Good things - Bad things

Bad: having so much laundry you run out of socks and underwear
Good: having a flexible schedule that allow you to go to the community laundry and wash said socks and underwear
Bad: the community change machine's "out of service when lit" light is glowing
Worse: you don't have any bills to change for quarters anyway
Better: ATM and laundry by 7-11 is less than a mile a way
Better: scary manager at the laundry by local 7-11 is not there to watch you use their "customers only" change machine"
Good: quarters + laundry machines = clean clothes
Not so good: hang drying intimates in chilly SC
Bad: only having your not so dry underwear to put on at 6:45 am
Good-ish: I was too tired to notice


And now for some student revelations:
"Russia is not the United States of America, nor is it located in the same continent or hemisphere as America but it shares something else with America, social movements."
then I learned how the Decemberists relate to Howard Stern's support of the Snapple company.

A-B-D

As of yesterday at 4:30, I joined the ranks of ABD (All But Dissertation) PhD Candidates. I actually had a lot of fun in my exam and received very valuable feedback from my committee. Everyone got along well and many of my examiners' fields overlapped in some really interesting ways.

After the exam I had a pretty large get together back at my place. Many thanks for all of those who came out to have fun and drink with me, especially on a Wednesday night late in the quarter. Much wine was drunk and good food was eaten. Amazingly, I don't have even the hint of a hangover this morning. Perhaps grad school is getting my liver back into fighting shape.

For now, as much as I'd like to go for a long walk, sit on the beach, knit, or generally waste time, I actually have a book to read and teach at 4. So, back to Russia, more from me later.

Almost There

I have about 5 hours until I leave for my exam. Despite spending Monday night waking up and answering questions in my head, I slept fine last night and I'm not all that stressed. The cookies for my committee are baked and I bought snacks and wine yesterday. All I have to do now is read through my statements again, refresh my memory of name-title-thesis, and I'll be set. My plan is to sneak a run in around 11 as a final de-stresser.

For my slug readers, I'll see you tonight at 8!

Oh, and I realized I forgot to tell you, L passed his exams last week.

Monday always comes too soon

This may be because I have to get up for 8am lecture, but I have the feeling it's a pretty universal complaint.

Nothing big, new, or exciting, just a quiet weekend at home prepping for my exam. What you do get today is two reviews:

#1 Happy Feet
Although I agree with Kingfuramone that a pack of screaming children can be some of the most effective birth control out there, nothing makes me way to tie up my fallopian tube more than watching a horrible kids movie, and envision it playing on constant loop in my house. I don't think I have ever turned off a movie part way through. I even stuck it out for all of Heavy Metal (despite being way too sober for much of it), but I couldn't do Happy Feet. At heart, I love penguins and I love tap dancing. What I can't stand is badly done animation (seriously, some video games have better texture than this film), American-Idol style big ensemble numbers, and racialized penguins (Puffins were Latinos and the Emperor Penguins were African-American - of course, nearly all of these "typical accents" were voiced by white actors). The overall messages: "even if you don't fit in, you're still a good person!", "corporations and governments are bad, they're destroying our environment", and "religion is a bunch of hooey", are generally those I can get behind. But they're pretty badly done and seriously dumbed down. I know it's a kids movie, but children aren't morons. Finally, it's very strange watching birds singing about how they're all "looking for somebody to love" is a way that's sort of sexual (for parents) and heavily glossed (for kids).

#2 The Gourmet Slow Cooker
When most people think slow cooker they think burritos, stew, meatballs, and quick easy to prepare family meals. This my friends, is not your traditional slow cooker cookbook. The recipes in here are "gown-up". They're aimed at dinner party, or nice dinners for adults rather than making a lot of "kid-friendly" food (I don't have kids so I have no idea if kids would like these dishes, although I'd assume yes because they're tasty, filled with fresh foods, and most of the time "kid-friendly" in my house was what mom cooked, and I turned out ok). As with most slow cookers, you can do most of the recipes in 2 different ways: chop everything, toss in cooker and go, or saute/brown everything and do more upfront cooking. They turn out well either way. However, the upfront cooking really does add another level of flavor to most of the foods. The book is divided into 6 countries: USA, France, Greece, Italy, India, Mexico and has a variety of dessert, main dish, and side dish meals. I've made two of the French dishes and absolutely love them. Although I had about an hour of prep time (I also cut up a whole chicken for the recipe), I was able to get at least 4, if not 5 dinners for Luke and I out of the pot. And, like most slow cooker recipes, they freeze beautifully. So, even though I spent an hour cooking, it really works out to 15 min per meal over the long run.

L's Turn

I'm not the only one QEing this quarter. Kungfuramone passed his exams yesterday (the 12th), and today L goes before his committee. In History, we do a lot of writing, submit a dossier to our committee and then get asked questions on what we've submitted and where we stand historiographically. We are responsible for positioning ourselves "in the field" (aka proving that you've read a whole lot of stuff that will technically establish your expertise in your field and hence your ability to teach the kiddies), producing syllabi, and putting together a dissertation proposal. The entire process is closed.

In Engineering, the focus is mainly on the dissertation proposal and on the research you've actually been doing for the last few years. L has to do a one hour presentation, which is open to the public. Following a Q&A, the committee kicks everyone out of the room and hones in on the candidate. I'm looking forward to sitting in support during Luke's presentation and wish we had a public part to our exams. I think it's helpful to find out what other people are actually doing and support your colleagues.

Besides from the "good-partner" type stuff I can do to help him prep (which so far has included keeping us fed and doing the kitchen cleaning last night), I'm contributing a bit of my best: baking. We are "expected" to bring food to our committee and I'm supporting L by doing my part and making brownies. I know it's SC, but they're totally sober brownies. In fact, in true grad fashion, there's about 3 T of very strong coffee in the frosting.

