Quick Update: Let’s Get It Started!

At one point in early August, I’d had two finalist interviews, one phone interview, and surgery to remove a lump from my breast, and I was just waiting to hear. On everything.

Luckily, that only lasted two days. Labwork came back totally benign, and just last week I accepted a position as a full-time academic advisor at a bigger, richer university, in a bigger (more expensive, but new salary totally workable) city.

It’s pretty much a dream job and a perfect fit—luckily, since I had turned down an offer that would have been a fun job in a very small town with a big pay cut, in order to hope for this one (and the third job hired someone else. I sent out six applications total. So I was optimistic enough to roll the dice. I actually had one more year with my current school, but it’s past time to be moving on, although I would have used it if I had to).

They need me asap, so I’m moving real fast. Scrambled ! find an apartment, cleaned out my office (see recent twitter feed) and now a week to pack my house.

New job, new town, new life!

 

Quick Update: Things Are Happening

Per usual, I have a multitude of drafts brewing in my mind, and have not intended to abandon this blog. But for those of you not on twitter, a quick update—-

This week offers me two extended final-round interviews for jobs (one of 4 candidates, and one of 2 or 3 candidates after passing phone interviews of 6 candidates, so that feels good even if I don’t get anything, and I’ve got to prepare some presentations that will be a whole new world), and a consultation with a surgeon to probably remove a lump in my breast that has substantially changed from last year (yeah, that doesn’t feel so good, but the internets say it’s a very high probability of being benign). Busy week!

Looking forward to Saturday.

 

I Was So Proud of Myself

I actually did my taxes five days early, on Wednesday. I haven’t done my taxes that early for years. Once I took them with me to a conference.

And then, last night, chatting with a friend about how she’d actually gotten paid for translation, and how I’d gotten a check for reviewing a textbook proposal—I realized, I had forgotten to report $250 of income I got for reviewing some grant applications.

Here’s the sad part. On Wednesday night, before doing my taxes, at dinner with a friend, I spent a good five minutes talking about how external academic income such as honorariums can be balanced against unreimbursed expenses.

My only hope was that I had received the check in January. Even though the grant application was due at Thanksgiving, I’d been slow about my paperwork.

Checked my bank history.

deposited 12/21.

ARGH.

 

My Eye Medicine Has a Rewards Program?

So I have dry eye. When you hold your eyes open without blinking, your tears are supposed to take about 10-15 seconds to evaporate. Mine take 2.

The eye doctor says she’d like to see 7 seconds for me to be able to safely wear contacts without risking infections, etc, although she hasn’t told me to stop wearing contacts (which I wear as-needed for exercise, glassblowing, going out, not full-time). With a previous course of medicine, I got up to about 6-7 seconds two summers ago, but have since fallen back.

So I’m going back on Googleproofed Medication, which is eye drops twice a day for at least six months, which is supposed to convince your eyes to make more tears. It’s expensive—$130/month. In addition, it comes in 60 little vials for a month, each of which holds about 8 drops of medicine, but you are only supposed to use 1 drop in each eye and then throw the rest away, because “there’s no preservative”. (My eye doctor explicitly said I could use a vial twice.)

So now they have this rewards program—$25 off each prescription, your 7th prescription free, a gift card after the 4th prescription.

Now, I have a good job, with good insurance. But we just changed insurance providers, or that is, we shifted from a big company to a management company that will run a self-insurance program. And I was all pissed, because the previous company just allowed the medication, but the new company made me try some over-the-counter remedy first for two weeks, and then go back to the doctor for a check-up, to prove the expensive medication was needed.

But the old company assessed a $50 co-pay, and the new company only demands a $15 co-pay. Which the rewards program covered for me. Maybe I should believe “there’s no preservative” and use a vial only once.

The financial infrastructure of health insurance in this country is all screwed up.

 

Life’s Little Luxuries…What Are Yours?

Things under, say $25, that just make life easier or happier or better:

• cozy comfy slippers
• spare phone chargers in car, house, office
• quality supportive hiking socks (especially worn under dress conference boots)
• ear tips to fix Apple’s terrible headphones (I just got these and not having to push on my headphones every 5 minutes on the way to school is awesome)
• decorative switchplates (these make me happy every time I turn on a light)

Got any recommendations?

