Balance Is Important

Bad: I still have more schoolwork than I know what to do with. I'm starting to think that I'm never going to stop reading. A few weeks from now, I'll show up in the Stanford Daily, in an article about how I was tragically crushed to death under a giant pile of modernist novels.

Bad: I set off the smoke alarm in our apartment again. Yes, I know. And of course the one in my bedroom never goes off, it's always the one in Apartment Roomie's bedroom, so I have to break into her room and feel like a creeper to shut it off.

Bad: I am terrible at my job. I hate the beginning of the term when we only call non-donors. I suck at non-donors, I have always sucked at non-donors, I presumably will continue to suck at non-donors until the end of time. And I'm worried TempBoss won't switch me off because I don't have the stats and he doesn't know OldBoss had me calling different people last year (which I was doing a lot better on). Augh, I wish I didn't need money so badly.

Good: My poetry professor cancelled lecture tomorrow. I'm enjoying that class more than I expected (it helps that I really like Prof Greene), but having that time off means I can come home for lunch instead of packing my bento, and it means I don't have to carry my Big Heavy Poetry Anthology along with my Big Heavy Non-Fiction Anthology. And I'll have time tomorrow afternoon to do my listening assignment, so I can go to bed early(er).

Good: One of the guys I went to China with got in touch with me today. Just to say hi, see how things are going with me. It was really good to hear from him, and hear how he's doing - I probably got along better with him than anyone else in our group until the very end when I started hanging out with E and M, since he's a super sweet guy and we're both into anime. It's made me all nostalgic for Qingdao though.

Good: I may have a roommate for Yaoi-Con! I'm still holding my breath a bit, but we've been sending emails back and forth, and I think this might work out okay. If it does, it's a big relief, especially for my bank account.

Thank God It's Thursday

Hey, I keep meaning to mention this and then totally forgetting, but I have a new blog: strangerfiction! This is the one I had to create for my Creative Non-Fiction class, so I'll be using it for all my writing exercises and essays. I don't expect most of the off-the-cuff stuff to be any good, but feel free to check it out.

As part of my not-a-diet, I've been trying to eat more veggies in general, and more vegetarian meals in particular. I still love meat (oh bacon, what would I ever do without you?), but a little variety is nice too. The results have been...mixed, but leaning toward the positive. I'm still trying to find more recipes for tofu that give me both the flavor and the texture I want from it. Today was an experiment: I crumbled up some tofu I had left from earlier in the week, added some grated carrot and shredded cabbage along with a tablespoon each of soy sauce and vinegar, a teaspoon of sesame oil, and some chili paste, and then stir-fried the whole mess until it was well-browned. It turned out not quite like I was expecting, but really good all the same, and a nice protein addition to the salad I was eating. Yay for successful kitchen witchery!

This week I discovered that I love hard-boiled detective novels. Like, really a lot. Philip Marlowe is apparently my happy place. It's, I don't know, some combination of the rain on the LA streets at night and the gangsters and racketeers and jazz club toughs and the buzzing neon lights and the cigarette smoke and the whiskey and the trench coats makes me come over all faint and infatuated. I guess I'm going to have to move that genderqueer noir novel I want to write closer to the top of the list.