Somehow, I don't think this is going to help me get a job in my major field.
p.s. Thanks, Katie! THATIE.
12/28/2007
YES. Yes yes yes yes yes yes YES.
Oh yes.
Somehow, I don't think this is going to help me get a job in my major field.
p.s. Thanks, Katie! THATIE.
Somehow, I don't think this is going to help me get a job in my major field.
p.s. Thanks, Katie! THATIE.
12/25/2007
At Home & More Food Memories
Late Christmas Eve.
The tree lights are set to alternate between flicker, spastic, and no-I-will-not-stop-for-directions. The fire's almost burnt out. We're all sitting in our living room, and my parents are reading books while my dogs sleep and the cat (who isn't lost) snores. Renaissance Christmas music echoes around the room. (Not my choice, I put on The Best of the Smoky Robinson & The Miracles' Christmas Songs and my next album choice of John Denver & The Muppets got vetoed. So what if I played the tape on repeat the first 18 Christmas seasons of my life and it can't hold a tune now? It's the nostalgia that counts.)
My life could not be more boring. But at least I'm not in Los Angeles! NorCal totally kicks butt.
We had a Christmas Eve dinner/family gathering earlier tonight over at my mom's stepsister's house, meaning I had to endure an hour of "Oh, Julia! I haven't seen you since you were this big!!" and trying to come up with yet another witty way of saying, "Nope, I guess it's been awhile... who are you again?" until I had enough wine so that it just came naturally to me. My step-aunt has six kids, all of whom are grown and have kids, and almost everyone was there which brought the total number for the evening to near about four million, half of whom continued to spend a good portion of the evening marvelling at the fact that, no, I was not the same height as I was when I was seven. I felt ridiculously over-dressed as I wasn't wearing jeans, and spent most of my time trying to stick next to my mom and the white wine, hoping I wouldn't have to talk to the masses of step-cousins my age I've never met about things like cars and and laying down carpet in trailers and Timbaland and Hollister clothing and other subjects I know nothing and care nothing about.
Still, the sticky toffee pudding I made for the evening went down well and everyone was lovely and friendly, so I shouldn't complain.
I always find being at home incredibly boring, even though I am in fact in one of my favorite places in the world. Once I get out into Oakland and San Francisco and even small downtown Alameda or hang out with friends it's awesome; I suppose it's just being stuck in my house with few options that drags things down. I love this place, but none of my high school friends are around here and the college friends I have up here I see all the time at rugby. Which, in a way, brings me to the second part of my post... more food memories.
Saturday my parents and I went to see The Hard Nut (imagine if The Nutcracker was turned into a 1960s comic book and then back into a ballet -- brilliant) and afterwards went to the House of Chicken and Waffles in Downtown Oakland. When my two pieces of Southern-style fried chicken, biscuit, and grits arrived, I realized I hadn't had fried chicken or southern cookin' of any kind since I left Baltimore -- about 2 1/2 years ago. It was a delicious and emotional experience. I felt sorry for the waiter who had to clean up the pile of snotty napkins I left behind.
All my griping aside, tomorrow is Christmas and I'm not in Los Angeles, so things are pretty good. Traffic isn't too bad (then again I don't have anywhere to go at rush hour), I can get places on my bike without fearing for my life, and I live reasonably close to a few BART stations.
Merry Crimbo, all. x
The tree lights are set to alternate between flicker, spastic, and no-I-will-not-stop-for-directions. The fire's almost burnt out. We're all sitting in our living room, and my parents are reading books while my dogs sleep and the cat (who isn't lost) snores. Renaissance Christmas music echoes around the room. (Not my choice, I put on The Best of the Smoky Robinson & The Miracles' Christmas Songs and my next album choice of John Denver & The Muppets got vetoed. So what if I played the tape on repeat the first 18 Christmas seasons of my life and it can't hold a tune now? It's the nostalgia that counts.)
My life could not be more boring. But at least I'm not in Los Angeles! NorCal totally kicks butt.
