This Is Me Doing a Small Victory Dance around My Oven

I have made a great discovery: stove tops and I are arch nemeses, while ovens and I are totally BFF.

I've always enjoyed baking, and been relatively good at it. I attribute this in part to my love of eating baked goods, in part to my mother's and grandmother's skill in baking (and letting me watch or help), and in part to the use of strict recipes in baking (because that's how baking works).

I've never considered myself a cook. In fact, I've had some rather heated conversations involving me proclaiming vehemently that I am NOT A COOK and the other party swearing that I COULD BE A COOK if I tried.

For a long time I had very little motivation to learn to cook, as my family full of awesome cooks and they're usually willing to share (as most good cooks seem to be). Then I started living places other than home and I had somewhat more motivation to learn to cook, as I was suddenly responsible for feeding myself and cold Pop Tarts are really only appealing for so long. I never got very far, though, because most of my culinary experiments were disasters and of course I couldn't afford to throw that much food away, so I'd spend ten days eating something that really might have been better off in the trough for the livestock. I managed to conquer a few basic things, namely scrambled eggs, grilled cheese, and pasta with sauce out of a jar. Aside from that I assembled (sandwiches, salads) and defrosted (they make amazing frozen meals these days).

But as my cooking ability persisted in sucking, my baking flourished. I spent hours and hours baking endless varieties of cookies for anyone willing to eat them. I made quick breads, and eventually triumphed over yeast breads as well. (Turns out trying to raise dough in a 60 degree apartment - because no one wants to pay for heat - doesn't work very well.)

I kept vowing to learn to cook, "someday." It kept not happening. Then I moved to Nashville and had no friends and nothing to do, so I figured I'd have another go at the whole cooking thing. The lack of income might be a slight damper on the lavishness of the recipes, but I'm not looking for filet mignon here, just a nice stir fry.

And stir fry is exactly what I attempted, my second go - but first I should mention the vegetable lasagna, which was my first experiment and a wild success. Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen, I apparently make a mean veggie lasagna. Yes, I intend to tweak it a little the next time I make it, and I do want to graduate from jarred tomato sauce to homemade, but I actually made an entire dish that tasted really quite good, and which I enjoyed eating. This is monumental, people.

Confidence high, I decided to get really crazy and try a stir fry. I've been gradually learning how to cook tofu so it tastes like something other than library paste, and I have a no-fail recipe for brown rice, so it shouldn't be all that hard, right? Wrong. (Obviously.) It became two hours of low-level disaster, with too-small pans overflowing and general unhappiness. The end result was edible, but not what you might call inspiring. Meaning I ate it because it was too expensive to throw away and because it wasn't actively gross.

In my frustration, I began to consider what could possibly be the common thread between my culinary failures as opposed to my successes, and I realized that all the "cooking" I do that comes out well comes out of the oven. Cookies: oven. Lasagna: oven. Brown rice: I bake it. The stove top hates me, clearly. I don't know if we'll ever get along. But! This means that I can assure myself a greater degree of success if I just stick to the oven!

So tonight was Nashville Culinary Experiment Number Three: pizza. I have never made a pizza before (unless you count helping put the toppings on, back when I was under the age of twelve). I attempted a whole-wheat crust pie with cheddar cheese, broccoli, and fake Italian sausage... and homemade tomato sauce! The result? Well, I need to use more spices next time, because it's a little bland. But it's really not bad at all. I'm excited to try again. By halfway through the stir fry I was vowing "never again."

Thesis proved: me + stove = 'where's the trash can?' me + oven = yum.

And luckily, for those days when it's just too hot to turn the oven on, I can pour a mean bowl of cereal.

Girls Will Be Girls

I have very definite opinions about the upcoming election, and I do believe there's a "right" answer to "who are you voting for?" But right now I don't want to talk about the right answer, I want to talk for a moment about what I see as one very, very wrong answer: Sarah Palin.

I've never met Sarah Palin. All I know about her has come, in some way or another, through mass media (interviews, articles, the debate). It's possible that she's a very nice woman on a personal level, and perhaps in another context I'd find her unobjectionable. However, as a candidate for the Vice Presidency of the United State, I find her personally offensive and insulting to women as a group.

Sarah Palin is completely unqualified to be Vice President. The state she's governed has the third smallest population of any state in the union; she didn't know what the Bush Doctrine is (which would be fine....if she wasn't running for executive office); she apparently legitimately believes that she has foreign policy experience based on Alaska's geographically proximity to Russia. This woman has no business being second in command in this country, and I hate to even consider the (very real) possibility that McCain won't make it through four years, and she'll be in charge.

SARAH PALIN IN CHARGE OF THE MOST POWERFUL COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.

Sobering though, isn't it?

Again, maybe she's very good at field dressing those moose - I really don't know. But she's completely unqualified to be VP.

The fact that the Republican's are trying to sell her as a champion for women is, quite frankly, insulting. First, to insinuate that we'd be happy with any female candidate - that Hillary and Sarah are essentially interchangeable, simply because both are women - is heinous. Second, are we not being set up with a clearly incompetent woman who will fail in the job and thus "prove" that women aren't capable of holding executive office? Choose someone who will be a disaster, and display her demise as publically as possible - making her a lesson for future generations?

