Wrong

Today I came across, for the first time, in an e-mail from the University president about our fairly dire funding situation, a word that made my skin crawl: planful. As in,

While it is clear that we will need to reduce the size of our workforce over the next two years, it is our goal to limit layoffs by continuing to take advantage of attrition, by reexamining the ways we work and being planful about filling vacant positions, by exploring other options including voluntary reduced-time appointments, and by improving service and efficiency.

Ewwwww.

Other things I am over:

• Winter (snow this morning)
• Staring at my computer, unable to write
• Finally writing something, only to end up
  
• Workshopping said paper and being told that I need to do a lot of
• Revising it before
• Giving a Dry Run presentation on it tomorrow

I'm also over grading essay exams, and submitting fellowship and grant proposals--but at least temporarily, I'm actually done with those! Woo! More time for "revising," which at the moment means staring at my computer and procrastiblogging. Sigh.

Colors

Blue (today, for the first time since last Sunday):
Green (bell pepper, one week ago):
Chartreuse (pears, one week ago):
Fuchsia, blue violet, pink, ivory (yes, I am ridiculously spoiled...):

Things That Are Awesome V

Things That Are Awesome (Spring Edition):

• Warm weather! Monday it was 67° and I ran in shorts. It was especially awesome because it was a full 70 degrees warmer than it had been the previous Wednesday (on which I refused to bike to school, because subzero biking is one thing in January or February, and another thing altogether in March).
• Warm weather biking. It is so much easier to bike when you're not fighting snow, ice, a bitter wind, and/or your appendages freezing off. In the past week I've been early to two events because I had underestimated how long it would take me to bike there. It just feels so easy.
  
• New earrings. Does anybody recognize these? I'm just curious. Although they're huge, they're so light and delicate that I can hardly feel them.
  
• Spring break. I only have to be on campus for class one day a week, so having the week off school wasn't a huge change (though the break in University e-mails and related random events was awfully nice). The best part has been socializing with people from the department: two happy hours, one Soup Night, and a brunch, so far. One of the happy hours was even outside! Having a spring break that actually feels like spring rules.
• Being spoiled. Because I was so stressed about the applications, papers, and grading I have to get done, David surprised me by booking and treating me to an aromatherapy massage at this fabulous converted mansion in my neighborhood. It was 90 minutes of wonderful, and left me feeling amazing. Oh, and as if that weren't enough, just after I got back home, UPS delivered this from him, which made me laugh out loud (note the card):

Yep. So far, spring has me feeling so good that I kind of don't even care about the mice anymore ('caught the third one a couple days ago). Even billing my landlord seems like too much trouble, when the sun is shining (and your comments to that post were awesome, by the way!). Life is good.

Dear Landlord,

Hi! How are you? Personally, I'm a little peeved. First, because it's the middle of March and I'm completely over these subzero temps (though they are predicting 50s by Monday, which is a huge relief). Second, because the mice are back.

Yesterday, I noticed a sudden preponderance of their... evidence... under my sink, and so carefully cleaned and disinfected everything. Yesterday evening, I heard rustling, and so sneaked up to my sink, opened the cupboard door--and saw the mouse in the corner. Startled, I flung the door closed--and then, examining the afterimage seared onto my brain, realized to my horror that there had been another mouse, in the trashcan, its furry silhouette visible against the white of the liner.

I did what I usually do in these circumstances (you will recall, dear Landlord, a long and unfortunate history with these things) and went next door. M had both mousetraps and sympathy, which I accepted gratefully.

I baited and positioned the traps, and as of last night hadn't caught anything. This morning, however, the check revealed both traps full. I had things to do (as one does), so I put off the unpleasant task of emptying them.

However, when I reached the point in my fellowship application writing that disposing of mouse corpses seemed preferable to staring at my laptop screen any longer, I put on my boots, steeled my nerves, and opened the cupboard door again--only to be greeted by a tiny mouseling, perched on the edge of the trashcan. My shout of shock and outrage either didn't faze him at all or stunned him into immobility; he just pointed his oversized ears at me and stared, miniature nose twitching. I cursed the fact that I had ever read The Tale of Despereaux, and that now I was even considering this small pest an "orphan" (at my hands, nonetheless!).

To make a long story shorter, after more silent standing-off and indecision over what to do, the mouseling climbed off the trashcan and disappeared into the black hole that connects all four units. I disposed of the occupied traps (jaw clenched and barely fending off the full-body shudders--you'll recall, dear Landlord, that I am a sensitive, conscientious, quasi-vegan, pacifist), again cleaned and disinfected the area, washed my hands several times, and am now writing you.

Because I've reached a solution. I'm putting a bounty on these mice.

I've decided that $50 per head is reasonable. If I were a slovenly person--storing bags of grain in the house, say, as the hippie downstairs neighbors did, and not noticing that the mice were feeding from them while breeding a colony that would only move north to my kitchen upon the crazy hippies' departure--or were otherwise welcoming vermin to share my space, this might be considered excessive. However, dear Landlord, I am not, and I am tired of dealing with this uncompensated.

If you had called an exterminator at any point during the past three years; if you had been more conscientious about the upkeep of this building (which I understand is old--and which I love for its antiquity--but the ceiling of which, to cite a single example, is about to cave in next door); or if I were feeling generally more charitable, I'd continue letting this go, as I have in the past.

As it is, I won't bill you for the--oh, 20?--mice I've already dealt with (at the price of a callus on my soul). But I will be taking $100 off my rent for next month (provided, that is, that I don't have to produce and dispose of any more corpses, although we already know at least one mouse remains). I will continue to keep my kitchen clean, disinfected, and as unattractive to mice as possible.

