I Wish I Were a Chef.

It's partly why I am living in an apartment next year-- I want to be off the meal plan so a) I can cook all the time and b) I don't feel guilty about cooking all the time because I don't have to be on the meal plan.
My school offers ExCo, or experimental college, courses, and I'm taking a cooking class with my boyfriend that's being offered. The class is geared towards people who have never cooked before in their lives (which we didn't know when we signed up for it) and I don't agree with many of the things the instructor has told us-- fresh vegetables, for example, are definitely NOT the same as frozen vegetables in texture or taste, as she's claimed-- but this coming Monday is our last class and we get to pair up and cook part of a meal for the rest of the class.

The boy and I decided we'd do an appetizer so all three pairs aren't cooking entrees and just had the bright idea to do stuffed mushrooms. As a result, I've been browsing my favorite food blogs for the past hour-point-five and want nothing more than to have my own kitchen again.

Looking at food blogs is on my top 10 lists of favorite past-times, though every time I look at them I get the crazy urge to cook something immediately. This wouldn't be a bad thing if I started browsing before dinner or lived somewhere with a kitchen. And since neither of those apply to me, especially at the moment, I'm left with my desire to cook overriding the lethargy caused by my icky cold.

Maybe if I continue to blank out on what my major should be I'll end next year by declaring a major in the study of food blogs. Staring and drooling and cooking for the rest of my life wouldn't be so bad, right?

Catch Up (Continuation).

And now for the second part of my ranting catch up post from the other day!

2. My School's Unqualified Health Center Staff.

I've had a really bad cold for the past week, so I went in to the Health Center to get myself checked out. The nurse happened to be in, so I saw her instead of the nurse practitioner, and she told me that because I didn't have a fever or any signs of strep there was nothing she could do for me. Which is fair. The next day, I went in for a developing case of pink eye.

I've had a lot of experience with pink eye-- I used to get it all the time as a kid and even still get it every once in a while. I know the signs so well that I can tell before it starts getting gooey that I have it and am going to need antibiotics, and every doctor that I've been to about it has reconfirmed my ability to recognize the signs, has given me antibiotic eye drops, and sent me home with a warning that I'd be contagious for 24 hours after starting the drops. So when I went to the Health Center I didn't expect them to know me and my weird ability to spot pink eye, but I expected them to be knowledgeable and be able to help me. Which is why I was so disappointed when the nurse practitioner obviously had no idea what she was talking about.

She started our session by having me describe my symptoms to her-- my eye was bright red, it was a bit sore near the eyelashes, and was oozing yellow goop that had glued my eye shut while I slept. Normal for pink eye, right? Apparently not for this nurse practitioner-- she kept insisting that people tend to get these symptoms either before or after colds, which meant that my cold had just relocated itself to my eye. And then, even though pink eye is highly contagious, she told me to go to classes.

First of all, excuse me? My chest cold decided to take up residence in my eye and show pink-eye-like symptoms? And secondly, I'm contagious!! Don't unleash me on the unsuspecting student body!! When I had the flu they told me to not go out of my room if I didn't had to, but I'm pretty sure pink eye is even more contagious than the flu and they're telling me to go to classes?

It kind of pissed me off but I ignored it because she gave me the antibiotic drops I needed. And though I wouldn't have thought it possible, but my opinion of her actually continued to degrade when I went in the next day for a follow-up appointment. My eye's condition had improved dramatically, so I wasn't expecting anything but inane chatter. I made the mistake of asking if I was still contagious-- again, every doctor has told me that after 24 hours on the drops it's not contagious at all-- and got a speech about how I was no longer contagious to myself because of the antibiotics I was taking, but because it was a viral infection due to my relocated cold I could be contagious to other people for up to two weeks.

Seriously? Stop with this relocated cold business. What I have is very obviously pink eye, and is improving with antibiotics, which treat bacterial infections and NOT viral infections. 

Don't these people have to go through SOME kind of training before being released on the population as a someone apparently knowledgeable in the medical sciences??? Don't middle schoolers know the difference between bacteria and viruses, and that antibiotics treat the former and NOT the latter???