Sarah Palin in the role of America's VP epitomizes people's claims about women's unfitness to hold high level jobs, and I find it absolutely heinous that the Republicans are trying to shoehorn her into this role. What can they hope to accomplish by this, other than 1. to establish a puppet in the position to allow for easy manipulation, 2. demonstrate that women, in fact, are not capable of holding executive office.

Am I being outrageous? Am I spewing apocalyptic bullshit? Making unfounded claims?

Even if I am, after the VP debate I can say this for sure:

I cannot handle another four (or - God forbid, and I really mean that - eight) years of hearing "nucular" on national television....said without irony.... by one of the top two leaders of the free world. I.cannot.take.it.

Goals

I have finally discovered when music videos are aired: 3am Central, which probably means 4am everywhere else. Thank you, VH1.

A few of the other gems I've uncovered in my exploration of the DISH Network:

- The NASA channel. DID YOU KNOW THERE'S A NASA CHANNEL? And am I too old to go to space camp?
- Latina women selling something that I first thought might be prosthetic breasts, but eventually concluded was a posture-enhancing device. (It would've helped if they had actually shown the product and not just a lot of closeups of breasts.)
- A priest getting very animated about the heresies of Arias. (Arms flying everywhere.)
- A documentary on Ronald Reagan.
- Jesus-music videos.
- The 2005 US Poker Championship.
- A James Woods movie.
- A Lawrence Olivier movie.
- A Robert Redford movie.
- A half-hour program on the internal cleansing craze sweeping America, titled "Is Colon Detox Hype?"

Watching television at 3am is one of the most depressing activities I can think of, right up there with getting paid $12 an hour to make photocopies for seven straight months.

One of my primary goals in life is (now) to have better things to do at 3am than watch television. Isn't it good to have goals?

a/s/l ?

Living in a city where I know no one, and facing the task (rather daunting for the shy kids of the world) of meeting new people, I've been thinking about the phenomenon of meeting people and how it's changed over time, especially recently. (And since I don't know anyone I have oodles of time to sit around and think about these things - doesn't that work out well?)

This also coincides with someone I know trying out the eHarmony thing - the first person I know to give this particular site a shot. (I have, in the past, known people who've done the J-Date thing, and people who've done the Craigslist personals thing. No, not casual encounters, the regular personals. And people who've met significant others in chat rooms/on message boards.) I happen to think it's fantastic that this person is finding out who's online - it's just helped fuel my musings on the subject, hearing about the firsthand experience.

It's the era of the internet: chat online, bank online, buy clothes/books/furniture online, rent videos online, find apartments online, so why not browse for potential friends and mates online? Shopping for people, without all that messy interpersonal interaction. The fiberoptics and satellites keep everything nice and distant. Doesn't it sound perfect?

What I've started to realize is that so many of us are so lost when it comes to meeting people that these 'shopping' sites are the only ways we can figure out how to do it. I won't make claims about what caused this phenomenon, but I think a lot of you will agree that this is the reality. Perhaps there are still small towns somewhere in America where people grow up with their neighbors, marry their high school sweethearts, and spend every Fourth of July at block parties with the same people they've known for many years. In most places - at least in the densely populated places I've lived - the art of meeting people seems to be nearing endangerment.

People do still pick people up in bars (apparently), but how many people do you know who've had a relationship longer than 24 hours with people they met that way?

Perhaps I'm completely off the mark. Perhaps I'm simply demonstrating how out of touch I am with the social interactions happening all around me. But I can't count how many times I've had the same conversation with friends: "How are we supposed to meet people?!"

What I've begun to wonder is if this move to virtual, often carefully constructed meetingplaces is unavoidable. If half the people in this town are shopping on eHarmony and Match.com, does that mean they're not out meeting people face to face? Are they too busy 'reviewing their matches'? Does that mean that if I go out to meet people in 'real life' the pool will be reduced to half the local population? That sounds like more incentive to look online, and so the cycle is perpetuated.

In the end, though, is it really any better to look to meet people online than at the local coffee shop? The bottom line is still the same - you risk rejection either way. Is it enough of an improvement to be rejected in the privacy of your own home, in front of the computer, instead of in a public place, that it's worth losing the opportunity to to meet a whole person instead of some disembodied words? Is the face to face rejection really so bad that we'd rather stay in our houses and miss the chemistry that can happen when two people are in the same room? (Can there possibly be chemistry through the computer?)

This doesn't solve the problem, of course. We still don't seem to know how to meet people - where to go, what to say, how to not feel totally awkward or to be brave enough to take the risk. I don't know if there's a solution, but if we've reached a point where we're collectively becoming more and more okay with saying "yes, I want to meet someone badly enough to pay $30 a month for the chance that I'll find someone whom I like who likes me too, and who also happened to sign up for the same website" then maybe - just maybe - we can take one more leap and say "I want to meet someone badly enough that I'm willing to go out into a public place and be awkward and say the wrong thing and hope that someone else is willing to be awkward and possibly foolish too, and if nothing else we can share our awkwardness (because the odds of encountering someone totally smooth and not awkward at all seem incredibly small)."

