the hypothetical wren

I have no desire to do any work this week, even though I have a huge book to read for Thursday, a review session to lead on Wednesday night, and a lecture to write for next week. Today, I went to class and held my office hour, but didn’t do anything else productive, at least for school. I napped, made grilled-cheese sandwiches, perused a million mp3 blogs, and watched some of the Arrested Development DVDs I got from Netflix this weekend.

Spring break cannot come soon enough.

I had a good weekend, overall, even though I didn’t do any work then, either. I went grocery shopping on Saturday morning, first at the 99 Banh market on Gibson, and then at Talin. My main accomplishment was replacing all of my Indian spices. The chana masala I made a few weeks ago suffered mightily from the stale, subdued spices I had in my cabinet, so I bought a bunch of new spice blends. I then made new chana masala, and the results were much better. Replace those spices on a regular basis, people!

I went to the May Cafe for lunch, the Vietnamese restaurant across the street from Talin (the one with the very amusing Paul Bunyan sign). I had never been there before, and I had a sudden craving for Vietnamese food. I wasn’t that impressed with the spring rolls (the dipping sauce was sort of flavorless, and had to be augmented with chile paste), but the spicy lemongrass tofu was great. I ate at more new restaurants this weekend than I have in a long time. I think a weekend of eating at new restaurants is called for every once in a while.

Continuing the Let’s Spend Money theme of the weekend, I also went out shopping on Saturday. I bought new spice jars (to keep the improved spices nice and fresh) at Cost Plus, plus some very cute and colorful spatterware bowls. The I went to Target and bought various supplies and an on-clearance suede jacket. None of this cost very much. What really made the day sort of excessive was what I bought at Marshalls.

I got one of these for $80. I had been thinking of getting a saute pan of that size, since I actually have no such pan. I have a griddle pan that I can use for sauteing (it has slightly raised sides) as long as I don’t get too excited about what I’m doing and fling food out of the pan. So I was excited to find the exact pan I wanted for cheap. This happened there last summer, too, when I found the two-quart saucepan at Marshalls for half price after looking at the same thing for full price at the mall that same day.

Anyway, I can justify this purchase by telling myself that I’ll have it for a long time. I’ve already used it twice since I bought it, so there you go.

Every drinker needs a friend: Futuristic p-pod to amaze drinkers. Subterranean urinals will arise out of the depths to accomodate late-night drunks. Perhaps we need some of these in ABQ.

I link this just because I really enjoy the following sentence:

Innocent passers-by need not worry that they will suddenly find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and be cast into the air, as the facility will be clearly marked and a warning sound will go off to alert people..

One can only hope the “alert sound” will be something appropriately impressive.

I’m fond of these sorts of meme thingies that involve where you’ve been, or where you haven’t, because it reminds me about all of the occasions that drew me to these places, and make me think of potential future vacations.

Here’s one, which I got from egeltje:

bold the states you’ve been to, underline the states you’ve lived in and italicize the state you’re in now…

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

Go here to have a form generate the HTML for you.

I’m missing vast swaths of the south (by choice, mainly), a lot of flat, dull states in the midwest, and parts of New England and the Atlantic states. Montana is the only western state (out of the contiguous 48) that I haven’t been to, because it’s sort of out of the way. I know a lot of Montanans, though, which should count for something.

There should be categories, though, for the state you were born in (Utah, in my case) and the state that you are From. No matter how many other states I live in, and how fond I am of living in different places, I will always be a Coloradan, for better or for worse.

I got paid today, which is a relief. I’m trying to save money for my trip, so, while my bank balance is technically okay, the amount that I allowed myself to spend was pretty small, so things were getting sort of sad and desperate in the grocery and household supply categories around here. My plan for today is to explore some of the non-Talin ethnic grocery stores in ABQ. I need cheap basil.

Happily, though, I leave for SF two weeks from tomorrow. I’m still working out the logistics of getting to the airport. I’ll probably just end up taking a cab. I leave a little too early on Sunday morning to ask one of my friends to drive me there, since they’d have to get up at around 5 a.m.