 

We Have a Very Small Tree This Year

Merry Christmas! Or Season’s Greetings, Happy Holidays, or Enjoy-the-Forced-Holiday-Day-When-Nothing-Is-Open-and-No-One-Is-Likely-to-Ask-You-to-Do-Anything-So-You-Can-Be-Self-Indulgent-Without-Guilt Day!

Normally we are all about the tree brushing the ceiling, but this year we are low-key. This living tree is about two feet high.

I made gift bags and fabric bows, though, that I am quite happy with.

 

Procrastination

My tweet was kidding; I did not procrastinate on reading the New Yorker article on procrastination (which is dated 11 October so you probably already saw it, I just clicked on it now while procrastinating on reading Susan Orlean on social networking):

A two-stage experiment provides a classic illustration: In the first stage, people are offered the choice between a hundred dollars today or a hundred and ten dollars tomorrow; in the second stage, they choose between a hundred dollars a month from now or a hundred and ten dollars a month and a day from now. In substance, the two choices are identical: wait an extra day, get an extra ten bucks.

No, that’s not identical. In the first option, you are waiting twice as long as you would otherwise; in the second option, you are waiting an extra 3% as long. 3% is a marginal tax to pay in return for $10; $10 is not much to give up to cut your waiting time in half, or by even more than half. This sounds like a book written by economists; surely they know something about how money and time interrelate.

(I translate everything into percentages and sales. 10% is not much of a discount, but 25%? that’s a good sale, makes me consider buying something. 50% is a “buy-it-now” or “stock up” discount. Helps me figure out what’s worth being upset about.)

In other words, hyperbolic discounters are able to make the rational choice when they’re thinking about the future, but, as the present gets closer, short-term considerations overwhelm their long-term goals.

I don’t know. Taking the relative value of time into account sounds pretty rational to me, but I’m a procrastinator.

(And if it was a choice between getting $100 right then and sending in a form or having to make a trip or cash a check to get the $110 a month later—fuck, $10 ain’t worth paperwork or errands and I know that’s a rational choice.)

 

“Recipe Writers, Comment Your Code”

Okay, I’ve mostly worked out my immediate angst about cooking (though I’m not entirely done yet), thank you all for listening and commenting. My current method of trying to become a better cook by just cooking is clearly not moving me forward at all. I’m going for look for local cooking classes, make more use of the Joy of Cooking that’s been on my shelf for 10 years, and maybe invest in a better rice cooker.

By the way—it’s not like I’ve been eating cookout since I left the dorms in 1997. But trying to cook healthy food basically is forcing me to redo everything (since I had a tendency to live on cheese toast. Yum, cheese toast). So I think I will also order the Engine2Diet book, which I read at my sister’s a while back and didn’t object to, and spend more time with it. The desire for health is what scares me off the “my first kitchen” books—I’ll have to check those first.

But here’s a great rant from an software engineer about cooking, who provided my post title. Basically similar to mine, but I think funnier.

Can I still make this recipe? What is the purpose of this ingredient? Why is it in the recipe? Is it critical to the process? Can I do without it? What are the possible substitutes that I could use?

And I think it highlights why I get so angry. When I write assignment handouts for students, I at least apologize for the equivalent of requiring cups of something that is sold by weight in ounces. I mean, yeah, sometimes that’s unavoidable, but I try not to leave them hanging out flapping in the wind. I know that I have a lot of detailed knowledge and certain instincts that I don’t expect them to have. I try to describe and prioritize the necessary function and explain why the form I suggest supports the function, at least in class or feedback if not in the handout. So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect recipe writers to do the same, or to feel let down when they don’t.

 

A Few of You Are Not Getting My Point About Cooking

It’s not about the time. Two hours from leaving for the grocery store to getting two quiches in the oven, on a Saturday afternoon, is perfectly fine. I wasn’t hungry, I wasn’t in a hurry, I was happy to spend the time.