Could we say that? If we're brave enough to have adopted the once totally stigmatized world of online dating into the mainstream, can we be brave enough to turn to a stranger and say hello?

Have I just talked myself into something?

A Gift from the Gods

Yes, that's right, I'm talking about Zyrtec. There must be some kind of benevolent god out there somewhere, because how else could we be so lucky as to have been graced with the gift of Zyrtec?

I used to be "Claritin clear," except that that was a total lie. Claritin may have reduced my misery somewhat, but it was no match for Southern levels of ragweed pollen. I was beginning to resign myself - with much sorrow - to spending all of hay fever season in my apartment with the windows closed, for as long as I live in Tennessee. Then - oh happy day! I tried Zyrtec.

Life is infinitely better now. My windows are open as we speak, and tomorrow I plan to check out some easy trails around a nearby lake. (They don't have oceans here, but at least there are some lakes. I'll take what I can get.)

I'm not generally a big fan of pharmeceuticals or the monster corporations that produce and sell them, but I would kiss the inventor of this stuff if I could. Thanks also to Kate for pointing out that continuing to use ineffective medication was perhaps not so productive and that this particular product might be worth investigation. THANK YOU!

Now if only someone made a truly effective remedy for the endless itching due to the twenty-four - yes, that's two dozen - bug bites currently gracing my legs. Apparently they weren't kidding about the bugs in the South.

If You Try, Sometimes, You Just Might Find....

I got in the car approximately seven minutes ago and, when I changed the station away from the DJ telling a fascinating story of that time he was late for an airplane, I happened upon the last third of this lovely little number. Thank you, Rolling Stones. I'm trying to think of this as the theme song for my adjustment period here in Nashville. Because I clearly can't get what I want. (All my friends to move here? A private jet for spur-of-the-moment trips north? Enough income to buy a plane ticket without suffering a massive panic attack?) But I have been finding that - sometimes - I get what I need. (Like when my friends manage to call or IM just when I'm most wishing I was with them. It's a good trick. They're talented like that.)

I'm trying to help this along. No, really. Just because I've been alone in my apartment anytime I wasn't actually in class or buying groceries for the last two weeks doesn't mean I'm not making an effort! I mean, there was that math test I thought I might fail. (I didn't.) And the cold I thought I was getting, and the allergies that turned out to be the cause of the cold symptoms, and which necessitate sitting in a sterile, enclosed environment. And there were the aliens attacking my stomach. And that episode of Project Runway that I hadn't seen, and the Netflix DVDs that arrived. So my seclusion has been totally justifiable. But I have (once again) resolved to begin leaving the house for destinations other than the engineering building or Whole Foods. Or Target. I'm actually going to go out into public places. Occasionally. Indoor, air conditioned public places, obviously. (Allergies.) But, like, ones with OTHER PEOPLE. People to whom I will probably not speak unless a monetary transaction needs to take place....or if they approach me first and don't seem totally lecherous or insane. And that's TOTALLY PROGRESS.

So as week five of the Experiment in Southern Living draws to a close, I conclude that I am, in fact, making progress. And I would pat myself on the back, but I'm not sure I'm ready yet to look quite that crazy in public. So I'll settle for blogging about it and fantasizing about going to - get this - other coffee shops. Ones that I haven't been to before. Shocking, I know. But hey - I've done crazier things. Like moving to a time zone where I don't know anyone. In the whole time zone. (Because "9, 8 Central"? that's me. I'm "8 Central". WHAT HAVE I DONE?!)

The good news? Only four more weeks until I fly home for my cousin's wedding. Not that I'm counting.

Allergic to Tennessee

Who knew it was possible to be allergic to a state? or maybe a region - maybe I'm allergic to the entire South.

I don't mean to imply that I've never suffered seasonal allergies before. Last summer in Boston I spent many lovely days Claritin Clear...except not really, because Claritin doesn't actually fix my allergies. But something about this fall's allergy season has knocked me on my ass. Perhaps there are other explanations for it, but I suspect it might have something to do with the fact that the pollen count here is approximately twice what it is in Boston. Awesome.

This means that even though the weather became totally gorgeous over the weekend - the temperature and humidity both dropped, so it's been cool in the mornings and evenings and gloriously warm and sunny in the afternoons - I cannot open my windows. I tried opening my windows, and it made me amazingly happy as far as the soft autumn breeze blowing through my apartment but fairly miserable in terms of the itchy, sneezy, phlegmy, awfulness.

So I have given up and become one of Those People who, despite the beauteousness outdoors, sits in the house with the windows shut and the air conditioning on. I really, really hope that this is effective. At about 3:00 this morning a handful of aliens decided to try to rip my stomach out of my body, and I can't help but think it is somehow related to the allergies. This is the only reason I'm willing to shut out the beautiful weather. I REALLY hope the pollen goes away soon. I mean, how badly do we need the trees to reproduce, anyway?

I'm now going to finish my recovery day by watching a DVD that's come highly recommended from a few sources: Once, and I'll let you know if it's any good. I can definitely say with confidence that Netflix is the best thing ever.