Reality Sets In

On Sunday, I mentioned that the 20-minutes-a-day cooking plan was actually true to its name. Unfortunately, today I have other news to report.

My cooking session yesterday which consisted of pasta with sauce to accompany went much longer than planned. Despite the helpful suggestion that pasta cooked in little water can be cooked more quickly, I still ended up spending a full hour in the kitchen.

This didn't even include the time I spent to cook the broccoli, though this only took about 10 minutes, so it could have easily been squeezed in to the same cooking session. Though I intended to have fresh broccoli to eat, apparently I escaped from Open Harvest without picking it up and I ended up using frozen broccoli that I had left over in my freezer. This fits in well with the plan, since the 20-minute-a-day starter plan is not meant to provide all of your meals, but allows you to use up what remaining items are in your pantry while learning new menu items from the book.

This also didn't include the nearly 2 hours I spent trying to make yogurt.

I don't even usually buy yogurt for myself, but the idea of making something that I usually have to pay money for so intrigues me that I have to rise to the challenge. Because of this, I learned how to make cottage cheese. Apparently if you boil milk you can make yogurt. Boil it for too long though, and the milk begins to curd, giving you cottage cheese. The trick lies in being able to identify when it just starts to boil, which I obviously found quite difficult. I got it right on the second try though, and I have two jars of (hopefully) yogurt in my refrigerator now that I am looking forward to trying.

The yogurt brings up an important issue with the starter plan though, it includes a recipe which calls for yogurt, despite an absence of yogurt in the other cooking plans. A small complaint, but it's worth noting that yogurt is needed for one of the recipes.

Not so Wildly Affordable Organic

After a long hiatus, I've decided to commit to writing on this blog again. This is, of course, against my better judgment because as a Grad. Student I have very little free time, and it most likely should not be devoted to ramblings on the Internet.

In any case, I have decided to start blogging again to document my slow spiral of descent into hippie land. That's right, today I bought my year's worth of membership to Open Harvest Grocery in Lincoln. What is Open Harvest, well it's exactly what it sounds like, an organic centric grocery store that has sky-high prices and a pretentious atmosphere. Why would I pay to be a part of such a place? Well, because I've got mad cash and a pretentious air about myself that I think could really contribute to the place. Or maybe there's something else. Yeah, it's definitely something else.

I've always been a fan of maintaining a proper diet (not eating copious amount of junk food and trying to limit fats) and being responsible to the environment (which can be particularly difficult in Lincoln, since they don't have a pick-up garbage service). I've also always been a fan of saving money. Unfortunately, saving money, being friendly to the environment, and eating a proper diet are often at odds with each other. Because of this conflict I was thrilled to hear about a book that seemed to solve all those problems. The book is called Wildly Affordable Organic by Linda Watson, and it claims that you can eat in a healthy and environmentally friendly way for under $5 a day. I put it on my list of things that I want but don't feel the immediate need to spend money on (my wish list) and was thrilled when my mother purchased it for me for Christmas.

Now I've began the process of assimilating the book's knowledge into my life. There is a convenient, cook-for-only-20-minutes-a-day starter plan that I've put into motion. I'll talk more about it in the coming days, but for now, I want to just raise a couple of my primary joys and concerns with the book.

1. In the starter plan, lunch is sometimes scheduled to be celery sticks or green bell pepper sticks. That's it. A fascicle of peppers. I realize that my appetite is probably different than most people's but I don't know anyone that would be satisfied with that for a meal.

2. After my first trip to the store, it became abundantly clear that $5 a day was a generously low figure. In my first trip to the store, I far exceeded that amount. Some of the prices the book quoted for items were 2 or 3 times more expensive in the store. I could have made another trip to a supermarket to get some lower prices, but that takes a lot of another valuable resource that I have, time. I wonder if Mrs. Watson took this into account when she wrote her book. Now that I've got that out of my system, I will clarify that I might not have gone over the budget. Yes, I spent more than $150 at the grocery store, but I might have more than 30 days of meals in my cart, as many of the recipes will serve more than one person.

