since you been gone

A rush of food, a
Slowdown of time, where is my
Graduation?  Here!

 I guess it's been a while.  Nearly a month?  Sheesh.  Okay, since then...

Thanksgiving: I went home to see the folks and the high school dudes (Robbie and Jacob!) and to introduce all of the above to Evan.  Then we went home-home to see extended family and eat way too much and play board games.  :D

School: I picked up my honor cords from the math department for graduation.  Egad, it's almost here!  I had my last code demo for Operating Systems today-our filesystem assignment.  Good to be done!

Food: What've I made the last few weeks... well, last week I made really delicious shepherdess pie (so named because of the crazy vegan feminist chicks who wrote the recipe):

Seitan, 16 oz. Soy sauce (tamari), 1/4 cup Olive Oil, 2 tbsp Onions, raw, 1 large Garlic, 3 clove Mushrooms, fresh, 3 cup, pieces or slices Frozen mixed vegetables, 3 cups Vegetable Broth, 2 cans Flour, 1/4 cup Potato, raw, 5 lbs Milk, 1 cup Salt, some Pepper, black, some

Peel and boil the potatoes until they're soft (doing the rest of these things in the meantime).  Put the onion, seitan, soy sauce, olive oil, and garlic in a frying pan on whatever heat is required to sauté.  Sauté that stuff!  Then add the mushrooms and frozen vegetables, allowing them to heat all the way through (i.e. not be frozen).  In another pan, mix the vegetable broth and flour until they're not lumpy, and then mix that into the pan with all the other goodies.  Once the potatoes are done, mash them with the milk and some salt and some pepper.  Put the chunky stuff into the bottom of a casserole dish (when I made this, it took two 9x9 dishes) with more salt and pepper.  Then spoon the potatoes over the top and bake the whole thing at 425 for about 40 minutes.

This week, I made a recipe from my friend Carlo:

Red kidney bean curry

2/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup chopped fresh ginger
2 medium onions, finely chopped
6 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tsp salt
3 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground tumeric
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
15 oz tomato sauce
3 cans red kidney beans, undrained
3 plum tomatoes, diced
1 cup cilantro, chopped

1. Heat oil in a deep sauce pan over medium heat for one minute. Add ginger, garlic, onion, and optionally, chili, and let sizzle for one minute.
2. Add tomato sauce, salt, and remaining spices and cook for an additional five minutes, stirring frequently.
3. Add the tomatoes, and undrained kidney beans plus one additional cup of water.
4. Bring it to a boil, then reduce to medium heat and let cook uncovered for 10 minutes. Remove from heat. Garnish with cilantro. Serve over rice.

DELICIOUS.

Life: I'm figuring out still what it is that I'll do with my Spring.  I just got an interesting call today that may lead to a job, but I'm not sure about it yet, and I don't know if I should jinx it by telling all the Internets about it.  :)  I should have a clearer idea by next week.  I've also gotten really into playing Silent Hill, and Patrick has the old King's Quest games on his computer!  WOOOO, BITCHES.  I feel like there's some other stuff I want to say... what, though?  Oh, I've been banned from playing Christmas carols or hanging Christmas decorations or wearing Christmas accessories while in Llama School.  Heartbreaking, truly.  I sneak them in, though.  I ran the CS talent show over the weekend, and that was a great success!  I also gave myself another haircut, as you can see in the photos.  I'm learning how to skid on a fixed-gear bike (haha, though I am not nearly as good as that guy).  I'm starting to look into a bike for my trip (hooray, graduation present!), and enjoying watching my favourite Christmas movie: The Year Without a Santa Clause.  Love, love, love!

Life is good at Llama School, and here's to hoping that that doesn't change in the next week and a half.  A week and a half, y'all!  Oh, btw, there will be a cake reception at L-School after the ceremony, and all my devoted readers are more than welcome to attend.  :D

recipe

Tasty things, wrapped up
In a tasty wrapper, yum!
Veritable win.

I guess I forgot to post that I cooked last night, and it was a success!  :P  Here's the recipe for sweet-ass quesadillas:

1 can black beans
1 can kidney beans
2 cans corn
1 green bell pepper, sliced in nice slices
1 white onion, sliced in nice slices
1 package tempeh
12 large tortillas (I used flour, but I guess corn or wheat would work)
4+ cups "Mexican" cheese (whatever that is, but it comes in a bag)
2 jalapeños, sliced in nice slices
some tomatoes and avocado for topping

Warm up the beans and corn in a pot with the jalapeños, until they are nice and bubbly, then keep it on low heat (since it takes a while to get through all the quesadillas).  At the same time, sauté the onion and bell pepper with the tempeh.  It's probably best to add the tempeh after they're mostly cooked, since it's not really meant for sautéing, but do what you want.

To assemble a quesadilla, take a tortilla and warm it on a skillet over medium high heat on one side, then flip it over, insert some bean/corn/jalapeño stuff and some tempeh/onion/bell pepper stuff, then cover all that in cheese (make sure the cheese at least gets around the edges of the tortilla: it's useful for sealing).  Then fold the tortilla in half and cook it on each side until it's golden-brown and crispy.

