After long weeks of trying, I finally sold my car. I'll see it again with some regularity, I sold it to a friend here at the City on the Hill, but it is no longer under my control. We had a good run and the car held up well in 12 years of ownership.
I don't have much more to say. I'm relieved, but busy and will now return to my regularly scheduled program of reading until my eyes fall out of my head.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
He's back....
5 papers and and we have our first "Jews were the escape goat and persecuted by those in power".
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Field Statement
I started writing. It's scattered, unsubstantiated and doesn't a lot of sense, but at least I've started.
I think I need to start carrying around a voice recorder. I can express myself much more eloquently verbally than I can in text. I get jumbled and confusing when I go to put my ideas on the page. I have a hard time saying what I want to in a very simple and clear manner, even thought if someone asks me to explain myself verbally I can do so well. This was an issue with my MA and is already starting to be an issue with my QE. It's also my big hang up to writing; I'm so much better talking.
Enough for now, back to Scottish history.
I think I need to start carrying around a voice recorder. I can express myself much more eloquently verbally than I can in text. I get jumbled and confusing when I go to put my ideas on the page. I have a hard time saying what I want to in a very simple and clear manner, even thought if someone asks me to explain myself verbally I can do so well. This was an issue with my MA and is already starting to be an issue with my QE. It's also my big hang up to writing; I'm so much better talking.
Enough for now, back to Scottish history.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Food is good
We're cooking a lot more so this blog may be about food for a while. In reality, we cook all the time. But recently we've become even more adventurous. Last Friday for instance, we wanted something spicy, cheesy, and that used up the 1/2 lb of frozen shrimp we had in the freezer. The result? About 30 min of looking through shrimp recipes until we stumbled upon this one for Portuguese Spicy Shrimp and decided to put it on top of a pizza.
We made about a 1/2 recipe and used Trader Joes whole canned tomatoes instead of fresh ones. Honestly, I don't think you'd be able to tell the difference, and the canned tomatoes come with the tomato juice that you need for the recipe. Otherwise, we actually stuck to the recipe. Our mini food processor (they're like $15, if you cook, buy one. worth every penny) was a real time saver. We were able to chop two onions, about 8 cloves of garlic and the peppers w/o 1) dealing with onion tears and 2) in about 15 seconds flat.
Although I'd love to say we made the crust, it actually came from Trader Joes, as well. After several years of experimenting, the best way to cook their crust is to pre-bake it on parchement paper on a pizza stone. Once again, if you cook or bake, especially bread, you can get a pizza stone at Ross for $6-7. We brushed the crust with olive oil, baked about 8-10 min, topped with mozzarella, smothered with shrimp, and returned to the oven for another 10 min or so.
The veggies you see are zucchini Spanish-style. Rather than do the eggs or the 2-pan hassle, I just did all the ingredients in one pan and topped with cilantro and parsley left over from the pizza (also chopped in the mini-processor). Our wine was a Chianti, which broke a bit with the Iberian peninsula theme, but was really, really good. Yet another $6 treasure from everyone's favourite grocery store: Trader Joe's.
You may get back to hearing me bitch about grad school and work, but for now I'll spare you the boring rants and just keep making you hungry.
We made about a 1/2 recipe and used Trader Joes whole canned tomatoes instead of fresh ones. Honestly, I don't think you'd be able to tell the difference, and the canned tomatoes come with the tomato juice that you need for the recipe. Otherwise, we actually stuck to the recipe. Our mini food processor (they're like $15, if you cook, buy one. worth every penny) was a real time saver. We were able to chop two onions, about 8 cloves of garlic and the peppers w/o 1) dealing with onion tears and 2) in about 15 seconds flat.
Although I'd love to say we made the crust, it actually came from Trader Joes, as well. After several years of experimenting, the best way to cook their crust is to pre-bake it on parchement paper on a pizza stone. Once again, if you cook or bake, especially bread, you can get a pizza stone at Ross for $6-7. We brushed the crust with olive oil, baked about 8-10 min, topped with mozzarella, smothered with shrimp, and returned to the oven for another 10 min or so.
