Bad science, book #19

I baked some big chocolate-chocolate-chocolate cookies last night (or technically, early this morning). They're cake-y, with two types of chocolate chip (or three, I don't remember. I made the dough earlier this month and froze it, so I'm not really sure what I put in anymore). They're huge, because I made them to celebrate the fact that I fixed a giant ice cream scoop we have. Because, you know, I'm so handy and all. And I used the scoop to portion out the dough.

Huge!

It's exam season! Final exams! Departmental tests!! Aaaah!

Litle story about my Algae team: we lost our results (shhhh!!) from the field work we did in Veracruz, so we're just flying with what we can remember (pH in the pond was like... 6?**) and whatever is in samples we brought back, which means mostly diatoms. And there's about four species of diatoms, so they don't even look that cool what with the lack of variety.

I just spent about ten minutes trying to remember what book I read last week. "Not science fiction, not chick lit, not popular science... Oh, yeah!"

Book #19: The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

I'm a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, except the books I've read aren't quite so bleak and depressing as this one is. It was really good; I kept waiting for something to happen, thinking "Eh, it'll get better when it picks up a bit", except then I was halfway through and I figured out that the whole book was like that; sort of slow, dare I say lethargic? I don't know. That makes it sound boring, but it wasn't boring. It was good. Especially the ending, which I thought might be disappointing, but it was totally cool.

The only thing that annoyed me was the selective use of apostrophes. This Cormac guy doesn't use apostrophes in his dialogs most of the time, which is fine, except that while he has no problem saying youre, dont and cant, he does leave the apostrophe in I'm. WHAT'S UP WITH THAT??

**Im kidding here, obviously. We're not going to guess the pH, that's just bad science. I mean, so is losing your results... but, uh.... huh.

Pissed. Off.

I feel pissed off for some reason (hormones? lack of sleep?). Grrrawrrr. Not at anything specific, but silly things are irritating me way more than they should. I'm annoyed that the housekeeper covered my desk with clothes and then disappeared, when I was planning to do my homework. I'm pissed off at myself for being too lazy to wash the blender properly after my sister used it, and instead just giving it a thorough rinse; it leaked gross metallic water into my food (I keep forgetting it does that if it's not completely dry).

I mean, what kind of loser gets mad because of things like that? They're not important. Nothing to hold grudges over.

Ugh.

Today I registered and got my photo taken for my voter's I.D. (finally). I'd made an appointment for 10:30 a.m., but for some reason I didn't show up on the appointment list ("Oh, that happens sometimes, just print out your confirmation email"), nor was I sent a confirmation email ("Huh! Well, you'd best take a number and sit down... the wait won't be too long, two hours at most"). So I got a slip of paper that said my turn would be at 12:20. They saw me at 1:40 p.m.

Oh, the whole time there was this fucking kid playing a game on her mom's Blackberry, with loud, annoying music after every level.

I did take a bit of a walk. I bought a box of chocolates for my Systematics class. This is because I forgot to put my phone on silent mode during class, and my Mom sent me a text message. If your phone interrupts the class, you bring everyone a chocolate. Dumb rule, since everyone is too cheap to bring nice chocolate, and bring crappy stuff instead (actually, I've still got my shares sitting around. I should throw them out or give them away or something).

I still feel pissed off. Mostly at myself, for letting myself feel pissed off for no reason.

Oh, yeah, I made cupcakes last night. Vanilla, with amaretto icing.

Grr.

Oooh, I know! I'll watch British T.V.! That always cheers me up.

Train of thought (& books 17, 18)

Aah! Another month of my life whizzed by and I didn't blog. Like, at all.

So books #17 and #18 are done and over with.

I read another book, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Yes, more chick lit. It was okay for the first half, and the second half was awesome (it picked up quite a bit when she went to Thailand. that was hilarious).

I also read Northanger Abbey-- YES!!! I'VE READ SOMETHING BY JANE AUSTEN!!! Actually, I haven't actually finished it, because I misplaced it about a week ago. But I'm only a chapter short, and I'll just lug The Complete Works of Jane Austen off the shelf and read it from there. I saw a girl reading Sense and Sensibility on the bus once from an Austen compilation. It looked, um, inconvenient. I breezed past with my 150-gram copy of N. Abbey and felt smug.

Har.

I've been on a baking kick. Within the last week, I've made three batches of cookies (double chocolate chip, white chip chocolate, and vanilla pudding with peanut butter chips) as well as chocolate marbled banana bread (which is really more like cake, but "banana bread" has a nicer ring to it. And "banana loaf" sounds even better, because it rhymes with "oaf"!) and marinated tofu from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant. Oh, I made granola, too. With cinnamon and applesauce. And nutmeg.

Mmm, chocolate. I've nearly polished off an entire bar of 85% Lindt chocolate. But everybody knows that dark chocolate is somewhat good for you, which means that I can eat as much as I want. Hurrah!

Although I do try to eat no more than two pieces of fruit a day, or they crowd veggies out. And fruit is just sugary veggies.

Speaking of granola, why do people think granola is so healthy? It's bits of oats and seeds stuck together with sugar and oil. Honey, too. People think honey is magical or something... it's sugar syrup (I mean, it's got trace amounts of minerals, too, but that doesn't give one license to smother stuff in honey).

What else? Oatmeal cookies. They're cookies with a few oats mixed in. Oh, and All-Bran: wheat bran stuck together with corn syrup. Seriously! I bought some plain toasted wheat bran the other day, and it's WAY cheaper and tastier (and without the stupid stick shape. Why is All-bran shaped like sticks? They could make it into little rings, like Cheerios!).

I'm way off topic. Well, there was no topic to begin with, but I'm still way off. Now I'm just ranting about stupid things nobody cares about. People can eat oatmeal cookies if they so wish. Cookies!

Perhaps I need a nap. I feel a bit woozy.

It rained today. Unfortunately, it was extremely sunny while I was jogging in the morning and now I'm all caramelized.

I took Reyna, one of our dogs, for a really long walk on Friday. I met a man who told me that I shouldn't let her lead me around, and that I should be the one telling her where we would go. I lied and told him that I lead her for the first half of our walks, and then let her sniff around at will. He nodded and we talked about our dogs for about ten minutes. Reyna tugged around at her leash and got scared of things (like the mans' dogs), and eventually flopped down in the dust, while his dogs sat next to him nicely and payed attention when he spoke to them. They nuzzled his hand and all.

I wonder if this is how mothers with fussy toddlers feel when they see other children who are well-behaved, and their own kids are screaming for candy?

Anyway, I took the guy's advice (his dogs really were lovely... cute bastards) and spoke to Reyna the whole way home. She seemed to be pulling less at the leash, but I think it might be because we had been out for a long time and she was tired. I won't let her pull next time, though. And I can put a bandana on her when we go out so she looks endearingly klutzy instead of fluff-brained.