27 August 2007

Things I Have Learned Recently

1. I have too much stuff. Way, way too much stuff.

2. You can ship things with Amtrak. It's actually far cheaper than shipping through USPS, if you have more than 100 pounds of stuff.

3. Which I do. Times four or five, probably.

4. Seriously, I have too much crap. I threw so much away, and there's still so much more to pack.

5. It's so much easier to get things done when you're unemployed.

23 August 2007

foodies



I made salsa a few days ago.



We also made baked macaroni and cheese, with cheese sauce we froze after the first time we made baked mac and cheese. That was before Kira left, so the cheese sauce has been in the freezer for at least three months. I wouldn't recommend freezing cheese sauce, especially for three months.

22 August 2007

Things That I am Going to Make With My Food Processor

[edit: even more words about food processors here]

Natural Peanut Butter. You know how you make peanut butter? You grind up peanuts. That's it! Apparently, it takes 1-3 minutes with a food processor. And I can add honey! And make it exactly as chunky as I want!

Salsa. Oh man, so many different kinds of salsa. I made salsa two nights ago, with roasted tomatoes and onions and red pepper, and I bought more tomatoes and peppers today at Fairway, and it will be even easier to make my own salsa when I have my own food processor. I'm still working on perfecting basic salsa, but I really want to try tomatillo salsa. Also, mango and pear and possibly apple. You can add so many things to salsa!

Pasta sauce! I can make it in bulk and add garlic and basil and whatever else I want! And then I can put it in jars and save it and I'll never have to buy pre-made pasta sauce!

Chutney! Why the fuck not?!

Cream Cheese [or more likely Neufchatel cheese] Mixes - green onions, jalapeño peppers, garlic, who knows!


I am so very excited about my soon-to-be-purchased food processor. I have a Target gift card that I saved from Christmas, so I'll actually be able to buy a pretty decent one. I haven't made a final decision yet, but I might buy it online now and have it sent to my new apartment so it'll be waiting for me when I arrive. They probably have free shipping on Target.com, right? I'm also going to buy a new rice cooker; my current one isn't nice enough to warrant packing and shipping it to Milwaukee, and Kira will be able to use it.

If anyone has product recommendations for food processors or rice cookers, please please please leave a comment. They will have to stand up to heavy use, as I am going to cook all the time in an effort to save money.

Cooking everything yourself instead of buying premade things is cheaper, right? Because I'm pretty sure it will be healthier, especially for me and my weird digestive system, but I'm sort of counting on it being cheaper as well. Kira and I have been talking about this a lot, and I think if I buy produce on sale and in season, and buy everything else on sale as well, I should be okay. Also, apparently a Costco is being built near Milwaukee, so I can take advantage of my parents' membership when they visit me.

Uhh sorry, this has veered into me worrying about money and moving. I'm not that surprised, since "holy shit, I can't afford to move, what if I don't find a job right away" is one of only three or four things that I think about anymore. [Others--"I'm moving from New York City to Milwaukee? What?!" and "Maybe I should just throw away everything I own and start fresh in Milwaukee because packing sucks ass."] Still, that doesn't mean it's interesting.

21 August 2007

Books That I Bought In Buenos Aires

Inspired by Jeb

Fiction
Rayuela Julio Cortázar

Non-Fiction
El Socialismo Latinoamericano: Un Recorrido Hasta Nuestros Tiempos, ed. Claudia Korol
Nación y nacionalismo en Latinoamérica, ed. Jorge Enrique González
Neoliberalismo y sectores dominantes, eds. Eduardo M. Basualdo & Enrique Arceo
Reforma Financiera en América Latina, eds. Eugenia Correa & Alicia Girón

Pamphlets
la américa latina y los congresos del partido comunista ruso, Víctor Alba [1960s?]
los EE.UU. y América Latina, H.L. Matthews and K.H. Silvert [1963]


In case you were wondering, my Spanish skills are not nearly up to the task of reading all of these books (case in point: I'm not entirely sure of what "sectores dominantes" means--the literal translation is dominant sectors, but I think it might be more 'domestic sectors'), but hey, that'll just make things more interesting, right?

