Just one example of many...

Recruiting starts tomorrow.  It's going to be a trainwreck.  We've got a new assistant grad program coordinator who is um, not the sharpest knife in the drawer or tool in the shed, or bulb or crayon in the box.  I could go on. My classmate and I have been coordinating the student drivers for the past several recruiting weekends, and needless to say this woman is making our job considerably more difficult.  But it turns out she's not the only one who's a little slow...


This afternoon I got an email from this asst grad coordinator asking if I am going to dinner tomorrow night.  I usually do, but there's really no reason that I need to be there.  Anyways, I tell her (um, somewhat snippily) that I was planning to go.  And then she tells me, less than 24 hours before recruiting stuff starts, that we have a recruit who lives on campus here (as she's a current undergrad here) who does not have a car, and asks if I can give her a ride to dinner.  Nevermind that there's no mention of the fact that surely she needs a ride back to campus after dinner, or that presumably we'll have to shuttle her individually back and forth to all the off-campus events.


I replied to the asst grad coordinator saying sure, I can do that, tell her to meet me behind [chem dept building] at 6 pm.


I got this email at 6:41 tonight:

Hi Anne,


[Asst grad coord] sent me an email saying that you are going to take me to the [hotel where all the other recruits are staying] for dinner tomorrow night.
I [was] supposed to meet you at 6 outside CSB, but I did not see you there.
Can I have your phone number so I can contact you tomorrow?
Thanks.


Best Regards,
[Lacking-all-common-sense Recruit]

[HEADDESK]

I replied to clarify that I meant tomorrow... as that's when dinner is.  I see a few possibilities here.

1. This recruit is not very bright.  Like to the point that I'd be concerned about odds of surviving grad school.

2. This recruit's English is so poor that she didn't understand the email from the assistant grad coordinator.  Entirely possible, though sadly I've seen people with far, far worse English make it through a PhD.  (Before you jump all over me - I've studied abroad, I know it's incredibly hard and tiring to master a language to the point of being functional, however if you want a degree from an English-speaking institution in an English-speaking country, I fully expect you to be functional in English.  End of story.)

3. The assistant grad coordinator is even dumber and more useless than I thought she was.

And 4th - the only possibility of which I'm sure - is that this recruit has so little common sense that it never occurred to her that the idea of meeting me today was weird and made zero sense.  (Yes, some combination of these possibilities is also plausible.  Also, no, sadly common sense is not required for a PhD, though I'd argue that it should be.)

Sadly, this is the most benign example I have of why this weekend is going to be a chaos teetering on the brink of disaster.  Counting down the hours until Sunday at noon...

Picacho Peak

We hiked Picacho Peak again last Saturday.  Somehow this hike seems to be getting scarier rather than easier for me.  Anyways, I just took a couple photos from the top when some vultures were flying low (charming, I know, especially given my fear of falling to my death throughout most of this hike).

Sweets for my Sweetheart(s)

Happy Valentine's Day!  With or without a boyfriend (previously it's always been without) I like Valentine's Day.  I'll always take an excuse to get dressed up and go out for dinner with my girlfriends.  And you can't be surprised to hear I'm a fan of all the ridiculously adorable Valentine's-themed desserts out there.  This year I sent packages of goodies to Boyfriend, my little brother, and one of my college roommates (I would have sent a package to my other college roommate, but she only eats 3 food groups now, none of which are butter or sugar.), and the cookies just turned out so freaking cute that I had to share them.

I made these chocolate cookie sandwiches from Sprinkle Bakes - a lot of her her desserts are more involved than I'm generally looking for, but man are they gorgeous.  But these cookies were just the right amount of involved AND they used up every last sprinkle I had!

I also made these conversation heart cookies from Annie's Eats.  The sugar monster inside of me loves conversation hearts, and the cookies are just so cute.  And it was fun to throw in a couple "specialized" ones.  This was my second attempt at decorating with royal icing, and I've decided it's a lot of fun (though rather time consuming).  Please ignore the icky-looking butter prints on the paper towel and consider how delicious and buttery it means these cookies are.

For my labmate.  My labmates got the extras that didn't get mailed.

I also made these yummy toffee blondies from Lovin' from the Oven.  I didn't take any photos since they taste much, much better than they look.  Also I substituted regular chocolate chips for the white chocolate chips because white chocolate is icky.

Sorry to post this so late, but I wanted to wait until the packages got to their destinations before posting.  Hopefully they all beat this!

Cafe Reviews for the Dissertation Writer, Volume 8

Bar Edition!

Friday afternoon Dallas and I headed to 1702 for some dissertation writing for me and paper revisions for him.  Surely I can work just as productively with a beer in hand as a cup of tea right?  Turns out I totally can.  I got at least as much done, if not more, that afternoon than I usually do during a dissertation date.

Pros:

• There are lots of tables, and as long as you don't arrive during a meal rush, there are plenty of tables.
• They have totally delicious pizza and about a zillion beer options, including beers that this non-beer-fan enjoys.
• It's within walking distance of our offices, and a somewhat long walk from home.
• Free wifi

Cons:

• Timing is everything.  You're going to have a hard time if you arrive during the lunch rush.  We got there shortly after 11 (kinda early for lunch), started with a beer, ordered lunch later, and worked all afternoon.
• There aren't that many outlets, and none near the tables by the windows.
• The place is pretty loud when it gets full.
• When we go to a cafe I get a cup of tea or a chai latte - neither of which is particularly unhealthy.  However my waistline can't support a slice of pizza and a couple pints of beer all that often...

