Donate... a great gift for the new year.

Northwest Medical Teams

i'm giving up on this blog for a bit. check back in a month.

Cooking
I'm so excited for dinner tomorrow night. I'm making Mughlai Chicken, handmade Naan, rice, and whatever else comes to my mind sporatically in the next 20 hours. I'm mostly worried about the naan, since our oven is an extremely old oven and doesn't always cooperate nicely. I need the oven to be superhot to be able to make it right. Too bad I don't have a tandoor--now that would be awesome. It would also be happy to have a pizzastone or something of the sort to bake on, but I'm lacking that also.
Last night I made my second bath of ghee (clarified butter), and I'm happy to proclaim that it came out perfect this time. I'm embarassed to say that the first batch burned a bit...but in my excuse, I didn't have any directions and really didn't know how to make it at the time...I didn't know that the second it turns amber I was supposed to immediately take it away from the heat....I had thought that you left it on for 10 more minutes and it becomes clear. Much to my dismay, it burned instead. Last night, however, my ghee was whitish-yellow, and not brown! I was so proud of myself, even though ghee is so simple to make.
I think tomorrow things will go smoothly, as long as I don't kill the yeast. hehe. Wish me luck.

Each day it gets harder and harder to go to work. Work is so BORING I can barely take it. There's no thinking involved, and everything is going so s l o w l y that it's painful. Seriously. I would rather be working at McDonalds. And that's not even a joke.
I've been sleeping in until the last possible second I can, then I lay in bed for about half an hour, and it's only until my dad actually gets up and gets in the shower that I know that we really have to go. But in the past week I've drug out the morning so much that I've been arriving at work at 9:45 or 10:00. And then everything goes ok until about 11:30, which at that time I start going crazy. By 2:30 I'm barely hanging on and it's hard to see the light of day...it's hard to even THINK about working another hour. Luckily the past two days my dad has come to my rescue and he's picked me up at 4:30 (working a grand total of 6 hours, and most of those aren't at my peak productivity because I hate it so much) and we've gone to Costco, or wherever. Anywhere is better than work.
I would quit, but I really think that would be rude. Because this is a grant project I'm working on and I promised to work until the end. Or at least, I would need a good reason to quit. Like being hired at another (much more wonderful) job. I'm in this viscious cycle right now. I hate work so much that I have to work short hours to be able to stand it, but at the same time, I need to be working longer hours in order to actually get this project over and done with faster. My goal is to finish on January 7th, the day before I head to Maui, but we'll see. Cross your fingers for me.
I am usually such a hard worker. Always putting in 100%, going over and above what I have to do, and being superly efficient about everything. But with this project, I think it's one of the only projects to which I know I can do better, but I can't, and I'm almost to the point where I'm beginning not to care. It will get done, I'm doing a good job, just not as well as I could be if I was in a different environment. I feel like it's not even my fault. Things could be better, but they aren't, and I have no say in anything.

I'm sick of being consumeristic...but it's a hard habit to break. I see so many things that I want, and can easily afford, but absolutely don't need.

The best purchase of the day for me was soft sheepskin boots. I'm wearing them right now and they're soo cozy. Fur inside and soft tanned light-brown leather outside, so soft that I can't help petting my own feet. Only $19.99 too! (the benefits of wearing kids sizes).

There's something so depressing and sad about watching a succession of aerial photos (96-04) showing rich agricultural farmland turn into poured asphalt streets and a gigantic new subdivision in NW Portland. It hurts. Not that development is bad, but poor land-use planning is. We need to built "up", not "out" (less sprawl). Which is part of the reason why the Portland metropolitan area has a Urban Growth Boundary (UGB). It just seems like we could do better.
Paul sent me an article from the New Yorker which I really wish I could find a link to right now, or at least remember the title. It was about how living in New York City, because of the high density and low use of cars/high walking rate, is one of the most environmental places in the US.

This is genius! Using a cell phone, math, physics and modern technology to win £1.3m from a casino, legally. (link via Jabin, who is now in Portland). :o)

missing. hating. blessings. confusion.
maui it is. and job-search never ending. time sucked away. not even hanging clothes up or cooking. to-do list frozen and unchecked from JUNE. rewriting it over and over. making and breaking goals, it's all i never used to do.

Searching for flights/lodging in Hawaii (preferably Kauai) Jan 8-15. No luck yet for a good deal. Anyone have any hints?

While as of yet I am still not a complete NPR snob, I have to admit that I am heading in that direction. Working 8 hours a day on the computer in an office, the computer has become my best friend, and online radio has kept me entertained throughout my many repititious Alt-X-S and right-clicks of the day. In particular, Seattle's KEXP, and NPR's This American Life from Chicago take up most of the hours of my workday. I've become so obsessed with listening to every back episode This American Life that for the past three weeks this has taken priority over listening to the actual news, so much so, that today I suddenly remembered that NPR actually has other decent shows that deserve my attention, such as Morning Edition and All Songs Considered, which used to be my focus in past months.

Additionally, last night I started reading I Thought My Father Was God and Other Tales from NPR's National Story Project, which is a combination of stories sent in bylisteners for NPR's Weekend All Things Considered. Any story could be sent in, the only catch was that it had to be true and it had to be short. The end result is a collection of 15 dozen random stories which are a great read.

I'm still book-hungry. I've been reading a lot, although not as much as I would like to.