is to say he can't tell me what to do, but I'll voluntarily refrain from using expressions that offend him - this I realize is not a consistent position. Thoughts?

(And if you're asking yourself why I keep the guy around, here's an example: he may have gotten us an invitation to a Kentucky Derby party somewhere down South a friend's house, where the women all wear big hats and where he will wear a seersucker suit if we go. Big hats! Seersucker! Mint juleps? I don't even know! The kid's all right, is what I'm sayin'.)

No fun

The only thing worse than other people having fun when I am not is other people having REALLY LOUD fun when I am not.

Every day, every hour of the day, there are undergrads on porches, drinking beers, throwing beanbags into the beanbag-throwing boards everyone seems to have for some reason, and listening to music.

Do undergrads not have exams? I am writing a paper on Sartre and one on Tarski, plus I have another Sartre paper and an ethics paper I haven't even started yet, plus a project on word segmentation in Chinese. And I think I have a cold

One more month, and this town is mine.

A cherished dream realized

Yesterday was pretty much the perfect Sunday in April - it was in the 60s, the daffodils and crocuses were in full bloom, and Cufflinks had invited me to a picnic given by one of his colleagues, who are all very nice, and whom I mostly know at this point, which is great - I love philosophers, but it's very pleasant to meet people from our evil twin department History and Philosophy of Science.

The picnic was held in a park by the hospital. Cufflinks had brought some chicken marinated in barbecue sauce for us, which was really good, and one of his colleagues had brought vegan cupcakes and grilled asparagus for everyone, too. The best part was that Nick, an Australian, had brought a cricket bat and wicket, and after we ate he showed us how to play.

I've wanted to play cricket ever since I became a P.G. Wodehouse fan, and this was a dream come true for me even though I was unsurprisingly very bad at it. (Cufflinks, who takes baseball rather seriously, was pretty good, which was pleasing to watch.) It's actually not a terribly exciting game, at least not at the level we were playing, and not if you're in the field instead of batting. But it was cricket and it was lovely to just be outside with friendly people (and a friendly, eager to help dog) playing a game.

I can hardly wait for summer, but I'm certainly digging spring.

The Simone de Beauvoir Party

Last night Krista and I had our first official dinner party. Sure, we've had people over in the past - once for a game night and once for Krista's birthday (the time we nearly set the apartment on fire again - but this was our first proper sit-down meal with courses and stuff. I called it our Simone de Beauvoir party because we invited all the female students in our department and in the invitation I said we'd be discussing The Second Sex and braiding each others' hair, but neither of those actually happened.

I made cheese straws for people to nosh on before dinner, as those are what people always have at dinner parties in books. I made them the night before, and I actually found they were best right out of the oven, but they went over rather well. When our guests arrived (we had a total of six people, counting me and Krista) they insisted on sitting on the floor in a circle. It felt sort of like a coven meeting, especially with Susan decked out head to toe in black, with big witchcrafty boots. At one point we were discussing Quine, but the conversation about Quine got mixed up somehow with an aside about a former colleague of Kari's whom Sharon and I had met in Memphis and who apparently thought we were hot. Susan was confused by the overlapping threads of conversation and thought we were discussing who Quine thought was hot. The possibility of breaking out the Ouija board was discussed to settle Quine's opinion once and for all.

I also made my gingered carrot soup and rolls using this recipe, which were rather good even though I didn't exactly follow all the directions. Krista helped by setting the sponge yesterday morning, and when I got back from the grocery store it was all bubbly and sentient. Baking is so cool.

The main course was fettuccine with creamy red pepper sauce (Serious Eats again!) which was disappointing because the pasta stuck together, making it hard to eat. I put a little oil in the water to keep this from happening but it didn't work. Susan brought pumpkin bread pudding for dessert, which was delicious, and we went through two bottles of red wine.

I don't really know much about wine, so when I went to the store to get some for the party I went straight for the Excelsior Cabernet I used to get in Northampton, but they didn't have it. So I asked the fellow working there to recommend a cheap white and a cheap red, and the red he suggested was this:

which I obviously had to get, given the theme of our party. It was pretty good, as far as I could tell. (We now have an unopened bottle of white wine chilling in our fridge, and it will probably be there for quite awhile as Krista and I can't drink a whole bottle of wine all by ourselves. Maybe we'll break it out to celebrate the end of the semester.)

I consider our party a total success - everyone was jolly and seemed to enjoy the spread and be suitably impressed by the from-scratchness of it all, and it was very nice to just spend time with the female portion of the philosophy department - because if there's one thing I love (in all seriousness), it's voluntary gender segregation.

After everyone left, Krista and I did the dishes and then I went and passed out in my room. Having a party really takes it out of you.

