Reaching Out

( exercise stuff )

( food stuff )

( water stuff )

Riverside weather is supposed to hit 42'C this weekend, which is FUCKING. HEINOUS. Luckily S. is back in California and up for a trip down to San Diego, and we're going to visit the new Clarion cohort, hang with Nalo, and cook bak kut teh for the potluck! I'd like to go back to Black's Beach sometime, and go swimming naked in the sea again, but maybe some other time. Lisa gets back soon and she's housesitting in Santa Ana, and I might try to join her for a week or so, just to escape the weather here. I'm also considering couch surfing in the Bay Area. Who knows. IDK. I just don't feel very productive here.

- editing editing editing, tiny little edits this time, of formatting and making all the little apostrophes curly and junk

- I went for lunch with Chi at Green Burrito where we had burritos.

- Around 4pm, just as my laptop was dying, I went to the mini conference for one of the seminars.

- Food was had.

- I just cooked some bowtie pasta, some minced meat with wine. The bowtie pasta I mixed with some olive oil, and mixed it in, then added alfredo sauce and lots of cheese. I think I should have drained the wine or not put it in at all because it's pretty strong in the result!

I now have enough lunches for the next three days aw yiiisssss.

I'm going to give this pasta thing a go for the next while... my dad wants me to move away from rice because of the starch but I feel very much the need for some carbs to go with my meats. I'm pretty sure cheeses are not what he had in mind but oh well.

- It turns out that even if I sleep on my side I am prone to waking myself up by snorting in my sleep. This is... getting out of hand. I'm going to the doctor when I get back from Malaysia to talk about a referral to an anatomist, see if it's something in my nasal structure. (Bla bla bla lose weight bla bla) I'm totally going to try my mom's CPAP machine when I go home too.

- This morning I found a calico kitty nomming on stuff I left outside. I've seen her before, and while she doesn't look incredibly underfed (unlike patchy kitty last year who was so thin I could see her ribcage) she ate with a gusto that I don't think she would have if she had an owner. She seems really skittish, although I think with time I could get her to trust me. We'll see.

- I wrote 2000 words this afternoon during the write-in.

- PK and I went to JoAnn's and I fretted about stuff. There's a 5-piece sewing roller which I'm tempted to get, and it'll be on sale in a couple of days, about $80 cheaper than it usually is. I bought some embroidery thread and an inordinate number of beads. Also some cheap fabric, which I think would make a great bra for Nisi when I finally figure out the pattern for her bra. I also went to the kids' craft aisle and got some alphabet beads. I want to make a necklace that says "FEMINAZGUL" because I think that will be amusing. Uhm. I used a $50 off for a >$150 purchse coupon. I suppose I really should stop doing that and use the stuff I buy.

- Dinner tonight was leftover chicken meat, mixed with alfredo sauce and cheese, and dinner rolls I forgot I had. I attempted some baked potatoes but apparently I am a failure and forgot to soak them first so they are pretty much ruined now. I'll do better next time.

I am thirty today! I was officially born at 9.27am (I saw my birth cert the other day for some reason) so it's been a while. Roy and I have been marinading things all day. I have a bucket of chicken sitting in Coca-cola because I thought it would be a good idea but now Roy wants me to re-marinade the chicken and use honey instead. He's going to start up the grill around 6pm and I have to figure out drinks and salad appetizers. Also plates. Haha. I have such trouble in a house where I know nothing of its contents.

I have a few Tumblr friends coming over, KKJ mates, an old schoolmate, a Twitter friend, and my little cousin (who is baking me cake!). Around a dozen of us. My brother's BBQing lamb, chicken wings, and I convinced him to try stingray.

Hopefully we'll have enough food (Roy thinks we've got too much) and hopefully everybody will get along (I am usually more discriminatory about who I choose to invite and have mix together) (but we are mostly all nerds so it should be fine).

Woo woo!

