salsa, gears, skylights, Marian, gym, scales, singing, couscous, and e.coli

This week, I made another batch of salsa, sans bloodshed. (See earlier post regarding previous salsa debacle.) Back at Case, when I was playing softball, a teammate and close friend Marcela went through a vegan stage. It made for interesting team trips to restaurants. I specifically remember a trip to Big Boy (or some other family restaurant) during the season where she ordered a plate of pasta with green beans and salsa and she proclaimed that it was very good. She would pile salsa on everything and we made fun of her for it. When we’d go to Mi Pueblo, she often would ask for her own bowl of salsa separate from the table’s community salsa. But I think she was onto something. Salsa is wonderful. The ingredients are so simple, but the flavors are so great. It takes time to chop all the ingredients for homemade salsa but, oh, the rewards. Sometimes, I eat my salsa straight, alone, right out of the bowl. Just like Marcela used to do.


After I repaired my cassette car adapter, it stopped working again. It would play for like 3 seconds and then the car would spit it out. I opened up the cassette and after examining the gears, thought that the gears needed to be filed down but when that didn’t work again, I did an online “how to fix” search. Some of the sites suggested that I remove three of the gears (x-ed out). This week I tried that, and now the adapter works! Why those three extra gears are in there is beyond me, but I love being s-m-r-t smart.

We’ve already established that I’m scared of thunder and the dark but I have not mentioned my deep love of the sound of rain hitting my skylight. The soft pinging is just delightful. I realize that skylights are intrinsically a pretty dumb idea (“Let’s cut a hole in the roof!” “Why?” “Because natural light is prettier than artificial light!”) but I think the skylight is my favorite thing about my condo. Sometimes on mornings during the weekends, I’ll figure out activities I can do with the sole purpose of standing under my skylight in the natural light. And I feel so pretty. While I’m doing the dishes. Or scrubbing the sink. Or cleaning the kitchen floor.

During the winter, I don’t get to see the sun much, but at work, they have these testing facilities with huge bright lights everywhere. I’ve stood under them and the heat and light feel glorious, just like real sunlight. Last year, I came in on a Sunday in December to watch while the technicians were doing my deployments and they let me hang out under the lights between deployments. I think I need to schedule more test series this winter.

I gave my talk at Marian yesterday and I think it went well. I really enjoyed talking to the girls and seeing some old faculty. There really is nothing like going back and everyone making you feel so adored. It took me a couple hours to figure out what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it, but in the end, I thought it was coherent. It was hard for me to believe that 11 years ago, I was entering high school. I just can’t believe it’s been that long. After, the girls asked me some questions about my job and about my athletic and Field Day record. It was very fun to reminisce. They even gave me an alumni sweatshirt to thank me! Yay!

Here’s the thing about going to the gym. Almost without exception, I feel better when I leave than when I walk in. (The only exception is when I have a really bad running workout and feel like I’m going to die. But even then, I am usually consoled by knowing that I will be better the next time. I went through a period in March though, where each run was worse than the one before it. After about a month of that, I gave up on running for about a month and a half!) I know there are lots of women who don’t like getting sweaty when they workout. I think sweating is the point of working out. I don’t think it really counts if I don’t sweat. And I feel best about myself after my workout when my muscles are tired, my makeup is softened, my cheeks have color, and I’m pretty confident that I just survived a self-imposed ass kicking.

I joined my gym in December of last year. It costs twenty bucks a month, it’s a half mile from my house, and the people there seemed very willing to be flexible about my membership if I wanted to take a couple months off and then come back or something. Since then, I have a little more than 10 pounds. My New Years goal was to lose a pound a week for the entire year, which would have put me at my goal weight at the end of the year. I maintained my pound per week pace through mid February, but then I kind of fell off the wagon with trips to Chihuahua and being lazy and having discouraging runs and stuff. But I think I’m ready to rededicate myself, and turn my 1 year plan into a 1.5 or 2 year plan.

I weigh myself pretty much every morning. The scale gives instant feedback. But if anyone else is like me, sometimes the number on the scale dictates how the rest of my day will go. See an expected number? The day will be fine. See a good number? I’m going to have a fantastic day. See a bad number? I remember it all day. I look forward to a time in my life where I will be able to see an expected number that is also a good number every day. Amen.

My choir director (yes, I joined Isidore’s choir last week) knows that I play the piano and she has repeatedly complimented me on my ability to sight read and learn new songs. If she knew how much training I have as a musician I think she’d change her mind and be pretty unimpressed with me. I’m trying to figure out a way to tell her (without sounding arrogant) that part of my training was sight reading and knowing what each interval sounds like and being able to quickly figure out rhythms. Church hymns aren’t nearly as tricky to figure out as Rachmaninoff. I probably won’t tell her that, but I may want to emphasize that I am already a musician, but I need her to help me figure out how to be a singer. Like, I don’t know how to breathe very well.

I put together a winning combination for lunch today. Fresh baby spinach, couscous (!), chicken, steak, tomato, onion, cucumber, with Italian dressing. Sooooo yummy. And I don’t even care if the spinach has e. coli.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,214039,00.html

More about E. coli some other time…