stick to Pop Tarts

in Berkeley Bowl a couple days ago i saw some fru-fru toaster pastries on sale, and i impulse-bought a box of the "cherry-pomegran" flavor. this morning i grabbed a couple as i was running out the door to miss the shuttle (actually i just barely caught it, but that's only because it was late). sometimes cherry flavor is good. sometimes it is just wrong. these fell into the latter category. they tasted like cherry Cepacol, that stuff you spray into your sore throat to numb it but that always ends up coating your tongue. strange thing was, my tongue started to feel a little numb near the end of the first pastry. i'm hoping it was just the association.

as a sidenote, i Googled "cherry numbing" to help me remember the name of the numbing spray. the results were far more educational than i could have hoped.

why i'll miss Berkeley

there's a good chance the commute to my new job will force me out of Berkeley within the next year. if i leave, i will sorely miss this crazy place. but evenings like this go a long way toward convincing me that i can stand the daily three hour commute longer than i thought.

i got off the shuttle tonight in West Oakland a little before 7. driving home, i passed the Tuesday night Berkeley Farmer's Market over on Derby Street. (incidentally, that's two blocks from the second place i lived in Berkeley, about 8 years ago.) i decided on a whim to stop and pick up some goodies. the air was still warm, the light just starting to dim, and even while some of the stands were packing up, the market was still crowded. i scored some luscious heirloom tomatoes, a butternut squash, and a hearty handful of okra.

i got home, changed clothes, chugged a glass of Gu2O, synched my iPod to get the day's NPR podcasts, and took off at sunset for a run up Spruce. this has become my favorite workout and a surefire way to get my endorphin fix when time is short. the sunset was gorgeous and the views of the bay from Spruce were spectacular. by the time i reached Grizzly Peak and Marin (more than 800 feet above where i started), there was only the barest trace of color behind Mount Tam and the Golden Gate Bridge, the city was lit, and i could see stars overhead. (the beauty was lessened only by the smell of clutches burning as i walked down Marin.) coming back down Cedar toward home, i passed Gregoire. the sidewalk window into the kitchen was open, amazing smells were wafting out, and a dog was standing on its back paws at the window, resting its front paws on the windowsill (leashed to it's owner, a couple feet away). as i passed, the chef was saying "shake" in a french accent, and rewarding the dog with scraps. i wondered if he was getting the Australian lamb chops with garlic cream or the grilled Coho salmon...

these days i only get 2-3 hours at home in a typical night, which is difficult to bear. but maybe it would be harder to not have nights like this one, no matter how short.

highs and lows of laundry

two things about laundry bring me down.

(1) the cap on the liquid detergent bottles. you know, the special spout cap designed so that detergent doesn't run down the side of the bottle [as much] when you put the cap back on? well, i remember seeing the commercials for the "new & improved cap" when i was a kid. it makes me feel old that this was a "technological advancement" that happened in my lifetime.

(2) dryer lint. ever think about what it is? it's little pieces of your clothing. you are slowly throwing away your favorite pair of jeans, one fuzzball at a time. dryer lint is the reason i feel justified in wearing jeans half a dozen times before i wash them (barring any stains or odors, of course).

on the upside, i'll once again have my pick of underwear, and my jeans will hug my butt again, even if only until i put my enormous wallet back in my pocket.

back to the "real world"

this was the first week of the rest of my (foreseeable) life. that might sound a little scary, but it's actually quite comforting. there's no end point and no final goal to be attained, and for now i'm right where i want to be, so i can just focus on making the most of every day. it's such a relief, following the perpetual guilt and inadequacy of grad school. in some ways it's like the difference between dating and being in a committed long-term relationship. i've already found the temptations are similar, too. this morning i got an e-mail from a professor at the University of Amsterdam saying that i'd be a great fit for an open post-doc position there. i'm not thinking about leaving my new job, but being committed doesn't mean that other options stop being attractive.

the Real World Welcome Committee has done its job from as far away as Hong Kong (thanks everybody), but let's be honest, it's a stretch to call what i'm entering the real world. first of all, i work in Silicon Valley, which is host and home to many rich, eccentric, and/or mildly autistic engineers. you see things here you wouldn't anywhere else. on my first day, i sat looking out the front window of the shuttle bus as we sat in traffic on 101. in front of us was a shiny, mint-condition, red PT Cruiser with a native american-themed vanity plate and two stickers in the back window. one was a picture of a dream catcher, the other read “I Y VMWare”. a camoflage-sleeved arm held a cigarette out the window.

