lesson in life #5741: meringue with a fork? don't even think about it

i can feel myself starting to slide again.

after some extremely cathartic discussions with a couple of people from the darbnet list, i feel a little better about the whole deal. well, i guess 'a little less insane' would be a better description, but still. sometimes it helps to give a name to your problems; apparently mine goes by "ultra-rapid cycling type III bipolar disorder." soon, i will gather the courage to see if my health insurance will cover a visit to the psychiatrist so i can try to talk them into medicating me. in the meantime, i'm trying to be more proactive about my coping methods, using some of their suggestions.

actually though, when i force some perspective into my outlook, some actually reasonably nice things have happened recently, most notably that icgs found my great-grandparents's birth certificates! that was the last hurdle that might have prevented completion of the process, but now it's just the bureaucracy of getting all the american certificates translated and notarized. i'm going to be officially italian soon! dual citizenship is going to rock.

and sunday, enno and i finally did the agnolotti, which came out surprisingly well. sure, it was a learning experience, and we made plenty of mistakes, and only slightly averted certain disaster multiple times throughout the afternoon, but it was all in good fun, and despite not being perfect, they still tasted damn good. i also tried my hand at a lemon meringue pie, and the fact that it came out at all has come close to renewing my faith in a higher power. hahaha. nothing short of a miracle could have reasonably saved us on that one, and yet the final result looked and tasted almost perfect. okay, so the principle problem was my lack of an electric mixer, or even a whisk, but we tried hard, took turns (mine significantly shorter than his, to my everlasting shame, but still), and thanks to enno's biceps (see related post from last month), we actually got meringue out of it. but if you have any shred of sanity, don't *ever* try to do it by hand. it's fucking ridiculous.

what was also ridiculous was that enno kept pronouncing it "merengue" (meh-rang-gay), which has absolutely nothing to do with egg whites, but rather is the national dance of the dominican republic. :)

anyway, the sunday before that, i went ice skating with markus, christine, and daniel, which was cool. damn, those things make my feet hurt, though. i'd almost go so far as to declare them the worst failure of engineering since the tacoma narrows bridge. i mean, it doesn't look like it should be that bad, but you put them on, and stand up, and it suddenly feels like you are standing on a knife blade down the soles of your feet.

then on thursday, for movie night, i finally convinced them to watch "the best/funniest movie ever," also known as "what's up doc?" and despite making fun of me for it (just like most everybody else), they all seemed to really enjoy it anyway (just like most everybody else). i felt amused, and slightly vindicated.

saturday, i bought the huge polished granite mortar and pestle from the little asian store that i go to. the newspaper that it was wrapped in was printed in thai, which i found kinda neat. now i just need a mixer, and few other things. (well, actually, there will probably never come a time when i can't think of some kitchen toy/gadget that I want; there's just so many...)

that's about it for this week's update. maybe i'll actually even manage a mid-week post this time... we'll see...

ob[seen]

wow. a whole week to catch up on. lucky my life is dull, or i'd be waaaay behind right now. :)

the "enno and chris foodfest" on sunday was great. we had a blast, and made more than enough food for probably like eight or ten people or something. too bad there was only four of us. but yeah, it was very cool. we made canonballs and hollowed them out, and we made the chili to go in them, along which cornbread, and a "vegetable rice dish" that i hesitate to call "spanish rice" since it wasn't quite the same, but we tried, and hell, it tasted good anyway.

with mucho props to janessa for providing the recipe skeleton, i also succeeded in making the pumpkin pie! of course, being the clumsy oaf that i am, i forgot the pastry blender (read: super-duper-pie-crust-making-accelerator-tool; sometimes called "wire knuckles" because of they way it looks), and had to do the two knives thing. [rolls eyes] wow. it works, but it takes a loooong ass time. but enno has this really cool mill thingy that turns wheat into flour, so we made the crust with freshly ground whole wheat flour. yum...

and the recipe was a double crust, so i had an extra that i wasn't sure what to do with, and we decided to make a quiche out of it for an appetizer. also very tasty. the whole ordeal was just pretty amazing. i mean, i've always loved cooking, but there's something about not only being able to share a fun experience with someone else, but at the same time know that the person is just as fanatical about it as you are, and also enjoying themselves thoroughly, rather than simply humoring you. probably i'm not making any sense, but sometimes it just strikes me, and i think of what an awesome feeling it is just to have friends; especially good friends. it's just... well, the way things _should_ be, you know? it feels nice.

