Too busy!!

I've been so insanely busy lately, I don't know which way is up.  Classes, homework, work, photography, (re)learning a new language, nightmares, Halloween costumes, painting, and trying to get myself enough downtime to stay sane, not to mention cooking, cleaning and all the chores that are necessary to keep oneself alive and presentable!!

Today, for instance, I got up at 9 am, showered, went grocery shopping, came home, and immediately started cooking!  To be sure, I have the game on, and I'm making meals for the week (more about that later), but still, not a lot of chill time.  Especially when later today I have Mediterranean homework, MUST work on my mask if I plan on wearing my costume to the local Renaissance fair, I want to get some painting done (trying to create a decent painting to use as a Christmas present...if I could only paint as well as my sister!!!  I need to find some drawing classes out here but I haven't yet), German homework, and I was hoping to find a few minutes for my thesis.  It's less objectionable when I just dedicate 20 minutes to it at a time, and I feel good for having worked on it, and feel better for not spending a whole day screaming at it.

Grocery shopping was gorgeous today - I found a 20 pound turkey for $11.50!!  Frankly, all I wanted to do after that was this:

But I continued shopping, and got enough food for the week (helped out by the $3.70 chicken I already had reposing in my freezer) for a grand total of $39.46, a whole $0.54 under my weekly grocery budget!!  I love it when I can do that.  That turkey, by the way, is destined for Thanksgiving.  I'm having people over, and trying to assemble what I can now (I need a roasting pan, gravy tureen, etc etc) to defray expenses so I won't have to pay out seven zillion dollars all at once come late November.

Right now my chicken is defrosting (if I had the brains of a lizard I would have put it to defrost last night, but I didn't) in a bowl of cold water, and I have butternut soup simmering away on the stove.  I'm making evil plans to make a good deal of butternut soup this autumn (so healthy, and so yummy!) but perfecting my own recipe.  One day, perhaps I can have my very own recipe book!  I'd love to make a few pennies that way.  I've been feeling pretty broke lately, but I haven't been paid since June 1st and I don't get paid til October 1st, so I've been living off my savings and praying I can swing it!

I'm going to be good and save the chicken bones for stock (which I will probably make tomorrow after work).  That way, next week I can make pork and saffron rice, which I have been CRAVING ever since we had that freak cool spell two weeks ago.  Mom says she's made it with brown rice and nobody noticed the difference which is so huge, because I'm trying so hard to be healthy, but I need yummy in my life.  Life without yummy is life not worth living!

I also opened a bottle of white wine which turned out to be ghastly (I need to remember some things are on super-sale for a reason) and will turn at least some of it into a white wine sauce tonight, with whole-wheat pasta, ham and green peas.  I think I have enough ham for two meals, so I might make a big fat batch (and use all the wine) and get a dinner and two lunches out of it.  That way I can save all the roast chicken for this week's dinners, and use the butternut soup as lunch and/or dinner starters, or even a midnight snack.

I also want to start eating more vegetarian, as I grudgingly admit that the way meat is currently farmed is one of the major contributors to global warming (grumble grumble don't want to be a hypocrite grumble grumble) so butternut soup is hitting that trigger too.  I will never give up all meat, (or even most, I'm sure) so don't even try!!  I am interested in trying my hand at black bean and quinoa meatballs, but that'll be next week at earliest, I think.  I need to think of some kind of sauce to use with them.  Tomato based, I'm sure, but I don't want to cop out and just do something too simple.  I'm kind of thinking I should use the excuse to go to the local farmer's market and get pumpkin and try some sort of pumpkin puree or something...

Seriously want to make mashed potatoes tonight, but I am going to be good and resist so that I don't turn into a hippopotamus.  Will make them one night this week when I sautee some of the roast chicken with onions, peas and barbecue sauce.  Sounds a little crazy, but it's yummy enough for a tired graduate student.

Okay, going to go make some cornbread now, partially to eat with my soup, partially to practice for Thanksgiving.  I've never made it before, and I have real Americans coming over, so I need to get it right!

Exhausted

So much work to do and somehow it's just not getting done.  Wandering in and out losing pens by putting them down and picking them up and misplacing books similarly, losing my notes, losing my place in my notes, etc etc.

Not even working on my costume today.  Too tired.  Too much work.  Wish I could though, it's going to be so great when it's all finished!  I'm making two different masks, both by hand, slightly differently.  May make a third if they don't both turn out.

Oh well.  Maybe doing the dishes will get me inspired to write something that resembles anything.

"Supporting" the NFL as a Woman

http://jezebel.com/if-you-care-about-women-and-still-support-the-nfl-you-1631903485/+tcraggs22

So, being not only a giant football fan, but also a follower of Chris Kluwe (@ChrisWarcraft) on twitter, I found the above-posted Jezebel article this morning and read it.

