Pre-graduation FREAK OUT

In 25 days, I will graduate from college.  I am of course excited/nervous/happy/sad/every other emotion one could possibly relate to a major life step...but right now, I'm mostly just freaking out.

You see, those are not 25 days of joy, relaxation, and time with friends.  Those are 25 days of hard, nearly nonstop work, punctuated with more work and moments of panic.  I have Java homework assignments to program, final exams to study for, a massive paper on gender hybridity in Buffy to write, and a group project in my Software Design class that may or may not ever see the light of day.

I've begun planning my days very carefully.  I allow myself one fun thing per weekend, and then spend of the rest of the time working, working out, or sleeping.  This weekend's fun thing: a reunion dinner with my hallmates from freshman year.  I'm making a caramelized onion, mushroom, and bacon frittata, pan-roasted broccoli, couscous, and my mocha cake.  This will allow me to relax...and continue pondering my Buffy paper.

Back to the grindstone.  If I'm silent for a few weeks, I'm just working.

New Music!

I've found a new temporary favorite writing band: the Prodigy.  Their music is British electronica - they did a few songs on the Kick-Ass soundtrack, and this morning I bought "Invaders Must Die", one of their albums, off iTunes.  Fantastic music for writing.  Current favorites are "Invaders Must Die", the title track, "Omen", which was in Kick-Ass, "Warrior's Dance", "Run With The Wolves", "Piranha", and "Stand Up" (also in Kick-Ass).  Some of it is a bit rough or repetitive, but all the tracks have excellent beats and really get me typing.  Highly recommended.  If you want to hear the songs, click the song titles; I've linked single-use players (Mom, you won't like them).

Very helpful.  I'm plowing through this short story for my fiction-writing seminar.  Of course, I'm also sipping a glass of Johnny Walker Black Label, my favorite weekend writing beverage - though it's only useful to a point, and then I fall asleep.

Eating healthy == eating tasty?

Today, I experimented with cooking brown rice for the first time.  I'm not a huge rice fan, but I've been on a big vegetable kick lately (last night's dinner was a pan-roasted head of broccoli and a chunk of Tillamook cheddar) and am always in search of new vessels for deliciousness.

I used the Cook's Illustrated oven-baked brown rice recipe (reprinted with permission at that site).  I threw in a chopped onion and a chopped red pepper before baking, just to give it extra flavor, and sprinkled on a very meager amount of curry powder.  Then I pan-roasted another head of broccoli, using my favorite Cook's Illustrated method, and mixed it in with my test bowl of rice.

The verdict?  Honestly, it was kind of boring.  Sure, the rice had a very nice texture, creamy without being soggy, but the flavor was just bland.  People keep describing brown rice to me as "nutty", and I wasn't really feeling it.  I found myself eating the delicious broccoli pieces and leaving the rice.  So tomorrow, I'll be trying a new experiment: curried fried (brown) rice.  The vegetables in my rice are already pretty soft, but I'll chop the contents of my vegetable drawer (carrots, bell peppers, onions), saute them, and then throw in the rice with a judicious amount of curry powder.  I'm guessing this will add a bit more flavor.  I really want to like brown rice because it is a) good for you, b) cheap, and c) easy to cook lots at once in a single pan without much attention.  Fingers crossed for tomorrow night.

If I make it to the market to pick up heavy cream and confectioner's sugar, I'm going to make my favorite self-created recipe for my half-birthday: mocha cake with espresso buttercream frosting.  I'm fairly sure the gourmet chefs out there don't use Swiss Miss hot cocoa mix to flavor their cakes.

I'm working on a new story for my writing workshop short course.  It's tough, but I'm getting it down in fits and starts.  Of course, I want it to be really fantastic before I show it to my professor, Pulitzer Prize-winner Paul Harding (yeah, we're kind of freaking out here at Grinnell).

On a final note, I've written a post on critique groups over at Book-Bound Writers.  Check it out.

Cool new project: Book-Bound Writers

For anyone interested in the writing and publishing aspect of my life, I've just started an awesome new project: I'll be blogging about writing with the lovely and talented Shayda Bakhshi over at Book-Bound Writers.  We're just getting the blog started, but let us know what you want to hear about, and we'll respond.

Weather excitement

We had a bit of excitement last night: a bit of spring severe weather.  The power went out around 5 PM, and we watched chunks of hail flying past our window along with driving rain.  First it was a Severe Thunderstorm Watch, and then it became a Tornado Watch, which became a Tornado Warning.  We sat in our apartment, eating cold nachos (I was about to cook them when the power went out; all of our appliances are electric, not gas) and playing Clue by the light of candles jammed into water bottles.

Needless to say, no one got much homework done.  But it was good fun until the game of Clue got old.

Back to school

First of all, the D.C. trip was fantastic.  We visited basically every government institution open to the public, including the Supreme Court, the National Archive, and the Library of Congress: 

 (That's me, outside the Library of Congress)

The second week of spring break, at home, was also quite eventful.  I made the entire Passover seder meal (roast chicken with root vegetables, charoset, almond cake) and we had an interestingly abbreviated service.  Later in the week, I made some deliciously disastrous almond cookies that spread like crazy but were very tasty, almost like almond brittle.

Now, it's on to my final 50 days of college - 49, now.  My fiction short course begins on Friday (hooray!) and I've started work on my final paper for my Gothic literature class.  I can't believe I'll be graduating so soon - and after that it's on to Europe for a few weeks and then my internship.  Wow.