Suffice to say, I'm overjoyed that my mom's family is full of doctors, and if worse comes to worst I know I can always get the care I need. You'd think, though, that the school would be able to hire people who know what they're talking about without spending more money than they already are.

Right now, I'm just upset that there's no way to comment on my experiences at the Health Center to let the school know directly how I feel about the services they're offering.

Catch Up.

Okay, first of all, I'm not going to burden you all with excuses for why I haven't been posting. Let's just leave it at "I've been really busy!" and say that I'm back. Sound good?

I just tried posting these next couple of things as one post, but it was overwhelming even to me so I'm going to split it up over a couple of days. This first one will be my mini-rant on Blogger's new templates, and up in the next couple of days will be my maxi-rant on my school's unqualified health center staff.... enjoy! & it's good to finally be back.

1. Blogger's New Templates.
Thank you, Blogger. Thank you for finally saying that you are doing something about your outdated template something while not actually doing a whole lot to fix it. Congratulations to your advertising team-- I was certainly enticed to check out your new and improved template designer. But did you notice that my blog template is the same as it always has been? Yes? Well, Blogger, it's because I'm disappointed with your new system.

When you promised that you had updated, I expected something at least as versatile as Twitter's system-- while everyone uses the same layout with Twitter, I was able to use one of my own photographs for my page's background and play extensively with the color palette. Yes, Blogger. While you are slightly above Twitter on the "letting inane people speak their minds" continuum, their design interface beats yours. And that sucks.

I'm an artist, Blogger! I would like to use my own creations over someone else's uninspired stock photography! I understand that this whole production is in draft form but it's apparently good enough to be released to the public-- shouldn't you have made sure that the background pictures lined up correctly before releasing? The top of the picture automatically lines up with the top of the blog, and how much of the picture background is visible depends on how big the viewer's internet window is-- my laptop screen dwarfs most other laptop screens and I STILL can't see the most interesting parts of most of the images available. What's up with that??

At the end of the day, Blogger, I do appreciate that you're making strides to improve our experience in this bottomless pit called the internet. I really and truly do. I just wish that your "new and improved" options lived up to their potential.

Extreme Disappointment Radiates: A Rant.

At my school we have something called Plenary, which is essentially the entire student body's foray into direct democracy-- students can propose resolutions that have to do with any aspect of life at the school, and the student body gets together one night a semester to vote on these resolutions and either reject them, amend them, or pass them into school law. The only catch is that a certain percentage of the student body-- called quorum-- has to be present to keep Plenary running.

This was only my second Plenary, but even I could tell that things were going wrong. We lost quorum about every ten or fifteen minutes and ended up having to stop Plenary altogether because we were majorly below quorum with little hope of reaching it again.

The biggest reason I came to this school was its community; among other things, I loved that students not only held themselves accountable for their actions, but got to set the standards against which they held themselves accountable. There was no administration imposing rules on the student body because the student body determined their own rules-- a long time ago someone wrote an Honor Code that we as a population have pledged to keep alive and uphold.

This process failed last night. The same people who pledged to take an active role in their own government did not show up for Plenary to discuss the resolutions that could possibly govern them. They didn't care enough to bring some work and a pillow and just be present for five hours. It's not even that they had to take an active part-- yes, we need a certain number of votes to pass anything, but really the most important thing is maintaining quorum. As long as you're in the building you can play frisbee, do homework, sleep, or whatever the hell you want. You just need to be there.

A bunch of people have been complaining because they had a lot of work and couldn't go, or they had sports and were tired, or any number of ridiculous reasons, but in any case it's unacceptable. Plenary is important enough that you should either have your most important work out of the way or be prepared to do it afterwards, and if you're tired, bring a pillow and a blanket and catch some Zs in a quiet corner. It's not that hard.

