Food.3

Well I've officially graduated. It doesn't feel any different, other than the fact that I don't have classes to look forward to come fall! Although I do have to work. Which, I need to find. Hey, I'm working on it, okay?

I see people get all emotional over graduating. Honestly I see it as an inconvenience. There were so many things I was able to do as a student: I could get discounts to things, I could use computers in the SLC, hell, I could use my computer anywhere on campus, and, most importantly, I could still be a part of BPG.

Granted, I plan on taking a class this summer, so technically I'll still be able to do those things, but come on: look at all the things I'm not looking forward to! Heh.

Anyways.

Food.3


Yesterday was Mother's Day, and we decided to make dinner and dessert for our mom. It's actually pretty easy doing things for her on said day, her birthday, or just anything where we should "get her something." She likes flowers and sentimental things with meaning behind them. So yesterday we got her flowers and we made food. Awesome.

We had this Sweet Thai Chili pork loin that we got from Sam's Club. It's delicious, by the way. I took the other one with me back to Athens and I can't wait when I get to have it. I'm saving it for a special occasion. So we seared the pork loin in a cast iron skillet (absolutely love those things. I have one and I cook nearly everything in it. Can get really fucking hot though) and stuck it in the oven where we cooked the rest of it. So tender. So flavorful. Even my sister kind of enjoyed it and she's not a big meat eater (hi, Em).

Veggies wise there was this stir-fried kale/bok choy mixture. I think. Or maybe it was all kale. Kinda fuzzy on the details because I checked out after doing my bit of the cooking.

And then as a starch, we cooked this hand-made, lemon-chive spaghetti/pasta our mom got from the farmer's market earlier last week. It was really tasty. It's very fresh and clean tasting, thanks to the lemon.

Finally, the sauce...the damn sauce for the pasta. I knew we couldn't really do a marinara/tomato-based sauce because I thought the sweetness from the tomatoes would compete with the sweetness from the marinade used on the pork. I decided a cream sauce would be better, like alfredo. However, the alfredo sauces I knew about required cream, or at least half-and-half. All we had was 2% milk. Great. Then our mother found a can of Coconut Milk in our pantry. I know, I was thinking the same thing. "I'm too derpish on cooking still, how the fuck can I make a for-pasta cream sauce from coconut milk?!" I knew the flavor of the coconut milk would go with the pork nicely already - the problem for me was I couldn't figure out if it'd do well as a pasta sauce.

I went ahead and tried to make something happen. And you know what? It worked. I guess.

Coconut Milk-Alfredo Sauce
Makes enough sauce for pasta servings for 3-4 people

• 1/2 can of coconut milk
•  2-3 cups freshly grated parmesan cheese 
• few dashes of chili powder
• garlic powder
• salt
• pepper
• a dash or two of cumin

Pour 1/2 can of coconut milk into small sauce pan over medium heat. When warm enough, add cheese, stir to melt. Add chili powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper - all to taste. Add a small shake or two of cumin. Stir. Let simmer/keep warm until ready to serve. 

I was really skeptical about using coconut milk. Again, I was all "wtf am I doing" the entire time. But in the end, it turned out pretty good. At least my mom and sister thought so. It tastes like alfredo sauce, but with coconut milk, which they said had added very Thai taste to it (of course. It's coconut milk). Like, Thai curry, almost. But alfredo. Yeah. Anyways, it paired nicely with the freshness from the lemon-chive pasta, and it complimented the sweet Thai chili pork loin well too. All in all, great success. 

And then dessert. I made strawberry shortcake, all from scratch: the shortcake biscuits, the strawberry topping, and the whipped cream. I followed this recipe. It was so damn good, easily my favorite part of the entire meal. I was especially proud of it. And it was relatively easy, too. You know what this means? I'm totally using this if I want to impress a girl with awesome dessert one day. Hell yeah. 

The only thing I would've gone back and changed about the dessert is that I would've added a few splashes of bourbon to the whipped cream prior to the whipping/blending. Mm. Bourbon-whipped cream on strawberry shortcake. My mouth just watered a little bit.

And I'll close with a picture of the above-mentioned dessert:

So. Good. 

How I'll feel when I turn in my crappy script in a couple of hours

Seriously though. I am so done with this. Pretty sure I checked out a week ago, at least. I'm graduating, whatever.