3. I'm excited to make my own yogurt. I've already created a nest where my milk can culture.

4. The reported 20-minutes-a-day cook time has so far held up. The cooking schedule for the first day fell well within this range, even though I had never made the recipes before. I'm mildly impressed. I have a batch of chocolate pudding and a vinaigrette dressing prepared for the week and the chocolate pudding was quite delicious.

And It Ended With a Peanut Butter Creme Pie

When I got on my bike this afternoon, I wasn't expecting to get a lesson on how I should approach grad school. I also wasn't expecting to eat a Peanut Butter Creme Pie, to have my chain fall off of my bike in the middle of the road, or to have removed $5 from my wallet. What I was expecting to do was to go take some pictures of a sunset.

I was expecting to take some pictures of a sunset, and in fact, that is what I did. I noticed that the sky was looking fairly pretty and thought that I would snap a couple pictures before going to the Physics building to finish my homework for the week. My favorite place to watch the sunset is on top of a parking garage. A flat concrete space is not the most scenic of places, but it gets you high up so that you have a nice view of the whole sky. Here is one of the pictures that I took:

It's pretty nice, isn't it? Anyway, I then proceeded to go to the Physics building, deciding to take a different route than I normally do. This is partially because I was coming from the parking garage, but also because I wanted to try out the cool bike lane that was on one of the streets that I passed. I'm the kind of person that likes to bike on the road, not the sidewalk, so it was an interesting change of pace to not have cars whizzing past me so close. I found out that this road was a bad one to take because it seemed like the civil engineers had designed it just right so that people riding on bikes would hit every red light. Maybe they figured that people would like to have a break from peddling every 15 seconds? It was quite annoying, but I decided to make the best of the situation and work on shifting gears down when I came to a stop and then back up once the light turned green.

It was at this point, that I learned a very valuable lesson that I already knew in the back of my head, but never really paid any attention to. The lesson is this: When shifting gears, one should only shift one gear at a time. If one tries to shift multiple gears in a switch, there is a chance that the chain will dislodge from the gears. Thankfully, I was in the bike lane when this happened and there were no other bikes behind me. I was able to dismount my bike and wait for the cars to pass before hauling my bike over to the sidewalk. Why did I have to haul my bike? Couldn't I have just walked it? Well, no. The chain managed to get lodged on the spoke side of the gear on the rear tire, and was stopping the wheel from rotating in a normal manner. I tried to jiggle it around a little bit, hoping it would come free and I could continue on my way to the Physics building. No such luck.

But there was still a chance that I could get it unstuck! If I flipped the bike over, I could maybe get better control and easier access to the chain. Alas, even from this improved angle of attack it was stuck in there really well. It was lodged securely under the gear so that if you rotated the wheel, the chain just got more and more stuck.

I'm not one that gives up so easily though. If I just tried harder it could come loose and I would be on my way. I took off my backpack and camera and set them on the ground so that they wouldn't get in my way either. After another 10 minutes of struggling with the chain, I was no closer to having it come loose.

At this point, I was really hoping that someone would just acknowledge my plight and try to help me with my bike. Wish granted. I heard someone call at me from about 15 feet away, "Do you have a flat tire?"
    "No," I replied. "The chain just came loose."
    "Oh, I'm real good with bikes, I can get that fixed in no time."

Something about the way that my good samaritan said those words let me know that despite his best efforts, I was probably going to have to carry my bike all the way home. Despite this initial assessment, I thought an extra pair of hands might be just the thing I needed to fix it.

Matt and Larry, two very nice people without a place to call home, tried to help me fix my bike chain. They had the reasonable idea to just spin the wheel quickly and hope for the best, this went South very quickly as Larry left his fingers too close to the gears and the chain pulled his fingers in, pinching them pretty severely. They initially thought they had fixed it because the wheel spun for a short period of time, but it turned out to just lodge the chain further down between the gear and the spokes. I thanked Matt for his attempt to help, but said it would probably be best if I just took the bike to a shop. I think he heard me, but he decided to continue doing his best to unstick the chain. I could clearly see that he wasn't going to get anywhere, but he had other ideas. Thankfully, Larry convinced him to stop trying. Before I was able to pick up my bike, backpack, and camera and get out of there. Larry made sure to let me know that any help I could provide he would really appreciate, he was hoping to be able to get something to eat tonight. They had been nice enough, I decided to give the two of them a $5 bill for their troubles.

Carrying my bike home, I realized that I could have handled the situation a lot better. Giving $5 to the two of them was a nice gesture, but a better approach would have been to take them to a restaurant and order something off the menu for each of them. This way, they would be sure to actually get food with their money, and I would also have the chance to talk to them and maybe hear their story. I don't plan on having random strangers helping me in the street in the future, but if they do, I will thank them with a meal rather than money.

Upon arriving at home, I went up to the closet and retrieved a wrench, hoping that I would be able to fix my bike on my own and be able to ride it to work the next day. I took the wrench down to the bike and in less than a minute had the chain unstuck and the bike fully functional.

From this experience, I learned that working harder won't accomplish much. Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results will produce only a lot of wasted time. I saw a little bit of myself in Matt as he tried over and over again to fix the bike and got nowhere. I spent so much time trying to fix the problem when in reality I shouldn't have spent more than a minute trying to fix my bike. Once it became clear that I wasn't getting anywhere, I should have looked for a different solution to the problem. In short, I needed to work smarter, not harder.

I feel this way in graduate school a lot. I think that I should be able to just work extra hard to solve the problem. In reality, I should look for another tool to solve the problem it's a process, but I think that I'm learning to be better about this.

Having just been through a really stressful situation and having successfully come out of it on top. I thought it best to reward myself with a Peanut Butter Creme Pie. I don't usually like to eat junk food, but it really felt right in that moment. A side note: I'm pretty sure that when God provided mana to the Israelites in the wilderness it was actually Peanut Butter Creme Pies, they just didn't know what to call them at the time. Those things are divine.

I run the Streets of this Town

Literally.

I made it my mission to explore Lincoln in the best way possible, by putting my sneakers to the pavement. I decided to explore a very specific region, only the lettered streets and only between 1st and 27th streets. It took me just under 3 months to do, but I learned a couple interesting facts about streets in the process. Here is a short list of facts.

1. Certain lettered streets don't exist. Both I Street and Z Street are absent from downtown Lincoln. I can only assume this is to avoid confusion with 1st and 2nd Street.
2. V Street does exist in Lincoln. Some people might think that V Street was simplly replaced with Vine Street, but there is also a V Street.
3. There are some really nice houses between 20th and 25th Streets on B and C Streets. It would be really nice to have a place in that area.
4. One way streets are awesome. It makes crossing the street outside of the crosswalks a whole lot easier.

With all of downtown under my belt, I think my next exercise activity will be biking to the various parks and trails in Lincoln. Hopefully the weather will stay warm for a couple more weeks!

Apple's Unheard Announcement

With all the hype over the last couple weeks for Apple's new products, the Apple Watch and the new iPhones, another one of Apple's implied announcements went unnoticed, the death of the clickwheel.

For a long time, it was the identifying feature of all Apple products. Everyone knew the motion of rolling their thumb in circles just to get to that song that they wanted to hear. Now, Apple has removed the Classic iPod from the iPod lineup, leaving nothing but touchscreen devices on the iPod section of their website. Everyone please, pause for a moment of silence as we mourn the passing of our good friend, the clickwheel.

I'm such a good guy... or am I?

I like to think of myself as a good guy. I doubt that you're surprised by this, I think that most people like to think of themselves as nice people. I also try to be fair. Everyone should have an equal opportunity to get something they want. Sometimes, these two things are at odds.

I was proctoring a Physics exam the other day. This gives me many opportunities to be nice. I can smile at students as they hand in their tests, I can walk to the students when they have a question, rather than having them come to me, the list could go on and on.

