The Dangerous Existence of Madame Lee

It's now technically the 2nd, but what the hell. I plan to write in this thing more often than I now do. (I may also comment on other people's LJs more often than I now do! SHOCKING!) Whether I produce anything worth reading remains, as ever, up in the air.

I actually don't really have any New Year's resolutions this year, which is kind of a first for me; I usually at least have "remain unsexy nonsmoker" and "read x number of books" going for me, and they're generally pretty serviceable. Amazing things accomplished today include such highlights as walking for a mile, cleaning out the front seat of my car (yeah, trying to break things down into small and unthreatening chunks, also it's below freezing out and I don't want to spend any more time outside than I have to), and learning to cast on. (duokinneas: The octopus sweater sees you. It is coming for you in the night.) I have all the hand-eye coordination of one of those eyeless fish that lives in caves (several of which are native to my fine home state) and the fine motor skills of an arthritic sloth (with apologies to James Lileks), so I felt some trepidation. I think I may have to supplement my how-to book with YouTube. Ultimately, I did manage to get a few stitches on the needle, because I tend to view these things as EPIC BATTLES OF WILL OMG wherein a ball of purple yarn is my evil archnemesis and I must prove that I am not dumber than it is, but I think I need more practice. I envy people with any kind of manual dexterity.

...Long paragraph is long.

Oh, and I have a 43 Things account, on the off chance anybody else has one and wants to follow my gorfy progress.

Also: I made a sweet potato pudding cake for the lolmom. Unfortunately, I failed at planning properly and apparently also ignored the bit where it has to sit in the fridge for like 3 hours, so we wound up not having it as the coda to our delicious New Year's meal of kielbasa and sauerkraut. (Pork and cooked cabbage on New Year's Day is traditional in my family.) However, it does smell good and may convince me to like sweet potatoes, at least when mixed with rum and sugar. I am not ordinarily a fan. (Regular potatoes are damn good eating. Hello, I am a Slav. I am also of Irish descent.)

I'm reading The Old-Time Maori by Makereti (Maggie Papakura), which is awesome; as Paul Diamond points out, at the time it was written (late '20s/early '30s), anthropology was a fairly new discipline and anthropology about one's own in-group was even more uncommon. I'm sure there's something I want to say about Makereti's being both female and Maori and negotiating culture and so on, but it just really escapes me and I'm not feeling very articulate at the moment. All I know is, it brings me big joy in brainmeats and it makes me excited and I want to write something. (Hello, n0v3l.)

So. Happy New Year. :D

[EDIT: I just noticed that I haven't used my Maori tag in almost a year. This calls for some serious remediation.]

Warning: This is a long, boring entry about things I did on Thursday and Friday. It is almost Schuminesque in its self-absorption. I figure this is my journal and you're here voluntarily, so I'm entitled to be a little self-absorbed periodically.

I decided to go up and make a day of it, though by the time I was ready to go it was already ten-something in the morning (eleven-something in Bloomington), and I got there about 1:30 or so. I made myself go straight to one of the places where I was going to apply in person on the south side first, since I try not to voluntarily set foot on Walnut Street if I can help it; that didn't take long. The University art museum is hiring guards, so I thought I'd apply even if it doesn't pay enough, because hell, it's work, it's in Bloomington, and I love the art museum.

( OMG ART MUSEUM! )

I guess it is foreordained that I'm not supposed to be a museum guard, because nobody was still at the information desk when I came out. And by then I had to make my interview at 4 o'clock about fifteen minutes away, so.

Had the interview; it was on the better side of average. We'll see what happens. Then I went to O'Malia's and bought grocery-store eel sushi and ate them with my fingers and went window-shopping for books I can't afford but came away wanting a whole bunch of stuff anyway because I am a shallow, vapid, book-grubbing bitch that way. And then, reluctantly, I wended my way south again. That bit really sucked.

On the bright side: the lolmom finally got paid, so we went grocery shopping (om nom nom nom). I control the horizontal, the vertical, and what we eat, because I do most of the cooking. We were over budget this time, because the lolmom wanted ground beef and steak (they were marked down for quick sale, so it's not like this was OMG EXTRAVAGANCE), and also had volunteered to make things for some sort of church persiflage she's doing this weekend. I proved brilliantly, once again, that I don't know anything about chocolate; I apparently suggested The Wrong Kind to Mom. (I am not a fan of chocolate and don't really care about it, and as far as I'm concerned, there are two kinds: the dark kind, preferably more bitter than sweet and even better when cut with espresso, and the crap kind. I don't eat the crap kind, except very infrequently and then I have to be in the mood for it.)

I got her back, though. Mom is a bit illiterate technologically, and when she spazzed about having left her cell phone in the car all day, I told her it was just a little melty around the edges but if she put it in the freezer for an hour or so it ought to firm right up. She almost believed me for a minute. Lolmom is lol.

The lolmom had previously gone to a Pampered Chef party her friend was having down the street, and came away with swag in the form of a citrus peeler and a cookbook. I made one of the salad recipes from the cookbook and found it pretty good (mmm, spinach with avocado and grilled chicken and grapefruit, mmmm), but what amused me was all the bolded product-placement references in the recipe (which I guess is only what you'd expect). For instance, spinach should go in the Prep Bowl before you use the Citrus Peeler to peel the grapefruit.

We're somewhat h4rdk0r3 about cooking in our house, so most of our dinners are accomplished with the Knife (pick one, it doesn't usually matter which), the Cutting Board, and some Wooden Spoons. For some reason we get CHEFS catalogue, probably because the lolmom got the stand mixer from them some years ago, but I find myself giggling at half the stuff in it. I mean, sure, if I were a restaurateuse, I'd probably want to have some of this stuff, but being l33, I personally am extremely unlikely to use, say, a crème brulée blowtorch more than once every couple of years, if that, and if you really do cook, you don't need most of the gadgetry in order to accomplish perfectly good results. Also I see no reason to spend $12 on special pie weights when you can use half a small bag of rice for the same purpose. (WARNING: In case you don't already know, the rice will be totally useless for eating purposes after that, so if you use rice for pie weights, be sure you continue to reuse the same rice for pie weights thereafter. You can reuse it several times--we actually have a special Tupperware container in the fridge for the pie rice.)

So. How was your weekend?

Dear Lee,

Perhaps it would be totally bitchin' if you were to research some other tribal island society for t3h n0v3l omg, or if you were to read some nice soothing studies on acculturation instead. When you are dreaming about the Maori all night every night, there is a serious problem.

Everyone would appreciate it if you stopped.

Also, there will be no "research trip" to New Zealand, even if actual research is conducted there. You have a living to earn.

Now get up off your duff and go make dinner.

No love, and scant tolerance,
Lee