CSA Power Meal

Friday night E and I made stuffed peppers. We used up all sorts of CSA stuff!

Unfortunately I no longer have any idea where I originally got it, but here's the recipe we started from:

Peppers Stuffed with Cranberry Bulgur
Start to Finish: 30 minutes
Makes: 4 main dish servings

1 14-oz can vegetable or chicken broth
1/2 c shredded carrot (1 medium)
1/4 c chopped onion (1 small)
3/4 c bulgur
1/3 c dried cranberries, cherries, or raisins
2 large or 4 small red, green, or yellow bell peppers
3/4 c shredded Muenster, brick, or mozzarella cheese
1/2 c water
2 tbsp sliced almonds or chopped pecans, toasted

In a large skillet stir together broth, carrot, and onion. Bring to boiling, reduce heat. Simmer, covered 5 minutes. Stir in bulgur and cranberries. Remove from heat. Cover and let stand 5 minutes. Drain off excess liquid.

Meanwhile, halve the peppers lengthwise, removing seeds and membranes.

Stir cheese into bulgur mixture, and spoon into peppers. Put peppers in large skillet, add water to bottom of skillet. Bring to a boil, then let simmer, covered, for 10-15 minutes until peppers are just slightly softened.

So you know how I said "started from"? Yeah...we also added chopped zucchini and these kind of funny greens called verdolaga or purslane. Apparently it's considered a weed in the U.S. (I'd never heard of it before), but almost the entire plant is edible. And it's got a bunch of calcium, potassium, and vitamin A. It doesn't have a very strong taste, so it's easy to mix in to pretty much whatever you're making. And we used plain goat cheese instead of the recipe's suggestions. All of the additions/substitutions, plus the carrot and onion were CSA goods.

The peppers before they went in the oven, with the bottle of "Mystery Wine" Kristen brought home...

U of A continues to amaze me...

While getting our monthly Eegee on Friday, Dallas and I came across this on our way back to Chemistry:


Bike valet parking?! Really?? It seems that if you're sufficiently active/unlazy to bike to campus, that you could manage to walk a bit from wherever you locked your bike to your destination...

Called? Lost?

Since I was about 8, up until I moved to Tucson 3 years ago, I was involved in some form of music ministry. I started with singing in the children's choir (I mean, what other options are there when you're 8?), and in middle school started playing piano for one of the adult choirs in my parish. All through high school I played most of the school liturgies, and even began essentially organizing/running the music ministry at school. In college I went back to "just" singing in the choir until my junior year when I got a "job" as one of the accompanists.

Being involved in the liturgy the way a music minister is was an amazing experience. Because you need to know "cues" and such, and when you're involved in music selection, you inevitably learn SO much more about the masses and as a result about the Church and your faith. I think being involved in the liturgy and the parish in such a way contributed significantly to making God, faith, and parish life such a big part of my life and what's important to me. I'm absolutely certain that if Dick (the director of the adult choir that I first played piano for) hadn't been a creeper (quite a funny story actually) and asked me to (at not quite 13) to play for his choir, I wouldn't be the person I am today.

I am by no means a spectacular pianist. But with time I became a good accompanist and really felt like I was where I belonged.

When I moved to Tucson, it took me a few months to find a parish I felt good about. A lot of the parishes in the mid-town area (where the university is, and where I've always lived) are suuuuper old-school and conservative. Like pre-Vatican II old-school. I really liked the priests at the parish near the university - ever sermon I've heard there has been excellent. But the music is TERRIBLE. Painfully bad. And nobody seems to talk to each other. There is a Newman Center on campus, and the music there is better, but 99% of the congregation is undergrads and alums that are married to each other and never moved on from undergrad. So I just felt really out of place.

Eventually I found the parish I've been going to for almost 3 years now. It has a decent balance of good preaching and good music, with a very active parish life. There's one choir I suppose I could join, but it's pretty much the guy who's the parish music director and a hoard of older women. At that point, fall of my 1st year, I decided that maybe I should try serving in a different fashion. So I started working with the high school youth group.

It's been a good experience, but I feel like I'm not really getting anything out of it anymore, and I'm not really sure I have anything to really offer the high school kids or the other ministers. Not that everybody I've met hasn't been very welcoming and friendly, but I've always been a bit of an outsider in the situation. All of the other ministers are a few years younger than me, which at this age means a huge difference in life situation/experience/needs, and they've grown up in the parish, so they've known each other and lots of people in the parish.

