Archive for February, 2010
February 25, 2010 at 6:55 am · Filed under beauty, dating, humor, love, news, personal, politics, random, texas
So my lovely friend D wrote this post the other day that I thought was really interesting. Apparently she found it here, and I also loved that post too. So here I am playing along… on my not-so-personal-but-getting-to-be-rather-personal blog.
If you know me well, you know that all my tattoos have significant meaning to me but my piercings were done on a whim, i love physics (and philosophy), am a super liberal feminist but I totally use the “I’m a girl” card to get someone to change a tire or the oil for me even though I’m perfectly capable of doing both myself.
If you know me well, you know I am a sucker for romantic comedies, I live for chocolate and I have the willpower of a gnat when it comes to things I want.
If you know me well, you know I *love* cooking (seriously, I have a slight obsession with food), decorating (and redecorating) and arranging flowers. Seriously every once in a while I contemplate putting myself up for sale: “Fantastic housewife available to a good home. Will cook, decorate and keep a lovely home. Contingent on a large budget. (Let’s not lie, I’ve got expensive taste).” or you know changing careers to be an event planner… or wedding planner.
If you know me well, you know I’m so obsessive about my hair that I cut it myself because I don’t think anyone else can do as good a job, I love chai (the fake Starbuck’s kind even though it’s totally not right) and I hate running but love soccer.
If you know me well you know that despite being a jeans and t-shirt girl, I love love love dresses and skirts and makeup, and if you make it past the tattoos, piercings, sarcasm and cynicism, I am a hopeless romantic and I view the world in hearts, stars, rainbows and puppies.
If you know me well, you know that despite my self-professed geekdom I am really not that geeky. I mean I work in IT but I have never owned a gaming system, nor do I play computer games and for an extended period of time I thought WoW was just people spelling wow rather enthusiastically. Apparently one shelf of fantasy novels does not equate to actual geekdom.
If you know me well, you know I love playing sports but can’t watch them to save my life, I am in a serious long-term relationship with Grey’s Anatomy, I move cities like it’s my job (though Chicago does seem to be sticking pretty well so far) and I desperately miss Texas.
February 16, 2010 at 11:32 am · Filed under economy, health, personal, personal finance, politics
This is what I want to say whenever I speak to anyone in the billing departments of hospitals and even moreso when I speak to the people at the insurance companies. Because really, I do honestly believe that they don’t care *at all* about us. And it’s really frustrating to be on the phone trying to figure out why your bills are so high when you have a full-time job. Or in my case a full-time job and part-time school. Why do I have to spend 40+ hours trying to figure out why I was billed this way and why this is even a valid bill to begin with. Granted at some point you even start wondering if it is worth spending this much time trying to work out your bill or if you could be spending your time on other things. I mean if I calculated the amount of time I’ve spent trying to get this figured out and how much that would cost my company that bills me out by the hour, I’m pretty sure it’d be a tiny fraction of what my time could be used for. Yet, for me that sum of money is actually legitimate and it makes a difference whether I have it or not so here I am on the phone with like 8 million different health care professionals trying to figure out what to do.
Sometimes I really wonder who works there. I mean honestly how can you just sit there and tell someone that well I’m sorry you just have to make that choice, which is what I heard on the other end of the phone today for a procedure that I’ve been “strongly advised” to get. For something that could be a life or death illness that has yet to be diagnosed. But what incentive do I have to spend this money when I’ve been told that I’m not sick for the past 5 years. However, there is a chance that it could all go horribly wrong and so now I have to make a choice between what my doctors think I should do and what I can afford to do. I don’t even have much of a choice about what I *want* to do.
And don’t get me started on the bills that Congress are looking at. I mean what kind of a cruel joke is that. You are giving the insurance companies essentially complete power over the masses and requiring all of us “little people” to buy into plans that perhaps we can’t afford and in fact may even be detrimental for us. Honestly if you can’t come up with legislation that is somewhat decent don’t even bother. I’d rather have people stick to what is right than try to pass something that really only makes sense for the bottom line of hospitals and insurance companies. I’m sorry supporting insurance companies and hospitals is really not my concern. Nor do I think it’s something my tax dollars should be paying you to help!
February 8, 2010 at 11:31 am · Filed under chicago, food, personal, random
So a couple of friends and I have recently started a little tradition to do “family dinners”. Which is really just three of us that live a couple blocks apart making an effort to get together every Sunday for dinner and some bad TV (or movies) and just hang out for a little bit on a Sunday night.
This Sunday I was particularly excited because my friend, Case, decided to make Corn and Sausage Chowder, which might sound a little odd but is actually quite delicious. Now, Case calls himself a Kansas cooker and I love it cause he just throws all sorts of random stuff in the pot and it just works. He claims he got this from his mother who would make them help her out as kids by finding stuff in the kitchen that they thought would be good in a soup. I adore Corn Chowder but I have never ever made it nor did I have any clue how until last night, which makes no sense because it falls into that Southern Comfort food category which I just adore. Though for some reason I’m more of a French cooker… like my bible is the Larousse Gastronomique, has been since I ever set foot in a kitchen. I do things like souffle and mousse and braised short ribs (which is on the menu for next weekend). It makes no sense coming from an Indian girl born and raised in Texas. You’d think I’d know how to do good Southern Comfort food or at least Indian food. But no, I’ve got nothin’ on either of those. However, you want me to make you souffle or risotto or anything that involves heavy cream, I’m your girl. Example, next week is my turn for dinner and I’m doing braised short ribs in a sauerkraut sauce over swiss chard, crunchy green beans with almonds & garlic and either pureed potatoes or polenta with mushrooms. Oh and lemon souffle with fresh raspberries to finish. (Well ok the raspberries might not be in season, I forget I am not in Texas and can’t get whatever I want whenever I want pretty much all year round but definitely the souffle).
That being said, I was just stunned at how simple, easy and delicious corn chowder is! Now we made enough soup for a small army (note there are only 3 of us eating this soup, we had enough leftovers for the rest of the week for all of us) but here is the recipe as follows:
Corn & Sausage Chowder
1 qt half/half
2 large-ish russet potatoes
3 bell peppers (in any colors you’d like, we had red & green)
1 large onion
1 can creamed sweet corn
2 cans sweet whole kernel corn
2 large sausages
1 bag flour
Salt
Pepper
and any other seasonings you’d like
(feel free to leave out the sausages and add other miscellaneous veggies as you’d like)
Slice one potato into very thin slices and then dice the other one into 1/4″ cubes. Throw the sliced potato into a very very large pot half filled with water and turn on to boil.
Dice all other vegetables and sausage. Put sausage into a large saucepan and brown. Let cook for about 2-5mins. After that add in the onions. Let those cook until they look somewhat clear. Then add in all the other veggies and saute for another 10-15mins. Once the veggies look just tender.
Pour all the ingredients from the saucepan into the pot of boiling water. Add in about 3/4-1qt heavy cream. Add in all the cans of corn.
In a separate bowl mix together water and flour until smooth. As the soup cooks and you want it to thicken add in the flour-water mixture. Repeat this step as many times as necessary to get the soup to the consistency that you’d like – the thicker you want it the more flour-water mix you should add.
Add in salt & pepper generously to taste. We put in cayenne pepper, garlic salt, all spice and something else. But the spices can be just about anything based on what you like and what you want in it. Also I like to think a little splash of beer gives it some good character. Keep on relatively high heat and check on it every few minutes, stir as necessary.
The whole process takes about an hour to make. It’s really not bad and it’s an excellent meal. Especially in the winter when it’s super cold outside. It was pretty perfect for yesterday.
February 6, 2010 at 9:30 am · Filed under chicago, economy, jobs, personal, random, work
Sometimes it is incredibly difficult to find the silver lining in life. I’ve been waffling between being unable to have the energy to look for the silver lining and trying so hard to find it that I just go out and do crazy things. While the crazy stuff is fun, I forget that I’m not 16 anymore, I can’t go out for 6 days in a row with no sleep and still be able to do the work I need to do for grad school and hold down a grown up job. Thankfully I have yet to do anything so idiotic that I get fired from said grown up job but that doesn’t really make me feel any better because I know I’m smarter than this. Anyway the point of this is not to crib about all of that but to point out that sometimes even when life is hard there really is a silver lining in there somewhere.
I mention this because I have a lot of friends who are struggling with the job search right now and um, I understand just how much it sucks. I remember when I got out of college and I didn’t have a place to live or enough money to do anything. I lived mostly out of my car for nearly 2 months but thank god for D who let me crash with her during that time before I had enough money to even be able to afford an apartment. It sucks. But remember it’s not permanent and it’s not forever. I even ended up taking a couple of AWFUL jobs in that time. I was a glorified secretary that they called an office manager except I did all sorts of crap stuff, like replace soda in the refrigerators and make lunch on Fridays. I swear it was the most frustrating thing ever because I thought to myself, “I went to college. I have a double major in Physics & Philosophy. And honestly, I’m smarter than most of you people that work here, I can’t believe I have to do this. This is so demeaning.” And at the time it really was.
Oh and there was this OCD woman that I worked for. You would think that someone with OCD is really clean, that’s just the general stereotype. Wrong. She had stacks of paper piled so high that there was just a narrow little pathway from the entrance to the staircase which I would have to go up to go to her “computer room”. And everything was covered in plastic because she had “cleanliness issues”. She also ran a “clutter workshop” to help others declutter their lives and for the life of me I do not understand because I really didn’t think she was the picture of learning how to clean up your clutter. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to make fun of her, I’m glad she was trying to organize her life. It just didn’t really seem like it to me. Not to mention it was terrifying to walk through that house once a week, it was just… I don’t even know how to describe it but it is certainly etched in my memory.
And this is all just stuff I *had* to do to get by at the time. So ok, my life is not perfect right now. I will give myself enough legitimacy that I’m allowed to be sad and to look forward to 2010 being a better year but seriously, my life is not that bad. I have a place to live with a roommate that I really like. (Actually, I think Adam is just a gem. I have a friend who is having the most awful time – lost his job and got kicked out of his apartment. *WALKED* from Lakeview to Downtown Chicago [that's like 10miles] in the winter in freezing weather to a job interview because that’s how desperately he wants to be employed and not be in the place he’s in right now. – so I told Adam I’d like to offer this guy a place to stay and, seriously I love this boy, Adam’s response was “Of course he can stay with us. If it becomes an issue we’ll think of something when we get there, we can’t let him be homeless. We’ll figure something out. Tell him to come over whenever he wants.” Seriously, Adam is *such* a gem.) I have a job that I actually really like. And I’m in school for something that I’m actually really interested in. And I’ve got incredible friends, even if some of them are thousands of miles away they’re still there. So really there is some silver lining out there. Sometimes it’s just about perspective and being able to see it. And for everyone who is looking for a job, I know the economy blows. I know it’s really hard. But I promise you it will not be like this forever. You will find something. Cut yourself a break. Even if it’s just for an hour. Also I know it seems like the most overwhelming thing in the world right now but it will get better and there are good things out there outside of needing to find employment. You’ll get there, just have a little faith even if that sounds impossible right now.