We had a Christmas Eve dinner/family gathering earlier tonight over at my mom's stepsister's house, meaning I had to endure an hour of "Oh, Julia! I haven't seen you since you were this big!!" and trying to come up with yet another witty way of saying, "Nope, I guess it's been awhile... who are you again?" until I had enough wine so that it just came naturally to me. My step-aunt has six kids, all of whom are grown and have kids, and almost everyone was there which brought the total number for the evening to near about four million, half of whom continued to spend a good portion of the evening marvelling at the fact that, no, I was not the same height as I was when I was seven. I felt ridiculously over-dressed as I wasn't wearing jeans, and spent most of my time trying to stick next to my mom and the white wine, hoping I wouldn't have to talk to the masses of step-cousins my age I've never met about things like cars and and laying down carpet in trailers and Timbaland and Hollister clothing and other subjects I know nothing and care nothing about.
Still, the sticky toffee pudding I made for the evening went down well and everyone was lovely and friendly, so I shouldn't complain.
I always find being at home incredibly boring, even though I am in fact in one of my favorite places in the world. Once I get out into Oakland and San Francisco and even small downtown Alameda or hang out with friends it's awesome; I suppose it's just being stuck in my house with few options that drags things down. I love this place, but none of my high school friends are around here and the college friends I have up here I see all the time at rugby. Which, in a way, brings me to the second part of my post... more food memories.
Saturday my parents and I went to see The Hard Nut (imagine if The Nutcracker was turned into a 1960s comic book and then back into a ballet -- brilliant) and afterwards went to the House of Chicken and Waffles in Downtown Oakland. When my two pieces of Southern-style fried chicken, biscuit, and grits arrived, I realized I hadn't had fried chicken or southern cookin' of any kind since I left Baltimore -- about 2 1/2 years ago. It was a delicious and emotional experience. I felt sorry for the waiter who had to clean up the pile of snotty napkins I left behind.
All my griping aside, tomorrow is Christmas and I'm not in Los Angeles, so things are pretty good. Traffic isn't too bad (then again I don't have anywhere to go at rush hour), I can get places on my bike without fearing for my life, and I live reasonably close to a few BART stations.
Merry Crimbo, all. x
12/15/2007
The Wisdom of Laura and I (or Me and Me)
Excerpt from last night:
Laura: Are you drinking tonight?
Me: No, I feel like I'm getting a cold.
Laura: Oh, did you know alcohol cures colds? It also helps you lose weight.
Me: Yeah, I heard that too. It also makes you smarter and prettier and funnier and sexier and more desirable...
Laura: Yes, as long as the alcohol is in the hands of the people you're with.
Which then lead to the formulation of our L.M.L.T.Y. self-help seminar: "Love More Liquor, Treat Yourself"! The idea came from the wonderful hypothesis -- nay, scientific likelihood -- that alcohol helps you lose weight. What started as a sarcastic comment Laura made to some friends on the way to Vegas has now turned into our (soon to be) wildly popular inspirational power point presentation! The basics are these: alcohol is empty calories, but this is often misinterpreted. Empty calories must be filled, and do so by filling up with full calories already in your system. For example, if you have 100 calories from dinner and you drink 100 empty calories in alcohol, the empty calories get filled up with the full calories, giving you a total of only 100 calories, instead of 200 like you thought! Amazing! With Laura's and my blonde charm and impeccable credentials (cognitive science, marine biology majors, my glasses) we'll be charging $50 a head in no time.
Oh, and LMLTY actually originally stood for "Let Me Lie To You". But I like the Love More Liquor version. Sigh, it's so good and I'd love to do a series of spoofs like these but I'm afraid people would actually take us seriously and we'd end up getting sued for other people's stupidity when really, all we want to do is make sorority girls fat.
In the bloggingly Los-Angeles-traffic-experience update, I spent two hours yesterday driving a 16 mile round trip journey. Between 2 and 4pm on a Friday. Average 8 mph. Wow. For the sake of equality, I drove there on the freeway and back on surface streets. (At least I had lovely company for the trip!)
I'll leave you with this:
Laura: I understand why some people don't like Christmas carols but... why don't people like Christmas carols???
Laura: Are you drinking tonight?
Me: No, I feel like I'm getting a cold.
Laura: Oh, did you know alcohol cures colds? It also helps you lose weight.
Me: Yeah, I heard that too. It also makes you smarter and prettier and funnier and sexier and more desirable...
Laura: Yes, as long as the alcohol is in the hands of the people you're with.