I feel like it's time for me to stop working with the high school youth group, but I also feel like I don't really have a good reason for wanting to stop. I feel like I'm not getting the support or enrichment out of my "faith community" that I did in college, or that I got from music ministry. But I also suspect that I'm not going to find what I'm looking for in my parish, or in Tucson. The time commitment of youth ministry is sometimes hard, but I can/could make it work if I want it to, and they've always been understanding about my sometimes limited availability. I'm having a hard time putting my finger on what it is, but I just feel like I don't belong there anymore.

Unfortunately my biggest reason why I should continue with youth ministry is essentially guilt. Yay Catholic guilt. Without really thinking about it, I told the high school coordinator (also a student with a lot on his plate) that I would continue this year, and I would feel really bad sort of leaving him in the lurch. Other than the adult who is the overall parish director of youth ministry, I'm the only "adult" minister (i.e. the only one over 25 who counts as an adult for legal purposes), making me valuable for fulfilling diocesan requirements and as a chaperon for any outings.

If I don't do high school youth ministry, I feel like I need to do something to be involved in the parish. Actively taking part in more than just attending mass every week pushes me to not be complacent about God or my faith, and I feel that's important. There are upteen various service organizations or projects in the parish that I could probably partake in, but I'm not sure that's really what I'm looking for either. I guess it comes down to feeling like there really isn't anybody else in a remotely similar life situation, so I'd always be sort of the odd man out.

In France I sort of felt the same way, but I knew it was temporary - in a year I'd be back in St Louis in a vibrant faith community, surrounded by my peers, with everything I could want or need (at that point). In a way, I know I'm in Tucson temporarily, but 5 years is an awfully long "temporary." It's long enough that I've really tried to make this feel like home, and in pretty much every way except church, it is.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking for, but I feel like the best I can do for now is to find something to make the best of until it's time to move on. And that feels like "settling." Which doesn't really feel right either.

Best. Seminar. Orientation. Ever.

At the beginning of every school year, instead of having regular colloquium (department-wide seminar with an external, invited speaker), we have "seminar" orientation. The faculty remind us that we're obligated to go to colloquium every week, as well as our division's seminar, the first year students introduce themselves, and then we all go to Gentle Ben's for a jolly good time.

The first years are usually pretty entertaining as many of them are quite awkward, but this years introductions were particularly hilarious. They were told to tell us their name, where they're from, and something interesting or funny about themselves.

Student #1: Hello, my name is _____, I'm from Ghana, the country that eliminated yours from the World Cup.
Student #2: Hello, my name is _____, I'm from Guyana, not Ghana.

(These really were the first two students to introduce themselves.)

1st Year Student: My name is _____, and I'm from Kentucky, which in and of itself should be interesting to the people in this room.
2nd Year Student, VERY excited: I'm from Kentucky, too!
1st Year Student: Yes, I know, so I guess it's not interesting for you, just for the rest of the people in the room.
2nd Year Student: Yeah, I know, and we're probably cousins.
1st Year Student: We're all cousins.

At this point, my advisor, who is also department chair, is standing in the corner behind the 2nd year student. She quietly taps this student on the shoulder and whispers, "I'm from Kentucky, too."

At least the 12th first year to introduce himself: Um, what are the rules?

First year: My name is ____, and I'm from Mexico. And, um, I speak much better Spanish than English.

First year: My name is ____, and I'm from Kenya - the country that fathered your president.

First year, teeny tiny, very petite girl: My name is ____, and I'm from India. And I really like to talk.

First year: My name is ____, and I'm also from India. And something interesting about me...hm...I'm a runaway from an arranged marriage!

Holy crap. At this point there's a whole mixture of reactions, from laughter, to dropped jaws, to applause. That's probably the craziest thing I've heard in quite a while. Ran away to graduate school to escape an arranged marriage!

Oops.

In cleaning/organizing my room the other night, I realized just how often I forget to pack a toothbrush when I travel. I swear that's the one thing I almost ALWAYS forget, and then I find myself running to Walgreens late at night when I really just want to crawl in bed.

How often do I forget my toothbrush you ask? So often that I now have SIX (6!) toothbrushes.

No Escape

Me: Sooo if I've done my time taking care of the lab dumbasses today, I'm off the hook for a bit right? It'll be somebody else's turn tomorrow?

Post-doc: Not likely

Me: Damn it

Post-doc: That's kind of a daily responsibility. Like feeding the goldfish in kindergarten.

...

Post-doc: Just pretend you don't speak English. Or put the ipod headphones in. Though I hate when people listen to earphones at work.

