16 posts tagged “food”

Going down to Denver (up to Denver?) tomorrow for President's Day weekend...yay! That means I can actually eat good food. I haven't replenished my fridge for a week or so because I won't be here for a few days, so it's majorly slim pickins, especially now when I'm down to a small hunk of cheese and some bread. And a shit ton of cilantro, because they only sell it in GIANT BUSHELS that are completely unnecessary.

Anyway, I'm also getting my hair cut on Saturday. I kinda sorta know what I want to get done, but I'm not positive. I wish I had the balls to do something totally wacky and crazy and wild, but I don't, so I won't. meh.

I need to find a good streaming radio station that's just news/talk in Spanish, so I can sort of practice interpreting. Or just practice repeating what they say right after they say it, so I can get better at sort of mentally recording what I hear so I can "play it back" to myself a few seconds later and repeat it. Which is totally easy and second-nature in English, but Spanish...not so much. I'm not going to be an interpreter (at least that's not a part of the gameplan) but that's pretty much all we do in my Spanish for Professionals class and it'd be a good way to brush up my Spanish anyway...I've been kind of lazy with it recently and don't feel like I've progressed in the language as much as I should have...meh.

For now I suppose I'll just listen to Manu Chao and imagine I'm still in Barcelona.

What is your favorite dish on the Thanksgiving table?
Submitted by Kadeeae.  

Main meal-wise, stuffing. Totally. And given how amazingly delicious everything else is, to say that the stuffing is the best means something. Mmm....

Dessert-wise....that's a harder choice. My family is full of pigs so we usually make a few pies. This year we're going to have pumpkin, plain pecan and chocolate chip pecan...I think the chocolate chip pecan is my favorite, but damn does pumpkin pie taste good. Especially since there's that imaginary rule that forbids you to make pumpkin pie at any time other than Thanksgiving, so it just makes it that much more special. Oh, and that's pumpkin pie WITHOUT WHIPPED SHIT CREAM. We hates whipped cream, we does. I want to be able to taste the pumpkinny goodness! Not to mention I can practically hear my arteries cry whenever I have any form of cream (or any form of milk that's fattier than skim, for that matter).

Philosophy essay written? Check.
Art homework drawn? Check.
Apartment clean and dishes done? Check.

Time for some Halo 3 online and, later, a delicious dinner (teriyaki chicken and rice!). Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are my crazy busy days of classes, and I've done all my work for the rest of the week, so now I can RELAX. Yay. I also don't have philosophy tomorrow morning since the essay is due sometime in my prof's office before 4pm, so I can sleep in until 10! Woohoo! You have no idea how excited that makes me. I love sleep, and I really haven't been getting enough of it lately.

What's the best thing you ever bought off of Ebay or Craigslist?

I dunno if it's the best thing, but it was definitely the best deal. I paid $25 for a factory sealed copy of the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the SNES on eBay a couple years ago. Factory sealed! It was a glorious day indeed.

I had the strangest dream last night. I remember a ton of it, even though there were a lot of different little "segments." The strangest part was me trying to get a toilet into the back of my dad's 4Runner and a car driving up and stealing it (....don't ask.) Then there was a part at a water park, and then we were in some house in what I think was the south of France, but we were in a warzone and couldn't make noise after 1am or else we'd get arrested, and my sister was blasting some techno music at full volume and everyone was freaking out. And at one point, that "If you could only see the way she loves me, maybe you would understand" song (I think it's by Tonic? Whoever they are...but it's a good song) was playing, so I've had it stuck in my head since I woke up. If you could only see how blue her eyes can be when she says....

I'm going to try my hand at cooking some stuff other than turkey sandwiches, hamburgers and rice things. I have 130 meals at the dining hall for this semester, which is about 8 meals a week, which I totally haven't been using (I go and get a "lunch to go," which is the only edible food there, maybe three times a week) so I feel bad about that. Although I might use it more once it gets cold and I don't feel like digging my car out of several feet of snow to go to the store to get fewd. I guess the food there isn't all that bad, it was just terrible when I had to eat it twice a day for my entire freshman year...

Last night was the "mid-season finale" of South of Nowhere. Evidently the next few episodes will air in February. FEBRUARY?!? Wtf? I can see maybe taking like a month or two off, but five months? That upsets me :|

I officially changed my advisor to one of the two professors in the Spanish department, and also declared myself as a philosophy minor. There are also, I think, two professors in the philosophy department, which means I'm going to get rather warm and cosy with my Spanish major and philosophy minor. Which is cool, since I like all of those people I've interacted with so far. I won't really get to chat with my advisor about just how all my credits from my year in Barcelona are going to transfer until I meet with said Spanish advisor shortly before the end of semester when I'm to decide on classes for next semester. But that's the only real issue I'm facing, and since I've cleared out all my General Education credits and am 10 credits ahead already, even if I'm horribly behind on my Spanish major I think I shouldn't have much of a problem working that out so that I can graduate on time in the spring of 2009 (ugh that seems so far away!)