Top it with the tomatoes and avocado... and yum!  :D

decisions, decisions

Tiny digital things,
Good, bad, display, art, SCIENCE,

Slipping through cells.

I have been reading a lot of cool biotech sorts of articles on my Reader recently, and some of it's been really inspiring.  Well, maybe that's not quite the right word, but anyway it might be a direction that I may consider thinking about following for a while... perhaps.  Gasp!  It's, like, approaching life-decision time!  GRADUATION IS IN A MONTH, Y'ALL.

A couple of the things that I thought were particularly awesome were the LED tattoos being developed at the University of Pennsylvania and the digital tattoo board that is actually not currently being developed, but is instead in the thinking phase.  They're sort of similar concepts, but I think it's awesome that the second one is powered by glucose in one's blood that is converted into electricity.  Sweeeeeeet.

Actually, for the interview that I had to do for the Churchill scholarship a while back, one of the questions that the board asked me related to where I think technology is going in the next few years (and, you know, how I want to "ride that wave," or whatever).  One of the things that I monologued about was how I think that people will need to come to accept it as more a part of life...and themselves.  The way that people are using technology now, it's essentially an extension of their own learning systems.  There've been a few studies on it, even.  I know my dear friend Mathieu would be a poor, lost boy without some way to outsource his knowledge and help with his tremendously bad memory (hi, Mathieu).  Why not keep that shit in-house?

I guess that means I may be spending spring semester (when I am graduated!) learning about a lot of life-science things that I've been skimping on for three and a half years.  But, I mean, the making of cool doodads is totally worth some hours with a book.

Oh, goodness, it seems to have been a long time since I posted anything on here.  I guess that means that I haven't talked about my play; we performed last weekend (to a pretty fair-sized crowd: I think around 200 people came over 4 nights) and are performing again in Indy today.  There was a pro-ish photographer dude (Robert Baxter) who came and took photos one night, and you can see them all on his Flickr page.  The photo embedded here is shamelessly taken from there.  :)

Uhhh... tonight is the opera!  Die Zauberflöte is being performed at IU, and a few of my friends/roommates are in it.  I'm purdy excited.

I guess it's time to shove off.  Thanksgiving break is next week, and I'm totally stoked.  Sean's coming home, Evan's coming to visit, I'll see Venus for the first time in months, and I get to play with my doggies.  ^_____^

Cheers, y'all.

temporary insanity

A bay and a boat
And a sunset with the boys:
Those Canadians.

Visiting Evan and Jeff and Jeff and Ben is always a killer time, and this past weekend was no different.  I flew out to SF for a couple days at the beginning of what is probably the busiest week I will have in college.  URGH.  But I had the tickets and needed a break.

Friday Jeff and Evan and Jeff's friend Adelaide (sp? She is from France) collected me from SFO for a tour of Napa and dinner at the Culinary Institute of America.  Expensive and delicious.  :D  I picked up a few bottles of wine (the dessert wines were amazing!) to bring back, but sadly they are currently camping in (other) Jeff's apartment.  Along with my camera.  :(

That night, Evan and I went to hang out with other Jeff and his girlfriend, Em.  We had delicious wine and cheese and chilled in their hot tub; Anton came over later and showed off these thingies that he has that are called Freelines.  They're super cool!  They're sort of like a Ripstik with no connector.  Anyway, he seemed to be pretty good at them, and it was neat to watch.

We also tried to see The Men Who Stare at Goats, but the showing started at midnight, and I had already been up for 23 hours and traveling and... well, Evan said it was good.

The next day I had been invited to go rock climbing with my friend Joe, but that didn't end up working out.  *sigh*  So Evan and I did some city exploring and hill climbing and met up with Ben to go out for sushi in Japan town.  We also got... bubble tea!  Woo!

After that, we were ON A BOAT.  Sailing through SF Bay for Em's birthday was quite a treat; as Barrett mentioned in his album, "much singing of the Lonely Island ensued."

I got to go clubbing in SF that night, but, alas, not at the DNA Lounge.  I'm pretty sad about that.  :(

Then it was pretty much time to go!  Eek!  So Evan and I had breakfast at a little jazz cafe (sic) in the Mission.  It was a pretty fun weekend, I gotta say; and I'm super excited for when Evan comes to visit at Thanksgivingtime.  Now back to the salt mines... with play performances 4 nights this week and two major projects due, I really shouldn't be writing this blog post at all..

>.<

getting old

November's sweet chill,
Pangs of ice that dull senses,
Frost at Llama School.

So I've decided to become one of the "hip" kids, I guess; I managed to pick up one of the bugs that seem to be floating around Bloomington.  I was running a 4 or 5 degree fever last night (although we have no thermometer, so that was just some educated guessing).  Did you know that H1N1 has sparked the College of Arts and Sciences at IU to extend their withdrawal deadline for classes?  If someone has been affected by swine flu, he simply has to petition and can get a later drop date.  Weird.

The thing about being sick is that it doesn't happen to me very often, and it's sort of cool to feel all the strange tricks it plays on one's senses.  I can feel the temperature of things, but it feels like I'm touching them through a blanket.  And I just get random tingles up and down my arms.  Also that feeling like my teeth are hollow, and every time I breathe the air flows inside of them.  Or maybe I'm just crazy and no one else feels these things.

