E's Fashion Advice #3

Fashion Lesson #3

Let's say you're a cute girl. Nice skin, nice body, etc. Now say you're riding a moped wearing the world's almost-shortest shorts, a t-shirt that is, for all intents and purposes, see through, and a pair of flip flops. How do you think you're gonna look if you get in an accident and are covered in road rash? Do you think you're gonna be quite so cute in those 'ittle bitty shorts? Let's make good clothing decisions ladies!

Why My Mother Should Not Have Text Messaging

It is entirely unnecessary to leave me a voicemail and send me a text message asking me the SAME THING.

Miscellaneous Tuesday Thoughts

It's payday! When you only get paid 3 times/year, payday takes on a whole new level of excitement. Unless I wind up at a job with some really weird pay schedule, these are also by far the biggest paychecks I'll ever get, even though I should make (lots) more money at any future job.

I just double checked cooking plans with E to make sure I don't accidentally trade something we had plans for at our CSA pickup. Except our pickup is Wednesday. Today is Tuesday. I really was earnestly planning to pick up our produce on my way home today. For some reason I've had a hard time keeping days/meetings straight lately. I very nearly blew off lunch with my old roommate today because I can't seem to keep track of things lately. It took multiple tries to schedule lunch in the first place because last week I didn't remember I had group meeting Wednesday at noon. We've had group meeting Wednesday at noon for over a year now. Except this week it's Thursday at noon. Not helping.

My weird leprosy thing is finally clearly up. Thank goodness. I really didn't want to look like a freak for the rest of bathing suit season.

It's Little Sister's birthday! She's a ripe old 17 today. She can (legally) see a rated-R movie all by herself like a big girl. If you know her in real life feel free to wish her a happy birthday in the most obnoxious fashion you can think of. By the way, the only labels with more posts are "gradual school", "random", and "travel."

A while ago I saw something online about this new thing called Pinterest. I didn't think much of it. Then a couple weeks ago a friend mentioned it, and said she really liked it. Eh, still brushed it off. Well, yesterday I got annoyed when epicurious wouldn't let me add a recipe to my recipe box, so I said eff it and started a Pinterest account. It's awesome and I'm already addicted. I can store and organize recipes or anything other website my heart desires all in one place. Definitely beats having recipe boxes on all sorts of different cooking sites and trying to remember which website or blog I got which recipe off of. I'm having fun with it, but it's not very conducive to getting my research update done.

Speaking of which, I HATE preparing and giving research update for group meeting. Loathe it. I generally analyze my data in a fairly timely fashion, but I don't generally made it into pretty figures and slides that are presentation-ready. So giving group meeting generally means a lot of pretty tedious work. And a last minute crunch to get more data.

Another annoying feature of work lately is the recent arrival of a person that we're pretty sure The Queen hired to be our babysitter/her watchdog, since as department chair she has just about zero time to pay any attention to what or how much work we're doing. As she puts it, he's a "real grown-up," as opposed to a post-doc fresh out of a PhD program, and since he got here most of what he's done has been to stick his nose into everybody's business. Last Friday he came flying into my office to less than tactfully inquire about the status of an instrument. The very next morning I got an email from The Queen asking the same. Coincidence? I doubt it. Maybe if my entire grad school experience had had this level of "supervision" I'd be less annoyed, but at this point I have zero interest in somebody looking over my shoulder all the time. The Queen wants me to stay through August because I have outside funding through then. I'm feeling less and less inclined to stick around that long. Working for the department chair is...interesting...to say the least. It probably merits a post of its own at some point.

Syfy has stopped posting episodes of Eureka online after they air! How am I supposed to keep up when we have Monday night softball games?! We have a few weeks off before the fall season starts, but I'm several weeks behind, so I'd just be all out of sorts watching the new episodes for the short time that I can. GAH!

Last bit of rambling for tonight - I need a haircut. But I'm totally undecided what to do. Sometimes I know I want to keep growing it out or that I want to chop a lot off. I have zero thoughts on the matter now. Since I don't have thoughts do I just trim it and see if I have inspiration later? Or chop a bunch (4-8") off? The shortest I've ever had my hair is about chin-length (about where 8" would leave me now), and I know it grows back, so cutting a bunch doesn't particularly freak me out. Opinions?