Word around the campfire is that it's going to snow here soon. Omgsnow? Here? In the mountains of Colorado?!? Never! If my memory serves me correctly (which it probably doesn't since I was in a crazy drunken funk pretty much....well....all of my freshman year which was the last time I was here) it starts getting cold early- to mid-October. Snow usually hits Denver by the end of October, so it's pretty much guaranteed to hit here a few weeks before it hits Denver. So basically I have a couple weeks of tank tops and flip flops left. By spring, though, once it gets above freezing (it usually lingers around 20 or 10 below, cold enough to freeze your nose hair (no joke! it's really weird and "wtf?" the first time it happens) and to make your snuggly-warm snow jacket crinkle because it gets solidified from the cold) then it's TOTALLY tshirt weather. Right now I get all cold when it's 50, but talk to me in 6 months and 50 degrees will seem like summer.

On the happy end of that news, that means that SNOWBOARDING SEASON IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER. From what my sources tell me, the student price for a season pass at Crested Butte (aka Crusty Butt, aka the Best Ski Resort Ever) has dropped a nice $100 from two years ago when I last bought one, down from about $650 to $550. Which is still crazy expensive, but do some research into regularly-priced season passes to bigger and better-known places in CO like Vail, Aspen or Copper, and $550 is a steal. Considering that I'd say the average day of skiing at a decent resort will cost you at least $50 or $60, to get an entire unlimited season (November to April, usually) of amazingness for $550 is pretty damn good.

And despite having  been home from Barcelona for four months (jesus christ has it really been that long?!) I still find myself on the good ol' Spanish schedule of eating. Lunch around 2ish, dinner around 9, 10 at night....it's a good deal.

Speaking of eating, I need to start working out. I've lost weight since I've been up here at school (funny how not having your mother's delicious cooking all the time makes you not eat nearly as much...) but I feel that I need to get some more physical activity and just....I dunno....tone myself? Get myself some rock-hard abs and buns. It shouldn't take too long, one perk of my short little pale body is that I can, if I try, lose fat and put on muscle relatively easily (the flipside of that is that I can put on fat and lose muscle just as easily...)

Anyway, I have to take a shower, do said eating and then I have a date with a fine young man named Aristotle. I've already read 3 of the assigned 8 pages, and I must say, even for a philosopher that dude is fucking hard to understand. Alas, this is what I've gotten myself into.

Mood swings galore this past week (two weeks? or has it been three?) but this weekend was actually pretty good. Now that I don't have sociology anymore, my life is pretty....boring. And it's FANTASTIC, though I know I'll get sick of it soon enough. I just have class on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, plus two more Wednesday evenings. And...that's about it.

I officially got the letter in the mail from Western saying "yay here's your room number, move in between such-and-such times blah blah." I'm in a building that has a good location, I'm on the first floor (which is either good or bad, I'm not sure), and did I mention earlier that I have no roommate? I'm excited, I've even started making a list of stuff I need to take down there. I love lists (but not as much as I love lamp.)

Since this whole disaster with my sister, she's been coming over to the house for dinner and such more often, and it's nice. I used to go weeks without seeing or hearing from her, but now I see her at least every other day or so. We're pretty tight and I enjoy hanging out with her, plus now that she's not all perma-stoned she's been more cheery and uppity and conversational and stuff.

I finally got around to watching Borat tonight, and....I dunno. It was pretty hilarious, yes, but...those poor antique shop owners! Gawwww I hate feeling embarrassed for people in movies (the chief reason I'm totally not a Meet the Parents fan) and some parts in Borat were just...too much. And speaking of "too much," that naked fight in the hotel....oh man. Though as it escalated and I got accustomed to the disgustingly fat and hairy man on my screen, it was pretty damn funny. The scene in the church also frightened me, but on a different level.

I was working out pretty regularly and eating pretty decently, then my hormones decided to go "haha fuck you" and I've been eating like a pig for past couple days. We had "poor man steaks" and taters for dinner, and now I'm hungry again. Feed me, Seymour, FEED ME! Must be BLOOD, must be FRESH!!

Aaaaaand enough with the Little Shop of Horrors rendition. But about that food thing...