aline and her sister (the girls enno had invited to join us for dinner) were nice, and provided the impetus to switch to french (for whatever reason, if it's just us, enno doesn't usually want to speak french with me). i held my own, and didn't have to use english at all, but i wasn't 'dominating the conversation,' either.

usually, i try to be pretty good about separating the week from the weekends, which i obviously did, given my description of sunday, but unfortunately that often leaves me feeling behind come monday morning. this week was no exception. everything did get done, and mostly on time even, but it was pretty cramped at points.

alcherio had me give about 1/3 of the lecture on wednesday. i didn't really want to, but having done it, i guess it wasn't so bad, and he said i did a pretty good job, so that's encouraging, at least. the lab for yesterday morning did finally come together as well (i wrote it from scratch). it took longer than i thought for most of them to finish, and what i thought was the hardest question turned out to be fairly trivial compared to one i thought would be easy, but overall, it went as smoothly as could reasonably have been hoped.

monday, i got free tickets in the mail (this time from T-L, the company that runs the public transit in lausanne) for one of the modern dance productions going on. they were for thursday; we'll get to that in a minute.

tuesday, enno wanted to give it another go, so we did indian. i made a massoor dahl, but had to use ordinary lentils instead of red ones, since that's what he had around. it still came out well, even if there was way too much of it... and he made palak paneer. the really fun part was that we made the paneer (cheese) ourselves! (well, rather, "himself" would probably be more accurate, but i watched, and could probably reproduce the procedure; you can bet i plan to try, at least.) enno is back home in holland this weekend, so he couldn't come to the thing on thursday.

but markus said he would come, and so pushed 'movie night' back to wednesday. i can't remember what the planned film was, but someone turned on "strange days" for a few minutes, and we ended up seeing the whole thing. it was definitely "strange," as the title promised. i guess it's another one of those films with a reasonably large cult following; i had never heard of it, though.

somewhere in here, early in the week, i decided to try reading in the metro to and from work. i hadn't done it before, because i remember when i was little, and tried to read in a moving car, and it always gave me really terrible headaches. the metro seems to be alright, though (either that, or i grew out of whatever it was), so i've been reading the copy "angels and demons" that jim lent me. it's another book by dan brown (the da vinci guy), and while it's also written in the 'cheap thrill' style that i've always assumed would epitomize the 'romance novel' genre (and therefore i feel kinda literary sell-out for stooping to the level of reading it), he is pretty good at inventing puzzles, and i've _always_ been a sucker for puzzles. the 'myst' style computer games are basically my runaway favorite. anyway, i'm almost through it now; probably i'll finish tomorrow.

thursday, we went to the dance thing. it was in a little blackbox theatre in the middle of a clean, but still industrial district. reminded me of the original knightsbridge in old pasadena, only a little bit bigger. just seeing the stage and the lights made me want to be involved in a production again. not necessarily even acting; there's just something intoxicating about the theatre process that i really enjoy. anyway, culture is cool, and free tickets to culture that i ordinarily wouldn't go to is even better, but i think this was bordering on a little too much culture for me... [grin] it was waaaay out there kind of weird.

so the thing was written by a [famous?] choreographer named phillipe saire, and it was called "ob[seen]." i guess it won some really special international award thingy as best original choreography or something in 2003. as far as i can tell (and after cheating a little bit by reading some of the newspaper reviews) it is supposed to question where we draw the line between things that are socially acceptable and things that aren't, and why. it was cool, and i enjoyed it, but it was teetering on the edge of what i would call 'art.' (i'm sure if you know me at all, we've probably had this whole discussion before, so i won't rehash it completely here.) my impression was basically that it took more balls that talent (freudian pun? [you'll understand in a minute]).