15 August 2007

todos se gustan listas

Things That I Love About Buenos Aires

1. Nonna Bianca's Super Dulce de Leche ice cream

2. Gibraltar, a super awesome pub with Staropramen. Staropramen! Czech beer in BA!

3. taking a day trip to Colonia [pictures on Flickr eventually]

4. getting home from a night out and drinking more wine and watching American movies with Spanish subtitles [oh, if only I could think of some good examples. cock=miembro? I swear I'm not watching Spanish soft-core porn, though I could as it's on channel 35 after midnight]

5. shopping. Look, I'm sorry, consumer culture in the US is terrible, but I have bought two different bags that make me so happy, so so happy.

6. Wine. Vino. Tinto o Blanco, me gusta vino.

7. I'm sorry about the shopping thing. Buenos Aires has bookstores on every corner, and I bought five books today. Five books in Spanish. Spanish. Which I... can read? Maybe? We'll see.

8. Everything.

12 August 2007

All right. Buenos Aires, so far.

[There was going to be a photo here, but it was taking far too long to load.]

I've had a lot of cafe con leche.

I've purchased two bags so far; I may buy more. I am all about consumption in Buenos Aires.

We went to the San Telmo Feria (Feria de San Pedro Telmo) which was full of tourists and jewelry and old things and generally very full. I wanted to buy an old cigarette case, but the cheapest one I could find was 450 pesos, which is something like $125. I don't need an old cigarette case that much, but maybe they'll have one at the Feria de Mataderos. I think I'll enjoy that one more; apparently it's not nearly as crowded.

What else have we done... we went to a few museums. The Palais de Glace and el Museo de Bellas Artes (I think). There were some amazing pieces by modern Argentine artists at the Art Museum, and the Palais de Glace had a really impressive photojournalism exhibit. We'll get to MALBA eventually, which is apparently the best art museum in the city. We also went to the Museo de San Telmo and tried to go to the Puppet Museum (fuck if I remember the Spanish name). We walked by the penitentiary museum and the Museo de Arte Moderno; the first one we'll see later, the second one has been inexplicably closed since at least March. We went to the Toilet Museum too, which was pretty great.

We've walked around a lot, mostly San Telmo and Palermo. Argentina empanadas and ice cream are both delicious, and I'm basically in love with dulce de leche. We're going to Uruguay tomorrow during the day (the ferry only takes an hour!) and then the Hippodrome at night. If we time everything right, we'll see the last horse race of the day.

There are other things, but they can wait I think. I swear I'll have pictures on my flickr soon (I know you're all waiting with bated breath), but the wifi in the apartment is spotty at best, and I have a lot of photos to upload. I'll get to an internet cafe by Tuesday at the latest, and maybe I'll try to upload everything later tonight when no one else is online.

11 August 2007

still alive!

Buenos Aires is aaaaaawesome.

Kira and Max's wireless is aaaawesome as somehow it automatically sends me to Argentine Google and Argentine Blogger, so el titulo as "still alive!" y voy a publicar entrada en uno minuto. Vamos al Aquabar pronto pero ya bebé una media botella de vino Malbec que cuesta 8 pesos. That's like $3! And it was amazing!

Pictures tomorrow, probably. I think we're going to the San Telmo fería and various San Telmo museums.

07 August 2007

update

So. I leave for Buenos Aires in less than 24 hours. Actually, I leave for Houston and a 6.5 hour layover in 24 hours, but after that, it's on to Argentina! I'm bringing my computer (obviously), so there's a chance I'll update from Buenos Aires (BA, as the cool kids say). If nothing else, I will be updating my Flickr on a regular basis.

My grandparents are selling their house. Jeb pretty much said everything I would've said. I'm really not okay with the whole thing, and I can't believe they'll have moved out by the time I get back to Wisconsin.

This is a little late, but I'm thankful that my friends and family weren't driving on 35W last Wednesday. I don't know what else to write that would be appropriate or fitting to this kind of tragedy. But really, how does a bridge just collapse? I still don't understand.

I sent in the last parts of my UWM application. The deadline isn't until September 1; I'm going to call and check that everything arrived when I'm back from Argentina, but I'm basically done. Three weeks before the deadline; this is a first for me. I really hope that they'll accept me; I think this program would be really perfect for me, and it would make this whole "moving to Milwaukee" thing a lot less frivolous.