I'm thinking, perhaps....computer science? It's probably the only option for a major that I'm not only interested in, but would be able to use in future to do something I actually want to do (hello, video game industry!). It sort of terrifies me though, as it's quite a bit of math...I'm fairly good at math, I just don't particularly like it, and the main reason I don't like it is because half the shit you learn, you don't use to apply to anything (which, I'd imagine, you actually do in computer science). I kind of want to challenge myself next year, and I'm wondering if this is the right sort of challenge. So, what say you, all my college-aged friends who are in computer science?

I've been thinking about food a lot, and have decided (well, I decided this a while ago, but now it's starting to bother me a bit more) that Spanish food is seriously lacking in intense flavors. Like, the stuff is good, but I seldom have something that I just think "wow, that was absolutely amazing, I want that again." Maybe it's because I'm used to spicy Mexican food a couple times a week, and delicious steaks and hamburgers and Chinese food, all of which, in my opinion, are amazing foods. And here I get...tortilla de patatas (basically a big patty of scrambled eggs, potatoes and onions, slightly overcooked so it's a bit more solid), fish, chicken breast, and lots (and by "lots" I mean "every friggen dinner" lots) of salad. I like salad, but I like salad with either caesar or ranch dressing, neither of which exist here. And don't get me started on the ham. Everything here is jamon this, jamon that...which is great for like, a day, but ALL THE FRIGGEN TIME? Whyy....

Damnit, now I'm hungry.

I haven't had much of a chance to come up here to the ISA office and use the Internet for any decent length of time, partially because of my schedule but mostly because I'm lazy. I also feel weird using my friend Ben's laptop at his apartment (where he has Wifi, which I've started calling "Weefee" like all the crazy Spaniards do) so I haven't really had a chance to do a nice big fatty update.

Anyway, you may or may not remember me bitching incessantly about waiting in line for hours upon hours to get my visa extended. Well, I finally...FINALLY got the card that that was all for (and right on cue, the ISA director who botched that whole thing up just came in to ask how I am...) and it's pretty and shiney and orangey and I -think- it's pretty much like a Spanish ID card, just that it's...not. Haha well anyway it makes me happy, I was disapointed last year that my student ID card from the Universitat de Barcelona was basically just a business card type thing with my name stamped sloppily on the back. But this is like a full blown ID card with my picture and finger print and it even has my reason for being in Barcelona (which is kinda creepy...)

So on the social side of life, things are cool. I pretty much hang out with Ben and Kinsy all the time, and then with Gaetano and Nelson a bit as well. Kinsy and I are cool again, we're "boys for life" once more so things are peachy. None of that other bullshit drama that was going on before, we're just friends and that's how it's gonna be. So anyway there's a bar that's like a block away from Kinsy (like 5 blocks from Ben and like 12 blocks from me, so I got fuxored) but they give us free food and Kinsy and I got like €40 worth of drinks there totally free when we went on her birthday so that was awesome. No creepy stories about creepy Barcelona men, yet. You just wait, I'll have a tale to spin by the fire in no time.

Ummm so we play my Wii at Ben's apartment, where his TV is jacked up and the AV channel is black and white. I tried to use my madd n3rd skillz and program other remotes for the TV, but failed. So that's sad. Super Mario World was released on the European Virtual Console (funny how usually gaming companies hate Europe but now they're giving us all this shit over here before North America).

I had paella last Sunday and lived through it (barely!) so this Sunday I'm planning Katie's Day Out. I realized I haven't been down to the water during the day at ALL since I've been here (I went down at night twice last semester). Which is just not cool, so I'll probably go down there and maybe over to Parc Cuitadella and then get myself some tasty vittles for lunch. I've been good about not going out and buying random foodstuffs I don't need, which is probably because Amanda's not here to be like "Let's go to [insert tasty and delicious place]!" so I'm not spending as much money. Though Ben and I did go and get some hot and sour soup and dumplings from a Chinese restaurant, which was totally crazy because I was stoned, the chairs were tiny so I was all clumsy getting into my seat, then they were playing some intense trance music and I was eating delicious food...it was a very interesting experience.

I keep seeing signs around advertising the Nine Inch Nails concert on February 18, THAT I'M GOING TO, and they get me so excited. That's going to be totally amazing. I have like two pictures on my camera so not much to share, but I can guarantee that I'll have oodles of pictures of that up afterwards. Mark my words! (Consider them marked...ok I've seen Pirates of the Caribbean way too many times.)

And now this entry is no longer a fatty, it's morbidly obese, so I shall bid ye adieu. Happy trails!

So according to Weather.com it's still snowing a tad in Denver, but the news a couple hours ago had live footage and it didn't look TOO horrible, and they said it had let up a bit and should stop snowing tonight. Tomorrow it's supposed to be "sunny," and the airport is scheduled to open at noon. My flight is scheduled to get in at something crazy close to that, like 12:17, so we'll see. I don't care if it's delayed, but if it's cancelled I really might kill something.