First, the brownies. Noncouplable will recognize this recipe from last year's bake off, with a few changes. Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa powder is a wonderful, wonderful product that I saw in North Carolina in 05, but didn't' see here until this past weekend. The inclusion of this very dark cocoa powder is the main change.

I use Hershey's "Best Brownie" recipe (small batch size). This produces an excellent, moist, fudgy, brownie. I generally double the recipe and bake in two pans (combining into one 9x13 pan results in overcooking).

I top these brownies with a mocha frosting while they are still a bit warm. It allows the frosting to melt a bit and then solidfy into a nice glaze. (This is a modification of a Hershey recipe)
Hershey's Best Brownie
Ingredients:

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, melted
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa (I used Hershey's Special Dark cocoa)
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped nuts(optional) (I did not add these)
CREAMY BROWNIE FROSTING(recipe follows) (I did not use the frosting)
as per Jessica's alterations, I also added about 2 tbsp of Hershey's Chocolate Syrup and about 1/3 cup of semisweet chocolate chips
Directions:
1. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease 9-inch square baking pan.

2. Stir together butter, sugar and vanilla in bowl. Add eggs; beat well with spoon. Stir together flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt; gradually add to egg mixture, beating until well blended. Stir in nuts, if desired. Spread batter evenly into prepared pan.

3. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until brownies begin to pull away from sides of pan. Cool completely in pan on wire rack. Prepare CREAMY BROWNIE FROSTING; spread over brownies. Cut into squares. About 16 brownies.


Kelly's Mocha Brownie Frosting

Ingredients:
3 T butter, softened
1T honey
3T cocoa powder
1tsp-1T vanilla
1-3T coffee (or milk, for a straight chocolate frosting)
1-2 cups powdered sugar

1. Beat butter with honey. Add cocoa powder and vanilla and beat well.
2. Slowly bead in powdered sugar, alternating with coffee or milk. Add sugar to desired consistency and taste.
3. Spread over brownies when then are still slightly warm


It's also good on peanut butter cookies....

New Blog Added

Today I want to do some shameless family-promotion. In addition to being a fellow historian (BA, Russian History), my future sister-in-law, Lily, is becoming a professional quilter. In September 2007 she followed her creative intuition and returned to her childhood home of Big Timber, MT to take over the local quilt store, Little Timber Quilts. Lily an incredibly talented quilter with a keen eye for color (did I mention she's also a painter?). For the crafty type readers of this blog, Little Timber Quilts and Candy has just established itself on the web and includes a new online fabric store. Lily is also keeping a bi-weekly blog with project and personal updates. Even for the non-crafty types I highly recommend checking out her recent posts, and in particular her introduction to her fuzzy family members.

So Much New

I like change. Or, at least, reorganization. I've updated the color scheme of this blog, we'll see how I like it. I'm not crazy about it yet so we'll see if it sticks. I have also made considerable progress on Rogue and figured that my "On the Needles" section needed to be refreshed. My progress is in large part due to some wonderful Wednesday night crafting evenings with Beetlegirl while the boys (and a girl) get their D&D on. I've also been working on an irish Hiking Scarf to match my new ski jacket. Obviously, it'll be for next season. I've made some good progress, although it's been a bit stalled by my work on Rogue and a gift I'm also knitting (another Irish Hiking Scarf) as the case may be.

I can't seem to be able to add a second small picture pagelet to blogger, so I'll have to post my other WIPs here:



This is the jacket I'm trying to match:


My current scarf is more than a little long and tends to make me look pregnant:


And come on, when you can make padded ski overalls look this good, you have to be rocking a slim and streamlined scarf.

Holy Crap, I'm Back

I turned in my QE dossier last Friday, did conference organization duties on Sunday, and am not catching up on all the Russian history I've missed while doing the previously mentioned tasks. The advantage is that I can sum up Russian History in a few words. It sucked, all the time, just about everywhere. Yeah, there are a few more details, and maybe the soldiers progressed from rags tied to their feet to old leather tied to their feet, but we're talking about pretty miserable conditions for a lot of people for many, many years. Fortunately, filling in the details is no biggie.

My QE is in about a week and a half and, like kungfuramone, I'm not too worried about the whole thing. The Sith Lord greeted my yesterday morning by saying, "if you're not completely worried, you're doing it wrong." I stared at him with the deer in headlight look for about 20 seconds before realizing,and then telling him, that I wasn't actually worried and I thought that meant I was doing it right. I know my shit, I'm fast on my feet, and being afraid of talking is an anathema to my very existence (even in French, and even when it comes out part spanish, part French and part German!) Hell, Sith has asked me "can I talk now?" (more than once in fact, sigh).

I actually see this as an opportunity to meet with four people I respect and talk about my and my work. It's every actor's dream: I'm the center of attention with my own private audience. Hell, I'd sing a solo if I could. What it comes down to is:
1) I know my material
2) I know the weakness of my material/arguments and am prepared to address them, maybe even upfront them and try to throw everyone off :)
3) I love to talk
4) I get to make even more cookies for my committee
and, most importantly,
5) I'm not going to fail. and If I've really been deluding myself into thinking I can actually do this historian thing and they revel to me that I'm dead wrong, that's ok. I take my MA, I go teach high school. I go back to Cornerstone and get my old (well-paid, well-benefited) job back. I teach kindergarten and fingerpaint the rest of my life away.

My point is, this is not a test of whether or not I can hack it. I know I can. So at that point I feel comfortable deciding to sit back, relax, and look forward to the fireworks.