The veggies you see are zucchini Spanish-style. Rather than do the eggs or the 2-pan hassle, I just did all the ingredients in one pan and topped with cilantro and parsley left over from the pizza (also chopped in the mini-processor). Our wine was a Chianti, which broke a bit with the Iberian peninsula theme, but was really, really good. Yet another $6 treasure from everyone's favourite grocery store: Trader Joe's.
You may get back to hearing me bitch about grad school and work, but for now I'll spare you the boring rants and just keep making you hungry.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Beavers and whales and coffee, oh my!
Well, my first conference presentation is official over and was officially rocked. I had the opportunity to present with two of the smartest and most beautiful people in graduate level world history today: Shirtless Canadian and Kungfuramone.
We successfully managed to convince twenty or so prominent historians that our kooky websites were not, in fact, overzealous book reports, but real down to earth historical synthesis that would let us play with the big kids. In all seriousness, this is the first time I had to present my work and the first time I really got to hear what my adopted cohort was working on. i've always known they were brilliant, but I really got to see how brilliant for the first time today. Shirtless did an impeccable job of conveying several hundred years of whaling history into a funny and engaging narrative. While Kungfu gave an equally strong presentation on the interconnectedness of the labor and consumption of the coffee story. I'd love to pair the coffee and chocolate stories side by side and call the lectures the "Double Mocha Approach to Consumption in World History".
My talk was well received and I got really good feedback on areas I can expand into. Honestly, the most surprising part was how excited people were about the topic and the number of people who thought it would make a good dissertation project or a good book. I was at my wit's end when working on this project, but it's given me more mileage than anything else I've done in graduate school. I already have a dissertation project, and this one would have way too many challenges as a diss (mainly that funding is still done w/in the framework of nation-state and it would take me years to finish if I decided to go this route), but I'm absolutely going to keep collecting material and consider it as a "what are you working on next?" piece. Something that L (the most wonderful husband in the world who came to support me and stayed for the discussion) mentioned is that this would even be a topic that would interest people outside the immediate professional field. Commodities are something people can wrap their heads around, and my topic might actually interest that elusive general audience that I would really like to get in touch with. Even better, much of the work would be in English and French sources! Woo hoo!
The adrenaline is pumping, I should probably use it to get some work done, but instead I'm going to make brownies, eat lunch, and then watch the superbowl with a couple of beers.
We successfully managed to convince twenty or so prominent historians that our kooky websites were not, in fact, overzealous book reports, but real down to earth historical synthesis that would let us play with the big kids. In all seriousness, this is the first time I had to present my work and the first time I really got to hear what my adopted cohort was working on. i've always known they were brilliant, but I really got to see how brilliant for the first time today. Shirtless did an impeccable job of conveying several hundred years of whaling history into a funny and engaging narrative. While Kungfu gave an equally strong presentation on the interconnectedness of the labor and consumption of the coffee story. I'd love to pair the coffee and chocolate stories side by side and call the lectures the "Double Mocha Approach to Consumption in World History".
My talk was well received and I got really good feedback on areas I can expand into. Honestly, the most surprising part was how excited people were about the topic and the number of people who thought it would make a good dissertation project or a good book. I was at my wit's end when working on this project, but it's given me more mileage than anything else I've done in graduate school. I already have a dissertation project, and this one would have way too many challenges as a diss (mainly that funding is still done w/in the framework of nation-state and it would take me years to finish if I decided to go this route), but I'm absolutely going to keep collecting material and consider it as a "what are you working on next?" piece. Something that L (the most wonderful husband in the world who came to support me and stayed for the discussion) mentioned is that this would even be a topic that would interest people outside the immediate professional field. Commodities are something people can wrap their heads around, and my topic might actually interest that elusive general audience that I would really like to get in touch with. Even better, much of the work would be in English and French sources! Woo hoo!
The adrenaline is pumping, I should probably use it to get some work done, but instead I'm going to make brownies, eat lunch, and then watch the superbowl with a couple of beers.
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