Which then lead to the formulation of our L.M.L.T.Y. self-help seminar: "Love More Liquor, Treat Yourself"! The idea came from the wonderful hypothesis -- nay, scientific likelihood -- that alcohol helps you lose weight. What started as a sarcastic comment Laura made to some friends on the way to Vegas has now turned into our (soon to be) wildly popular inspirational power point presentation! The basics are these: alcohol is empty calories, but this is often misinterpreted. Empty calories must be filled, and do so by filling up with full calories already in your system. For example, if you have 100 calories from dinner and you drink 100 empty calories in alcohol, the empty calories get filled up with the full calories, giving you a total of only 100 calories, instead of 200 like you thought! Amazing! With Laura's and my blonde charm and impeccable credentials (cognitive science, marine biology majors, my glasses) we'll be charging $50 a head in no time.
Oh, and LMLTY actually originally stood for "Let Me Lie To You". But I like the Love More Liquor version. Sigh, it's so good and I'd love to do a series of spoofs like these but I'm afraid people would actually take us seriously and we'd end up getting sued for other people's stupidity when really, all we want to do is make sorority girls fat.
In the bloggingly Los-Angeles-traffic-experience update, I spent two hours yesterday driving a 16 mile round trip journey. Between 2 and 4pm on a Friday. Average 8 mph. Wow. For the sake of equality, I drove there on the freeway and back on surface streets. (At least I had lovely company for the trip!)
I'll leave you with this:
Laura: I understand why some people don't like Christmas carols but... why don't people like Christmas carols???
12/12/2007
The (Food) Stuff(s) of Memory
I'm sitting here putting off some studying by eating the packet of Smoky Bacon Crisps Katie sent me and listening to the Edinburgh Club Mix Steph made me. When I close my eyes I feel like I'm in a totally different world. So maybe I am licking the inside of the bag -- I miss savory crisps.
It's funny how strongly smell and taste are tied to memory. Katie and others from Edinburgh were kind enough to indulge my request to send me brown sauce (in exchange for candy corn) and sent me a full bottle along with some other particularly British food-y treats: a massive Kit-Kat, fruit pastilles (which I'm still unsure of how to pronounce -- "pas-tills" or "pasteels"?), and the aforementioned Smoky Bacon Crisps. Don't knock them till you've tried 'em. Upon receiving the box I opened it, read the enclosed cards, and then sat in one place smelling the HP Sauce for about 20 minutes. Fantastic. Even now when I just flip open the lid and smell it (like now, since I've finished the crisps and licked the package clean) I get this internal feeling of being somewhere else. Lovely.
I can't think of any other food smell related memories off the top of my head, but I think these British ones strike me so strongly because they're both distinctive and isolated with regards to most of my life experiences. Until the squeezy 425g bottle of browny goodness arrived, I found it nearly impossible to describe brown sauce to Americans. It's fairly impossible. And it doesn't help any that it's widely know as 'brown sauce' instead of HP sauce. Still. I made Sticky Toffee Pudding a couple of weeks ago in a similar attempt to recapture my Scottish culinary experiences, but it wasn't quite the same, probably due to error in my own cooking abilities and the fact that I didn't actually eat sticky toffee pudding all that often.
It's fashionable to knock British cuisine, but I miss it. Mark once told me the first thing he always ate upon making it home to Glasgow was a bacon roll. I could KILL for a bacon roll about now. I've even got the brown sauce to go on it. Mmmmm....
Gahh, my fingers still smell like the smoky bacon crisps! You must excuse me, I've got to sit very still and smell my hands for awhile -- can't waste the essence on my keyboard...
It's funny how strongly smell and taste are tied to memory. Katie and others from Edinburgh were kind enough to indulge my request to send me brown sauce (in exchange for candy corn) and sent me a full bottle along with some other particularly British food-y treats: a massive Kit-Kat, fruit pastilles (which I'm still unsure of how to pronounce -- "pas-tills" or "pasteels"?), and the aforementioned Smoky Bacon Crisps. Don't knock them till you've tried 'em. Upon receiving the box I opened it, read the enclosed cards, and then sat in one place smelling the HP Sauce for about 20 minutes. Fantastic. Even now when I just flip open the lid and smell it (like now, since I've finished the crisps and licked the package clean) I get this internal feeling of being somewhere else. Lovely.
I can't think of any other food smell related memories off the top of my head, but I think these British ones strike me so strongly because they're both distinctive and isolated with regards to most of my life experiences. Until the squeezy 425g bottle of browny goodness arrived, I found it nearly impossible to describe brown sauce to Americans. It's fairly impossible. And it doesn't help any that it's widely know as 'brown sauce' instead of HP sauce. Still. I made Sticky Toffee Pudding a couple of weeks ago in a similar attempt to recapture my Scottish culinary experiences, but it wasn't quite the same, probably due to error in my own cooking abilities and the fact that I didn't actually eat sticky toffee pudding all that often.
