need... vegetables...

OK so my personal nutrition is all going to hell. I'm going to be cooking lots of lovely food in, oh, a week or so, when I actually get to move into Nikki's house (I'm housesitting for my piano teacher this summer), but for now I am living on the extra bed in Megan Ward's room, which is lovely and hospitable except that there is no more room for groceries or for me to feel like figuring out whose cookware I can use. So, does anyone have any ideas for meals that require minimal refrigeration, no cooking, and that have some nutritional content (ie. Ramen doesn't count!)? I've got those Campbell's soup things that you heat up in the microwave, I've got bread and hummus (there was room for hummus in the fridge)... but that's going to get real old real quick.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

I had my first "day" of "work" today.
Here is what it involved:

9:30 - get to Professor Zhao's office. We talk about the project. He has problems with technology, such as how to save the textbook in an accessible place. I help him fix said problems.
10:00 - Zhao opens up the computer lab so I can access my account. The alarm starts beeping. Then the beeping turns into a steady high-pitched noise. No other consequences.
10:30 - We go to Zhao's house in Northfield. He makes me tea. Lots of tea. We don't talk about the project. What do we talk about? I don't remember. It was very slow paced.
11:00 - Maybe we start talking about the textbook for like 45 minutes. He shows me some passages from a book he was working on, but stopped because an English professor didn't think it was interesting. He wants to incorporate some of it into the textbook. (I think it actually is pretty interesting.)
11:50 - We have lunch. He heats up dumplings. They are very very tasty.
12:30 - Zhao makes coffee. We sit outside and drink it.
1:00 - We work a bit on a proposal to send to publishers. It is clear that really, he just needs to write it himself, and then I can edit. Also I look through the Writer's Handbook for potential places to send it to.
1:30 - Zhao is a judge for the international Emmys. He asks if I want to watch any of the entries. I say OK. The first one is this terrible, overacted Japanese show that could have been anime except it's live action. It's that bad. The second one was actually good except 10 minutes into it, the dialogue track cut out, and the subtitles just weren't making for an entertaining show. The last one was a Phillipino show, the title of which was a 25-letter Phillipino word that is mostly consonants, but despite the title it was pretty good, if a little cheesy.
2:20 - I decide that this afternoon is going nowhere, and while watching TV at a professor's house isn't the worst way to spend my time... there are better ways too. I also feel silently grateful that Zhao is extremely non-sketchy, 'cause honestly, hanging out watching TV at a professor's house could be pretty darn sketchy. I tell him I need to get back to campus. He is going to lend me his copies of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, so we stop by the LDC to get them. The alarm in the computer lab is still going off.
2:30 - He drops me off with the comment, "Thanks for your work, we got a lot done."

Voilà. 5 hours of paid work.

Taoism is awesome.

PS. If you guys are actually reading this, you should totally leave me comments - it would make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside... and you know you wanna do that...

Lies, lies, it's all lies...

So my last post was totally a lie, because 7 hours later I was definitely back in the familiar dazed realm of not knowing what was going on and wanting desperately to sleep. But the last two days have been (really honestly) pretty awake, or at least, I made it til 9 or so at my friend's barbecue before I started to pass out, and today I've got full consciousness, enough to work 5 hours for my part-time job editing the Taoism textbook. This is progress. By Thursday maybe I can actually (*gasp*) exercise. Now that would be a novel idea. And about time, too, because Wade (3rd-degree aikido black belt, and way hardcore) and Liz and probably people from the Kobukan (aikido dojo in Minneapolis) are going to be down on Saturday for alumni weekend to throw us around. Which will be awesome, now that I'm awake enough to enjoy it.

Yep, I'm going back to Minnesota tomorrow. I can't say it's not kind of a relief. Somehow the summer has been more stressful so far than the school year... or at least the school year post-"Flies," because I don't know what could top "The Flies" for stress.

But we saw a quite excellent play on Sunday. For those of you who don't know Martin McDonagh's plays, you should. This man is brilliant. My favorite of his is The Pillowman, which you should all read because it is phenomenal - satirical and scary and funny and political and dramatic, and the main character tells these crazy stories, and I suppose it doesn't help that when I saw it last year it was with Jeff Goldblum and Billy Crudup. If there were more amazing male actors at Carleton, this is the play that would motivate me to stop being so down on directing. Maybe next year.

But in any case, the one we saw on Sunday was "The Lieutenant of Inishmore," which is much - much - more bloody, and also more heavy-handed with the moral-political message, but it's a good message (about violent extremism being generally a bad thing which leaves the innocents to clean up, or in this case, hack up the corpses) so you can excuse him. Also at one point there is a very friendly-looking live cat on stage, whose life you genuinely fear for. (Note to directors: live animals in seeming threat of execution = powerful stage device.)

Anyway, next post from Minnesota! I'll be leading a fantastic nomadic lifestyle out of my car for 10 days, so I may or may not have time/motivation to post... but hey, nobody really reads this anyway, so it doesn't much matter, huh?

Non-adventures in normalcy

I think I'm finally getting back to a functional mental state - this is the first morning all week that I haven't wanted to go immediately back to sleep as soon as I woke up. This is exciting, as I have definitely been feeling bad about being so exhausted around my parents all the time and probably being a big downer. Especially since they have their own anxieties at the moment.
And we're going to the theater this afternoon, and I'll actually be able to stay awake the whole time! yay!

You should all go to your local Chinatowns and try bubble tea. It is awesome. Basically you get a smoothie (I recommend taro, it is tasty plus it is purple!) and put tapioca pearls in it. And it is good.

Anyway, really I am just writing because I'm at my friend's house and she's trying to figure out what courses she's going to take for the next few years (she just transferred so everything is confusing). But I don't want to inflict my time-killing on you guys too much (too late) so I guess I will wait until I have something interesting to say.

Oh except this one more thing: Columbia has a course on pirates. It's a fairly upper-level anthropology course on gender and capitalism and high-seas raiding. Carleton definitely needs to take the hint. If we had a course like that, SOAN would totally be the most popular major ever.

Final paper topic: Choose one of the following questions and answer in a 10 page analytical essay, citing sources and specific examples -
1) What is a pirate's favorite school?
2) Where do pirates go running?

The potential for that class is endless...