the first half was almost completely silent, which was different in and of itself. there were six people, 4 men and 2 women, and small subsets of the group (one to three at a time) would perform little sketches on the large low table in the center of the blackbox stage. one of the first ones was a man removing a woman's bra and underwear out from underneath her clothes. for another, a man laid naked on the table, and one of the others dragged a large knife around the outside edge of the table, making a scraping noise. a couple involved one of them "sculpting" one of the others into various positions and expressions. in one such segment, the "statue" kept trying to get away, and the sculpter kept forcing them back---very strange, but suprisingly powerful, as a visual. one of the most amusing (and also strange) clips was a man and a woman walking up to the edge of the table, her topless and him bottomless, and then sinking down from standing until his 'naughty bits' and her breasts were resting on the top of the table. then, towards the end of the half, it got really wierd. one of the men climbed up on to the table in his birthday suit, did a couple of muscle poses, and then bent over and turned around to reveal that he was wearing a pig mask over his ass and proceded to walk around backwards on four 'legs' like this, as if he was the pig. and one of the very last ones, a guy stood on the table (clothed) with his back to us, and did nothing for a while, then adjusted the waistband of his pants so that he was partially mooning us, then a little later moved it down farther, and eventually took his pants clean off. after standing that way for a while, he hung a sign off his back reading "fuck me," and bent over to grab his ankles. at about thirty second intervals (or maybe even longer) he would shift his position to be gradually more obseen/provocative, until he was eventually on his knees sticking his ass out. it was more than a little disturbing. even moreso when he started talking (the first and only spoken words in the show) and attempting to convince someone in the audience to actually come up and do it. "there's not one big swiss man here who'd like to stick his cock up my arse?" etc... wow. talk about 'alternate universe' experiences... very strange...

then the second half was more like the dancing that i had expected, but even that was a little odd. the only way i can really think to describe it is "artistic falling." seriously, they would lose their balance, fall on the floor, and then bounce back up. or sometimes they would fall into each other, and throw each other apart, and then fall together again. sort of like the whole "trust-fall" thing, but intricately choreographed. it lacked the 'visually amazing' factor of, say, a gymnastic floor exercise, but it was impressive nonetheless. and the music was very loud; a stark contrast to the first half.

that night, they were also doing something special, which i had never heard of being done before; they had three artists in the audience, doing drawings/paintings during the performance, and then after it was over, they put their work up on the stage for the audience to come up and look at. this i thought was really amazing. the woman with paints did four whole paintings during the 90 minute performance. then there was one of them who did about 20 or so line sketches with a red grease pencil. just simple lines, but unbelievable in their ability to convey a massive amount of imagery in a minimum amount of strokes. the last lady was using blue, white, and black chalk on corrigated paper, and any one of her ~12 pieces would be welcome on my walls. i was shocked by how good they were. particularly considering their rapid production.

so, yeah, the whole thing was kinda bizzarre, and more than a little surreal, but i enjoyed it. i guess it's like peeking into a slice of life that is definitely outside my experience. it's fun to check up on "the other side" once in a while...

first frost and snow spectacular

it's really incredible. it's been snowing outside for the last several hours at least, but the sun is shining like it's the middle of july or something. i've never seen anything like it before. wow. it's almost like being in one of those artsy chinese movies where people fly and shit. really cool.

i've really gotta work on remembering to write in this thing when i'm _not_ feeling melancholy.

thursday i woke up and found that it had frosted the night before. winter is coming, folks, and quickly. and that means: snowboarding! whooohoo! i can't wait. one of these days here pretty soon i'm going to have to kidnap enno and get him to tell me which boots i need to buy, then i'll be all set (henri gave me a board last year; it's not much to look at, but it seems like it should be adequate).

friday night we were invited to a housewarming party by two of our semester project students. i, of course, felt like a complete social retard for most of the time, but eventually did meet a fair number of really neat people. initiating a conversation in a non-native tongue, in an environment where there's enough noise to effectively obfuscate what someone would be trying to tell you in your native language, is not easy, let me tell you. but i did get to talk with one guy (vincent, from around paris, if i remember correctly) who was really cool about the whole thing, and complimented me on my accent, but later had to teach me how to pronounce my own name correctly (in french), which was amusing, to say the least. according to them, i learn quickly, but i'm not sure how drunk they were. overall, it was a really enjoyable evening, even despite the awkward moments when i was standing in the middle of the room by myself, not sure which if any conversation i should try to interrupt and barge into.

sean mentioned that he knows a place in geneva to get a decent classical guitar for ~160 francs, and offered to pick one up for me sometime. i'm rather tempted to take him up on it. we'll see what happens.