EDIT: Thanks for the birthday wishes! Party was great. Ray came earlier to drop off the cake because she couldn't make it. (She also brought her new car! It's tiny just like her!) The cake was marvellous. The company was marvellous. We played a round of Politico. It was great fun! Possibly because I won. It was so much fun that I forgot to take pictures! For drinks I pulled out a really nice bowl and bought several things of juice and mixed them up, just because I could. (I used to do it with soda when I was younger.)

Stingray is also an amazing fish and I wish I had more of it.

the back of my chair fell off. like, fell off and i cant fix it anymore. D: gonna have to start walking to campus to do work now.

I took a walk today! unfortunately where I live in Riverside is not very interesting, just houses and apartment complexes. =/ sigh. i miss living in a downtown area!

investigating multivitamin powder options. preferrably something with high folic acid content, since i always forget to take my pills. the protein powder smoothies in the morning seems to be working out for me, so time to look into this further. two scoops of the stuff help with the texture a lot. it's not like using a banana, but close enough!

Third year in a row that I spent New Year's Day hanging out with Asian folks, eating Chinese food :D Last year it was with the inimitable bankuei and this year it was with my colleague TX.

Last night I went to Dr. LR's party which was a nice gathering of a few profs and we hung out and had snackies and chatted. At midnight we did a countdown, and sang Auld Lang Syne, and then I caught a ride home with the department chair.

This morning around 9, TX and I headed to the Hsi Lai temple to pray for good luck in the new year (she's job-hunting, I've got quals) and wandered around waiting for the chanting ceremony. Then we had lunch with a UCR alumnus who's now in law school, with her law school friend. (I don't know what makes a person want to pursue law school after a PhD.)

Then TX and I went shopping for stuff at 99 Ranch, and we planned for dinner. She'd cook a pork rib soup, and I'd steam a fish. I also managed to cook turmeric rice as well. It was a good dinner and we hung out and judged Asian dudes on Tumblr and stuff.

Long day, satisfying day. Tomorrow I go to campus and see how much work I can get done on quals reading before starting on reading for AFROFUTURISM!!

Well that was a slightly eventful day. I started using my new sandwich maker to make sandwiches to take to campus with me right? And puttered around and all that. Headed to campus and about halfway there, remembered the sandwich maker was still on so I half-ran home all terrified that my sandwiches were burned and my fire alarm isn't in (I have it unplugged because I ran out of batteries and forgot to get some more) and what if my apartment got smokey while I was gone??

The sandwiches weren't that bad--very nice golden brown in fact. So I rested and headed off to campus again to get MM a file from a database and tried to read but it wasn't happening, sigh. I don't know why my brain is currently so resistant to working right now.

Anyway, got home, had a strange dream.

I went on a cookie run and was about to settle down to eating some when I got an email from a colleague who is leaving tomorrow and somehow locked herself out of her office (our offices can't be unlocked; while I do prop my door open on a regular basis I bring my keys along just in case). She's generally very stressed (last stage of dissertating... and leaving to go on sabbatical in Taiwan so she also had to move out) and I figured she had no idea what to do.

So I went back to campus and ascertained that there's no 24-hour maintenance, and figured out that the UC PD is, in fact, campus security (I had many dealings with SMU campus security but they're not exactly what I would call a police department). I called and got an officer over, averting further stress, and hung around so my friend could finish her work not alone.

I've decided to use MapMyRun.com again this year, if only to persuade myself that things are really not as far as they seem to be here. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to register the walking routes in the Botanic Gardens, but it does register the major trails on the mountains, like the Big C and Two Trees. Two Trees is barely 2km from here, so I'll give it a whirl over the weekend and see if I can find it and wander on it for a bit.

Hmmm.... I made a chicken and rice casserole using the directions on this jar of chicken gravy I got the other day. I replace the 2 cups cooked rice with one cup rice and one cup of couscous, and used some chicken sewers, and instead of cheddar cheese I use that Kraft Mexicana blend.

