Dreams and Their Inspirations

Last night I had 3 different anti-carb dream vignettes:

1)  My mom and I were talking about a movie I'd seen that she's interested in seeing.  I'm like, Hey, it's on Netflix streaming, do you want to watch it?  She says no, that she wants us to make and eat a big cake together.  I'm like, Um, I really don't want to eat any cake, do you?  She is insistent that we should do this.  In desperation I ask whether she'd be happy going out and getting a donut or something instead of making an entire cake, and she's down on that idea.  But this weird Dream Mom is also wearing capri-length jeans, white athletic socks, and the most bright red faux-croc faux-leather penny loafer mules -- you know, they are like penny loafers in the front but are missing the part in the back that would hold them onto your foot.  Imagine something similar to these only bright red penny loafers.  With athletic socks.  Obviously this isn't my real mom.

2)  Somebody has left my lunch for me in the warm oven.  And it's two kinds of pancakes -- buttermilk/wheat pancakes with apple sauce and cinnamon and chocolate pancakes.  There are like 6 of each kind.  I try a bite of buttermilk pancake and think, Man, this really isn't very flavorful at all.

3)  I am going through the lunch line at a school cafeteria and WTF it's cookies for lunch day.  I have my choice of two kinds of cookies -- either baked or just the raw dough.  I ask for the chocolate chip cookie dough and they give me like 3 ice cream scoops worth.  In place of the salad bar, they have a cookie bar where you can add e.g. a cream filling/frosting between your cookies to make big Oreo style cookies.  I walk past the cookie bar and dump my tray into the trash.

My guess is I was dreaming about this because last night, after inhaling a lot of dust/etc. while cleaning the apartment pretty thoroughly and thereby really aggravating my allergies, I felt kind of ill and didn't want to eat anything even though I was hungry.  Even the normal things I would have wanted to eat under such circumstances sounded bleh.  I ended up getting Robert to defrost some ground beef, crumble it on the stove with onions, salt and pepper, and serve it to me with guacamole.  That hit the spot.  

But lest you think my dreams were all high-sugar nightmares, I also had one of my standard dreams:  Seeing Exotic Birds in My Mom's Backyard While Looking Out the Patio Door.  In this particular case, I saw two species of prairie chicken.  Exciting!  Robert was taking a nap but I woke him up to come view this awesomeness.  While he was looking at them, I saw another similar-shaped/sized but unfamiliar bird that according to my field guide was a Guadeloupe Something-or-Other.

When I woke up this morning, I was surprised by that spelling of Guadeloupe -- I would have naturally spelled it Guadalupe but I had the distinct memory that it was spelled this other way.  A few minutes ago, I noticed that the level of Solitaire Blitz I have been playing yesterday and today is on the island of Guadeloupe.  OK then.

Masters of the Universe

Tam is defending her master's project tomorrow.  Good luck, Tam!  If I understand correctly, this involves giving a presentation over her material to the professors and other grad students and then, afterwards, answering questions from her committee (not the entire group).  Stressful, right?  But she'll do great and I predict she will be totally high for several hours afterwards. 

It's always good if you can get yourself to enjoy these kinds of experiences (easier said than done, perhaps) because one thing about academia -- people generally really don't give two shits about anybody else's research.  So this is one of the few times you will have the attention of people who are situationally predisposed to care a little bit and who have a halfway decent chance of understanding some broad aspect of the project if not the details (unlike, for example, your family and friends who are not in a PhD program in your particular field).

This has made me think about my master's program and the...I was going to say two but it's really four components like this -- the first year project presentation, the major area paper (just a document that was turned in for advisor's approval), the master's thesis proposal defense, and the master's thesis defense. 

I wrote about the first year project presentation beforehand, but I never blogged about how it turned out.  (In our case, all the first year grad students did their presentations during one big session, and professors asked questions after each one.)  I was nervous, but when I finally got up there to talk, my anxiety diminished a great deal and it went fine.  One of the pieces of feedback I got was to the effect:  I thought maybe she was a bit nervous at first from her voice, but she looked so relaxed and confident up there that I decided my initial impression was mistaken.  Oh, and a funny thing: I actually did get asked a question I could not answer.  I had a complex set of results, and my focus was on the overall interaction and then some specific data points, but of course one professor asked me about the statistical significance of two data points that were not germane to my argument and I totally blanked on whether they were different or not and had to admit ignorance about that in front of everyone.  But it was OK.  I was not humiliated for life, and I passed.