okay, and then, as always, there's the shitty part of the story, but i'm trying really hard to make it into a positive learning experience. now, i haven't really been interested in drinking since the embarrassing incident when peter was here, and occasionally people give me funny looks for turning down drinks, but this time i thought i would be clever, and avoid having to explain why i didn't want to drink by offering to drive. sounds simple, right? can't go wrong... well, it seemed to work great, right up until we all got strapped into nikolaus's car, and i proceded to back up straight into what i swear was an invisible pole. i still can't believe i could have been so stupid. the rest of the drive was pretty uneventful; we dropped off jim and enno at their respective apartments, and then back to nikolaus's apartment. he was really cool about it, but nothing could really change the fact that i felt shit because of it. i suppose in the big picture, he's right, and it's not that bad (it hit the corner of the bumper, and caused a stress crack about 4 inches long, which isn't really noticible unless you're actually looking straight at it). he told me not to worry about it, and mentioned that if anything i had already made up for it the time when i fixed the latch on his hatchback when he had broken it and couldn't get it open. he said it's an old car and he plans on running it into the ground rather than attempting to sell it, so he doesn't care much. i hope he still feels the same way now that he's not inebriated anymore.

anyway, here's where the lesson comes in. i'm trying to remind myself of great uncle chet's wise words from one of his many stories: "learn to be a good receiver." (this next part may well border on a relapse to religious dogma---if it gets too bad, please shoot me.) of course, he was right; when someone offers me grace, or any other gift, for that matter, i should accept it with gratitude, rather than pandering on about how unworthy i think i am. it's harder than it sounds... but i'm trying.

yesterday was shopping day extrordinaire. tonight we're gonna do the cooking thing, at enno's place this time, and he said he invited a couple of girls as well. he had a boat race yesterday somewhere far away, and so i offered to pick up the stuff we need. sounds like we're going to try to do chili in sourdough cannonballs with spanish rice and cornbread. also, christiane (one of the secretaries at work) gave me about a quarter of the big pumpkin that they had used for decoration at the "celebrate the new building" party on tuesday, so i want to try doing a test run of a pumpkin pie (from scratch) before we do this whole thanksgiving disaster. (did i mention that before? markus's girlfriend christine suggested we should do something for thanksgiving. i kinda think it will be a big joke, but hopefully a fun at the same time, as well.

so, i bought lots and lots of food, and went to three different stores looking for a pie plate. did finally find one, and it's even real pyrex, but it's the one with the extra raised dimpled rim around it; i usually prefer the ones with a flat rim that the crust can sit on. eh, after what i went through to find this one, i'll deal. [grin]

also on the list was a food mill, which i was afraid would be prohibitively expensive. but guess what! i actually found one at the thrift store! craaazzzy. and what's even more crazy is that i bought several other things with it (a candle holder, a shelf organizer thingy, a candy thermometer) and when i got to the counter, the guy looks at my pile of stuff, and asks for for 3 francs. wow. now the mill is old, and made of aluminum, but i had been trying to guess what it might be worth, and was expecting to pay between 10 and 15 francs for it. moral of the story: when buying cooking equipment at a thrift store, try to time it so you get checked out by the man who looks like he has no clue what the stuff you're buying is used for. works like a charm.

then it came time to actually try to make the pumpkin puree. and i learned another lesson: "collecting five different recipes and averaging them does not always produce the best results." janessa's instructions said bake the chunks at 400 in a dish with half and inch of water in the bottom for ~20 minutes. the other recipes i found referenced instructions that said bake at 325 for one hour, and then reduce to 300 for another two hours. so what did i do? i put it in at 325, with some water... when i went to turn down the heat after an hour, they looked _awfully_ soft, so i took them out---and suddenly, it dawns on me that the longer time was probably to dry cook them, and it wasn't just that they forgot the water, or that the water was a special trick that would make it work better. [rolls eyes] having little other choice, i peeled them and put them through the food mill. miraculously, it seems to still have worked alright, though i wonder if i might have lost some of the flavor by waterlogging them. incidentally, using this particular food mill was a little awkward, and i'm slightly less excited about it now than when i first found it, but hey, for about a buck fifty, it's hard to complain, and it did [eventually] get the job done. although it was a royal pain in the ass to clean, but i imagine even a brand spanking new one would have had the same problem. (did you know? mashed pumpkin = stringy nightmare.)