It’s not about the quiche. Quiche IS easy, and forgiving. The grating and mixing and cooking of Saturday’s quiche was perfectly smooth, didn’t even spill it getting it in the oven. I actually made quiche myself, twice, two summers ago, without having a mental breakdown, and even produced something I was willing to serve to my neighbor. You know the difference? I didn’t try to follow a recipe. I said, I’ve helped my sister make quiche, I called her to ask roughly how much half-and-half goes with how much eggs, and I winged it. I didn’t prebake the frozen crust, because I’d never heard of that. I didn’t worry about why onion quiche calls for 6 cups of onions but Bittman’s instructions on substituting other greens say use no more than 2 cups but doesn’t spinach cook down almost as much as onions and maybe I should use more spinach than 2 cups and do I measure that 2 cups tightly or loosely packed because the pesto recipe specified but the quiche instructions don’t say? I just sauteed all the spinach I had and threw it in.

Why didn’t I just do that again? Because it was edible, but not actually very tasty. I don’t have the skills to diagnose it, so I thought maybe listening to the experts would produce better results.

This is why I’m blaming cookbooks. “If you can follow instructions, you can cook.” Fuck that bullshit. They pretend recipes are all you need, but recipes are written for people who already cook.
The other point some of you are not getting is about human nature. Fool me twice, shame on me. What did I learn from Saturday? I did not learn how to make a better quiche. I did not move any closer to the holy grail of mastering six-to-ten simple recipes or making cooking a habit. Instead, I exerted a ton of mental energy for something unhealthy and unsatisfying to consume. In terms of health, time, money, and energy, I would have been FAR better off ordering Thai from down the street. So I learned that cooking is not worth it. Now how do I unlearn that lesson?

 

Why Sewing Is Easier Than Cooking

Considering trying to make quiche practically sent me into a mental breakdown, how in the world is it that I can deal with sewing, which everyone agrees is frustrating and where I am equally as ignorant?

A few things:

The first try in sewing is done in cheap fabric to identify potential problems, not in an attempt to get something edible that night (sometimes under the pressure of hunger). Unsuccessful projects can be recycled, or at least added to the scrap bag for eventual re-use, not just tossed in the trash or choked down.

Sewing takes longer, yes—but at the end I have something that will last, that I can use more than once. And I’m happier to repeat a skirt/dress pattern in three different fabrics than to eat varieties of quiche for three solid weeks.

After cooking, I have something that is edible, but I know would have tasted better if I had gone out to a restaurant and ordered it. Sewing only since February, I’ve managed to produce about 10 skirts and 1 dress that don’t fit me any worse than the clothes I buy, and are in colors and fabrics that I picked because I really liked them.

It’s much easier to move between sewing and my computer than cooking and my computer, since I don’t have to be washing hands or moving into another room. So both research and taking notes for next time are quicker and less annoying and less of an interruption to the process.

Sewing instructions take less for granted than cookbooks. There is a LOT less decision-making required, at least at the novice level. Patterns are very specific about the things you need and what you should do, including how much fabric you need at 45″ wide and how much if the fabric is 60″ wide (as opposed to basil being sold in ounces but measured in cups, and so forth). There’s none of this assumption that you know what difference it makes to throw in a quarter-cup of dill or basil or thyme—I learned the difference between a regular zipper and an invisible zipper by April, and that’s about the main choice I need to make.

Sewing turns out right. Yeah, it seems weird and crazy along the way, just like cooking, but when it’s done, I see how it works. It’s not as complicated. I see where I need to add a dart to fine-tune the fit on the next one or lengthen the skirt. When I finish cooking, I’m left with “this tastes bland, but I have no clue which spices or herbs it needs to improve.” Or I don’t like the texture, but don’t know which ingredient will change it.

If I can’t figure it out, I can take it to my weekly sewing studio to ask for advice. I can’t describe tastes over the phone to my mother or sister.

Learning to fit clothes teaches me to accept my body, to know it better, to conquer its flaws. Trying to eat healthy—um, doesn’t. Just doesn’t. At all.

Cookbooks say “this is easier than you think!” and they lie. Sewists say “yes, this is tricky, but you can do it!” and they are right.

Sewists remember their own frustration in learning something for the first time, and try to pre-empt it in tutorials. The catchphrase is “ask me how I know” (that doing X will fail. Because they tried it, and it failed). They say things like “okay, this is going to look really weird, but trust me, it works.” Cookbooks do not. I am very reluctant to cook something unfamiliar, when I don’t know how it’s supposed to turn out. I can look in my closet to see how some things are supposed to turn out.

