Weekly Post of Week!

[rax]

• So I didn't take notes on it online, and only took sort of sporadic notes offline, which means I will have to read it again, probably this summer, probably after I reread Fanon and Barthes and give up and dive into some Derrida. But oh my, y'all, Chela Sandoval's Methodology of the Oppressed is really all that. If you are into theory, and would like to see someone deftly tie together a variety of other theorists into a toolkit that can be used to decolonize the imagination, you need to read this book, like, stat. I don't understand it well enough yet to say too much more than that, frankly, although Rik can tell you that I can gush about how awesome it is for like hours. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK
• So plan: Be a week ahead on homework by Friday was successful. It looks like plan: Be two weeks ahead on homework by the end of today will not be successful, but I am already done with 2/4 classes and am hoping to hit 2.5 today and 3 tomorrow. That's still pretty good, right? I mean I can definitely avoid being doing stuff at the last minute and hopefully get working on some of the stuff due after spring break so I am not spending the whole thing doing homework. One of the readings I need isn't posted but I think I probably have it in book form and if not maybe I can find it at the library.
• Leo now solidly spends time in the kitchen and dining room when we are all up here. Selene is not thrilled with this but on a few occasions they have both been in the dining room without hissing at each other or anything, and I'm hopeful that in a couple of months they might actually be coexisting comfortably. *fingers crossed* I feel bad for Selene that I am going away for a week soon but oh my god I need to get out of here for a while.
• I spent a ton of time yesterday cleaning and organizing and hanging up art. I think I hung up like thirty pieces of art, and I still have a (much smaller) pile of things to find places for. ...when I'm old I am going to have art, like, all over the walls in crazy patterns that make people think I am losing it. And like twelve cats. And foxes. And it will be awesome. Assuming we don't have some sort of nigh-apocalyptic crash that renders us all subsistence farmers, in which case I will still have a bunch of art but it will be stacked in piles in the hovel outside my strip of farmland and my foxes will guard it fiercely while I pet them and tell them stories about how there used to be this thing called an "Internet." ("It was pretty cool! You would have liked it if you had had thumbs and language skills.")
• Is it weird that I'm really excited about quals? They sound fun! You get to read like 300 books and take notes on them and then have two weeks to write four essays and then you have to defend those essays for like three hours! I like talking! I like writing! I like books! Why are these supposedly so intimidating? Should I be bookmarking this post to laugh at myself later when I am freaking out and being like "oh god quals are the worst thing ever why am I even alive?" I don't know! I mean, while I like my classes, I'm not so much here because I want to take classes as here because I want to read three hundred books and talk a lot and write a book-length treatise on something. Which I guess is why I went to graduate school, because that's basically what you do? Other than grading student papers, of course. Alllllllllll the tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime.
• Also I am super excited because I get to make pizza for all of the incoming graduate students and whoever shows up to the party for them. I am going to make, like, eight or ten pizzas next weekend. I am sooooooooo thrilllllllled about this. I don't even know why. I am just like.... YES. PIZZAS. I need to start making dough on Wednesday and keep running the bread machine all day! And oh, the capers I will use. And delicious vegetables! And TVP! I am looking forward to saying "Would anyone like pizza? Because I have ALL OF IT." Myahahahahaha.
• Oh, since I tend to tell the interesting stories about my cat hat here, the other day I wore it to the grocery store and two people started petting me on the head without permission! Look people, even if you think I'm a [molar] cat, you're supposed to let me sniff your hand first. Hiss.
• ...OK time to go grade more exams.

Comments

[rainfae.livejournal.com]

Mmm capers. If I ever find I don't have enough time to read through my entire friends list, I'm going to search for the word 'capers' just to make sure I catch all of the good food posts. Because all good food posts must contain capers.

Tell me about these pizzas....

[oceanstater.livejournal.com]

As someone who is also unable to eat tomatoes (although I can eat other nightshades), I'm curious how you do it! I've had the occasional "white pizza" before, but it's inevitably very greasy and extremely non-vegan. Do you make a faux-tomato sauce with other vegetables? I've tried that too, but it never works out.