so i ended up with more puree than i expected, but it might be because of the extra water. i'll try to remember to report back on how the finished product turns out when we try to make it tonight.

two steps forward, five steps back

isn't this fun.

saturday, i finally went out and bought some new clothes. not much, but a pair of corduroy pants that seems to fit pretty well, a blue turtleneck, and a orange long-sleeve shirt. didn't spend too much, and i liked the way they looked. it seemed like a good thing. in any case, it felt a little gratifying (and a lot weird) to put on things with the letter "s" sewn into the collar, and not fear splitting them wide open if i dared to breathe. okay, let's be fair, these shirts are probably the biggest 'smalls' i've ever seen, but the shoulders are the right width, and the trunk is only about an inch too long (i can put my hands in my pockets without feeling like i'm gathering the train of a wedding dress), and they were in my price range, so i bought them. it's not like they're skin-tight or anything (far from it; i'm not nearly brave enough for that).

well, so here i was, thinking positive (or at least trying, which is an accomplishment for me in itself), putting on my orange shirt this morning, looking in the mirror, and thinking, "you know, there might be hope yet..." it was a little bit like that story about michaelangelo, where he made some comment about seeing the form trapped inside of the rough stone, and then just cut away the extra. as i looked in the mirror, i glimpsed momentarily the potential form underneath my skin, and thought that maybe, just maybe, i might someday succeed in cutting away all the excess.

and just as the little seedling of self-esteem starts to germinate, the big black bird of inevitability swoops down to grab it, and crushes the life out of it with its big orange beak. and then swallows it whole, or something like that.

right, so what actually happened is that nikolaus spent the latter half of the afternoon grinning like an idiot while periodically poking my midsection like i was the goddam brown-and-serve roll mascot or something. after the second time, i gave him a funny look, and he said something like "it's just the shirt; it makes it stick out or something." great. this is _exactly_ what i needed to hear...

sorry folks, that's the end of the story (at least for today). yeah, i know, i'm still waiting for the happy ending too. or at least a punchline. anything, really...

life blows; i guess we should just get used to it. or something.

of insanity and insomnia

so, i was dead tired yesterday and went to bed at like 9:30pm. which, obviously, means i can't sleep now (4:00am).

as such, sitting here reading email, and clicking the "delete forever" button after checking all the checkboxes in the spam folder of gmail---i find myself struck by (what at the moment i think might be) a clever idea:

what if, instead of "delete forever," there was a mechanism to forge a postmaster bounce message? we all know that you can't "follow the instructions at the bottom to be removed," because this simply confirms that the message did, in fact, reach a warm body, and thereby makes the problem worse. but can we trick them into thinking they didn't reach us? in my drowsy, yet somehow insomniac, state of mind right now, this seems like a real possibility.

probably it's already been tried? or someone knows why it wouldn't work?

anyway, that's just one of many random pre-dawn thoughts.

the quality of markus's movie collection varies wildly. this thursday, we saw "alien vs. predator." enough said... though, after that, he busted out with this incredibly terrifying video (i have no idea where he found it) of some whack-o nutjob giving some sort of inspirational seminar on how to meet women. the people in the audience asking questions were really creepy (well, okay, they were exactly the sort of people you would expect to find at such an event). if i was a woman, i don't think i would give them the time of day either.

my reaction was that this was just plain weird. markus, daniel, and michele all thought that it was hilarious. perhaps because i kind of got the impression that they thought this was a typically american thing? at any rate, they claim such things would never happen in european countries, so i guess that makes it by default at least a "comparatively american" thing. i still find it a little offensive when something like this comes up. i know they don't mean it that way, but i'm kinda hypersensitive to the fact that i'm still technically american, and therefore dislike being generalized into the same category as the inbred ass-picking redneck hicks. **i can't wait until i get my italian passport.** damn, it's going to be awesome.

that's all for now. maybe some deeper thoughts after the sun comes up.

it's a mad mad mad mad world

well, i sincerely hope that there is somebody out there who can be happy about this, but as for me, i need a stiff drink.

and i don't drink. :(

is it possible that there are good things about him that i just don't know about? for some unknown reason i still cling to the hope that all those people must have had adequate justification for acting the way they did, but for the life of me, i wish i understood them (both the people and the motivations). sigh.