Me: Oh that doesn't work. [He] will crouch next to my desk until I take the headphones off.

Wasson Peak

Sunday morning I hiked Wasson Peak, the highest peak in the western division of Saguaro National Park, with my friend Colleen. (Fun Fact: Saguaro National Park is the only national park with two districts (one on either side of Tucson).)

It's generally considered a winter hike, as it's still only about 4600 ft at the peak, so the entire hike is really quite hot. Since the national park system was having a fee-free weekend, we decided to go for it anyways, and just start pretty early. It's a good, moderate hike - ~ 7 miles round trip with about 1700 ft elevation gain and a cool 360 degree view of the greater Tucson area.

You can tell how much rain we've had lately by how green the ocatillos are...

Happy birthday!

Today is my little sister's 16th birthday.

As the youngest of four, Sarah was "tortured" quite a bit as a baby/toddler. We thought it was hilarious to take her pacifier out of her mouth while she slept and watch her suck her tongue instead. And when she was just learning to talk, we trained her such that when we said, "Sarah, are you smart?" she'd reply, "No, I stupid!" with the biggest grin on her face. (She's not dumb. Gullible? Absolutely. Still is. But not dumb. At all. Never has been.) We didn't always torture her - we all had lots of fun playing with her in the snow. When she was about 2, we'd bundle her all up (which pretty much meant she could barely waddle), and then take her and toss her into the giant snow drifts in the yard. This may sound torturous, but I promise we always fished her out and she thoroughly enjoyed it.

When Sarah was little, like below, she thought I was super cool. Everything I did, and especially all my stuff, was really, really cool. I'm not gonna lie, the rock star-like admiration phase was fun.


When I moved away for college just after her 9th birthday, in the interest of familial peace, she moved into my room so that one of our brothers could move out of their shared room and into hers. This is when I became uncool: the summer of 2003. All summer I'd come upstairs to find her and one or more of her friends standing in the doorway to my room, making plans for when I moved out. They'd never go in, just hang out in the doorway and scheme. My freshman year when I came home for Thanksgiving, she had to share my old bed with me. I think it was about a day before she asked when I was going back to St Louis. At Christmas I got upgraded to a spare twin-size mattress on the floor of what used to be my bedroom while my sister slept in the full-size bed. This time I think it was about 3 days before she asked when I was leaving. Clearly I was cramping her style. The summer after my freshman year - the last time I lived at home - I also slept on the spare mattress on the floor, and she was forced to resign herself to my presence.

Her 10th birthday was that summer, and when I did cool things, like make her a (ridiculous) "tiered" birthday cake (at her request!) and facilitate whatever (somewhat bizarre) decorations she wanted, I was apparently ok.

(These were the early days of my dominating cupcake skills! While this particular decorating job was not my doing, my cake decorating tastes leaned more towards the utterly ridiculous in high school.)

Sometime around late middle school was when I became tolerably cool again. Before she got her own cell phone, every time I talked to Dad on the phone, she'd interrupt and either ask him to talk to me or ask him to ask me whatever question she had. I tried to convince her that she could call me whenever she wanted; my cell phone number was posted next to the phone in the kitchen. But it wasn't until she got her own cell phone that she ever actually called me herself. Her first year or so of high school she'd call all the time, asking if I remembered this or that (I went to the same high school she goes to).

Now I think she mostly finds me annoying (possibly because I call her all the time purely for my own entertainment), but she's become one of the funniest, coolest people I know. At the risk of sounding mushy, I'd like to be like her when I grow up. I know I've posted my favorite picture of her before, but because it's her 16th birthday, I'll be nice and post a flattering recent picture of her.

Happy 16th birthday little sister!! I love you!

Why Monsoons Are Awesome

P.S. One example of many of why I love my camera...

Canadians are so awesome.

A smattering of the awesome exchanges/remarks I've heard today.

During various 1st year student advising sessions this morning:

Professor: Tell us about your interests.
Student: Well, I like photography, mountain biking, hiking...

Professor, advising a student on which physical chemistry class to take: Well, it depends, do you prefer wave functions or partition functions?

Student, on whether or not s/he might enjoy the course on statistical thermodynamics: I follow the Mark Twain viewpoint on statistics. There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics.


Chatting with my sister this afternoon:

Little sister: Canadians are so awesome.
Me: Hahahaha why are Canadians so awesome?
Little sister: Are you serious? They're Canadians. No explanation needed.

To go, or not to go??