Anyway, it was my cooking day today, so I fought off the plague and whipped up something delicious (thanks to Carlo for the recipe):

2 medium eggplants, sliced 1/4 inch thick
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp parsley
1/2 tsp rosemary
1 red onion, sliced 1/4 inch thick
Italian bread (2 loaves)
Lettuce
2 tomatoes

1. Combine salt, thyme, parsley, and rosemary into a bowl. Lightly brush eggplant slices with olive oil, and then cover in spice mixture.
2. Grill eggplant slices in hot skillet, without adding additional olive oil.
3. Grill onion slices and Italian bread in hot skillet with olive oil.
4. Spread aioli (mayonnaise, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic) on bread, then assemble sandwiches with eggplant, onion, lettuce, and tomato.

4.5oz mayonnaise
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp lemon juice
3 cloves garlic (minced)

1. Whisk all ingredients in a small bowl until combined. Use as a spread or dressing (like on the taste-tastic sandwiches above).

It was super tasty.  And I felt pretty fancy eating it.  (I think it was the rosemary).

I had a bit of a sad moment today when I was doing the crossword during operating systems: the clue was "Television program recorder."  My first thought was "VCR," but the space was 4 characters... it was definitely "TIVO."  ARGH.  THESE KIDS AND THEIR GADGETS.

trick || treat

Cackles and giggles
Intermix, seep through the dark,
On All Hallows Eve.

Happy Halloween! Well, I guess now it's Rabbit Rabbit day instead, but that's almost as good.

So at 21, I'd never been a Valkyrie for Halloween before.  I figured it was time, so I got together some sort of ridiculous looking pieces.  Grey bikini with silver studs?  Check.  Fur cape?  Check.  Fur leg warmers?  Check.  Gold gauntlets?  Check.  Oh, and the hat.  I didn't take a camera with me, and the only picture that seems to have surfaced so far of the thing is sort of silly-looking (i.e. my facial expression is sort of odd), but here you have it: me posing with Boba Fett and a mop masquerading as a spear.

My roomates kept me busy going to their shows this weekend; Patrick and Dan performed and Patrick DJed and Dan and Peri performed and Patrick performed.  It was noise-tastic.  :D

At the Mad Scientists' Ball (the CS/Info/CogSci/Psych/SLIS/Phil/Math Halloween party that I was on the committee for), there were slews of interesting costumes.  There was also another Valkyrie... she was a folklore and ethnomusicology major or something, and she wussed out and wore a flesh-coloured body sleeve under her swimsuit stuff.  I was jealous of her sword, though.  I wound up beating out Marie Antoinette and a Scotsman for sexiest costume and am now the proud owner of Saw II and Treehouse of Horror on DVD.

The Bloomington Annual Zombie Walk was this weekend, as well.  Roy and Jill came over.  We dolled ourselves up in two kinds of fake blood: corn syrup + maraschino cherry juice + Sriracha (which combination was admittedly less than successful... sticky and foul-smelling? ew) and Elmer's glue + red glitter.  We also had Twinkies, inspired by Zombieland (which you, dear reader, should certainly go see!).  Unfortunately, we were a bit late for the walk, and the police had already broken it up by the time we arrived.  *sigh*

The Twinkies came in handy, though.  One solitary group of trick-or-treaters graced Llama School's porch, and I guess they had been jaded by visiting too many college student houses.  Instead of "Trick or treat!", we were simply asked, "Is there any candy here?"  Little bastards.  :)  We gave them Twinkies, though.

I also went to see a Haunted House that a friend of a friend had set up in his basement.  It was actually not bad, and I had a lot of fun.  Sadly, that activity represented a failure to go see Paranormal Activity, which made it tragic in any case, but at least it was sort of enjoyable.

Anyway, the Llamas had a good night of mischief.  Chas was Gumby, Sam a caped clown, and Dan and Peri were Ponyo and Sosuke.  Adorable!  Patrick decided to be the grown-up and not go in costume, but I think he had fun, anyway.  I guess maybe I'll be sensible and boring someday, too.  (Just kidding, Patrick.)

Also, I really like this image that someone shared with me this morning.  XD

possum couch

Raindrops stripping leaves,
Beautiful melancholy,
World of cold puddles.

Rain settled on Bloomington today, after a gorgeous weekend.  I wound up going back to the railroad trestle on Sunday with Chet when he got home, and we brought a proper camera this time.  Some of the photos we got are sweet.


Then fall turned wet today, and with a vengeance.  It's sort of gorgeous to look at, though; all the leaves are a sort of uniform yellow now, and people are wandering around with a vague look of helplessness as the drop date looms and midterms conclude.

There was a sweet adventure at our house this weekend, which I unfortunately missed most of.  Patrick discovered that there was a possum living in the couch on our porch, and was evidently impassioned enough take up our snow shovel, brandish it at the creature, and shout, "I DRINK ON THAT COUCH!"

The possum's name is Kevin.

(p.s. there are a lot more photos here)