Food: more thoughts

1) I have no idea why I keep buying two eggplants when I only ever manage to eat one and I know that the texture gets all weird if I try to freeze it.

2) I can't tell the difference between maple sugar and cane sugar, so the wildly inventive decision to put maple syrup in my tea was anticlimatic.

3) Che-choui, the banana-coconut-tapioca pudding, is really not my taste. In fact it reminded me of how I thought I hated coconuts until I came to the US and discovered that I do, in fact, like fresh coconut, pina colada, and in fact coconut in baking (imagine my astonishment when I discovered coconut macaroons).

4) I still don't understand why people like tootsie rolls.

5) Don't remember if I mentioned gulab jamun yet but it's really good! It reminds me of baklava in the sense that I expect it to be too cloyingly sweet for my taste but I ended up liking it despite of the fact that it's much sweeter than stuff I usually eat. (The version I tried had rose water and I think that's the first time I've seen it in food.)

Last night I had a dream in which I was explaining my data to the PI at my desk and my lab bench spontaneously combusted. It was the sort of fire that could not be put out by water / normal extinguisher and my labmate figured out how to put it out by setting fire to the stuff that's on fire with a bunsen burner which, for some reason that only makes sense in my subconscious, ended up putting out the fire.

From this I conclude that I need to spend a weekend Not In Lab.

Also I had the recent revelation that cool is overrated. As in the popular notion of "coolness" is an unnecessary amount of work and a bit pretentious. I've decided that I'd rather be the flailing dork because frankly they seem to have a lot more fun in life and, I've realized, being unapologetically enthusiastic about something is actually kind of awesome. I'm not entirely sure what the next generation will take away from me, based on this conclusion, but I've also realized that I apparently belong to the group of people who try to teach a two year old how to say "mitochondria" so, if all else fails, I will lure the progeny to Science. [Insert mad cackling.]

That will be all.

1) The phrase "Important information inside! Open immediately." No longer has any meaning for me because they inevitably contain advertisement.

2) I forgot to water my mini-rose before I left for the conference and came back to find it dead. Graduate school has been absolutely terrible for practical horticulture.

3) While we're on the subject of food, I'll load photos of stuff I ate in New Orleans probably to Facebook. In the meantime I should mention that while here I've also tried kiwi berries (you can eat them peel and all) which are quite good and spaghetti squash, because it was on sale and the handy sticker on the thing actually includes instructions for how to cook it. I have the strangest urge to lecture it and ask it didn't it know that it's a melon and not a type of pasta and it doesn't really taste like pasta...but not quite like a melon either. It's good though.

Cathe persuaded me to try pumpkin smoothie ("It can't be scarier than Cajun food."). It's got pumpkin and soymilk in it, is sweeter than I would've liked, but is somehow not as weird as it sounds -- mostly it tastes like icy pumpkin pie filling. It does, however, makes me want to make some time to try to track down a good recipe for pumpkin bread.

Also: milk is icky, soy milk is very nice, almond milk it tolerable, but rice milk is ...kind of awful. 

Weirdest dream last week: Crime and Punishment and the Metamorphosis fusion, featuring Razumihin (is that the guy's name? Really tall guy who married the sister) being agitated and flailing around yelling at Rodya about how he's not a super-human, dammit, he's a cockroach, and Raskolnikov explaining that cockroaches are in fact superior beings and did you know they have really high tolerance for radiation? (Because my subconscious has been taken over by science, no matter what else may be going on in there at any given time). And there was someone who was either Gregor's (Gregor? The guy who turned into the bug) sister or Soniya, sobbing.

This entire dream may or may not have been inspired by the fact that I stepped on a giant cockroach in the hostel's kitchen.

My brain, guys.

Flying out to New Orleans tomorrow (one layover in Texas)! I have my trusty knapsack with my wallet and my poster tube of awesome with my poster. Everything else is pretty much secondary. That being said packing for business is definitely different than packing for pleasure: after some thought I'm not taking my sketchbook with me or my fancy camera (though I stuck my old Canon one in my suitcase because is small) but decided to include Ivy (there are keynote symposia that I will compulsively take notes at), so there will be internet access, at some point.

Labmate introduced me to goat milk candy! She brought something called "Aldama", described as "obleas con cajeta de leche" ("something milk" I told her, reading it; she laughed). It's something like caramel.

Grad school is apparently my time to be introduced to goat-based food products, what with the goat cheese in Crete and goat candy now. Neither of which are actually as weird as goats themselves. (Seriously goats are...physics defying, among other things.)

I should go hiking somewhere where I might see goats for the completion of the experience.

After some contemplation, I realized that most girl's dads probably don't sign their emails to their daughters "Regards, F." (F for Father.)

Families are Complicated.

So the weather prediction for New Orleans is going to be in the 80s.

Today: the lab microwave started random emitting sparks so we put it out of commission because no one was sure if we could heat up our gels without something exploding. Also, I learned via Tumblr that it is apparently possible to take off one's bra without removing the shirt first. When I find the time I will need to figure out how this is possible.

I was politely stalked by four different bees four separate times and my thesis adviser advised me to watch Casablanca. 

My life, guys.

(As in, the bees ignored my abandoned lunch & jacket & bag and followed me across the courtyard and to the building entrance where I closed the doors on their face while they buzzed anxiously outside and my labmates are unsympathetic and joked about pheromones.)
(I am not wearing perfume and have been avoiding food / floral scented shampoo & soaps for years now. They're not trying to sting me. They just keep trying to land on me.)
(The professor went from early endosome marker to Casablanca. I'm not quite sure how his brain works, either.)

I think our neighbor's spectrophotometer has a cricket living underneath it.
Warm autumn = crickets in doors?