I should've learned my lesson from last semester, that I do not have the stamina to commit myself to a long piece of fiction, be it novel or play. Inspiration and motivation come in short bursts for me and writing, so I'll start out pumped for an idea I have, but then as times goes on, I start realizing "Fuck. This is really complicated now," or "Fuck. This idea sucks. What the hell was I thinking?"

This is what I get for trying to write a murder-mystery stageplay...fuck. What was I thinking?

Firefly: On Faith...

[Shepherd Book prepares a meal as he absentmindedly addresses River.]

Book: What are we up to, sweetheart?

River: Fixing your Bible.

Book: I, um -- What?

[Pan over to River, who works on a book with pens, brushes, and loose pages.]

River: Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logistics... doesn't make sense.

Book: No, no. You—you can't...

River: So we'll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God's creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah's ark is a problem.

Book: Really?

River: We'll have to call it "early quantum state phenomenon". Only way to fit 5,000 species of mammals on the same boat.

. . .

Book: River, you don't... fix the Bible.

River: It's broken. It doesn't make sense.

Book: It's not about... making sense. It's about believing in something. And letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It's about faith. You don't fix faith, River. It fixes you.

~from ep 7 of Firefly, "Jaynestown." 

And all that Jazz

I'm gonna recommend this 8tracks playlist. 36 smooth jazz covers of very un-jazz songs. It's great stuff. Have a listen.

The person who put this 8tracks list together even uploaded the entire playlist via zip file! So you can download the playlist and have it for your own personal enjoyment and listen to tracks at your own will. Like I'm doing right now.

Aw yeah. 

"Don't Stop The Music"

Me gusta.

When shirt-ironing leads into a personal reflection

So yeah, I take pleasure in meditative activities. I've mentioned a few already. Now I'll add to the list: ironing clothes. There's just something quite satisfying about spreading a shirt over the board and guiding the hot iron over the fabric and eliminating creases, leaving me with a relatively crisp, and smooth, shirt. That being said, I really, REALLY, want a full sized, folding/stand-up ironing board. I'm tired of using this mini, table-top thing. I mean, it gets the job done, but it's just so tiny. I need more surface area on which to iron shirts. Not to mention pants; the pant leg would be all over the place, everywhere except on the board. 

On a semi-related note, I will never purchase a "non-iron" shirt again. The idea is that these shirts are supposed to be wrinkle resistant so you don't have to iron them, but let's face it, they're gonna require just a little bit of ironing anyways. Also, these shirts are coated in...something. It's some weird finish they dip the fabric in before putting the shirt together. As a result, the thing is really suffocating. It doesn't breathe well (read: NOT ideal for dancing. No.) So from now, I will strive to skip those non-iron things and stick to untreated shirts, thank you very much. They're comfier and softer anyways. 

And about the DAT: I actually think I did really well on the PAT section. Like, I think I got a legit competitive score for that. Also, I actually found it rather fun, doing all those visualize-these-2D-images-in-a-3D-space puzzles. It amused me greatly (but also is what probably sobered me up the most. Damn). I also seemed to have killed it on the math section too. Reading comp was my next best score - that was...alright. ish. And then...sciences. 

...

HAHAHAHHAHAHA yeah, nope. Completely bombed that shit. I so called it. 

Moving on. 

So I realize I'm not a great story-teller. Like say, if I wanted to share something interesting I experienced in my day-to-day life with a friend, it just doesn't seem to work out very well. I get through the information fine, but I catch myself stumbling over words - stuttering, almost. I really need to slow down. Enunciate. Articulating my words was my biggest problem in my acting classes. It still is, actually. I just feel like my mind processes things at a normal rate, but my mouth can't keep up with it, so it just fumbles words and then I get flustered and fail so hard. Or, sometimes I feel like I worry I'm talking too slowly, and the person listening will get bored and find an interest elsewhere at the moment. Now the latter might not be true; in fact, I know most of the time people will sometimes get this bug-out expression on their faces and be all, "Whoa man, you're talking really fast." Yikes. Allow me to gather myself and stop my face from reddening and I'll gladly resume my story and/or opinion. Also, sometimes when I'm talking about something I'm really passionate about, I get too excited and I tend to accelerate my speech as well. I just need to...slow down, I guess?

But then this is why I like writing. Here. This blog. These words. It gives me the chance to organize my thoughts at my own leisure. I don't have to worry about trying to hold someone's interest. I can write at my own speed. I can pause and think and resume typing at my will.