I just emailed The Queen about taking some vacation days in September. Even though I know she's going to be ok with it, I always feel so incredibly awkward asking (telling) her. My advisor is more reasonable/permissive than a lot of advisors about vacation time, largely because she seems to understand better than most that happy graduate students are more productive graduate students. And in my individual case, she knows that I work when I'm here (you may or may not be surprised by how many people don't), and it doesn't hurt that I've had and will have my own outside funding for the entirety of my grad school career. In other words, I don't cost my advisor anything.

I "asked" for a Thurs-Sun for a kayaking trip in Utah with my roommate and some of her friends, immediately followed by a Tues-Sun for my college roommate's wedding in St. Louis. While I'd really like to go on the kayaking trip (Utah is gorgeous, kayaking is fun, seems like a no-brainer), I'm technically not committed (though my roommate might kill me for backing out - even though she backed out on Death Valley last April). I'm definitely committed to the wedding in StL - I'm in the wedding for starters, and I've already bought the plane ticket.

Since last Christmas, when I went home for (I think) 6 days, the only time off I've taken were 3 days over "spring break" for a backpacking trip, three 3-day weekends that The Queen knows about, and two 3-day weekends that she doesn't. I don't really feel that bad about the 3 days weekends (including the ones she doesn't know about) because I work more than enough weekends to cancel them out.

Here's where I start to debate whether or not to go on the kayaking trip. I really, as in REALLY, want to go to Europe next year, hopefully immediately after Christmas. In order to continue living, I have to go home for Christmas for at least a few days, so I can't cut back many days there. The motivation of going to Europe after Christmas is that I could fly directly from Boston, making airfare $300-400 cheaper (my parents will buy me a plane ticket home for Christmas for my birthday). I could easily get away with going to Europe for a week, but there's a lot I want to do on this trip. I want to see my friend Amy who's living in Amsterdam and my labmate Ashley who will be living in Paris, and I also really want to get down to Lyon to see my host family if at all possible. I've also never been to any of the low countries, so I'd really like to see a bit more of them between Amsterdam and Paris. All that makes a week way too short. (There's also the possibility of flying IcelandAir, and taking a layover in Reykjavik, which would add a couple of more days...but we won't talk about that temptation for now.)

So it comes down to, do I go kayaking, and not go to Europe for as long as I'd like, or do I skip the kayaking and have an easier time getting away with going to Europe longer??? If these decisions are tough now...I have NO idea how I'm going to feed this addiction when I have a real job...

Save Second Base

My roommate Jen is doing the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure later this month in Denver. It's a 3 day (in case you hadn't picked up on that), 60 mile walk to raise awareness and research funds for breast cancer. The fund-raising goal (requirement) for this event is huge - $2300/participant. Needless to say, $2300 and 60 miles are huge numbers, and Jen's been working her butt off to be ready.

Last week, with help from friends, she had a taco dinner and bake sale to raise some money. Straight-up asking people for money is just so awkward, so she's been trying to have various events or goods for people to enjoy in exchange. (Tucson folks - FYI I think we're having another Beer for Boobs kegger in a few weeks.)

Considering baking is one of the things we do best, E and I baked up a storm the night before Jen's bake sale. (Yes, we have very healthy egos when it comes to our abilities in the kitchen. :P ) Here's E in my kitchen:
For some reason, she thought you needed to see the flour hand print on my butt:

Over the course of about 6 hours, we made rolo cookies, gooey butter cookies, pumpkin cookies and muffins (both with frozen pumpkin from our CSA pumpkins last fall!) , snickerdoodle cookies, mini zucchini breads (with fresh zucchini from our CSA share!), red velvet cupcakes, and chocolate nutella cupcakes. It was insane, and my kitchen was an absolute disaster area afterward. We're a little crazy, and eventually we were curious to see just how much we could make in a night.

Red velvet cupcakes with buttercream frosting - Red velvet cake is VERY red! And delicious if you make it right. Red velvet cake is NOT, I repeat NOT, chocolate cake dyed red!

Snickerdoodles

Zucchini bread

Chocolate cupcakes with nutella frosting

All the loot packaged and ready to go. (Side note, I think it's quite funny that the common bookshelf in our house is over 50% travel and/or hiking/climbing books...)

The craziness was worth it - between the dinner and the bake sale Jen made nearly $500. I went to the bake sale for a while to help out, also figuring I had a better idea of what was in everything in case people needed or wanted to know (after nannying for a peanut-allergy kid when I was in high school I'm super allergy-paranoid and made sure to label everything very clearly). I think the funniest thing I saw all night was the rather crabby looking doctor who came in, handed me $10, took the entire container of pumpkin cookies, and said he'd be back to return my container!