It's fashionable to knock British cuisine, but I miss it. Mark once told me the first thing he always ate upon making it home to Glasgow was a bacon roll. I could KILL for a bacon roll about now. I've even got the brown sauce to go on it. Mmmmm....
Gahh, my fingers still smell like the smoky bacon crisps! You must excuse me, I've got to sit very still and smell my hands for awhile -- can't waste the essence on my keyboard...
12/07/2007
Priorities
1. Get out of Los Angeles.
Steps to be undertaken to achieve Priority #1
1. Dream.
2. Quit wasting time writing pointless blogs.
3. Graduate.
4. Start a band.
5. Trips to other locations until permanent relocation possible.
6. Get an awesome job working for The BBC in London/Britain.
Steps currently in progress:
#1, 5, (3)
Steps to be undertaken to achieve Priority #1
1. Dream.
2. Quit wasting time writing pointless blogs.
3. Graduate.
4. Start a band.
5. Trips to other locations until permanent relocation possible.
6. Get an awesome job working for The BBC in London/Britain.
Steps currently in progress:
#1, 5, (3)
12/03/2007
'Tis the season
...For surrealism.
Happy Chrismannawanzukkah and all the rest.
On the twelfth day of Christmas, 
Julia sent to me...
Julia sent to me...Twelve shoes reading
Eleven stencils writing
Ten cartoons a-creating
Nine animals bowling
Eight sunsets a-kissing
Seven breaks a-sight-seeing
Six photobooths a-drawing
Five blu-u-u-ue jeans
Four spinning records
Three helping others
Two my friends
...and a mamba in an astrology.
Happy Chrismannawanzukkah and all the rest.
12/01/2007
(Late) St. Andrew's Day and The Weather Strikes Back: Part Deux
Ok, so there was no Parte Une -- I imagined writing it several weeks ago when it rained for the first time since I've been back in LA. But it rained again yesterday, so I decided it was time for Part Deux. Yes, it has only rained twice in Los Angeles since September. What a depressing town.
However, the rain was right on schedule for St. Andrew's Day, a day to celebrate Scotland. By myself. In the rain and in my own head. I'll get to a recap of my day in a minute but let's just say it culminated in me, drunk, in a friend's kitchen, serving up sticky toffee pudding to my team of ruggers around midnight. I can hardly think of a better way to mark the occasion, (excepting for the lack of pubs in LA).
Hm, so now that I think of it, yesterday didn't have that much of a story to tell. I had class, then spent the afternoon frantically cooking up a double batch of sticky toffee pudding for the rugby team and script for my radio show, interspersed with a planning meeting about our rugby tour this spring (Hong Kong, here we come! We only need.... about $34,000. Ouch.). After that was Rookie Night for the rugby team which (for legal reasons) I can only tell you involved a lot of group activities, lots of fun, and culminated in the revelation of Rookie-Vet assignments (Hi, Andi!).
And speaking of "legal reasons"... there are too many prohibitive ones in America. Almost every fundraising idea I had for Hong Kong (ones that worked well in Edinburgh) was found to be fraught with too many legal liabilities or prohibited by silly regulations from UCLA, UCLA club sports, etc. Bah. Rules are made to be broken, laws are open to interpretation. This is what I've learned from rugby.
At any rate, where all this leaves me is huddled inside against the cold Los Angeles winter (oooh, long sleeve shirt AND a sweater? NO!) with my never-ending cups of tea (wahey, Tetley's British Blend!) and a seemingly never-ending list of things to accomplish very soon. As in, before finals. As in, in addition to finals. Ouch, my valley-girl-vocab muscle is hurting. Time to head over to FreeRice.com and improve that vocabulary. Grammar, however, shall still be set loose to the wind and creativity cut off and distributed amongst the poor.
