The first hurdle

My office had a catered lunch today as a farewell for some employees who are leaving. The restaurant who catered it is a yummy Lebanese place, and as a result there was all sorts of delicious food like chicken shawarma and hummus.

But damn it, shawarma is flavoured with animal fat and the chicken version comes with a super-greasy sauce, and the hummus was floating in oil. And those things do not come close to qualifying as Healthy Living.

But it was a farewell lunch for people who've been with the company for years. I swear that one person said in his speech that he's been here for 42 years, although the shock of that is so great that I am still convinced that I heard him wrong. Regardless, though, he's been here for an effing long time and I work with him and a few of the others every day, so I had to attend.

So I heated up my whole wheat spaghetti with tomatoes, herbs, and goat cheese (just a little) and my chicken with lemon, capers, and artichokes, and I moved it from its tupperware container to one of the plastic plates provided to be a little less conspicuous, and yet everyone AND THEIR BROTHER'S DOG came up to me and said, "Why are you eating that? Do you not like Lebanese food?"

(It's important to imagine, in the previous paragraph, the tone in which that last question was asked: pitying half-condescension for the poor sheltered American girl who says about everything, "If I can't pronounce it, I won't eat it." Keep in mind that this is an international public health organization where allowances are not made for people with narrow world views.)

Anyway, so not only did I have to eat my boring leftovers (which under normal circumstances I would have considered quite tasty) while everyone at my table ate delicious, dripping food in front of me before going back for seconds, but I had to turn around every few minutes to say again, "No, I actually do like Lebanese cuisine a lot, I'm just trying to avoid eating greasy food."

It was about 9,000 times worse than last week when we had our monthly birthday bash and I stayed and chatted with people who were all eating cake and ice cream while I had nothing.

Man, who knew that offices were such sources of unhealthy food? It's like a minefield around here.

Anyway, I am pleased to report that despite the constant questioning and the extreme proximity to the delicious grease, I did not have one single bite of the unhealthy catered food.

I am determined, damn it. And stubborn.

Healthy living

So the one type of blog post that bores me beyond almost any other is the type where cooking-obsessed people detail the ostentatiously difficult and exotic meal that they whipped up from scratch without a recipe the night before... pretending that they are just excited about the delicious meal that they ate but really just bragging about what brilliant chefs they are (not to mention showing off their ridiculously expensive kitchen equipment).

You know the type: I had such a hard time finding galangal in Manhattan. This place is so uncultured. Luckily, I know exactly where to look for these things, so I managed to track some down in the end. I used my 39-speed food processor from Williams-Sonoma to purée it, then blended it with Italian winter black truffle oil. Then I simply added some cubeb before brushing the red snapper with the mixture so it would be ready to sear. To make a side dish, I simply used one of my Kasumi titanium knives to prepare a few marangs for flambéing. But of course I culled the seeds for roasting first; I used them later to garnish the snapper.

So before I continue with this entry, let me just make clear: everything I cooked was from a recipe. It only worked because I followed the recipe exactly. I am not a master chef. I can only cook if someone (or a cookbook) is holding my hand.

Nonetheless, I feel the need to share my excitement about this. Now that Torsten and I are living in a place with a fully stocked kitchen (unlike the kitchen in his former apartment, which did not contain a saucepan, any sort of measuring device, or a spoon larger than a soup spoon), we have given up on our former lifestyle of eating at restaurants or getting frozen meals from Trader Joe's every night. Now we are cooking. But not just cooking. We're cooking healthy. (Well, actually, I'm doing most of the cooking. This is not because Torsten doesn't want to help but rather because even though he is the better cook of the two of us, his skills run more toward the above-represented whipping up of great food without a recipe, which does not lend itself toward healthy eating as it usually involves pouring unmeasured but large amounts of oil, cream, or other unhealthy substances into every dish; also, I finish work earlier than he does.)

The amazing thing about all of this is that it's possible to cook something other than my old standby of pasta with tuna. If you use a recipe from a healthy cookbook or website, you can cook good food, real food like you might order in a restaurant, and you can cook it without all the unhealthy ingredients.

As evidence, I submit a list of the dishes that I personally have prepared over the past week:

• Shrimp pad thai
• Linguine with clams in a white wine sauce
• Lemon-herb risotto with havarti and smoked salmon
• Spinach enchiladas with shrimp veracruz
• Tomato-basil bruschetta
• Caprese rice salad
• Baked shrimp in a lemon-garlic sauce
• Spinach fettuccine with salmon in a creamy sauce
• Chicken with scallion sauce
• Polenta with baby spinach

Every single one of those things is something that I would consider ordering off a restaurant menu. Except that since I made them myself, I know that they are healthy. And yet they still taste good. Recipes enable a person to prepare a variety of exciting meals that actually taste good. Not just fancy master-chef-type people, but all people. Did you know that? Because I didn't.

Lame? Whatever.

Yesterday I logged into Facebook and noticed a little icon on the right sidebar telling me that I had a new notification. Apparently this was not a notification worthy of sending me an email; rather, I just had to notice it myself on the site. I clicked on it and was informed that I had been judged on Facebook's new Lamefactor application.

