New Years Resolutions Fall 09

This Week, school started on my campus. The beginning of the fall semester resonates even more with me as a fresh start than January 1st.

Here are some resolutions:
1) Walk 30 min every day for 21 days
21 days because that is how long it takes to form a habit. And I need to get back into the habit of cardiovascular workouts. 21 days in a row was the ideal, although today is Day 6 and I have walked 5 days (including today). I didn't walk yesterday because my experiments lasted too long and I was sleepy in the morning from having watched CHOPPED- this awesome Food Network at Night reality TV show. It is a cooking competition where you get some odd ingredients in your basket - (Celery for dessert) and the chefs are timed with how they make their meals.
4 contestants start.
20 min and for an appetizer.
one contestant gets eliminated.
3 contestants and 30 min for an entree.
2 contestants and 30 min for a dessert.
and one winner.

This is BRILLIANT because the best part of all reality shows is the elimination, and in ONE show you get THREE Eliminations! And you get to see some creative cooking puzzles.

Back to the resolutions:
Walking 30 min because I am so out of shape that this is a good workout for me. I do go at a 7.5 to 8.0 level incline on the treadmill and as fast as I can 3.4 to 3.9 speed so I get a good workout for my current fitness level.

I think I will get myself a *prize* after 21 days of walking even if I can't get them all in a row.


2) Work Less
If all of our readers haven't already left for good- you may have noticed that I haven't been doing much of the blogging lately.
I haven't been doing much of anything other than working.
At my peak it was 70-73 hours a week AT WORK. That counts walking into my desk/bench and out- no commute, no working from home included.

Right- that is a bit much if you want to nourish ANYTHING else in your life and get sleep.
Sleep is a must for me as my brain goes to mush without it- and as it turns out- nourishing your body, and your relationship with your spouse and dogs help you to enjoy life more.
Imagine that.
So now my limit is 60 hours a week.
The only drawback to this is that I fear the amount of time I will be in graduate school. Sure it won't be forever- but it seems like it has been already.

3) Have a nice house
By house I mean apartment, and by nice I mean somewhat clean and not full of crap that I don't need.
I have started this by trying to clean up some - and by taking 2 Camry Trunk-fulls to the goodwill drop off. I need to take some more. I got rid of lots of crap that we had inherited from our families and friends. (13 piece nativity set, anyone?)
Also I got rid of any clothes that I cant imagine fitting into again (From 8th grade before puberty widened my hip bones.) And clothes that are worn out and don't look nice, or clothes that do look nice but I cannot imagine myself ever wearing.

Worn out clothes = LOTS of Natalie Dee T- shirts. I might do a post about this later on.
I had been keeping the shirts for sentimental value, and because I love the artwork- although I rode public transit and sweated alot in the shirts so there are nasty arm pit marks on them. Yes- I should not wear these.

Do goodwill people care about arm pit marks on t shirts?

So I took some digital photos of shirts that were painful for me to get rid of, and the Husband was looking through them and was very alarmed and distraught about the fact that I had taken these shirts to goodwill.

Still I think this will help my apartment be more livable and be filled with less crap.

Have you noticed that Natalie Dee has been not putting out new shirts since her baby has been born? Sure- they are probably hella busy but she used to have new shirts all the time. and now I KNOW they reprinted anxiety girl and the will knit for tattoos because I am a long term ND fan who is a ND shirt fan no longer.

Grad School or Grocery Bagger?

I didn't blog much last week because I was too busy waking up at an ungodly hour - walking to the train - taking the train downtown - and walking to school. Reverse and repeat for the way home. I thought that getting to work early would be good because I wouldn't get as sweaty on my way in. But I was wrong. Getting to work early is NOT good, (sans good.) I was overly tired all day which made me want to nap in the evening rather than walk the dogs, workout, spend time with the husband, or do any housework. Jips even said to me that early work might not be good because "the house and I need you." And it is so. Early work is not good. Eventually I bet I could get used to the hours, but then there is the problem of my obsessions. I cannot bring myself to leave work early even if I get there early. I just want to finish what I am working on, and it doesn't seem so bad to leave at the normal time, right?



Speaking of work, Mrs. Smoltz and I had dinner yesterday. She showed me that we make the same amount of money as someone who dropped out of high school and is bagging groceries at wall mart.* Damn. But then I say that we are getting paid to get an education and we will be making tons more than the wall mart bagger once we get out. And some people in grad school don't get paid. In our program, in science, they have to pay us something. Otherwise the graduation rate would be 5% rather than the 50% it is now. We have to put up with alot of shit. Maybe it is like that in every program, and maybe not.



Jips is our program's grad student president. That means he has meetings with the "popular" kids on the grad student council and he attends faculty meetings. The popular kids in grad school act like high schoolers. All they do is complain about how they don't get enough money for alcohol for their parties. Faculty meetings are full of professors complaining about email server changes and acting as obnoxious as possible. The Academic World is not the real world. Or maybe it is. What do I know?



Am I ranting? I need to do some cardio. I haven't worked out since Tuesday and I can tell. My muscles scream to me that they want to be worked.



Last week I decided I would try to eat healthier. I made some split pea soup and bought some raw spinach. I made "spinach salad" which means Spinach (80%), Greek Vinaigrette (10%), and Feta Cheese Chunks (10%). I was afraid of the split pea soup, but it isn't painful to eat, just a bit hum-drum. Finally, Frozen blueberries, Vanilla Light N Fit Dannon Yogurt, and Kashi Go Lean Crunch cereal on top. I thought it was good the first time I ate it. Now I am of the opinion that health food tastes like crap.


What did Jips get me for my birthday? Diamond Earrings. Yes. I know, he did well. They are special posts with screw on backs so that they won't fall out. Growing up I was not one of those girly-girls that was all about expensive jewelry. But the best husband in the world likes to give me pretty things. :) I bet I can adapt.