Oh, sorry, did I mention my radio show earlier? WELL, let me tell you about it! Or, actually, in the context of today's episode, which was quite interesting, I felt. I have 2 hours on the radio, so what do I do? I cook! Well, you cook, actually, and I talk you through it, all whilst playing some sweet tunes. As I said earlier, today's recipe was Sticky Toffee Pudding (much of which is left over and delights my roomates), and in honor of the recipe and post-St. Andrew's Day hangovers and twisted-ceilidh-ankles worldwide I devoted my whole slot to purely Scottish bands. And lo, it was awesome. It's all so perfectly offset by a book I was recently given, Sound Bites by Alex Kapranos, which is about eating all over the world while on tour with -- with? -- as Franz Ferdinand. Magnificent. It makes me want to write and travel and play in a rockband and do little else with my life. Then again, if it means I'm going to be broke until I get my break at thirty... hello university degree?
Speaking of which, I've swung back around from any screw-Marine-Bio-I'm-switching-to-Anthro feelings I've had in the interest of getting out of school ASAP. It's all for a worthy cause -- being done with class faster. Mmm, can't wait to hit that several month skid of entry-level job searching while desperately wanting and yet being unable to move away from home! I can hardly wait -- I can almost smell the desperation. Whoopdie-effing-do.
Hope you've enjoyed my unusually long rambling tonight -- I was browsing through my old Scots-Julia blog from last year and felt the need to portray my life as exciting, interesting, thoughtful, literate or at least verbose.
However, the rain was right on schedule for St. Andrew's Day, a day to celebrate Scotland. By myself. In the rain and in my own head. I'll get to a recap of my day in a minute but let's just say it culminated in me, drunk, in a friend's kitchen, serving up sticky toffee pudding to my team of ruggers around midnight. I can hardly think of a better way to mark the occasion, (excepting for the lack of pubs in LA).
Hm, so now that I think of it, yesterday didn't have that much of a story to tell. I had class, then spent the afternoon frantically cooking up a double batch of sticky toffee pudding for the rugby team and script for my radio show, interspersed with a planning meeting about our rugby tour this spring (Hong Kong, here we come! We only need.... about $34,000. Ouch.). After that was Rookie Night for the rugby team which (for legal reasons) I can only tell you involved a lot of group activities, lots of fun, and culminated in the revelation of Rookie-Vet assignments (Hi, Andi!).
And speaking of "legal reasons"... there are too many prohibitive ones in America. Almost every fundraising idea I had for Hong Kong (ones that worked well in Edinburgh) was found to be fraught with too many legal liabilities or prohibited by silly regulations from UCLA, UCLA club sports, etc. Bah. Rules are made to be broken, laws are open to interpretation. This is what I've learned from rugby.
At any rate, where all this leaves me is huddled inside against the cold Los Angeles winter (oooh, long sleeve shirt AND a sweater? NO!) with my never-ending cups of tea (wahey, Tetley's British Blend!) and a seemingly never-ending list of things to accomplish very soon. As in, before finals. As in, in addition to finals. Ouch, my valley-girl-vocab muscle is hurting. Time to head over to FreeRice.com and improve that vocabulary. Grammar, however, shall still be set loose to the wind and creativity cut off and distributed amongst the poor.
Oh, sorry, did I mention my radio show earlier? WELL, let me tell you about it! Or, actually, in the context of today's episode, which was quite interesting, I felt. I have 2 hours on the radio, so what do I do? I cook! Well, you cook, actually, and I talk you through it, all whilst playing some sweet tunes. As I said earlier, today's recipe was Sticky Toffee Pudding (much of which is left over and delights my roomates), and in honor of the recipe and post-St. Andrew's Day hangovers and twisted-ceilidh-ankles worldwide I devoted my whole slot to purely Scottish bands. And lo, it was awesome. It's all so perfectly offset by a book I was recently given, Sound Bites by Alex Kapranos, which is about eating all over the world while on tour with -- with? -- as Franz Ferdinand. Magnificent. It makes me want to write and travel and play in a rockband and do little else with my life. Then again, if it means I'm going to be broke until I get my break at thirty... hello university degree?
Speaking of which, I've swung back around from any screw-Marine-Bio-I'm-switching-to-Anthro feelings I've had in the interest of getting out of school ASAP. It's all for a worthy cause -- being done with class faster. Mmm, can't wait to hit that several month skid of entry-level job searching while desperately wanting and yet being unable to move away from home! I can hardly wait -- I can almost smell the desperation. Whoopdie-effing-do.
Hope you've enjoyed my unusually long rambling tonight -- I was browsing through my old Scots-Julia blog from last year and felt the need to portray my life as exciting, interesting, thoughtful, literate or at least verbose.
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