It's fairly decent tasting but it occurs to me that I have no basis for comparison on how these things really ought to be.

Do wish I'd remember the garlic powder though.

The smoothie did not last me through the whole evening, sadly =( Oh well! Tomorrow is a new day.

Monday. What did I do on Monday? I can't remember. Maybe I cleaned a little bit. I know there was some back and forth with Dr. S about the final grades.

EDIT: I remember now! I filed my federal taxes. And spent time complaining about it on Tumblr as I did so. I also worried about whether I needed to do state taxes. (As it turns out, no, I don't, because I didn't make more than $15k. I wonder if I should do it anyway, just to get the hang of it.) I also called my dad at night. He didn't know it was me!!! =(

Tuesday, I spent the day with Chi. We went to Canyon Crest Towne Center, where I sent off my brother's stuff at last. We then wandered around looking for the shoe repair store, but the shoe guy told me he couldn't fix my shoes =( I think they're really gone. It still wasn't a wasted trip; Canyon Crest is a really nice place. There were a couple of places that were closed down, which made me really sad, but it gave me the idea of creating a workshop that people could come and rent tools and a place to work in. Then they wouldn't have to have more space or buy tools which they wouldn't otherwise use. It'd be like a sewing cafe. And every so often, there'd be a workshop for various things like gardening or woodworking or fixing lights, little life skills like that.

After that we had lunch at Busy Cafe, and went to my place where I taught her how to bake cake! She'd never done it before. I didn't have vanilla though. I think it makes a difference. Now that I've baked two cakes without vanilla, it seems to me that without the vanilla the cake doesn't rise. She also perused my books. She needs to read stuff on feminist theory, so I loaned her some of my stuff. We then went to campus. I returned books and cleaned out my desk a little. I've got to go back and get the rest of the stuff though.

Wednesday.... I went to San Diego! E and Ak came to get me in the morning and we drove to Dumpling Inn. After that we bought some cake and put it into a cooler, then went to the zoo! We covered almost everything... we didn't get to the reptiles or the petting zoo, but we hit pretty much every else. Except the pandas. I developed a headache from the sunstroke, but drinking a bit of water staved it off. We took the cakes out, and I had brought along my picnic mat, and we basically picnicked on the side of the road XD Then we drove to get onion rings for snacks, and since we had time, I got them to take me to a pet supplies store. I was hoping for a pet store with some actual animals but whatever. There was also a Jo-Ann nearby, so we spent some time there too. I have some red elastic which I'm going to put in the back of my planned dress.

We finished the day with Little Sheep Hot Pot which was pretty fucking amazing. Then we had to do the long drive home. By this time I was pretty sure that getting into a car right after eating a lot of food that involves drinking a lot of fluids is a bad idea but whatever. This happened.

I'm tidying up my apartment today, in preparation for the new quarter and also because I need to vacuum and minimize dust mites (aka DERMATOPHAGOIDES FARINAE). I'm also going to K-mart to buy some more dirt. I'm going to see if I can persuade anybody to take me to Home Depot or something so I can buy more dirt.

I'm also thinking about taking up pulping paper and making my own little recycled notebooks. That way I'll be less distressed about the amount of printing I have to do and the fact that there is no paper recycling center that's easy for me to get to. We'll see though.

I also really want a big floppy hat to replace the one I lost =(

Hey ya'll. I leave tonight at 9.45pm for Singapore. From there, I sleep over and leave tomorrow morning for Narita. From Narita, after a 3 1/2 hour stopover, I hie over to Chicago, and after another 4 hr stopover, get back to Halifax by 11.45pm, 21st Feb.

Hopefully, I won't have many issues getting some books onto the plane like I did coming home (I mean, wtf). TSA's site says there are no restrictions on what people can bring, so if someone tells me otherwise, I shall have to point out the website.

So, while I'm gone, here's a picspam of my last dinner here, as well as the lunch I just had:

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