(It’s possible that I am just reading the right sewists online, and not the right cookbooks or cooking blogs. The one sewing book I bought, Sew What! Skirts, I did occasionally find frustrating in the same way as cookbooks. There’s a sense of betrayed trust in my quiche post, and that’s a situation I tend to overreact to—for one reason or another, I don’t feel like I encounter it as much in sewing.)

Because sewing is not an expected skill, every functional achievement deserves pride, even if it didn’t come out exactly the way I wanted. Cooking always provokes a sense of trailing behind, desperately trying to catch up to where a 34-year-old woman ought to be.

 

Why I Don’t Cook

So, What Would Phoebe Do had a post a bit back in which she basically argued that cooking can be a hell of a lot of work, and those people promising fast and easy simple recipes need to stop lying to people:

because food and health writers whose topic of choice is home cooking do this for a living, their entire concept of how much cooking interferes with the life of someone whose life doesn’t revolve around cooking is warped, warped, warped.

I enthusiastically agreed, because I have this argument with my sister all the time. If you do not cook regularly, cooking is a big-ass hassle, and it is enough of a hassle that it makes it very difficult to develop the habit of cooking regularly.

However, Phoebe missed a few items on her list.

I decided to make quiche, because it’s really handy to have some real food around that requires nothing more a microwave to create a meal. I have eaten quiche, so I know what it’s supposed to taste like. I have made quiche, so I know it’s not that hard to get edible and that 6 eggs and 2 cups of milk requires TWO pie shells even though none of the recipes tell you this. I don’t need to spend 30 minutes trying to decide which quiche recipe on the internet I should follow, because I have How to Cook Everything on my phone and I am going to just trust Mark Bittman.

So I am happy and optimistic about the quiche plan, even though I don’t cook. I am going to use ingredients from my trip to the farmer’s market this morning to make pesto for pesto quiche, even, because I love pesto.

In the Grocery Store:

• wonder exactly how 4 oz of basil correlates to 2 tightly packed cups and maybe I should just spend $10 on two packages of organic basil but that seems fucking ridiculous.
• peer at labels and price per oz to try to figure which of the 25 fucking brands of imported extra virgin olive oil I should buy
• wish pathetically for a grocery store that only offered each item in a single brand.
• read labels on pie crusts looking for whole grain ingredients.
• stare hopelessly at the eggs, wondering what’s the difference between free range and cage-free and access to outdoors and does omega-3 mean they put some kind of injection into the eggs or what?
• since I am at the grocery, decide to buy brown rice. Google to figure out whether brown rice is healthy or I have to go all the way to the $9/lb wild rice. Ponder whether I am more likely to enjoy long grain brown rice, short grain brown rice, short grain brown rice (pearled), or sweet brown rice. Wish I could call my mother and ask her but she’s traveling this weekend. Note that this is a high-stakes decision, because if I have to add “overcome the memory of the nasty-ass food I cooked last time” to the beginning of any intent to cook, it’s not gonna be good.

At Home

• change clothes and put on apron because I am a messy cook.
• start to prebake the pie crust per the recipe, worry that I have no aluminum foil, wonder what the fuck a pie weight is, think that maybe prebaking the pie crust is only if you actually made the pie crust, curse Mark Bittman.
• call my mother on the cell to settle the prebaking issue.
• scale back plans to make pesto-cheese quiche and spinach quiche in favor of getting a goddamn cheese quiche in the oven asap.
• resist urge to cry, say fuck it, and order pizza. Turn up music instead.
• skip the recommended fresh basil because I don’t know whether to include the stems and am pissed about how the fuck I’m supposed to only wash a 1/4 cup of basil when it’s on a fucking stem still.
• guess I needed the fucking pie weights. Tamp down the blown up pie shells, hope they are browned enough, since I can’t really tell with the whole grain spelt flour.
• wonder what “beat until well-blended” means when I have 2 cups of grated aged cheese that is not going to blend without some sort of machine getting involved. Decide it can’t really matter because how you can screw up cheese and eggs and milk, but curse Mark Bittman anyway.
• feel smug about having the necessary two pie crusts ready.
• put the quiche in the oven. Realize I just exerted all that mental energy on making something completely unhealthy.

Maybe the thought of the basil rotting will convince me to cook again soon, but maybe not.

ETA, from my comment, because I think this sums the heart of my issues: I went from happy to fucking furious, as little annoyances accumulated from 5pm to 7pm. What food is worth that?