second of all, it's unfair, even by Silicon Valley standards, to call Google the "real world". i'm so pampered that, on my first Friday afternoon, i actually felt a little sad that i had to leave for two days. weekends mean i have to feed myself again and sit on a cold toilet seat.

but don't worry, that faded once Friday night got underway. in fact, i'm loving this notion of a "weekend", it's like getting a bite-sized vacation every week. and i think my two-week in-town vacation between Hawaii and starting work was good preparation for the weekends. for one, i learned how to cope with a stretch of free time in my natural habitat without triggering my guilt response. (perhaps unfortunately that laid-back attitude extends to getting blog posts up in a timely manner.)

now that it's Sunday afternoon, i am heartened by the thought that i'm going back to work tomorrow morning and i'm almost looking forward to getting up at 6am to catch the early shuttle. if i'm going to be working a 40-hour week for a paycheck, i guess i can't ask for much more than that.

kitchen stories

in the last couple years, i've gotten very lazy about feeding myself. especially near the end of my graduate career, there were several weeks that i only set foot in my kitchen to boil water for my morning tea, and the rest of my daily sustenance was acquired elsewhere. on the upside, this was affordable thanks to the scores of cheap restaurants all over Berkeley (plus it almost eliminated dish washing). on the downside, all that restaurant food probably took years off my life. the internships i did at Google didn't help either. coming out of a six-month stint of eating three free, healthy meals a day in their gourmet cafes, i was overwhelmed by supermarkets, and attempts to cook for myself typically ended with a hasty run for Thai take-out. (i've heard more than one fellow employee joke that the free food makes us docile so we can't fend for ourselves any longer, thus reducing employee turnover. i doubt that's the primary reason they feed their employees, but it is an undeniable side-effect for some of us.) my fridge was a barren wasteland, often holding only old beer and salad dressing, and there were several nights that i waited too long and was too tired for dinner, so i just put off this eating thing for tomorrow's Future Me to figure out.

in my final weeks of freedom before i begin my full-time job (and forget again what to do with raw vegetables), i've been spending extra time stocking my fridge with yummy things and cooking for myself. it's relaxing and i've even had some minor successes, mostly thanks to Eating Well magazine, which my sister got for me a couple of years ago (she and i share a deep passion for using sticky tabs, which protrude from my magazines in every direction). in the last couple months, i tried whole grain pasta with creamy mushroom-pea sauce and turkey tenderloin with whiskey-cherry sauce. some of the successes in the last week include dairy-free brown rice banana pudding and squash saute with gorgonzola polenta, and just tonight i made both the frozen raspberry meringue pie and raspberry-almond crumb tart (both were yummy, but while the tart was a cinch, the frozen pie was a royal pain in the ass). tomorrow's project is the basque vegatable rice, and maybe after that a salmon dish and some squash risotto...

there have been disasters, though. if you've come over to my place for waffles on a Sunday morning, you may think of me as a confident and proficient cook, but you are watching me make the same easy recipe for the 38th time. get me on a recipe that i haven't made three dozen times, and i have the memory of a goldfish. i often burn things as i run back to read the instructions a fifth time, then pick up two steps past where i should be. the day i attempted broccoli and corn calzones was a hoot. it began with me reaching into the cabinet above the sink for my bag of flour which i then dumped directly over top my head. it was a real I Love Lucy-esque moment, but once the hilarity faded, it was a bitch to clean up (everywhere the flour contacted water it turned into a persistent paste) then i had to run out for more flour. that same experiment was also my first encounter with Trader Joe's whole wheat pizza dough. all i had to do was roll it out into a six-inch diameter circle. sounds easy, right? it was an epic battle, and while i won in the end, it wasn't pretty. the result looked more like a squirrel skin pinned down to a dissection tray, after being used for target practice. i managed to cook up a couple calzone only to reaffirm that i don't like eating that much dough, so i picked out the filling.

but the process of improvement is its own reward, especially when cooking. i'm trying to sign up for a cooking lesson at Kitchen On Fire in my neighborhood (the first class is on knives and cutting techniques, which is great because (1) it's crucial for faster prep, and (2) afterward i can earnestly use my "i can't, i need to stay home and sharpen my knives" date excuse), and i will continue to share (foist) my food (experiments) with (onto) friends. i don't expect that i'll ever come anywhere close to my sister's amazing culinary skills, but i'm having a ball anyway.

(as a side note, i borrowed the title from a quirky, lovable, understated Swedish film i watched last week. i continue to make only glacial progress through my Netflix queue, even when on vacation.)