Re: Tell me about these pizzas....

[rax.livejournal.com]

I have never made a faux-tomato sauce that I liked! I do one of two things (or sometimes both):

• I use a brushing of olive oil with garlic, rosemary, basil, and oregano in place of sauce, and let the pizza dough get a little crispier than it might otherwise.


• I use vegan cheese (generally Daiya, although if I am feeling enterprising I will make the cashew ricotta from the Veganomicon) and just call it a white pizza.

I find that you can get the sweetness of tomato from thin pieces of sweet potato that are cooked enough to be mushy; you don't get the tang, but if you aren't trying to replicate tomato and are just trying to make something that tastes good, it can work well. (I was actually just talking with my mother about using sweet potato in lasagna while you made this comment!)

I didn't know or had forgotten that you were also a no-tomato person! That's cool, I mean, not cool that you can't eat tomatoes, but cool that, I dunno, solidarity or something. :)

Re: Tell me about these pizzas....

[oceanstater.livejournal.com]

That's cool, I mean, not cool that you can't eat tomatoes, but cool that, I dunno, solidarity or something. :)

No, I felt the same way when I learned that you couldn't eat tomatoes, although I don't have to avoid all nightshades (which must be very hard, when avoiding tomatoes is hard enough.) I once loved tomatoes, but now that I have GERD they're total death for me, worse than coffee or alcohol or anything else. OK, not actual death, and I shouldn't joke around when food allergies of that severity exist, but it's a painful and severe reaction.

I love sweet potatoes, and I was unaware that they could play a tomato-like role in cuisine. (I have experimented with soft cooked carrots with so-so results.) Now I'd like to try to make a lasagna with sweet potatoes!

Re: Tell me about these pizzas....

[rax.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, I don't drink coffee or alcohol either, though for different reasons! Go team dietary restrictions? Avoiding all nightshades is pretty easy in the home but is very hard at restaurants.

I hesitate to call sweet potatoes alllll that tomato-like, but I used to like sweet potato on pizza and in lasagna even before I stopped eating most things that most people think of as food, and so it was natural to try it again, and I do still like it. If you don't go into it wishing it were tomato, you'll hopefully like it too!

Re: Tell me about these pizzas....

[sprrwhwk.livejournal.com]

Drizzle with balsamic vinegar to provide tang, maybe? (My fatigued brain suggests "Or Tang(tm)!" but that just sounds eww.)

Re: Tell me about these pizzas....

[rax.livejournal.com]

Oooooh! Yes! I had even known that but then forgotten about it, thank you. :)

Re: Tell me about these pizzas....

[sprrwhwk.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! It sounds really delicious, now I really want to try it. :-)

[jessiehl.livejournal.com]

Why are these supposedly so intimidating?

I'm not even in a PhD program yet, but I fear quals, and here's why:

- High-stakes. Solving hard problems can be fun. Solving hard problems knowing that you MUST PASS TO STAY IN THE PROGRAM is unfun, at least to me.

- Time crunch. Most quals are pretty time-limited, and harsh deadlines for something with such high stakes are scary.

Also, it is possible that I like talking less than you, as I still find public speaking kind of scary (note that according to various surveys, many people are more afraid of public speaking than they are of death, which is much more scary than I find it, but which may account for some of the apprehension that you see).

My point in aiming at a PhD program is, like yours, not particularly to take classes. But it's also not to take high-stakes tests.

[lindseykuper]

I think one of the hard things about quals is agonizing about how to distill everything you know into those four essays or those three hours, and eventually coming to terms with the fact that you cannot possibly do that and instead you have to prioritize. I think I did a good job of picking my reading list for oral quals (I didn't have to write essays; I was working under a system in which one takes a couple of separate written exams), but during the three-hour oral exam itself, I did a poor job of budgeting the time to the material. We spent too much time on stuff that wasn't really my focus and not enough time on stuff that should have been. I didn't know, going in, that I had the right to impose a fair amount of structure on those three hours, and I didn't do that.