However, at the same time, I stop and wonder if this all seems a bit antisocial. For the most part, I feel like I've yet to have a friend(s) to whom I can talk to about anything and everything. From the most tedious and uninteresting occurrence of my day, to the most exhilarating and jaw-dropping story about my night. (The latter would probably never happen. My nights are rather uneventful.) I don't have a small gang of friends with which I could call any of them up and just be like, "Hey, let's hang out. Be there." At the present, trying to hang out and see friends feels a little like a chore. It seems to require a degree of planning. It involves trying to look presentable. Shouldn't hanging out with best friends be almost effortless? 

There are times where I wish I had a few best guy- friends. The problem is, I find guys my age to be so...hm, immature isn't the word. Lord knows I can be immature. But maybe it's the maturity level. That might be it. I feel that I've yet to meet a guy to whom I can relate to on the same frequency of fluctuating maturity. Having gal-friends is fine and all, but they're still members of the opposite gender, and in the long run, that's not gonna fly.

Basically, I continue writing here because I feel like I don't have a best friend with whom I can talk to all the time. 

Or, well. Hmm. Just now, that statement sounded a bit like girl logic. Is it? I don't know. Well I'm not saying, "omg gaiz, I needz ur pity bc I'm so lonelyyyyy."(Because I know there's only like, three or four people who even keep up with this thing regularly). For the most part, I don't mind being by myself. Things are simpler when I don't have people who need me for things. But then other times, I do yearn for some kind of human connection. 

And well, going back a bit now: because of my less than stellar verbal communication skills, I've always found solace in other forms of self-expression. I've been playing music for pretty much all my life to this point. Something about sounds and melodies, how you can manipulate them to imply different emotions and feelings. I find pleasure in writing, how you're able to craft and compose words, and shape them to tell a moving story, or tease with a poem's message. 

But dance. Dance is something else entirely, to me. It's like, music and writing have sustained my need for self-expression fine enough up to this point, but dance is like...the final key. It brings everything together. It allows me to experiment with music and its emotions. Like writing, I can compose and choreograph to convey a message or theme. But it also adds something else, and this is a bit abstract, but I find it to be most crucial. For me, I especially enjoy dance because of the different energies I can feel and manipulate. I've only just started and I know I'm only a beginner, but I'll just say what I can from my experiences thus far. Jazz feels very articulated and sharp. It's certainly malleable, allowing room for many different many flavors of music. To me, it's sassy, bold, sly, mischievous, even sexy at times. I haven't done anything close to a formal beginner's ballet lesson yet, but from what I can observe, ballet comes across as raw power under the guise of elegance. The things those dancers can do are simply unbelievable. Dizzying turns and gravity-defying leaps, all while maintaining a certain poise and grace. Amazing. Contemporary meanwhile seems to be the most pliable. I feel like it has the greatest range of interpretation, and the number of ways one could use the energy to move in this style are nearly infinite. And of course ballroom is essentially about the energy between two people, how you can give and receive and read each others' energy in order to successfully move across the floor. 

I've discovered dance. I want more. So much more. And I'm just about prepared to do whatever it takes to get what I want. 

I REALLY wish I owned a flask right now.

Think about it. It'd make taking the DAT tomorrow so much better. I have an hour for lunch between my class and the exam, so like, why not make myself a little somethin' before I walk over to the building on campus where I'll be chained to a computer for 5 hours?

Really though. I give zero fucks about this. Well, wait, maybe if I just check my desk drawers...nope, nothing, what about my backpack...hm, empty. Oh! My pockets? I don't think--wait, what's this? Yep! There, I found a fuck. Oh, a fuck and a half. I give 1.5 fucks about the DAT tomorrow.

I have a dream now. And it's something I know I feel strongly for, more than anything I've encountered thus far. And it does not involve dentistry. Or medicine. Or anything supposedly "respectable" for my family's standards. I know my family will flip its shit. And if they do, okay, cool. I need to at least try and maybe fail (hopefully not) so I can say I did, versus looking back, years from now, still living with fear, regret, and major resentment towards my family. Honestly, I already dislike my family for this. Well, I love my cousins, of course, but the elders...not so much. And my grandfather's fighting cancer, sure, and if it's like, some dying wish of his that I should be a doctor, well...sorry. That's not me. Guess he'll have to die disappointed. Q-fucking-Q. He's already got other grandchildren striving to go into that field. And I will not be one of them.

If someone loaned me their flask for the day tomorrow, I'd really, really appreciate it <3



Or you know what, screw it. There are other ways to transport small amounts of alcohol.