If you would hire an actual professional to come assess and remedy the situation, you might be able to make things better for all of us. As it is, I'm guessing that you won't, and would prefer to pay me (especially if I don't file a written complaint with the city, to which lengths a neighbor was recently driven). It's not pleasant for either of us, but as long as I'm doing someone else's job (at the expense of my own--remember that fellowship application?), I might as well receive some compensation.

Thanks, dear Landlord, and stay warm!
CëRïSë

Dr. Horrible

I realize I'm behind the times on this one, but Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is completely awesome. My only disappointment (and I'll admit it's fairly major) is that it's only 43 minutes long. I was hoping that Hulu's label of "Season 1, Episode 1" meant that there was more to come. Such is not the case, however, which is too bad, because it's brilliant.

I had heard about Dr. Horrible on NPR, but hadn't seen it until I noticed it on Hulu today. You can watch it there or at the Dr. Horrible website. Just pretend it's a short movie in three parts, rather than an on-going series (as I wish it were).

"I have a PhD in horribleness!"

Mail!

It's been like Christmas around the 'Kitchen lately! Yesterday, my Christmas present from Ellen arrived. The packaging was beautiful, of course:

And what was inside was even better:

That's right, it's a scrolling LED sign with a pin on the back! She said she was hoping it would arrive in time for my Milwaukee conference, but I reminded her that it might be even more appropriate for my Pop Culture conference next month. I'd show it to you with something actually on the screen, but the batteries appear to be dead and I'm having trouble getting the back off to replace them.

Then today UPS delivered the brand new U2 album, which a little bird (David) had sent because they're my favorite band of all time. Awwww:

And finally, just when you'd think it couldn't get any better, the US mail delivered a huge fuchsia bubble mailer from Teri, containing this awesome T-shirt from their favorite gelateria in San Francisco:

Vuoi means "do you want to"; guess what cucchiaio means!

Finally, lest you think I'm the luckiest girl in the world, here is a picture of my bruised left hip, courtesy of my most recent biking misadventure:

The quarter was Ellen's idea, to demonstrate scale. So I'm clearly not quite the luckiest--but definitely feel very loved.

Taters*

Oh, Internets. What can make my beloved black beans and rice with avocados, cilantro, and olives even better? A side dish of homemade sweet potato fries with spicy chipotle aioli, that's what.

There's a small local chain of grills in town that serves amazing sweet potato fries with what they call their chipotle pesto aioli. I had some last night with friends after we watched Revolutionary Road (the former, at least, were awesome; the latter was fairly pretty but rather disappointing), and today still wanted more. So, I made some!

For the fries, I peeled two large sweet potatoes, hacked them into sticks, and tossed them with a drizzle of olive oil and a good shake of kosher salt. Then I put them on a nonstick-sprayed pan and baked them at 425 for 40 minutes or so (and 450 for the last 10 or 15 minutes), flipping them over every 15-20 minutes.

For the aioli, I minced garlic and then mashed it into a paste with kosher salt. I threw in a small handful of cilantro, chopped, and mashed that in, too, before adding mayo and a few drops of "very hot" chipotle sauce. I would have added the juice of the lime I bought, but forgot. In the future, I think I'd also make my own mayo from olive oil and an egg; my Smart Balance mayo seemed too sweet. Still, it was remarkably close, I thought, to Longfellow's (and left me with the same dragon breath).

Mmmmm. Cheap, colorful, and a complete protein (the rice and beans, that is). I think I could eat this all the time.

*I like dem French fried potaters.

Smelly

So I'm pretty sure whomever was stocking cosmetics at the K-Mart was wearing a perfume that my grandma used to wear--White Diamonds, maybe? The fragrance followed me throughout the store and back home; closer sniffing reveals that it's all over my lipstick tube, and now all over my hands.

It's not a bad smell, but I only want scents lingering on my person that I have deliberately applied, and preferably not ones that keep evoking memories of the 1980s. Actually, I think this one might be doing double-duty: remember those Designer Imposter fragrances in the 90s?* It's possible I, or someone near me, had a synthetic version of this scent as well.

I need to go wash my hands again.

*Blogger thinks that "imposter" is misspelled; apparently "impostor" is more common, although Merriam Webster admits the former as a variant of the latter. Isn't that crazy?

Overwriting

Today a friend and I went to Maria's Cafe for brunch, where I had a delicious chocolate chip/strawberry pancake and too much coffee. The waiter, who had said, when I initially ordered two pancakes, "You know they're as big as the plate, right?" also pointed out, when he delivered the one I did order, that it had originally had a smiley face, and showed me where the chocolatey eyes had been.

Maria's is on Franklin just a block or so up from where I wiped out on Friday. The roads are thankfully much clearer, and I got there and back without incident. My left hip has developed quite an impressive lump, and is currently mottled shades of blue and purple, but what's even weirder is that my left shoulder--the back of my deltoid, I think--has knotted all up; I seem to have pulled something as I went down. Still: I've had an amazing winter biking run, all told, and intend to continue, albeit with renewed caution.

I hadn't been down Franklin in a couple of days, and to Maria's for a couple of years. But the inimitable Miss Mandy has got me thinking about the idea of overwriting old/unpleasant/outdated memories, and I think the idea has promise.

And here are a few pictures from the weekend (alas, none of my pancake)--black beans and rice, sun on snow, and window ice: