August 2011 Archives

First day of classes today. I've got my favorite schedule back this semester (and I think I may have talked my way into it for next semester too... seems once the chair has you set in a schedule it can be hard to modify it, but fingers crossed). I'm don't teach on Mondays, which I've found is a million times better than having Friday off. With Mondays off, I actually get a lot of work done. When I've had Fridays off, I get nothing done because... it's Friday! I also have 2 classes back to back with an hour break before the third, and I don't start teaching until after 12:30. I like having the mornings free from teaching because like Mondays, I'm more apt to get work done in the morning than the afternoon.

I've actually been doing a lot of knitting the past couple of days, and yet have taken no pictures. I promise I'll get some soon!

I don't mean this to send like an advertisement, but it probably will. Funny, they probably don't need real advertising because everything I've heard has been word of mouth and has been glowing.

"Have you tried Dropbox?" "Dropbox is so awesome!" "You really need to get Dropbox!"

What's Dropbox? Go on over to the site and watch the video.

A colleague sent me an invite to Dropbox because one of the main ways that you get more free space is to have people accept your invites. And so I signed up to be collegial, but I didn't do anything with it or pay much attention to it for a few months. Mainly, I didn't want to be like my colleague and ask everyone I know to accept my invites so that I could have tons of free space.

Fortunately I didn't have any computer malfunction scares, but hearing from a couple of people who lost everything suddenly made me nervous. We have an external hard drive that's big and holds a lot of stuff, but I never remember to sync up to it. I have to get it out, plug it in, and let the sync run. I know, not that hard for piece of mind... but the piece of mind only goes back to the last sync and when you only sync every few (or six) months... not very helpful.

So I looked back at this Dropbox thing. I decided, what the hell, let's pay for the monthly upgrade. $120 a year seems like a reasonable price to be assured that all of my documents, videos, and pictures won't be destroyed should be laptop combust. As the laptop is now 4 years old, and likelihood of getting a new one from the school is uncertain, I really wanted that piece of mind. Besides, if everything is stored on the cloud, when I do eventually get a new computer, bringing over all of my important files will be no problem.

My files are still stored locally on my laptop (whose hard drive is nearly full... eek!). I don't have to have an internet connection to get my files on my laptop. But what I love about Dropbox, so that Dropbox is now my "My Documents" folder. All of my work, documents, files, video clips, music, pictures, etc are saved to my Dropbox folder and are automatically synced and sent to be backed up in the cloud. If I change and resave a document, it is updated and synced automatically so long as I have an internet connection. What's even awesomer... is that I can go on any computer (or internet capable device... I have an app on my phone) and go to Dropbox.com and login and get to all of my files. If I'm at my parent's house and want to show them pictures I saved on my laptop, but my laptop is at my apartment, I can log on to Dropbox on their computer, access my pictures, and show them. In our new home office, I've been spending more time working on the desktop computer. I downloaded from Dropbox onto the desktop my old syllabi from last semester, made the changes I needed, and then uploaded them back into Dropbox. On my laptop (after a quick automatic sync), the documents are now in my Dropbox folder on my harddrive on my laptop.

So if you are like me and get nervous about the possibility of all your hard work, pictures, and other files vanishing (all of those knitting patterns you've downloaded, maybe??)... I can't recommend Dropbox enough. And hey... let me know if you want an invite.... ;)

For as much as it has been a lazy summer, I have spent a lot of my time reading. I really need to try harder to keep fun reading in the mix during the semesters, but I often am so burned out on reading required materials (ha! materials that I require) that I'm often not up for fun reading.

What have I read this summer...

1. Mockingjay - This is the third book in the Hunger Games trilogy. I read the first two books over Spring Break and didn't have time to read the third. I forced myself to wait and read it after the semester ended. As soon as I graded my last final, I tore through this book in about 2 days. The trilogy is intended for young adults, but the story is interesting and compelling. After lots of heavy academic reading, quick, easy reads are a treat!
2. Motley Crue: The Dirt - I read this on the recommendation of my mom's cousin who is a big metal fan. The book was really interesting and shocking. It is hard to believe all four members of the band are still alive after reading what things they did.
3. The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star I followed The Dirt with Nikki Six's book. Wow! Again, I can't believe that he is still alive. The book is a series of diary entries with commentary so it is interesting and different reading. Having no personal experience with fame and heroin, the book almost becomes fictional as it is unbelievable that someone would be so stupid and out of control. But then you remember that this was all real and it makes you stop reading for a while to process it all. Apparently Tommy Lee and Vince Neil also have autobiographies, but goodness, I can't have it be an all Motley Crue summer.
4. The First Three Sookie Stackhouse Novels - After chatting with my mom about books and True Blood, she mentioned that she had purchased from Amazon the first three Sookie Stackhouse novels in a special set when it was half priced. She hadn't read them yet, but was willing to let me borrow them. So I did, and read all three books in about a week. I've heard and read mixed reviews of the books from people who are fans and aren't fans of True Blood, vampires, etc. These books, like the Hunger Games, weren't difficult reading, weren't high literature, but they were engaging and enjoyable. I think what I enjoyed the most was that the books are not the same as the TV show. You can certainly see where the TV show gets its inspiration, but the books are written entirely from Sookie's first person point of view, so anything that happens with any other character in the show when they are apart from Sookie isn't in the books. The books focus more an Sookie so you get more of her story and what's happening with her than you do on the show. I'll probably pick up the next couple of books in the series. Reviews suggest the 4th one is the best, but that they start to go downhill from there. These might be good light books for during the semester.
5. House of Holes: A Book of Raunch - After reading a profile on Nicholson Baker in the NY Times magazine, and a follow up piece on Slate, I was really curious to read this book. It was fast, fun, and lived up to its title and then some.
6. A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1) - And if I'm reading one set of books that inspired a favorite HBO series, why not read another. I am about 1/4 of the way through Game of Thrones (it's 600 pages!!). In this case, the TV show is quite faithful to the book. It is nice to be reliving this world and picking up on things that missed in the show. In some ways, I think reading the book after the show is helpful because I have some idea of who the characters are and how they are related (there are soooooo many). Most importantly, after watching the show, I know how to pronounce all the crazy names in my head as I read them instead of making up my own versions.
7. The Man Who Shocked The World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram - I'm over half way through this book. I started it at the beginning of summer and have been coming back to it off and on. It is fascinating to get a deeper view of the life of Milgram. I always teach about Milgram and know his studies very well, but this book adds a lot of depth, which I'll likely bring some of to my teaching.

Do you ever get it into your head that you are really craving two foods and wonder if they can be magically brought together? Of course, the answer is yes because apparently many other people had already thought of and developed recipes for bringing the spicy, yumminess of buffalo chicken and the cheesy, gooeyness of mac and cheese together. I knew that Kevin would be on board for trying this, so I went with the recipe posted at the Food Network. I read through the modifications, complaints, and praises. I decided to give it a go as written, no modifications (ok, I left out the blue cheese because neither of us likes blue cheese, but it was part of the topping, and not integral). We've now eaten this buffalo chicken mac and cheese three nights in a row. I prepared it (all by myself!!) Sunday afternoon, and we ate it Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. The recipe makes A LOT of mac and cheese. It would be great for a party and is soooooooo delicious everyone will probably ask you to bring it to all pot lucks forever and ever (which is cool to have a signature dish, but this is a bit time consuming to make... but don't let that dissuade you from trying it).

Buffalo-Chicken Macaroni and Cheese

I cooked it in the dutch oven because we didn't have casserole dish large enough, and I was worried that even the two that we have wouldn't be enough space.

All gooey and spicy and yummy!!

You can see all the melty, cheesy goodness and the nice orange tint of lots of Frank's hot sauce.

The first day, fresh from the oven is always the gooiest, yummiest day. But this held up well on the second and third day. Both times it was reheated in the oven. The macaroni had soaked up some of the excess liquid, so it was less runny, but still delicious. Probably could have been reheated in the microwave, but we prefer the oven.

Tonight's dinner is pasta using tomato sauce that Kevin made on Saturday/Sunday with tomatoes from our garden!

I've always wanted to try making my own bagels at home. From reading recipes, they didn't seem too much more difficult than making bread, and surprisingly similar to make homemade pretzels. What was stopping me was missing some of the key ingredients like nondiastatic malt powder, which I happened to find on a random shopping trip to a kitchen store.

I used a King Arthur recipe that included using an overnight starter, which I subbed my regular live-in the fridge starter for, so the bagels would have a more assertive tangy flavor.

The dough was easy to bring together, let rise, and divide. My experience from that doughnut class a couple of years ago was handy for making the dough balls into shapes with central holes.

The bagels started to get a bit lumpy, bumpy as they went through the bath stage.

And after they finished baking, there was still a bit of unevenness to the outside look and texture.

But boy, they were mighty tasty!! The real problem was that I made 12 bagels and with just the two of us eating them, they went stale pretty quick. Toasting salvaged some of them, but regretfully some had to go to the birds and squirrels.

After reading tips online, I think next time I might bake half the dough and leave the rest in the fridge for a few days. I also read that more practice with technique can help to perfect the appearance of the finished product. So look for some more bagel making soon!

Whoa, what happened there? Two good weeks of posting in July and then wham! I go missing again. I don't even know how to explain the disappearance. It's summer so it wasn't like I got busy with work stuff. *Sigh* And now there is only 1 week left until school starts back up.

So let's see what has happened that's interesting...

My mom came up to visit and we went to see Hair on Broadway. That was really fun. Before the show, we just had to eat lunch at the famous Sardis.

The food was unbelievably good!!

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There has also been good homemade food.

I was on a bit of a muffin kick and made parsnip muffins (in pic), Trader Joe's pumpkin muffins, and zucchini bread.

Kevin and I also are trying to make our own homemade hot sauce with all the delicious hot peppers from our garden. We still in the first stage, which is to brine the peppers for a few weeks.

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In less awesome news, super insane rain storms caused us to wake up to this in our dining room:

Which now looks like this:

It's been like that for over a week now. Fun times! Roofers came out and fixed the area of the roof that seemed to be leaking, but now we have to wait for the landlord to come over and fix the hole in the ceiling. He apparently wants to wait a month for the hole to dry out! I understand concerns about mold, but a few fans blowing in the hole for a couple of days should have it dry in no time. Bah! I want my dining room (and by extension office, because that's were all the dining furniture is) back to normal!!

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Oh, and I have been knitting!! Quite productively actually. But of course, no pictures just yet. I'll post those project soon!