 

Here’s a Good Halloween Costume Idea

A few years back, I bought some light blue sheets, wrapped them around myself, pinned on a sun and some clouds cut out of felt, and when people asked what I was, said “partly sunny with a chance of rain” and spritzed them.

It was a big hit. And very quick, easy and inexpensive to put together.

You can have that idea for free—I got it from a friend, and of course I can’t use it again in this town. I passed the costume itself to a friend in a different town.

Okay, now give me one.

Help.

 

Notable Quotations

I have the knowledge to teach Shakespeare. I don’t have the wisdom to teach Basic Comp.

—Fretful Porpentine at Quills

 

Classes I’m Thinking of Taking

I’m not decided enough to put them in my calendar or actually sign up quite yet, but I don’t want to do all the work of re-reading the schedules all over again, only to realize I’ve missed something I wanted.

And, for the person who thinks, “oh, that sounds fun. I wish I could do that,” you can. Find room for creativity the same way you find the time and money for exercise—making things nourishes your soul.

My general guideline for classes is that I’m happy to pay about $10/hour to learn something from a skilled artisan (about twice the cost of a movie), but I’ve been paying $10/hour for a long time (since grad school in 1998? wait, really? what happened to inflation?), so it’s probably time to up that. Glass is the most expensive, and that comes in at no more than $15/hour, materials included. Yes, I’m taking advantage of some taxpayer subsidies before I leave this town.

(I don’t like to be mean, but I can’t help laughing to see that the city offers, for one hour at $7: “CD Burning on Your Computer: Learn how to save photos, music, and essential files onto blank CDs (two provided with class).” “Intro to Twitter” is two hours and $10. But they also have a lot of adaptive recreation classes for adults with disabilities, which is very cool.)

• silk painting teaser, 29 Sept. I love painted silk scarves, but I’m a crap artist. Hmm.
• fused glass magnets, 30 Sept. I’m not really that into fusing, but I do love magnets. Although I’m pretty oversupplied. Should skip.
• weaving, from 11 Oct. Unfortunately on Monday nights, conflicts with hula.
• glassblowing: ornaments, 11 Oct or 16 Nov. DEFINITELY. Sad I have to wait until November because of hula.
• soaps, lotion, and lip balms, from 20 Oct. Wait, I don’t even buy that stuff. Why would I want to make it? Getting carried away.
• photographing fall colors, from 20 Oct. DEFINITELY. A classroom session, then a trip where presumably you get hands-on advice in the field, then show&tell in the classroom. I’ve been looking for a class that would help me set up better pictures and adjust on the fly (as opposed to “how to use your digital camera”) for forever, and I almost missed it because I misremembered my teaching schedule.
• glassblowing: paperweights, 22 Oct. I did last spring, but enjoyed, could get better, paperweights are functional gifts and acceptable clutter.
• finishes for sewn knit tops, 28 Oct. DEFINITELY. My favorite type of sewing class—here’s a bunch of skills to practice and we’ll talk about some ways you might apply them.
• supervised glassblowing, from 2 Nov. Would be good, but I need to think about what I want to make. I won’t yet have learned to do ornaments, which leaves me with a repertoire of paperweights, useless misshapen flowers, and totally unsymmetrical cups. But the class is smaller and I’d get more focused time (two evenings) to get better, against the one-evening paperweights class. That would be three straight Tuesdays of glassblowing.
• purse organizer, 9 Nov. Really don’t need a purse organizer but these are made out of plastic pet screen, and learning how to sew that could be handy. Re-examine the demo next time I’m in the fabric shop.
• wire and glass pendant, 18 Nov. Not sure about having the metalworking skills for that. Beginning metalworking conflicts with hula, although metal jewelry/wirework would probably be a more long-lasting skill than glassblowing, which I really don’t have a knack for.

Still pending: class schedule from the other sewing shop.

 

Brief PS re Psuedonymity

I’ve been using fake names since I started getting catcalled by men on the street (when was that? My only memory with a clear date attached: telling some man on the bus that I was eleven when I had turned twelve a month before. Note: by this point, I was familiar enough with the whole situation that I knew a minor lie was a good idea).

So why would it ever cross my mind to put my real name on the web?

(And re catcalling, check out this interesting post about a video game based on it)

Direct followup to this post, one in a series.