I've also heard a lot of harsh words being thrown about the freshmen class ruining Plenary for everyone else. However, I know that many more of my freshmen friends were there than my upperclassmen friends. A few of my upperclassmen friends were too apathetic to walk up campus from their apartment, but a bunch of my fencing friends and I had been up since 5.45 yesterday morning, fenced for eight hours, and still were there for as long as we could be. Because I care about my school and our ability to self-govern. But apparently the majority of our student body didn't care enough to be there.

Dear Blog-Following World,

IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE READING THIS?





Not that it really matters in the long run. This is a test for me to improve my writing and consistency, and I'll keep writing whether or not people are actually reading it...


(But it would still be nice to know.)


Love,
Chicca

Sauna Sauna Sauna Sauna Sauna

For the past three or so weeks my school has been right in the middle of a series of small blizzards. Cumulatively we've probably gotten about four feet of snow in about that much time, and it's been kind of windy so the snow is whipping around in the air and blowing into people's faces and making people generally cold to the bone. So you'd expect nothing more from me than a recount of how I've spent these past few weeks curled up in bed with a cup of hot chocolate, being warm and cozy in my duvet and watching the snow fall outside my window?

Well, you would be wrong. Because while I have been watching the snow fall outside my window, instead of curling up cozy under my duvet I have been opening my window and hoping that some of the disgustingly hot air trapped in my room will go away. I mean, yes. That's terrible for the environment and as someone who cares greatly about saving the environment I am terribly ashamed of myself and my actions, but actually there is no other way for me to survive. When I lay down to take a nap yesterday the air coming out of the heater was so hot that the tree outside looked like it was rippling-- I was seeing those crazy air ripples that you find in the summertime when you look at the pavement. Seriously? It's the middle of a snowy winter in the mid-Atlantic. This should not be happening! It's winter, for chrissake! I want to be able to cuddle up under my comforter! But instead I sleep basically naked under a sheet and still wake up sweaty and disgusting-- what's up with that??

On another note, the tree outside my window also has had something crazy stuck to one of its branches for about two weeks now. It looks kind of like a gigantic black squirrel attached itself to a branch and died, except there's no body and instead is just a lot of long black fur waving in the wind. It's pretty creepy and terribly mysterious and makes me feel a bit like Edgar Allen Poe.

Don't be fooled by molasses, guys.

My parents sent me the most delicious cookie sampler for my birthday from Dancing Deer Baking Co., and as I sit here eating a molasses-clove cookie I am realizing I shouldn't have chickened out on molasses cake over winter break. I found this recipe for dark molasses gingerbread cake and immediately wanted to make it-- I mean, look at it! It just looks so gooey and rich and inviting that my taste buds simply quivered and ordered me to start baking. However, because I found it pretty late at night I figured it wouldn't be such a good idea, so instead I went to bed with my midnight snackies unsatisfied and put the cake on the back burner (ha).

My plan was to make it the next day, but as I was gathering ingredients I'd realized that I had no idea what a molasses cake tasted like. Both my dad, who was my sous chef for the day, and my mom, who was taking a break from playing with me in the kitchen, warned me that molasses was certainly not for everyone-- I already knew that my mom wasn't going to eat this cake (she really doesn't care for molasses), and so to see if I would like it my dad had me lick some off a spoon. Sounds like a good idea, right? To give me an idea of what the cake might taste like?

WRONG. MOLASSES BAKED GOODS TASTE NOTHING LIKE STRAIGHT MOLASSES FROM A SPOON. DON'T BE FOOLED, GUYS.

The molasses-from-a-spoon experience unfortunately pushed me away from baking that delicious-looking cake and I opted for a chocolate gingerbread instead. Chocolate gingerbread is a masterpiece in its own right and is actually one of my all-time favorites, but I now realize the error of my baking ways. Because when I bit into this Dancing Deer molasses-clove cookie it was moist and reminded me faintly of gingerbread, but tasted nothing like the gross, viscous, dark substance I ate from a spoon.

The moral of the story is, don't be fooled by its sticky texture, weird color, and strong smell. Molasses cookies are spectacular. So when I find ingredients and a willing oven, guess what my next project's going to be?