The crux of the article is, given the NFL's abominably weak stance on womens' rights, if you're a supporter of women or feminism, you should hit 'em where it hurts and stop watching, supporting, and buying merchandise.  Also, if you boycott other products because of cruelty or some similar social injustice, you're a hypocrite for not giving up the NFL also.

And I completely respect that argument.  But I'm not going to agree with it.

I already do not shop at Chik Fil A (partially because I'm vehemently against the glorification of bad grammar/poor spelling), Hobby Lobby, and Carl's Jr, I change the radio whenever I hear Chris Brown or Robin Thicke, I buy cage-free vegetarian eggs, I buy as much fair trade clothing from H&M as possible etc etc. 

However, I am a graduate student carrying literally tens of thousands of dollars of debt, and earning a mere $12,000 for nine months' work at my graduate assistantship (causing me to have to borrow money every month from my parents to make both  ends meet, and again in the summer so I can pay to attend field schools to get experience), which severely limits my spending power.  I do not have a great deal of money for myself, and even less for entertainment.  Football - the NFL - is one of my favorite diversions from the backbreaking grind of graduate study.

Which brings me to my main point - how much is too much?  Having given up what I have, limiting my clothing purchases whenever possible to garments I believe have not been made by bloody-fingered seven year olds in Bangledesh, changing my food purchases to obtain fresh and local as often as possible, boycotting fast food restaurants and craft chains I enjoyed, when can I draw my line and say, "I've had enough"?

If I dressed myself in sackcloth and ashes, if I limited my diet to a few hundred calories a day of local organic produce, if I lived without electricity and halved my monthly use of water, rejected anything plastic and all televison, I could not begin to set right all the wrongs in the world.  Each individual certainly has a responsibility to the world, and to the societies that "raised" us, but how much responsibility can any one individual take on?

I concede that supporting the NFL - that is, watching it, and sighing over over-priced jerseys I cannot afford - while it continues to flout the women from whence flow at least 50% of their security, is both foolish and encourages real change to happen about as quickly as glacial landscaping.

Jezebel's article has one crucial failure - it doesn't state what must happen before we can enjoy football from a stand of moral equality again.  Must Goodell be fired?  (I would love that - heck, I'd take on his job for a fraction of whatever he gets paid.)  Must Ray Rice be banned for life?  (Not having seen the video, I can't say.)  Must whoever tweeted for the Ravens that "Janay Rice deeply regrets" be sent to have their head examined?  (Magic 8 Ball says: "Yes") 

But I am drawing my line in the turf.  I have before tweeted, emailed, and blogged about how I feel about how the NFL treats women, and I will continue to do so in the hopes that one day they will realize that women buy half their stuff, and pay half the household's cable bills, and from a sense of fiscal responsibility alone (let's ignore morals here for a moment, because television almost always does anyway) it's about time to start punishing their players for violence against women.  However, football provides me with so much relief from what I endure on a weekly basis, I refuse to make my life - a woman's life - harder because Ray Rice is a colossal douche, and Roger Goodell is a bigger one.


P.S. Has anyone ever wondered why so many football players love their mothers - say that they're doing this for their mother (or their grandmother) and once they "make it" buy them houses and cars...and yet, still treat women in general like shit?

First Day Fall 2014: Complete

Well, sort of.  I have a lot of homework I can't do right now (backing up all my files) although it's not due til Thursday I would still prefer to at least START it tonight.

I had nightmares all last night, that is, after I drifted off around 2:30 am and only fell asleep properly, REM sleep style around 5 am.  Naturally, I skipped the gym and slept in until 7:30 am.  I'm so tired right now I'm hoping I pass out when I go to bed at tonight so that I will actually be able to go to the gym tomorrow and start removing some of this unwelcome belly and thigh fat.

First class was Mediterranean History of Seafaring 1400-1700.  I think I'll like it.  If I study carefully (that is, a little every day) I should do well, I think.  Then I went down to the lab and worked for 2.5 hours - doing the chemical inventory today, which left stains all over my clothes - before taking half an hour for lunch.  Then came Conservation, which ended about an hour early, so I worked another 1.5 hours before heading home.

Made dinner, did the dishes, and got to work on homework and backing up my files.  Once I'm done backing up my files then I can do some readings, set out everything for tomorrow, and go up to bed.  Let's hope I can sleep tonight!!

Last Night of Freedom

It's not really, but classes start tomorrow and I'm attempting to cool myself from a long, difficult day by watching one of the new episodes of Midsomer Murders.

I hope this will be a good semester.  I'm so tired already, tired but unable to sleep.  My book got rejected again.  It's exhausting.  One day it'll get published, if I have to self-publish it and flog it on street corners.

Courage!