the hypothetical wren

I don’t read a lot of political blogs, for various reasons. I’d rather read about what people are eating and listening to and the details of everyday life than politics, and a lot of the political blogs seem to repeat each other. I depend on my friends who read political blogs to give me a good summary of them, instead. However, I do like Colorado Luis a lot. His main topic is the politics of my home state, although he does write a lot about culture, the environment and, also, beer (beer and politics are not unrelated topics, though: witness this year’s Senate race, and the whole mayor of Denver thing). His take on state politics tends to match mine, and, for someone who is from the Denver area, he writes cogently and sympathetically about the point of view of people from rural and western Colorado. He’s also pretty funny — a bonus.

Tonight was Ethnic Convenience Food night here at the apartment. I went grocery shopping in lieu of working this afternoon (I did read an entire book today, so I figured that that was enough for today), and picked up some new things I wanted to try.

My usual grocery runs involve stops at least two stores, maybe three. Whole Foods and Ta Lin are the default stops, and today, I added a visit to Vitamin Cottage as well, since they had a lot of stuff that I use on sale. (During the week, I tend to shop more at La Montañita, since I’m usually on foot Monday through Friday, and it’s within walking distance. Big shopping trips, such as today’s, involve the car, taking me to more distant places.)

Most of the stuff I bought was pretty standard — eggs, half and half, fruit, crème brulée, bread — but whenever I go to Ta Lin, I tend to branch out, with things that look interesting, good, or mysterious.

For dinner, I had an aloo paratha, a pan-cooked bread filled with potato and lentils. It was really sticky coming out of the package, since the dough was raw, and it proved hard to flip while in the pan. The end result was pretty tasty, and comparable to paratha that I have had in Indian restaurants. The outer crust was crispy and buttery (I added the butter) and the potato-lentil filling was soft, yet not overtly spiced (the only drawback to this paratha, in my opinion). Bread, potatoes, and beans: all the good carbohydrates, all combined in one flat food. They come four to a package for only $2, and since they were both good and extremely filling, I’ll be buying more of them in the future.

To go with my paratha, I had some yellow lentil dal, the kind that comes in the little foil pouches you boil. My attempts at making lentil dal in the past have always been a bit disappointing, so I’ve been content to either eat it out or eat it pre-made. Usually, I’ve found the ready-to-eat Indian meals, such as the Tasty Bite ones, to be good, but overpriced, at about $3 to $4 each. Ta Lin has a different brand of them, Swad, and each of their varieties is only $1.69 each. I’ve had the palak paneer (disappointing) and the bhaigan bhartha (pretty good) in the past, so today I picked up the yellow lentil dal and a couple of other varieties. It was worth getting, although it, too, suffered from a mildness problem (I like my Indian food to be pretty hot). It was certainly better than any dal I’ve managed to make, which should say something about my ability to make Indian food.

For dessert, I had a little cup of Goya-brand flan, which was okay. It was flan, so it can’t be too bad, but it runs a close second in the pre-packaged grocery-store custardy-thing category to the crème brulée from the Whole Foods bakery. Time eating flan, though, is always time well spent.

There was a fire in the alley behind my apartment this afternoon. Someone had a big pile of junk — old mattresses, pieces of wood, whatnot — in their yard, piled up high enough that it poked over their fence. I never saw who owned it, and the visible parts of the pile looked weathered enough to suggest that they had been there for quite some time.

It seems inevitable that the pile would catch fire sometime; the question, of course, was when. Luckily, it happened on an afternoon that I, and most of the other residents of my building, were gone. Driving home from lunch, I noticed several fire-department vehicles ahead of me on Lead, and, when I got to my apartment building, found that the fire was here. Never a good site to see, especially since it wasn’t apparent from the street view what, exactly, might be on fire.

There was a good-sized crowd assembled on the sidewalk, and I found out from other bystanders that it was the junk pile on fire, not any parts of the building complex (one wall of the one of the complex’s buildings almost caught on fire, but the flames were put out before they could do more than cosmetic damage). No one was hurt. Someone’s car was damaged, although not badly — again, mainly cosmetic damage. My building was fine, but it since it’s close to where the fire was, it could have not been fine, given a different set of circumstances. The junk pile, however, was destroyed. Its owner finally showed up after the fire was put out: I’ve actually never seen him or his car around here, so I don’t know what’s up with that.

The local news showed up quite a bit after the fact, after everyone went inside. My back window overlooks the now ex-junk pile, so I could see several people with microphones out there, milling about, in search of someone to interview.

My apartment smells like smoke now. It’s not a strong smell, thankfully, since I didn’t have any of my windows open. It could be worse: outside, it smells like burnt mattress. Bleah. I am a bit nervous that the fire could somehow reignite, so, in my mind, I keep making plans about what to take out of here, just in case. My concentration on the things I have to do was shot before I got home this afternoon, and has gone further south since then. Oh well.

After nearly a whole work week’s full of effort, my productivity got all shot to hell this afternoon. Oh well: I got a lot done this week, and I will be spending most of the weekend working, so I guess it’s okay. I felt pretty guilty for the first part of the afternoon, since I had planned to go to one of the student reading groups, and worried about not being there. Then I realized that I hadn’t told anyone I was going, and they’re completely optional, so no one would expect me there, and I felt better after that. I could have spent my afternoon in the library, but that just seems wrong. The library at my undergrad school closed earlier than normal on Friday afternoon, as did the public library in town, so this day and going to the library have never been associated in my mind.

So I spent it taking a nap, going to Borders and then to the grocery store. I picked up the new issues of The Wire and Signal to Noise and also bought two new CDs: Niño Rojo (the new Devendra Banhart) and Cambodian Cassette Archives 1: Khmer Folk, a collection of 1960s and 1970s Cambodian pop music. I was really surprised that Natural Sound had the latter, and the clerks looked eaqually surprised that I was buying it. They didn’t have Radio Java, put out by the same label, but there’s only so much I can ask for in one day.

I have to lead a review session on Monday, since we have an exam in the class I am assisting. This is my first big task in the class, my first that involves getting up in front of people and hopefully answering their questions about colonial American history, a topic I don’t feel qualified to help anyone with. So I’m very nervous about this, and expect someone to answer a question I have no idea of the answer to. It’s not like this is my favorite area of U.S. history, either. It’s interesting, of course, but to be honest, it’s the part I always sort of avoided earlier, choosing to take classes focusing on the twentieth century instead. Americans got more interesting once they got cars, I theorized. Now I get to lament my earlier actions, and fret about getting in over my head. I don’t feel like An Authority yet, either in the knowledge sense or the someone-you-should-listen-to-because-you-should sense, but I have to act like one.

Can anyone actually see the images on this site today? Because all I’m getting is text, and the title image and all the sidebar links are missing, as well….

EDIT: It seems to be okay now.