Pages

Saturday, September 26, 2009

A Farmer's Market Saturday

So today I went to the Bloomington Farmer's Market and it was lovely. The weather was beautiful, which was especially great since its been raining off and on all week. There were quirky performances, like some kind of folk dancing and high school kids posing as living statues. Anyway, we bought honey, smoked cheddar cheese, apples, spinach, potatoes, rhubarb, and some pulled pork sandwiches for lunch. I got the Kansas City bbq sauce, and it was delish. We also stopped by the Lotus Festival's free stage and heard some music and saw some free-spirited dancing. We also played tennis. It was a very productive day in relaxation.

Anyway, the farmer's market inspired me to, at long last, make pie! It is currently in the oven and is about 5 minutes away from done:

Farmer's Market Saturday Pie: strawberries, rhubarb, brown sugar, vodka crust with lattice top

Friday, September 18, 2009

Kreider!

Tim Kreider strikes again! Another superior post on Happy Days. This time he's looking at the way we handle the vast array of life paths/choices available to us and sticking by our particular choice. Love love love this man's writing.

Favorite passage [not cause I share his perspective on the issue, but it cracks me up]:
"Most of my married friends now have children, the rewards of which appear to be exclusively intangible and, like the mysteries of some gnostic sect, incommunicable to outsiders. In fact it seems from the outside as if these people have joined a dubious cult: they claim to be much happier and more fulfilled than ever before, even though they live in conditions of appalling filth and degradation, deprived of the most basic freedoms and dignity, and owe unquestioning obedience to a capricious and demented master."

Read the whole post here.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Pie

It has been brought to my attention that there is a lack of pie-related business on this pie-themed blog of mine.

Sadly, this is related to the lack of pie in my real life. People, it's been months since I had any pie! I unfortunately lack the time right now to bake a pie since they are time-intensive, and grad school right now feels like its finals 100% of the time. I dread what finals will really be like. Never have 1 page assignments consumed so much of my energy and produced so much hair-pulling and stress.

Graduate Stress Pie: dark chocolate cream, ginger meringue, ginger-graham cracker crust.

Gumped

BIG BROTHER SPOILERS AHEAD! Ashley and Ty, you have been warned.

I heard somewhere that the word of the year/decade/something was "plutoed." As in, got demoted like Pluto got demoted from planethood.

I have a suggestion for a similar word, and though it may not be as timely as plutoed, I think it fills an important void in our language: gumped. This verb shall be used to describe someone who has inadvertently landed themselves in a fortuitous situation, as in, duh, Forrest Gump.

I can't take credit for this word, and revealing the original source of this word will embarrass me, but for you dear readers, I will soil my reputation. Here's the story: Last night was the finale of Big Brother. I had not even understood the premise of this show, which is 11 seasons old, until my housemates maliciously got me into it. I was pretending for awhile that I was only watching to be sociable since other people were watching, but last night I watched the 2 hour finale allll by myself (Tivoed down to 1hour 15 min, but still). No one else was even home. No more pretending to be above it after that.

So anyway, in the finale Jordan and Kevin competed for the power to evict the last houseguest. The competition went down to a tiebreaker, the answer to which was 51. Jordan guessed 50. Now Jordan has proven herself to be not the most mathematically inclined. Last time a similar competition arised, she guessed 224 when the answer was 90something. So after the show, I went on some message boards (I knowwwww) and someone said that Jordan had Forrest Gumped herself into the win.

So that is the story. Let's just brush over my pathetic involvement in a show I didn't want to watch in the first place.

I think the word is AWESOME. So many people must be gumping all the time but no one has had a word to describe it, so the phenomenon has gone undetected.

This post is a waste of your time, I realize. Sorry.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Retail Love: TOMS Shoes


This post is a bit delayed, as I purchased my TOMS about 3 months ago. However, when I saw that they were coming out with a new design, I just had to post about them.

TOMS have always a lot going for them:
1) You get to feel good about yourself for buying them, because in doing so, you have donated a pair of shoes to children who don't have them, and this prevents diseases like Podoconiosis and allows them to attend school. Hard to argue with this.
2) SO COMFY. These are the best walking shoes I have ever owned. It kind of feels like you are wearing slippers, and yet you still have support. They are great.
3) Fun designs! They are always coming out with new styles and they name them after anthropologists and authors so you get to feel both benevolent and intellectual while you wear them. Also you feel a little pompous. Life's a trade-off.
4) TOMS also has this young founder of the company, named Blake which makes him seem extra young and hip, who appears on AT&T ads and such and is generally seen as an innovative entrepreneur of a company with a profitable business model and a selfless mission to help the less fortunate. It's all very now.

BUT. TOMS previously only came in one style. You know what they look like (see the picture of the adorable kid). They are slip-on shoes that look kind of like Keds or Vons or something. In just about every color, fabric, etc. imaginable, but all in the exact same shape. And I have heard complaints that this shape is unideal. I have to agree, because while my TOMS look excellent with one pair of jeans (the aforementioned Martin and Osa ones) they create a strange line with any jeans that flare enough to extend beyond the top of the shoe. It looks like just one line from jean to foot and its unflattering. (I'm sorry I lack the fashion vocab to make this make more sense, but trust me.) In fairness, they also have these wrap boot things. But they are weird-looking and seem impractical to me.

Anyway, now you have NO EXCUSE not to get some TOMS because a little email in my inbox told me they now have lace-up TOMS!!! Behold:
They have clearly recognized the need for additional styles, so I think we can expect even more variety in the future.

Now go buy some comfy shoes and spread some good will while you're at it.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Labor Day

Well, it is labor day, a national holiday, and yet I am about to go to class in about an hour. Why IU still schedules class on this day is beyond me, really, but we do get an extra day off at Thanksgiving, so I guess it can be forgiven. It is especially irksome, though, because all of the program offices are closed, so I can't forget about it being Labor Day and am instead taunted by other people's three day weekend while I finish up my reading on legal reasoning.

So far grad school has been mostly good. I have one class that is enormously frustrating, because the assignments are very unclear and so far we have had no lecture so no one knows what is going on or what we are supposed to know. The best thing, though, is that some of the things I learned in undergrad are actually really useful in graduate school. After taking the GRE and looking at my class schedule, I was honestly convinced that I was starting from scratch, and since so much of undergrad is about learning how to be an academic person, and I have very poor memory for details, I just didn't have much hope. But, no! I have a law class that my Civil Liberties class was a great background for, and thank GOD I took Econ 101. Come to think of it, both of these classes were things I took in the last semester of my senior year, so I guess its good I didn't decide to graduate early and got things together before I left college.

Right now I am sitting near the cafe in my building and they are grinding coffee. It smells fantastic, and makes me miss working at the Green Bean.

Okay I better finish that reading on legal reasoning. Ciao!

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

It is late at night

and I am still reading for my class tomorrow.

I think my undergrad study habits need some updating.

That's all for this post today.

I had pizza for dinner so no recipes for the weary.