Jen still has a long way to go to reach her $2300 goal. If you'd like to donate let me know and I'll put you in touch with Jen/let you know how.

Red Rocks of Sedona

Last weekend I went up to Sedona to see my aunt and her family who are vacationing in northern Arizona for the week. The town of Sedona is pretty much like a western version of Cape Cod - super cheesy and touristy but beautiful when you get away from town. Unfortunate it rained pretty much the entire weekend, so we didn't get to do one of the things I wanted to do (Slide Rock State Park), but on the upside it wasn't 100 degrees out and we did some things I otherwise wouldn't have thought to do (Riordon Mansion in Flagstaff). Despite all the grief my uncle gave me over the weather - hey, I told them to bring rain jackets because it's monsoon season - it was really great to see some family since I only see my immediate family about twice a year and extended family on my mom's side maybe once a year.

We did a light hike in Red Rock State Park. The rocks around Sedona really are red. Sorry my pictures are all fairly crappy - the perpetually gray, rainy, cloudy weather wasn't so awesome for getting good photos with realistic color.


Even though this is from the "ghost" town of Jerome, an amusing reminder that Arizona still is the "wild west" in a lot of ways...


P.S. All the links are to Google image searches, the websites for the Arizona state park system are terrible. They look like some 4th grader made them in the mid-90s.

Level Up

I think I finally have to give in and admit that I'm a 4th year grad student now. I even went so far as to change it in my description. The new 1st years are starting to show up - the international students this week, the domestic students next week. Not that I'm taking any (woohoo!!), but classes will start in less than 3 weeks, and then I'll really have no excuse for not calling myself a 4th year.

The most recent 1st years (now 2nd years) were eager to promote themselves, so by default in their mind I'd logically be promoted too. I'm not sure why they were so eager to officially be 2nd years, but I'm pretty adamant about not being the next year older until I really have to be. So I've always defined what year I am relative to the newest cohort of grad students around. So the coming academic year's 1st years are arriving? I guess that makes me a 4th year. When do you consider yourself the next year/grade/rank up?

I haven't been particularly eager to "level up" since high school, because it seems that the older I get, the faster time goes by, not to mention the farther you get through whatever tier of education the more responsibility you have. And after being the oldest child in my family, I eventually realized that it's nice to not always be responsible. The farther you get in grad school, the more responsibility you have, not just for yourself, but for lab equipment and younger students. Because of my fellowship situation, I was independent in the lab a lot sooner than most younger grad students, which was actually awesome for a little while, because I could do my own experiments without feeling like I was pestering anybody, but I didn't yet have to fix all the $h!t other people break. At this point in grad school I sometimes feels like all I ever do is trouble shoot instrument problems, fix said instrument problems, help people find things, clean up messes, and restock supplies (that everybody else uses). Most of time I don't mind (too much), especially with first years. Somebody has to teach them, and I was really lucky to have an awesome mentor when I was a 1st year, and the 1st years (well, most of them) deserve to have an awesome mentor too (not saying I'm an awesome mentor, besides I've been teaching/guiding the first years more generally - I'm not so far along that I need to line up somebody to more directly take over my project). What actually bugs me is non-1st year students who didn't take the initiative to learn what they should have when they were 1st years, and now they're taking up my time because they suddenly realize they need to get their $h!t together.

The additional responsibility is an annoyance, but not a freak-out factor. What's freaky about being a 4th year is that means there are relatively few people senior to me in the lab (i.e. relatively few people who can help when I need it). I have three-four labmates that are a year ahead of me, at least 2 of them will graduate next May or August. Those that may not graduate then aren't exactly the most functional, contributing members of the lab. That pretty much leaves me as the senior student in the lab. Which is just plain scary. I have two labmates who are my year, but one of them is a joint student and spends almost all her time in her other lab and the other, while productive and very bright, doesn't really take on any leadership responsibility.

What's even scarier is that being a 4th year means I'm only a year away from being a 5th year, which puts me only 2 years away from graduating and having to figure out what I'm doing next. Lately I've been feeling the itch to move again, to live somewhere new, but I'm the idea of having to figure that out actually being reality is weird.

Much cuter.

Apparently I need to start a creatures-living-on-my-porch label, because last night I came home to find this guy on the screen:


My labmate tells me this is a gecko. I was just gonna go with "lizard," but sure we can call him a gecko. Whatever he is, he's much cuter than this guy.