I leave you with the best political YouTube video yet.

* It is interesting that we make the same amount because Jips's maw-maw said that he could bag groceries when he decided to quit his first graduate program.

Summer of Blog

I haven't written since Tuesday.
I tend to not write when things are going shitty.

(skipping the shitty parts for now or perhaps forever)

We rented Bucket List because my mom told me it was great. I bet she loved it because she is an oncology nurse. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman were funny together, but the whole film seemed external. They go on these adventures and die, and they are supposed to change on the inside, but I guess I didn't buy the change. One truth of the film is that people need some time for themselves where they don't have to give of themselves, where they can just be.

I made a red velvet cake. This was my first experience with red velvet and probably will be my last. It is not delicious without cream cheese frosting.

Booton got married this weekend. I am waiting for A. to post photos on facebook. I got a beautiful invitation for her wedding, and I didn't even send in the reply card. Nor did I send a card and gift yet. Maybe I will get that done today.

www.oiltruth.com

Don't Let the Peak Oil Crisis Get You Down

The burney smell comes off onto my fingers as I wipe the grill down. I lit it, and now I have to wait 10 minutes for the grill to heat up. Last weekend my parents came, and my dad showed me how to cook on my apartment complex’s grill. I always considered grilling to be a masculine activity, but it is also a fire activity, and I love fire.

It is peaceful out here. I type that and smile because I have eight air conditioners running in front of me and endless cars driving on the street behind me. Still, it is peaceful. When I am not looking at them, the cars almost sound like ocean waves.

I got to talk to my dad last weekend about oil prices. Lately, one of the reasons I have been feeling depressed is that it seemed like the world was going down-hill. Maybe this is totally my perception, but in 1999 I was sixteen and I got my first job as a hostess at a pasta restaurant. It was a great time to be working because we had a lot of business. I remember quoting people 2 hour wait times and they would stay. That is because there were 2 hour wait times everywhere. Everyone was eating out and spending money. The economy was good. I could fill up at the pumps for a whopping ten dollars.

The first scary thing was 9/11, not because I was afraid of terrorists, but because I was afraid that there would be a draft. I didn’t want all of the boys I loved in high school shipped off and killed. And I loved all of the boys in high school. Not sexually loved them: just loved them in the young happy I-love-humanity sort of way.

We find out: No Draft. There is a sigh of relief in my subconscious. Still, how classist of me to not bat an eye at all of the blue collar boys being shipped off to war.

Then the American dollar becomes worth less. There are no longer 2 hour wait times at every restaurant in the city. The economy is shitty. The price of gas is up. This depresses me. My dad was a geologist for a major oil company in the eighties. My uncle retired from his job of predicting gas prices. But these men have the obsessiveness that I have. They still spend all of their time on the oil gossip: finding it, pricing it, producing it. So I asked my dad about oil now: Do we have the reserves in the ground? Will the price continue to go up forever until we run out? What about those people who think we are going to run out of oil and are starting to live on self-sufficient farms?

We have lots of oil left in the ground. The price will go up to about $300 a barrel and it will stay there for a bit, and then it will come down. The faster it gets up to $300 a barrel the faster it will come down. The high-school economic principles of supply and demand have more to do with the gas prices than the amount of oil we have in the ground.

He told me this all happened in the eighties. We were rich in the eighties because he worked for a big oil company and the price of oil was up. And they predicted that it would continue to go up and we would run out and everyone would have to live on homesteads. And look what happened: THE NINETIES are what happened. The price of oil dropped, I turned sixteen, and there were 2 hour wait times at restaurants.

But there are crazy people stockpiling food and learning how to farm now, did that happen then? He asked me if I remembered his friend Jackson P., I remembered him. He told me how Jackson P. had bought a farm in upstate New York and built a house with a wood burning stove, and sent my dad a letter saying: You are welcome to join our homestead, but we will have to meet your wife and determine if she is the type of person suitable for our cause. My mom didn’t like Jackson P. after that. This all happened in the eighties, and it is happening again.

There is something attractive to people about doomsday, about trying to survive. Why else would there be so many fundamentalists believing in the rapture and homesteaders learning how to farm? I understand the attractiveness of THE END. I used to fantasize that the world would end during the night before I had a large assignment due. It never happened. The truth is that it could happen, but the probability is sooo very low that I feel 100% safe.

Things are looking up.

the train from Kansas City

Having an entire week off from work gives you A LOT of free time. And aside from committing to a grad school in Virginia (something I hesitate to mention due to Fermi's post with a lot of grad animosity) and turing in my application for the Peace Corps, I've been delightfully lazy.

Mostly, I've watched a lot of tv. That brings me to my next topic of discussion. Does anyone actually watch A Baby Story on TLC? Maybe I'm just cold-hearted, but I don't see the appeal, and therefore don't see why What Not to Wear or Cash Cab isn't on instead. Although Cash Cab might be on Discovery. Oh well. The point is, I'm not interested in seeing childbirth. Especially not the childbirth of strangers.

Another fun thing I've done has been to cook this amazing french dish called choucroute. It is a dish from the Alsace region of France, which has played something of a geographical musical chairs with France and Germany, so there is a lot of German influence. The kind my mom and I made last night had sauerkraut, kielbasa (polish sausage), venision sausage (couldn't leave out the coon ass), ham hock, candian bacon, regular bacon, onions, butter, potatoes, apples, and white wine. To season it, I made a little sac of spices in cheesecloth with juniper berries, peppercorn, bay leaves, thyme, and caraway seeds. It was a delightful mini-dinner party. It made me miss being in France a lot.

The last thing I've been doing to excess is looking at icanhascheezburger.com. That stuff is hilarious.


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