Apparently I never wrote about my thesis defense, but it was really low-stress and pretty much totally great.  I had already been put through the ringer during my proposal defense by the Professor of Doom (who chaired my committee) -- incidentally, this is the same woman with the total hard-ass reputation who made a totally crushing comment to one of my fellow first years during our first year presentations because the student made a slip of the tongue.  So anyway, because of Professor of Doom's thorough excoriation of my proposal (and the not-as-scary comments by other committee members), by the time I got to the final product, I had already addressed the major issues.  And both the proposal and thesis defense involved sitting at a table with my committee, talking about the document, and not a presentation where you're standing in front of a group -- sitting at the table generally feels much less stressful to me.  The Professor of Doom was even in an expansive, light-hearted mood during the thesis defense and I saw her smile and laugh for the first time in my experience, which was nice. 

This also reminds me of how nervous I get before a job interview (like crazy nervous), but how once the interview starts, I don't feel anxious anymore.

And of course no discussion of this kind is complete without my referencing my dad's oral exam for his master's degree in German.  A member of his committee asked him a question about a book that he hadn't read, and my dad (being cool as a cucumber in these sorts of anxiety-provoking situations, something I wish I had inherited) said basically: Well, I haven't read this particular book by This Author, but in his book Whatever, he blah blah blah...  And he passed his exam.

So to Tam I pass on once again my advisor's wise advice re: the research presentation:  Have fun with it!

The End of the Warmth

Here are a few outfits I wore during what seems to have been the last gasp of summer last week.

80 Degrees

I would have liked to do something more interesting with this brown skirt, but when it's this warm, minimal is better.  (Note that this is not my new Lands End white shirt, but an old one of thinner material that I had previously hemmed to be more skirt-compatible.)  God, it looks weird and boxy with my arms up! 

New items:
*Brown cotton skirt (thifted, Ann Taylor)
*Brown flats (thrifted, American Eagle)

Pink and Blue, True Gold

(KSAL listeners might recognize those as lyrics from a Mountain Goats song.)

I liked the coral drapeneck top I got at Lands End so much that I ordered another one.  And they're still on sale!  In solid ($6), striped ($7), and polka-dotted ($7, or $9 plus size) versions (limited sizes).  I'm having to resist the urge to buy some more colors (I really have enough short-sleeved knit shirts).  The top does run a bit large, but I ordered in my normal Lands End size and I liked the fit.  The fabric is fluid enough that it drapes.

New item:
*Striped drapeneck shirt (Lands End)

Finally These Shoes

I have been stalking the Julianne flat by Born for about 6 months.  I tried the black ones from Zappos during my big "finding black shoes to wear with a suit" hunt and I really liked the fit and comfort, but sent them back when I found some comfortable heels that were dressier and more interview appropriate.  I liked several of the other colors, but they were $90, which was higher than I wanted to spend.  Last week, Eddie Bauer had them on sale for $50 plus an extra discount code, so I snatched up this purply-pink pair for $35.  (I am currently resisting the urge to spend $50 on a pair of gold ones.)  I purchased the t-shirt from them on sale also and was happy to see that the purple color matched the shoes.

New items:
*Julianne flat by Born (Eddie Bauer)
*Flowery t-shirt (Eddie Bauer)

For the last several days, it's been rainy and cool and I've been sick, so I've been wearing slight variations on the t-shirt, jeans, cardigan, and scarf combinations you've already seen.

I'm actually doing a bit better today.  Instead of waking up at 7:30 (in anticipation of my alarm, whether I've set the alarm or not -- it only takes me about 2 days to adjust to a given wake-up time) and then falling back asleep for a couple more hours, I woke up and got out of bed within about 10 minutes.  And then did 45 minutes on my exercise bike, the first exercise I've had (other than dragging myself up the stairs in the apartment) for several days.  I'm kind of tired now, but I'm clearly over the hump of this thing.

Yesterday I had a stomach ache so I tried some ginger tea that I had purchased a while back that is supposed to be good for your stomach.  And not only did it help relieve the stomach ache, it actually tasted pretty awesome.  Apparently ginger root and black pepper make a nice combination -- it was an herbal tea with a bit of a kick.  I would drink this stuff whether I had a stomach ache or not.

A Good Time for It

I've sick and very low on energy for several days now -- I've been spending time curled up with crossword puzzles, playing Fate (technically, Fate 2), and starting to re-read the Thomas Covenant books for the first time.  I was out of books from the library, and in my sick and grumpy state, this seemed to fit the bill.  I am somewhat surprised that I have only read the books (well, the first 6; I haven't read the third set) once, a very long time ago, even though I've held onto them through many, many moves and associated book purgings.  I'm enjoying reading the first one with only a memory of the premise, a couple of the characters, and a sense of the protagonist's character.  The actual plot keeps taking me by surprise.  The events are darker than I remember (though obviously not a match for the Gap series, my favorite books by this author).