I decided that I'm going to Prague in January. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to save enough money by then, and I bet my parents will help me pay for the plane ticket for my Christmas present.

I didn't pack as much as I wanted to, and I'm not going to have time to mail anything to my new apartment before I leave. Still, I got a lot done, stuff that I won't have to do when I get back. I was able to throw away a lot of old papers, and I packed up almost all of my books. They only filled three smallish boxes; I feel very inadequate.

But I did finish my UWM application, finally, so I guess that makes up for it. The past month has been fairly... tumultuous. I can't really believe I'll be in the Southern Hemisphere tomorrow. I get to go to Argentina for almost two weeks. I get to move to a brand new city that's within driving distance of home. My cousin is visiting me in New York before I move; one of my favorite people is coming to New York for a few days before taking the train back to Wisconsin with me. I'm pretty lucky.

Oh god, this is getting cheesy, time to stop.

03 August 2007

goodbye NYU

nyu bobcat

[Edited many months later: Who are all of you people that are searching for the NYU Bobcat? Do you just want to see what it looks like? Are you using this photo for something? I'm totally okay with that, though I'd prefer you told me about what you're using it for and didn't use it for anything commercial without my permission. Are you applying to NYU and looking to see what you're getting into? Tell me! Leave a comment or email me! This post is responsible for half the traffic to my site; I am so curious about why.]

This is the NYU bobcat. Ridiculous, right? Half of our sports teams (possibly the club teams?) are still the Fighting (Fightin'?) Violets, but for some reason, the other half call themselves the Bobcats (possibly the DIII teams?). According to Wikipedia, our school mascot is "Violet D. Bobcat," which sounds just about right. The best part? The school named the new mascot after the library's search engine, which is called Bobcat (for 'Bobst Catalogue'?), but sadly not "Violet D. Bobcat."

Funny, this is all coming together now. The ridiculousness, the library connection, my soon-to-be outdated use of the possessive 'our' when referring to NYU. Today is my last day of work, which is also my last day at NYU, and so far, I find it to be a little anti-climactic. I've spent five years as part of this "community," which is a loaded word at NYU for reasons too boring to expand upon, and I'm not really sure how I feel about leaving it. I'm going to miss a lot of individual parts of NYU, but on the whole, I really dislike NYU for a lot of reasons, most of which are more than tangentially related to my six-figure student loan debt. However, and beware because this is going to be a little cheesy, I've changed a lot in the past five years, almost entirely for the better (I hope). NYU is the place where I became an adult, the place where I became a person that I actually like, and the place where I met most of the important people in my life. So much as I am ambivalent towards the institution, I'm still sad to leave it.

At the same time, I can still honestly say that most NYU students are complete morons, and I'm really ready to not dodge tourists and film crews on my way to work anymore. I've spent the past five years walking around the same streets, which I've watched become increasingly generic and gentrified, and I'm ready to move on. Sometimes I feel like I haven't really graduated (surprising, right? Since I'm working at my undergraduate school, in the same job that I had for two years as a student), and I think it's time to move on and do something new.

Which doesn't change the fact that I've been sitting in Bobst for the past two hours, because the library is the only place that I'll actually physically miss. Which really shouldn't surprise you since my new life goal is to get paid to hang out in libraries. And that life goal is going to be a lot harder if I don't get into library school, so I'm going to go work on my UWM application.

01 August 2007

nostalgia

Yesterday was my going-away luncheon at work. Everyone seemed genuinely sad that I was leaving. People outside of work seem sad that I'm leaving too; this is all very strange to me. Leaving New York feels sort of like leaving SCC, leaving home, but this time I'm actually sad.

ambivalent marketing

This is from a shoe store in the financial district. I want to go back to this store next time I'm in the city; eventually the scaffolding will be gone, and I'll be able to get a clear shot.

I can't believe that a month from now, I won't live in the city anymore. To those of you who live in the city, I'm warning you now--there's a better than average chance that I'll spontaneously start crying between now and the end of the month. Try not to get freaked out.