I also have many opportunities to be fair. When a student has a question, I have to be careful not to give the student a hint about how to solve the problem when I answer the question. Often, this just means that I am limited to re-reading the question to them aloud.

Something that I discovered isn't so clear, is loaning materials to students. If someone forgets their calculator, my nice guy instinct says the I should give it to them. But then, what if another student needs a calculator. For can I be fair with my limited resources? After giving it much thought, I've decided that I have no fairness qualms with loaning my calculator to a person. All students are supposed to bring their own calculators, so it's their own fault if they don't bring one, but I can make a difference in at least one student's day by letting them borrow mine.

Free Dessert Dilemma

In my previous post, I mentioned how much I enjoyed getting free stuff. While sometimes free stuff is just given to you, like with the Redbox free rentals, other times there is some serious strategery involved.

For example, there is definitely an artform to complaining in order to get free stuff. Usually I'm not one to complain. I'm willing to lay down and take whatever misfortune may come upon me and see it as an opportunity to "build character." While most of the time I think that I am a better person because I choose not to complain about things, sometimes complaining is the right thing to do, right?

As an example, I present to you the free dessert dilemma. I don't often eat out at restaurants, it's much too expensive for my taste. On this occasion I had a giftcard to a particular restaurant and I decided to take my girlfriend out to a nice dinner since she was visiting for the weekend. We were having an enjoyable dinner after the starters and I was looking forward to the moment when my steak that I had ordered would arrive. Naturally I had avoided eating too large of a lunch in order to reach full appreciation of my special day of eating at a restaurant.

At last the time arrived, I saw a waiter coming with two meals that looked to be my own and my girlfriend's. With a flourish, the pasta dish for my girlfriend was delivered to the table. With... much less of a flourish, my dish was also delivered to the table. What follows is a recount of the events between when the waiter picked up my dish and when the dish settled on the table.

The waiter, with much confidence, grabbed my steak plate with a napkin in hand and began lifting it off his tray. A fraction of a second later, the waiter realized that the napkin was not going to provide sufficient heat insulation I could see the pain he was in by the way his eyes enlarged to nearly twice their normal size and his hand did its best to simultaneously let go and hold on to the plate. Yes, the plate was too hot and he shouldn't be holding it, but he was determined to fulfill his duty to place my meal in front of me. While this motion was going on, our ears were also graced with the waiter's verbal recognition that trying to use a napkin as a hot pad holder was not a good idea. It included an expletive followed by the observation, "That's hot!"

The plate did make it in front of me, but my meal wasn't the only thing that arrived. The funny thing about the waiter's action of both holding on to and letting go of the plate at the same time is that it required his whole upper body to be over top of the table. Thankfully, his feet were still firmly anchored to the floor, so the story doesn't end with a waiter joining my meal on the table. What did happen was a little drop of spit came out of the waiter's mouth as he completed the verbal portion of his act. It sailed through the air and landed right in the middle of my plate. I blinked, not entirely sure if what I just saw actually did happen. Thankfully, the waiter was sure of what he just saw happen and said, "I'm so sorry, that plate was really hot and I think I just spit a little bit on your plate."

I wasn't entirely sure what to say. I knew that I should probably complain and ask him to take the steak back immediately. On the other hand, I was mostly okay with a single drop of spit on my plate. That's what I have an immune system for, right? Again, the waiter took over for me and said that he would get a second dish out for me right away.

But this is where the dilemma actually begins. I've heard stories about people finding undesirable things in their meals and then getting free stuff because of it. Should I complain and possibly get free stuff? I could, but I'm not one to complain. Thankfully, I didn't have to solve this moral quandary. The manager came up to our table and apologized for what happened. He asked if we would be getting dessert that night, then said it would be "on him" if we did.

I didn't have to complain, but when we got our check, we were still charged for dessert. The gentleman that I am, I made my girlfriend complain to the server that it should have been free. I guess you could say that I have a somewhat extreme aversion to complaining.