Shang huo

When I was in China (all my stories start that way), I remember once coming upon my friend Fang Ge spitting blood into the flowerbeds outside the teachers' dormitory. Alarmed, I asked him what had happened. He replied that he had eaten too much pork or bananas recently and was suffering from a touch of shang huo - an excess of internal heat. It has to do with the balance of ying and yang, I believe. I thought this was ridiculous, and my friend Xiaoxue (whose mother was a doctor) and I used to argue about it. Basically my argument boiled down to, "If there were such a thing as shang huo, we would know about it in the West." (There are, in fact, westerners who regulate their diet in terms of ying and yang, but these are people on macrobiotic diets, i.e. chumps.)

The other day, quite out of the blue and almost without precedent, I found myself craving Chinese food. I don't, on the whole, look back on most Chinese food with longing, but mostly because I got so sick of it, not because it was bad. I found myself thinking of my weekend breakfasts in Beijing: a hot glass of sweet soymilk, and a deep fried dough stick or a zongzi. On weekday mornings I would go to the dorm cafeteria for a bowl of noodles and a steamed bun filled with sweet yellow ... stuff. Anyway, today I found myself near the good international grocery store and I spent a good half hour just looking. I love this place; they've got everything from ghee to queso fresco and prawn flavored rice porridge. After much deliberation, I got some snow peas, dumpling shells (so I can make scrambled egg and tomato dumplings, my favorite), chicken and vegetable dumplings, steamed buns stuffed with red bean paste, and a mango.

I took it all home and sliced up the mango for my afternoon snack, and to my surprise I found I felt guilty about devouring it - there's not much better for you than mango, but I felt like I was eating cream cheese frosting with a spoon. I guess I must have internalized some of Xiaoxue's warnings. If I start breaking out or bleeding from the gums, I guess I'll owe China an apology.

Spring Break

My spring break is drawing to a close, and although I've been devoting a ridiculous amount of time to my Tarski and Sartre papers (and still it's not nearly enough), I've also managed to have some fun. Cufflinks and I took Wednesday off and went hiking in Yellowwood State Park, which was really lovely - it was a very nice day and we got a nice longish car ride through the Indiana countryside, listening to Interpol and folk. We had dinner at his place and then went to a pub for dessert, where we watched old people swing dancing to live music. Most enjoyable.

I have a very low-key weekend planned; Krista's in Chicago, so I have the apartment to myself. I'm planning to make pasta puttanesca for St Joseph's Day on Sunday - I bought anchovies and everything. Classes resume Monday and then we're in the home stretch!

Community Kitchen

Today was my first serving shift at the Community Kitchen (my past shifts have all been prep shifts). Serving is fun, and it was good to actually see the patrons, all of whom were quite polite and pleasant. A lot of them commented on my t-shirt, which says "Brooklyn Grows Great Women." I served ham and potato casserole, baked beans, salad, and pineapple.

My favorite thing about the community kitchen is the other volunteers - where else can you see heavily tattooed punks, retirees, Midwestern college kids and the cognitively disabled all working happily together towards a common goal? It's so nice!

Merely some incoherent ravings about food.

Meat! Oh, warm and savory animal tissue! Tonight I cooked meat for the first time all semester; I really shouldn't go shopping when I'm feeling out of it, because the other day I came home with a pound of reduced-price frozen turkey, ground up in a tube. I used it to make Asian Turkey Burgers, which were a very delicious vehicle for ketchup, that most delectable of sauces.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 egg white
• 2 tablespoon soy sauce
• 3/4 cup dry bread crumbs
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped onion
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 16 ounces ground turkey
  

In a bowl, combine the first seven ingredients. Crumble turkey over mixture and mix just until combined. Shape into four patties. Cook in a nonstick skillet coated with nonstick cooking spray until no longer pink.

Last week I bought some of those new pepper Triscuits and they were gone within 24 hours; K and I simply demolished them. This week they were out - pepper Triscuits are a craze sweeping the nation apparently - so I got fire roasted tomato instead, which were half-off but not quite the taste sensation of the pepper ones.

Another thing that's revolutionized my life in the kitchen lately is Jiffy cornbread mix. I always bake bread on Sundays, but we often run out, and when that happens I supplement our starch supply with biscuits - made from Kroger baking mix - or cornbread, made from scratch using the recipe in the More With Less Cookbook. Now, however, I have tried the Jiffy mix and I will never go back. It's just 37 cents a box, and all it takes is an egg and 1/3 of a cup of milk! You can have warm corn muffins for tea whenever you want! Revelation!

And oh, man, ORANGE JUICE! This is the first time we've had orange juice, all frozen and condensed - brought me back to my childhood. Good stuff! I've been getting a little crazy with the groceries lately - I bought all this name-brand stuff: Triscuits, Honeymaid Graham crackers (they're SO much better than the store-brand though), Minute Maid orange juice, Kraft cheese. I really need to cut back a bit - next week, no fancy stuff! Maybe name-brand raisins, but that's it!