it simply blows my mind. it's as if i woke up in an alternate universe or something.

if anybody feels like consoling me, i'm game for trying...

waiting for go(v)ot(e)

hey pete, thanks a lot for the note of encouragement. it was much appreciated.

i don't know why i get this way. but i wish i did (know why), and i wish i didn't (get this way). a lot of the time i feel like i don't have any control over my emotions, and the overwhelming fog of helplessness beats me down until i can't help but think of myself as stupid and incompetant. after all, if i can't even control little bits of my own mind, how in the hell am i supposed to accomplish anything worthwhile in real life.

and it probably doesn't help any that my more rational hemisphere (i can't even remember which is which anymore) is fully aware of what's going on, and just lacks the ability to do anything about it. i tried going to all the shrinks the health centers at oxy and caltech had, but none of them would take me seriously, simply because i was capable of sitting down and holding a calm and logical conversation with them. the fact that i knew i was fucked up seemed to them like proof that i could just go home and fix it up myself. well, i try to. and i fail. and it's depressing. and i'm tired of talking about this. if you have questions i'll answer them, but otherwise, we'll postpone this dreadful self-analysis until some other day.

***

in other news, a little over a year later, i finally got around to walking over to the sports center. well, to be fair, since it's shared with UNIL, and on their campus, it is about a mile away from my office. but anyway, i found out that they had yoga classes on tuesdays. so i wanted to try it out, since it's been a whole year since i've had a real instructor. but it was disappointing, for two reasons. first, i was all jazzed, 'cause i thought i'd probably be able to understand the french by now; as it turns out, this was hardly the case. i guess i need to work on my body part vocabulary some more, and there were a bunch of other unfamiliar idioms that she used to describe various spacings, and relative positions of appendages and things. second, it was a wimpy yoga class. this was the more disappointing. the first 45 minute class was supposed to be an 'introduction,' so i was expecting it to be light, but at the end i hadn't even broken a sweat. then the second 45 minute class should have been 'advanced,' so i expected it to get better. no banana. it was a little more involved, but it still didn't feel like exercise. this kind of class is why people have the misconception that yoga is just a pansy meditation kind of thing. sigh. i miss patti. (my instructor from caltech; the one who converted me to ashtanga.)

what with the nine hour time difference and all, i'm only vaguely aware of the fact that the country is in voting upheaval at the moment. i'm trying not to think about it too much, since i'll be fast asleep long before they anounce the results. i really hope it goes well. sure, i'm slightly safer than most, having a large, atlantic ocean shaped buffer in between me and the bad guys, but i really think the world has had about all it can take of this imbecility. god, i hope we win. not that i think it will be much better with the new guy, but it will be a little better---and like i said before, when faced with a choice between bad and worse, the sad, sad truth of it is that we have to go with bad. well, after the last four years, i think we all know that "it could definitely be worse..."

fatigue

i'm tired... not sure what else there is to say today.

saturday night we did end up going out around town with martin (the visiting post-doc), and it was actually a lot of fun. he seems like a really cool interesting person, and i think it'd be great if he came to work with us.

there's something incredibly demented about the fact that this makes me feel worse instead of better. [rolls eyes]

i can't remember anything notable happening on sunday. but that's not terribly unusual for a sunday. i did sleep very late though (like noonish, even after the time change). thank god i didn't drink anything; i had a headache just from being up so late the night before.

at work today, well, life goes on. i'm still not getting to even think about my research, what with all the stuff that needs to be done for the labs and semester project students. i'm actually worried that i might not be giving my semester project students enough guidance, but i'm trying my best, at least. this term is turning out to be one helluva insane trip.

oh, and my little mini-cactus is losing it's flowers. i hope it's not dying. maybe i overwatered it? my poor plants. i try so hard, and they still end up dying horrible horrible deaths. probably they scream little plant screams when they see me coming. like the ugly little girl that the dentist was going to give the clownfish to, in that silly little computer animation film last year. sigh.

well, i'd say by now it's pretty clear that the pendulum has swung. all i can do now is wait it out, i guess. for some reason, the fact that i've written all this down, and can actually track the sinusoid of my rhythmic psychological malfunctions seems really fucking disturbing.