In requesting some new books from the library this morning, I decided that it was time for me to start reading the Horatio Hornblower series.  I've been saving this option for a time of need (or as it would be stated in a Stephen Donaldson novel, a time of exigency), and I think that time has come.

In the Lull

It's been a slow week in Job Search Land, but I did apply to four jobs this afternoon.  It is what it is.

Domesticity

Yesterday: Blue, White, and.....Green?

My instinct was to match the navy and white with some shade of red, of course, but I decided to try something different.  (Recent posts have made clear to me just how much I fall back on that combination.) 

I used my common strategy of using a coordinating scarf to bring disparate colors together.  (This is basically my only personal dressing pro-tip.)  I liked the subtle pattern mixing of stripes with the flowery print.  (Sorry for the cruddy photo.)

New items:
*Navy striped shirt from Lands End
*Pleated navy skirt from Lands End (from their school uniform collection, mega-cheap)
*Green cardigan from Liz Claiborne

Wearing this outfit reminded me of two people:

(1)  It had that RB cool weather compensatory dressing thing going -- you know, if you wear enough long layers on the top, even in winter you can wear shorts.  (Note: this is related to, but distinct from, what I think of as Colorado compensatory dressing, in which putting a heavy sleeveless ski vest on top of any clothing combination makes it cool weather compatible because you are keeping your core warm, after all.  This is especially awesome when it involves a t-shirt, hiking shorts, and a down ski vest.)  (And it is light-years more valid and stylish than the weird Austin thing wherein people wear jeans, a coat, a hat, mittens, etc., in winter with flip flops.  For the love of Christ, people.  Buy a pair of real fucking shoes already.)

(2)  I never really understood my mom's abiding love of the 3/4 length sleeve until I started doing a lot of cooking and washing up for myself, but now I get it.  It was pretty sweet wearing this cardigan yesterday while cooking -- no bunching up of long sweater sleeves followed by the almost immediate un-scrunching, ensuring that the ends of the sleeves get wet and/or gross.

What was I cooking?  A variant on a favorite recipe, made acceptable on my neo-paleo diet with a few revisions.  I think it's just as good as the original version.

Chicken Junot, Neo-Paleo Style
Serves 4

1 - 1.5 lb. skinless, boneless chicken breasts
Italian seasoning, to taste
Garlic salt, to taste
Black pepper, to taste
2-3 portabello mushroom caps, sliced [and cut into smaller chunks]
1/2 red onion, sliced [I cut each long strip into thirds or so]
4 T. butter
1/4 c. chicken broth
1/4 c. red wine

1.  With kitchen shears, cut chicken breasts lengthwise so that each chicken breast becomes two thinner pieces.  (You can also pound them to make them thin, but I think cutting them is MUCH easier.  My cheat method does not do any tenderizing but whatever.)

2.  In a large skillet, cook mushroom and onion in 2 T. butter until tender; remove from skillet. 

3.  In same skillet, melt 2 T. butter, add chicken pieces, and sprinkle with herbs/spices.  Cook chicken over medium-high heat until cooked through, turning to brown evenly.  Remove from skillet.

4.  Return mushrooms and onion to skillet.  Add broth and wine.  Cook, uncovered, for about 3 minutes or until mixture heats up/thickens slightly.

5.  Serve chicken with wine sauce.

Note:  I find that the chicken heats up just fine in the microwave later, cooking about 2 minutes.  I always add more butter (actually butter/olive oil spread) after re-heating to moisten things up a bit.  Mmmmm....butter and red wine and more butter.  Love it.

I actually made a double recipe (two skillets) at once because I don't mind eating the same thing a couple times a day if I need to.  At the very least I mind that less than having to spend more time cooking more different things.

Today:  Unseasonably Warm

I had hoped that it would be warm enough again to wear this new dress before the fall weather really set in for good.  I wanted the chance to wear it on its own, rather than under/over a bunch of layers, because I think the details are simple but pretty.  Today, with a high of 79 degrees, seems a good day for it.

New item:
*Pink dress from Lands End

Of course, it won't be that warm until afternoon, so I'm wearing it with a lightweight cardigan for now.

Too Much

Though I consider myself a fan of most things bunny-themed, these PJs that Robert found at Target are just too insane for an adult to even consider wearing.