On Friday I did a shift at the soup kitchen and they actually let me do stuff! I got to chop up a million eggplants (and then that night I went home and made eggplant parmesan, yum) and make salads! Eric, the guy in charge, pointed me in the direction of some bags of wilted lettuce and said he didn't like to stifle people's creativity, so just have at. There's a limit to what you can accomplish with wilted iceberg lettuce and carrot sticks, but I had fun. TWO shifts next week because I'm on Spring Break, and I'm totally looking forward to them.

Rabbits and Suffering

My department, as it turns out, has a specialty. We do religious philosophy. We're actually, as I understand it, a really good place for religious philosophy - if you're into that sort of thing you might also go to Notre Dame, but I think we're higher ranked. I have been trying since I got here to articulate exactly why I think religion and philosophy should be kept separate, and then today it hit me:

Philosophy is based on rigor. Religion is based on faith.

Don't get me wrong; if you want to do religious philosophy, I say have at. You can try to prove the existence of God or whatever and that's fine. You can even, if you insist, assume the existence of God and work from there. But it isn't good religion and it certainly isn't good philosophy.

Case in point: some people have argued against modal realism by pointing out that, if there are possible worlds that realize every possibility, then there must be a possible world consisting of nothing but rabbits and suffering. In fact, there must be infinitely many. (Don't worry about why this follows; it actually does.) Now, God would never have created infinitely many worlds consisting of just rabbits and suffering, because that's arbitrary and God is never arbitrary. Therefore modal realism cannot be true. QED.

Let's think about what's wrong with this argument: the arguer assumes

1. That there is a God
   
2. That she [the arguer] knows what God would and wouldn't do
3. That God never does anything arbitrary
4. That it even makes sense to talk about arbitrariness on this scale.
   

All of these assumptions are problematic. Passing lightly over 1, how on earth do you come by the knowledge of what God would or wouldn't do? Most likely you have read it in your notoriously over-translated and difficult to understand Book. Okay, let's assume that's legit - let's assume that the book is totally true, that your interpretation is flawless, and that either it somewhere covers this case specifically (the Bible says a lot of things, after all) or it's possible to correctly extrapolate from what it does say. I'll grant you all that. But then tell me this: what the heck is the point of philosophy? If all the answers are in your book, what are we doing? Does philosophy boil down to Biblical exegesis? Is it too late for me to apply to library school?

So 2 is problematic; what about 3? One word: Job. Moving on.

Finally, how does it make any sense at all to talk about arbitrariness on that scale? How is it any more arbitrary to create infinitely many worlds than it is to create just one? Just one? Why would God do that? See #2. But our human notion of arbitrariness can't be applied to God's actions in creating worlds. If God created as many worlds as there were people alive on Earth at 11:59 a.m. on December 14, 1974, that would be entirely God's prerogative. Does that seem random to me? Sure! But hey, God moves in mysterious ways. It's not for me to understand.

Philosophy, though - that is something I must try to understand. And that's the difference.

God's in his heaven, all's right with the world

Last night I saw They Might Be Giants at the Bluebird. The opening act was a band called Oppenheimer, who were actually quite good - I have seen many bands open for They Might Be Giants in my day, and I would say these guys were not quite up to the level of Ok Go, but certainly better than, oh, Corn Mo. (Click the link if you dare!) Oppenheimer is two guys from Belfast, one on drums and one on guitar, and they did a good, electronic power-pop-y set. They were super loud - my clothes were vibrating, my heart was beating in time. In certain moods, at certain times, I sure do love loud rock 'n' roll.

TMBG opened with a classic - "Hey Mr DJ, I Thought You Said We Had A Deal" - and afterwards, John Flansburgh remarked, "It may be a little early in the show to say this, but I think this may well be our BEST SHOW EVER." And it was pretty fantastic.

I have rarely seen John Linnell as animated or in such high spirits as last night. It was wonderful - he smiled the whole time, he told little anecdotes, he actually got out from behind the keyboard to move around on stage and DO THE ROBOT, he blew us a kiss at the end of the second encore. He did the robot, people. The man is like unto a god.

Linnell told a story of the first time they'd played in Bloomington, back in the 80's, when their manager's father attended the show and afterwards remarked, "That's how Hitler got started." This story seemed to really ring his bell.

John Flansburgh was also looking well, and I dig their current drummer - he's very animated. They played a good mix of old and new - a lot of stuff from The Else, as expected, but also classics like "I Palindrome I" and "Ana Ng." No real surprises, but no matter what, the opening bars of "New York City" will always be one of the most sublime moments life has to offer.