I enjoyed this dissertation date very much.  I'm quite sure this will be a quasi-regular thing.

Cafe Reviews for the Dissertation Writer, Volume 7

Last week Tiff and I tried Shot in the Dark Cafe, which is in downtown Tucson.  In short, there was one deal breaker which trumps all the good things about this cafe - we both left reeking of cigarette smoke.  The cafe part we were in was non-smoking, but the closed off adjoining room (which I think was more bar-like in character) allowed smoking, and the smell permeated the whole place despite the separation.  Anyways, here's the list:

Pros

• The cafe is open 24/7!  Coffee XChange is the only other cafe we've found open 24 hours, and sadly, we're not particularly likely to go back there (though far more likely to go back there than to Shot in the Dark!).  While I'm generally not a night owl, and midnight is usually plenty late for me, I really like that if I get on a roll, there's no reason to stop!  This actually came in really handy as it took me til about 12:30 to finish the section that I was determined to finish that night.
• They had lots of food, like legit meal-food, not just drinks and snacks.  Tiff had a sandwich that looked pretty tasty.
• They use real dishes - I had a chai latte in a beer stein. :)
• Free wifi
• The place was mostly empty!  Weird conversations are probably one of the most distracting things about working in public (or in the office haha), but no worries about that here.

Cons

• The cafe is downtown, which means it can be hard to find parking and you may have to park a couple blocks away.
• While the cafe is technically within walking distance (I run by it regularly in fact), but I don't want to make that walk home in the middle of the night by myself.
• Tiff's labmate who was also working with us reported that the bathroom was pretty gross.  I held it til I got home. :(
• Finally, the smell of cigarette smoke from next door!  ICK!  Get better ventilation people!  For this one reason I won't be back.

The place we're trying this week looks pretty good...including their dessert menu. :)  Let's hope it's an improvement otherwise, too.

Why am I doing this?

Ah, finally one of these dumb "Shit ____ Say" I can relate to.  I've personally heard or said just about every one of these lines.  Especially the "why am I doing this?" one.
 

Goals & Kitchen Goals, Update

So before I get into what kitchen goods I want to whittle down in February, an update on my broader goals and January's kitchen goals.

• The write/defend graduate thing - well, I've written about a chapter and a half.  Well maybe a little more than that.  I'm hoping to have a second chapter knocked out by the end of the week.  But yes, I'm going to have to pick up the pace.
• Finding a job...I've applied for a couple things...and I've done a fair amount of browsing for pertinent postings.  But I need to get some more applications out and find some more (in the sense of quantity and quality) appealing postings.
• Vitamins - I've actually been pretty good about this!  I haven't been taking my vitamin every day, but at least several times per week.  I'll consider this one a success.

I also talked about trying to work my way through my excessive stash of frozen cranberries, curry, rosemary, and cloves during the month of January.  While I haven't polished anything off, I did use more of each of these than I typically would in a month.

• I'm down to one bag of frozen cranberries from 2 1/2 bags.  They've gone into baked oatmeal, muffins, and cookies.  I tried to "health-up" the muffins but subbing a small portion of the flour with whole wheat flour, subbing apple sauce for the vegetable/canola oil, and eliminating the crumb topping (sigh).  I've been wanting to try the vegetable/canola oil substitution for a while.  All the commentary I could find online said that it would change the texture, but that that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.  I do think it made the muffins significantly heavier and denser, but they were still tasty, so I don't think it was a bad substitution.
• While I only used curry a couple of times, twice per month is definitely higher than my average curry consumption rate.  I still have a holy ton of curry though.
• I almost finished a bottle of dried rosemary!  Fortunately winter generally means ample quantities of root vegetables, which are quite amenable to rosemary.  I made mashed potatoes with rosemary as well as roasted miscellaneous root vegetables.
• The only thing I used cloves for this month were these gingerbread cookies that I made in the shape of kangaroos for Australia Day.  If you're looking for a gingerbread cookie recipe, I highly recommend that one from Annie's Eats.  They were delicious, stayed soft at least as long as they existed before being devoured, and got rave reviews from everybody.  (And they used up a bunch of cloves, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg!)

Sadly, we haven't had a chance to make anything with saffron.  Hopefully we'll get to it this month.  Fingers crossed!  Aside from hopefully getting around to cooking with saffron, here's what I'm hoping to focus on this month:

• Pinto beans - last year we accumulated a ton from the CSA and just never used them.  They're dry.  They keep indefinitely.  So we didn't worry about them.  But now we have a ton.  I did already get a head start on this by making this yummy recipe from Simply Recipes last weekend.  We got cilantro in our share, and E had jalapenos from her mom, so it seemed like a good idea.
• Whole wheat flour - I bought it for one particular recipe, but haven't really used it otherwise.  I used a whopping half cup in the cranberry muffins I made last weekend though. :)  I've found a few recipes that particularly call for it - including pizza crust and more muffins.  And I'm going to try to sub in a small portion of the total flour in a recipe for whole wheat more often.
• Drink mixes - random, I know.  But I've got some Gatorade mix (left over from the Grand Canyon trip) and a bunch of EmergenC just sitting around.  It should be used.  Either would certainly be better for me than the Cherry Coke Zero I love so much (though not nearly as tasty :( ).
• Sprinkles - I don't know when, why, or how I got them, but I have them.  We used a bunch for E's advisor's birthday last week, but Valentine's called for cute baked goods, which can easily accommodate cute sprinkles. 

I'll be sure to report back in a month. :)