au revoir

changed cities, changed sites.  deal with it.  

United thumps Kiev again

4 nil to United. Pretty goals:

I feel ya, Big Fella

I am so stoked for my man KG these days. I just watched the clips of the Celtics-Nuggets game on espn.com and have been following his stats so far this season, and KG is playing like a man possessed. He has been better than 20-10-5 in his first three games as a Celtic, and he looks so damn happy. I mean did you see the 'oop that Pierce gave him in the 3rd quarter? They celebrated like freaking And-1 playground ballers, it just looks like they are having a lot of fun. And that is good to see.

The T-wolves and my new hometown boys the Durants, I mean Sonics... pretty much going to be battling it out all season for the worst record in the league. So that will be a nice rivalry to follow between my two teams.

The clip also made me wish I was ballin some out here. I stuck my head in the gym the other day to see what sorta pickup was going on, and it was intense. There were probably 3 to 5 teams of 5 guys sitting out waiting to get in. Two courts going full-length 5v5 (the other courts were occupied by volleyball and badminton games), and it was some intense ball. It was also the most Black people I have seen on campus. Diversity is not a strong suit out here.

Anyways, go KG, or as Trent Tucker used to say, "I feel ya, Big Fella." If the Celtics come to town I am definitely going. Sonics tickets have been expensive since it's the start of the season and people are still excited to watch Durant. But I have no doubt that 20 losses down the road I will be able to score some cheap upper deck tix. And since Key Arena is so small, that probably won't be a bad thing. Shame the Sonics will be leaving in a year or three, I think they could eventually be pretty good. After all, I am a T-Wolves fan at my core, so all I really strive for is first round elimination mediocrity, and I am sure that by season three Durant will be supplying that.

Adventures in tofu

Tonight I had visions of hot and sour soup in my head when I decided to try adding steamed tofu to my leftover squash & broccoli soup. I've been trying to find ways to eat tofu that I enjoy, because there is just something inherent in tofu that I dislike. Not sure what it is. It might be that subtle flavor. It might be the texture. It might be something else, but what matters is that I can usually overcome this inherent deficiency in tofu if it is prepared in a tasty way. Tonight I had a protein craving, and since I am a pescetarian who can't afford to eat fish, I decided I'd do something with the chunk of tofu in my fridge. I also had leftover soup. I almost dismissed using the tofu somehow when I remembered that hot and sour soup has tofu in it, in fact many Asian soups do, and they are delish. So I decided to give it a whirl.

The first mistake was the tofu itself. It was super firm. Super firm is pretty gross. It is way too firm. Its sorta like chewy calamari. No bueno. I steamed it before adding it to the soup, hoping to loosen it up a bit and get it heated thoroughly. I crumbled the super chewy firm tofu as best I could intot he steamer basket and let it rip for 10 mins. I even added a hit or two of soy sauce, hoping to impart some flavor on the tofu.

Once the soup was hot and the tofu was steamed, I combined the two and let it come together for 10 mins or so on low heat before I ate it. And it was gross. The tofu was nasty. Whatever that little thing I sorta don't like about tofu is, it was in my soup in spades. It tasted awful, the texture was awful, it was a failed experiment. I ended up eating only half of the tofu and dumping the leftovers in the compost. No bueno, indeed.

I think I will come back to Adventures in Tofu again, probably in the near future. I want to like the damn stuff and quite often I genuinely do. And I have to use the rest of this damn block of tofu in the next few days, we're cutting it a litte close to the expiration date. I wonder if that had anything to do with the off flavor...

blog block

I got a case of blog block. Every time I'm procrastinating on the interwebs and I start a new post, I realize what I am writing is dumb. I know, it's never stopped me before. I guess this stuff is just really bad. So I will just drop some pics on you and let it go. I also can't decide if I ought to tell my classmates about my blog. Not that I care if they would read it, just that I might want to use this to vent at them at some point along the way. I mean there are only 16 of us, I am sure I'll be pissed at someone at some point. SO I dunno.

Check it out, Seattle's Magnolia neighborhood in the fall. Some amazing Puget Sound and Olympic peninsula vistas, as well as a nice shot of the Seattle skyline.

As it turns out...

As it turns out, I am not very well suited to living alone. Thankfully, I only have another month or so of this hell. Everything suffers when I have no one to be held responsible to. My hygiene has gone to shit for starters, I used to shower everyday, sometimes twice a day. I sometimes fall asleep without brushing my teeth now (gross). And I only really shave when my neck gets itchy from my own whiskers.

My apartment doesn't get any visitors, so I don't make a very big effort to do the dishes everyday or clean up the newspapers on the coffee table or bother to put the clothes anywhere other than the floor. It annoys me to see my slobbery, but not to the point where I am really motivated to do anything about it.

I know once I am rejoined with my [much] better half in December(ish) that I will definitely feel compelled to do a better job on all these things. I will also feel compelled to go grocery shopping regularly. As it is now, I go when the cupboards are bare, like really bare. If there is still enough food to scrape together some semblance of a meal--beans & rice, pasta & olive oil, carrots & toast--I will put off shopping for another day. I haven't had fresh fruit/vegetables in over a week.

And for those of you really skilled at reading comprehension, you will note that I actually take no responsibility for these slovenly actions (or lack of actions... l'actions?). Instead, I blame others (for not living here, for not coming over to my apt, etc etc). And I think this maybe this is the hallmark of our generation, "complain complain complain... but not my fuckin' problem." Or maybe it's just me.

Ok, off to class. This sufficiently took up the time I had allotted for showering this morning (victory!), so I guess we press on with Day 3. Since I haven't really worked out since Monday nigh, I haven't showered since then either. No one seems to be repulsed yet, but maybe people are just being polite. But today, will shower, I promise. Shave? Hell no, I did that last week.

Holy Rant, Batman!

Did you know that medical harm is the third leading cause of death in this country? Holy shit, right? It's behind cardiac disease (1) and cancer (3). This is astounding to me. I learned this recently in some research I was doing for class.

Then today, I saw this article saying that about 19,000 peopled died in 2005 from a fucking gross staph infection that they picked up WHILE IN THE FREAKING HOSPITAL!! That would be more people than died of AIDS in 2005 (about 15,000). Wowzers. People are going to the hospital and leaving no better off (or WORSE) when they leave.

I could go on about how medical harm on this scale is endemic of our current F-ed up system of health care. About how in our private insurer/private provider model, profits are valued over patients by both insurers AND providers, with no one to give a shit about individual patients except individual patients (and their lawyers). Or about how trial lawyers claim to provide justice and stand up for the little guy who gets screwed by big hospital/big insurer... but have yet to actually stop the increasing costs of care or improved quality of care in any marked way or decrease the numbers of those getting harmed in our hospitals every year. But I will spare you all of that, and just say shit is fucked.

VIVA LA REVOLUCION!!!!

[insert obligatory stock Che pic here]