Speaking of new experiences, I’m also trying to explore some of the other restaurants in my neighborhood. I’ve fallen into a comfortable Frontier/vegetarian Chinese restaurant whose name I always forget/Kai’s/the Korean restaurant/the occasional gyro rut when it comes to lunch. Yesterday, I ate at Bandido Hideout, which I’ve walked by many, many times on my way home from school. I did not have the $3.99 Chicken Special (which is what the Mexican-wrestling-mask-clad guy standing in the Central median strip advertises on his sign), but, judging by the plates of others in the restaurant that ordered it (it’s a half of a rotisserie chicken, accompanied by large servings of beans and rice), you get a lot of food for your almost four dollars.

I had the chicken mole burrito, which was okay. The filling was all chicken, and little else, which I wasn’t entirely pleased with, since in my mind burritos have some sort of vegetable in them as a rule, or cheese, even. The mole sauce was pleasant. It wasn’t quite spicy enough, but it wasn’t sickly sweet, like some moles I’ve had. I used to occasionally order mole burritos at this restaurant in Grand Junction, and depending on who made the mole that morning, you could end up with something pleasingly spicy or, on a day when someone overdid the chocolate component of the mole, something akin to a Hot Fudge Burrito. This burrito wasn’t that bad, fortunately, but I’ll probably order something else when I go back. One of the other customers was eating a whole fish in some sort of citrus-y sauce that looked decent, so that might be a good choice. They have cheap chile-relleno burritos (an unholy but always pleasing combination), so that’s an option, or there is always the Chicken Special.

The book I have to read this week is Army Exploration in the American West, 1803-1863, by William Goetzmann. It’s not as bad as it sounds. The author is a fairly engaging writer, and it’s an interesting subject, but it is long, long, long. If I had to characterize it, it seems to fall into the Good Gift For Dad category. It has pictures, exploration, adventure, science, and whatnot, which seems to be the things dads — my dad, at least — like.

Impending warm weather (or, at least, not-cold weather) means new clothes. Specifically, new linen clothes. I need to buy new linen pants this year, since I have a couple of worn-out pairs (and, unfortunately, some too-tight pairs), and the appearance of said clothes in stores and catalogs is as much a marker of impending seasonal change as sprouting grass, robins, and whatnot.

These are nice pants. However, I ask you, what kind of color name is “citoh”? Googling the word brings up a brand of copier and not much else, and I don’t think “copier” is a concept that brings to mind any particular color, except, perhaps, that dingy tone that identifies the part of the copier where people rest their hands.

This has been a pretty nice weekend. I didn’t do a whole lot, or go many places, but it was a satisfying couple of days, nonetheless. Mainly, I read. I read the book I have assigned for class on Thursday (the unthrilling, extremely repetitive Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth) and half of one of the extra books I have to give a presentation on for the same class (the much better Promised Lands: Promotion, Memory, and the Creation of the American West). I began work on the lecture I have to give in a couple of weeks, and also started reading some other things that may or may not be promising for future research (William Wyckoff’s Creating Colorado: The Making of a Western American Landscape, Paul Groth’s Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States and the anthology Reclaiming San Franciso [part research, part vacation preparation]). I also sort of organized my bedroom, since I was sick of the way it looked (piles of sweaters everywhere, even though my everyday sweater wardrobe consists of a rotation of four or five sweaters out of the many I own), and did other domestic chores like grocery shopping. All in all, it was a pleasant weekend.

I also did some cooking. I’m making roasted chicken leg quarters (basted with a lemon sauce) and roasted potatoes and parsnips for dinner. I made nearly the same dish last weekend, and it was pretty tasty. The only problem with last week’s meal was that the leg quarters, tiny to begin with, shrank down as they cooked, and I ended up eating both of the quarters I cooked because they were so small. However, they were the only dark-meat chicken parts available on late Sunday afternoon at La Montanita, and they were pretty tasty. This week’s chicken legs seem more substantial.

Last night, I made a curried chickpeas recipe I found in a magazine (can’t remember where, sorry), and it was quite good and extremely easy to make. You take one 15-oz can of diced tomatoes, a two-inch piece of ginger (peeled and chopped), a green chile (seeded), and some cilantro, and puree them in a blender. Then you put the puree in a warm skillet with a little bit of oil and cook for 5 minutes or so. Add 1-2 tablespoons of curry powder, and a bit of chile powder, as well, and then stir in two 15-oz. cans of chickpeas (rinse them first). Cook until the chickpeas are cooked through. The end result was quite good, even though I added some garam masala that I think is off a bit (it has an odd, unidentifiable taste to it). The leftovers today were better, since the flavors had time to meld. It was cheap, too, a good thing since I’m effectively broke until payday next week.