I went to bed at like 9 last night and woke up around 9 this morning to my delicious roomservice breakfast. I've done absolutely nothing today except watch a lot of news to keep track of the Denver situation, and a lot of the History Channel. Anyway it went by pretty quickly, I just had dinner (delicious hamburgers and unlimited Diet Coke don't make eating alone a fun experience) and got online to bitch some more and to check Weather.com again because I'm obsessed.

It's very strange to be back in the US. Things are new and clean and shiny, there's English everywhere, I am fully capable of expressing myself exactly how I want to to people, and people are nice and service is spectacular. I've probably dealt with a bunch of assholes here since I arrived, but I haven't noticed because I got so used to it in Spain. Whenever anyone smiles at me, I smile back because I'm so amused by the fact that not only is someone paying me any attention, but they're happy to be doing so. And things are in DOLLARS. I still say "euros" though, and will probably get back in the swing of saying "dollars" right before I leave again.

I feel like I have a lot to write about but I'm not really sure what.

Edit: After looking at how ginormous this post is, evidently I WAS sure what to write about...

Thanksgiving was pretty fun, though there was no stuffing or pumpkin pie (which is probably just as well because I'm überpicky with my stuffing and pumpkin pie and generally only like my mom's). We went out to a bar after that so I didn't get to sleep until late, then I had to wake up at like 4:30 or something to leave for Sevilla at 5:45. Sevilla was really awesome, I liked it a lot. It's in the southwestern part of Spain, about an hour or so flight (or something like that, I was so tired on both the flight there and the flight back that I was already asleep when the captain came on to talk about the weather and the duration of the flight). It was raining a ton on Saturday when we went to the big cathedral, and we were supposed to go somewhere else but it got cancelled. So after the cathedral I went to the bull ring with Rachael and Mikayla (not a bull fight, we just went on a little tour of the ring and there's a little museum type thing there) and that was pretty cool. Then we had lunch and went to...Starbucks! Naoooooooooo! That was the first time had Starbucks since I've been here :( Oh well. Then we went to a flamenco show that I didn't think I was going to be able to go on because I hadn't RSVPed when I should have, but I went anyway with no problemo. It was pretty cool I guess, I dunno, maybe I'm just not a huge flamenco person.

Then a bunch of us (me, Rachael, Mikayla, Jen and Melissa) walked around with Javi, Dani and Geno (the three ISA directors who were on the trip) and they took us to a bunch of tapas bars and we had some good eats and beer. Then we went to some big bar place and there were a lot of other ISA people there, so we met up with some of them and then went to a discoteca and stayed out until they kicked us out at like 6 or something. Somehow we found our way back to the hotel and had breakfast when it opened at 7, which was amusing cuz all the happy old people and families are in there and then there's me, Rachael and Mikayla laughing about eggs and chocolate donuts. Ah, good times. Then yesterday was pretty much a waste, we had to be out of the hotel by 1 and our flight wasn't until 5 so we just wasted time in the airport, then we didn't get off the bus from the Barcelona airport until like 8ish. Bleh.

After we got back I went to the Hard Rock Cafe with Ainslie and Amanda, which was awesome and horrible at the same time. The food was amazing, I had salmon on penne pasta and a margarita, but Amanda and Ainslie were annoying the hell out of me and I was tired and sick so that wasn't fun. They made friends with some creepy Spanish men and were going to go to a discoteca with them, so I just left and got some coffee with Ben and vented a bit and then just talked about nerdy things. I was so exhausted but when I went home I couldn't sleep because my throat was so dry and uncomfortable, so now I'm still tired and nasty feeling. I hate being sick. Though maybe now this will be a good reason for me to be a hermit for a few days and just sleep away the time until I can go HOME. :D

I'm going to be kind of sad though when I go home, just because most of the people in this program are leaving after this semester, and while I'm not a huge fan of a lot of them, it's still going to be sad. It's not like in grade school where most of the people will be back the next year, and while some people leave here and there, by and large it's the same crew of people for a long time. But I'll never see most of these people again, and that's just kind of sad. There's a handful of people that I will definitely miss :'(

In other news (oh yes, there's MORE!) I think I might possibly maybe be getting a Wii for Christmas, which makes me smile. I told my mom I also want a flatscreen TV and a laptop, and I think she's going to kindly tell me to go fuck myself. Oh well.

Oh and don't pay attention to the subject, it's a joke from this weekend that I find way too funny not to mention, so it's for my personal humor.