Fancy Pants Dessert

So this is a report on a quasi-successful, very fancy pants dessert that E and I made while Little Sister was visiting. Ever since I first saw these incredibly pretty and elegant Berry Charlottes on Annie's Eats months ago (literally) I've been itching for a chance to make them. They're so fancy (and a fair amount of work, though not a ridiculous amount) that it seemed they should be made for some special occasion. Eventually though, E just suggested we go ahead and make them anyways, especially while there are still decent berries to be had.

The successful part of this is that everything tasted delicious. The mousses were good and the lady fingers were freakin' fantastic. Seriously. Very, very excited to know that it's not all that hard to make totally delicious lady fingers. They were every bit as light and airy as their name makes it sound like they should be.

Lady fingers sprinkled with powdered sugar before baking

The final product consists of lady fingers and a big round lady finger base assembled into a cup-like shape that is filled with raspberry and blackberry mousses and fresh berries.

The final product

With a cookie removed to show the layers of mousse

As you can tell from the pictures, we struggled with assembly. Neither E or I have ring-molds like the ones used by more sophisticated bakers than us. Per a suggestion in the comments, we tried a Pringle's can. It turns out that it's really hard to slice all the way through a Pringle's can anywhere close to perfectly perpendicular to obtain "molds" that are actually vertical. So while a funny idea, it wasn't really the greatest.

I think two things would make assembling these guys waaaaaayy easier. One would be having proper molds, particularly ones that are actually straight. The second thing would be to have a stencil of some sort to guide the piping of the lady fingers and bases to obtain uniform lady fingers where the circumference of the base is an integral number of cookies. I don't think it would be that hard to make a stencil-like something.

E, Little Sister, and I thought they were great. J griped that the mousse made the cookies soggy. I really don't think it's an issue as long as they're served the day you make them. I'm sure they'd be soggy the next day.

One addition/change that we all agreed would be delicious with these is a thin layer of ganache in there somewhere - perhaps between the two mousses.

Even if they took quite a while and turned out a bit crooked I'm glad we made these. They were yummy. We now have a good and not difficult recipe for totally delicious lady fingers. E wants to try making a tiramisu with them at some point. Plus, since the mousse was pretty much berry puree, gelatin, and whipped cream, we could theoretically make any sort of fruit-flavored mousse we wanted (though we might have to think a bit about the effects of using more acidic fruit?).

Blackett's Ridge

Sunday morning I dragged Little Sister out of bed at 5:30 so we could be at the trail head by 6:30. Blackett's Ridge is a great hike, though really not meant to be done in summer. Even at the highest point it's only about 4400 feet, so not a whole lot cooler, and holy cow is some of it steep. Blackett's Ridge is the ridge line between Sabino Canyon and Bear Canyon, and the views at the end are fantastic.


Little Sister's mind was pretty much blown by all the cacti. Arizona is reeeeeeeaallllyyyy different from the northeast and from anything she's ever seen. She kept remarking on all the cacti around us. (There's one like every 3 feet!)

While she did admit the necessity of starting so early by time we were done, the funniest part was the realization that she climbed up to the ridgeline and back down all before she'd normally be out of bed!

Friday the 13th

Little Sister goes home tomorrow morning, so tonight we're hanging out with ice cream and Friday the 13th.

Little Sister: Oh look these little sluts are sneaking off! They're probably going to die!
Me: Because that's what happens to sluts in horror movies!
Little Sister: Oh, he's spreading out the sex blanket... You know, that's true...Sluts really do die in horror movies...
Me: Yep...

Sure enough, less than 2 minutes later, they're both dead. I love predicable '80s horror movies. :)

Little Sister Does Tucson

Little Sister arrived in Tucson yesterday afternoon for an entire 5 days of ridiculousness. She's been saying one hilarious thing after another. So much that I can't keep track to remember even half of it.


When she exited the secure area of the airport, i.e. we haven't even left the airport yet, I overhear her on the phone with Dad telling him how much she misses grass already.

The very first thing she did upon exiting the airport was hug a cactus:


She was astounded by how big a lot of them are. Somewhere she got the idea that cacti were fairly short...


From the airport we went to a local taco joint in South Tucson so Little Sister could have her first "real" taco. She loves tacos, and they're one of only a few meals that she can make herself, but she's only ever had gringo, Ortega grocery store kit or Taco Bell "tacos." She liked them, but found her nose starting to run and her tongue on fire from the "hot" salsa. It was spicy compared to most stuff you can find in New England, but wasn't much compared to a lot of salsas you find around here. Now those will make your nose run. She decided that it was the "most ghetto" place she's ever eaten. And seeing as it was a taco joint in South Tucson, she's probably right.


After some food we went to campus so a few friends could meet her (after all, she's pretty hilarious, and I do talk about her quite a bit) and so she could start to get the lay of the land. One of the first years asked, "Are you twins?!" Uh, not quite. Two minutes later E's advisor said in his usual total deadpan, "You don't look anything alike. Not at all." Dallas said we're "like the same person," mostly based on us being about the same height. And then she simultaneously offended and charmed the die-hard Yankees fan with her Red Sox cap.


Driving back from buying roller derby tickets for Saturday she noticed that the fire hydrants are all silver.

Little Sister: ANNE, did you notice that the fire hydrants are all silver?
Me: Uh, no.
Little Sister: What?! You've been here 4 years and you never noticed that???
Me: Uh, no.
Little Sister: No wonder it took you 3 years to notice that the hall is narrower at one end than the other [true story]. The color of the fire hydrants is like the 6th most important thing to notice in a city.
Me (interrupting): OH really now? What are the other 5 things??
Little Sister: Well uh...
Me: No really, what are the other 5 things??
Little Sister: Well, I'd have to think about it.
Me: That's ok. Think about it.
Little Sister: Um, first the size of the street signs; second, the color of the street signs; third, the arrangement of the traffic lights; fourth, um, the closest Starbucks; and fifth, something about the sidewalks. Like if they exist or not...
Me: Uh huh...

She has since asked most of my friends if they know what color the fire hydrants are in Tucson.


Before we went to walk down 4th Ave, where a bunch of shops and cafes are:

"I'm bringing my camera, for all the beautiful Tucson sites that need documenting."

Good...because I'm bringing mine in case (when) you do something silly.

While on 4th Ave, we found these redneck wine glasses:

Little Sister: Oh, it's a goblet of the Lord.
Then I see the tag on them saying they're "redneck wine glasses."
Little Sister: Wait, so they're saying the Lord is a redneck because that's what he serves his wine in??

I also found this awesome sparkly blue dress:

Wouldn't this make a great bridesmaid dress for E's wedding? I sent her pictures just in case she thought so too. :P


Once we were home for the night, she was checking her email on my computer. Now I have my cursor on the "dinosaur scheme" because it amuses me. Apparently it amuses her too:

"I love when your little dinosaur tries to walk because his legs are so little."

While in control of my computer she took over a gchat convo with my boyfriend:

me: omg [Little Sister] keeps saying so much ridiculous stuff that i can't even keep track of half of it

when she walked out of the airport terminal the first thing she did was hug a cactus

Boyfriend: hehe

how is she liking the 100 degree weather?

me: it's HORRIBLE

literally i always feel slightly moist

and if you're not outside you're inside

and everywhere inside is wicked over air conditioned

so then its more like vancouver in december instead of tucson

Boyfriend: so if you're not outside you're inside, how profound. :)

How are you doing [Little Sister]?

me: i've always been profound

its a strong point

Boyfriend: haha

me: i'm contemplating majoring in philosophy...following the footsteps of big bruddah [who majored in philosophy and is now marginally employed and living with our parents]

Later in the evening, I'm telling her about this weird leprosy-rash thing I've got going on, that apparently I just have to wait out. She's into biology, so she's googling to try to figure out why a rash would be a reasonable immune response - like why does it happen or what purpose does it serve? In her googling she's reading various bits aloud, and keeps pronouncing the word "dermatitis" as "derma-tit-us" (with a short i, to be clear), and laughing uncontrollably. I totally think she's mispronouncing it deliberately. But then as she's reading she's like wait, so it's like a skin-itis...so it's probably pronounced "dermatitis" (with a long i). We're both in tears laughing at this point. I just can't believe she was actually earnestly pronouncing it "derma-tit-us"...


All afternoon and evening she kept remarking on the time difference. She'd look at her watch when it was say 7:30, and be like oh my goodness, did you know it's 10:30 at home?? Everyone at home is doing 10:30 things, but we're doing 7:30 things, AND it's light out here but it's dark out there...


She's entertained and entertaining. Tucson is really, really different from anywhere she's been before, and she clearly thinks it's a really strange place. We'll have to see what the rest of the weekend holds in store... Maybe we should find some javelinas to really weird her out. :)