Let me back up. Facebook has just recently added all sorts of silly applications that let users personalize their profiles just a bit more. Samples include a graffiti application that allows users to draw on each other's designated graffiti walls, a "places visited" map that shows which countries and/or US states the user has been to, a "political compass" designed by the Washington Post to tell you where you lie on the liberal-conservative scale, and a movies application that lets you rate movies you've seen, list movies you want to see, and compare your movie profile to those of your friends.

There are a lot of them altogether, probably hundreds. I added three: the graffiti, the map, and the political compass. But now I'm sort of vaguely convinced that the applications exist just so that we can get more spammed than we already do, because the application cannot be installed unless you grant it access to all your information. So today I removed the three that I had.

Anyway, back to the Lamefactor thing. Curious about who had "judged" me (and not happy about the pejorative connotation of the word), I clicked on the link and was informed that I had to install the Lamefactor application in order to see my rating. Rating? Okay, fine. I added it. Then I was informed that somebody had anonymously rated me on some sort of lameness scale, and that I wouldn't be able to see my rating until a second person rated me as well.

For a brief second, I thought about asking Torsten to rate me just so I could see what the other rating was. Then I got a grip on myself and realized that I just wasn't that interested in what some random, anonymous person rated me on a scale. So I went into my profile to delete the application and noticed that despite claims of needing a second rating before I could see the results, my "Lamefactor" was posted on my profile for all to see: 2.5.

A quick look around the application defined the possible rankings for me: 1=lame, 2.5=whatever, 5=solid, and 7.5 and 10 equal silly (might I even say... lame) strings of adjectives basically saying "I like this person."

I could be offended by this. After all, 2.5 out of ten isn't exactly a great score. But then I did a quick assessment of the implications of this rating: Someone, who has to be a Facebook friend of mine in order to access my profile and yet chose to remain anonymous and therefore render their neatly packaged "opinion" useless, bothered to go onto the profile of a friend of theirs who didn't even have the application installed (most likely because she could care less what her lamefactor is), in order to rate them "whatever."

Doesn't that seem like an oxymoron? This person is "whatever," therefore I couldn't care less about them, and yet I choose to spend time TELLING them that I am indifferent to them.

Speaking of lame, is all I'm saying.

Like living in a warehouse

So, when I said packing sucked, I was just kidding. What actually sucks is moving.

Torsten and I thought we could do it in three hours. We had a pickup truck borrowed from a friend, Torsten's freight elevator reserved from 3-5, and my freight elevator reserved from 4-6. We had a couch, a mattress, a coffee table, a desk, a piano (an electric one, not an upright), a giant ironing board, an extremely long and unwieldy projector screen, an upright Japanese screen, five large suitcases, and approximately ten boxes.

It took eight hours. Seriously. We started at two and we finished at ten. Torsten's freight elevator gets locked promptly at five, so when we realized how long everything was taking, we ended up having to haul all of Torsten's stuff down the freight elevator into the parking garage at once. Then once it was down there, we made trips to my building (about a fifteen minute drive each way), where we left stuff on the lawn while we went back for more. Yes, a bird shat on the couch (Torsten managed to wipe most of it off). Yes, we did have to convince a neighbour to help us get the couch into the bedroom (there is no room for it in the living room as I already have a couch, an armchair, a desk, a coffee table, a bookshelf, and a big entertainment center in the living room, and we need to leave a wall empty to use Torsten's projector). Yes, we did have to remove the doors from the hall closet to get the couch into the bedroom. Yes, even with the extra closet space for maneuvering, we did scrape paint off the door frame with the couch's feet. And yes, when I said "we" in those last two sentences, I really meant "Torsten and our neighbour."

It was horrible. And now it's over only in the most literal sense of the word. All of the stuff is in my apartment. But it's piled everywhere. I was late to work this morning because it took me about fifteen minutes to find things like the toothbrush and work-appropriate clothing.

So now comes the unpacking/organizing. The goal is to have it done by the end of the weekend. It can't be any worse than the moving, right?

Packing sucks.

So Torsten is moving in with me on Monday. This necessitates, obviously, a thorough Going-Through of all of the crap (I mean, extremely important personal belongings) that he has accumulated in his apartment over the past two years.

Actually, that's not really fair. He doesn't have much crap. He mostly just has huge piles of boxes and packaging, because almost all of his belongings were ordered on Amazon, and apparently hauling the packages and padding that once contained said belongings all the way down the hall to the trash room is too much of a daunting task to truly be contemplated.

Anyway, everything was fine until I came across the gift bag that once upon a time (okay, on February 14) contained Torsten's Valentine's Day gift to me. It is a lovely bag, white with silver hearts (I think), transparent rubber handles, and (best of all) a pale purple interior. But it has lain empty and dusty on the floor of his apartment for four months.

Quite reasonably (I thought), I asked Torsten if he thought we would ever use the bag again, or if it could potentially be thrown away.

The response I got was the most hurt, accusing look ever. I only wish I'd had a camera.

So, we're keeping the gift bag. Forever, apparently.

All I can say is, we're keeping it on his side of the closet. Which is, for the record, the smaller side.

Bigfoot

My office building had its annual summer BBQ today, and as I was standing in line with a few of my coworkers, I complimented the shoes of a particularly petite female coworker of mine.

"Thanks," she answered. "You can borrow them whenever you like."

I stared at her tiny feet and asked what size shoe she wore. The response was about what I expected: seven and a half.

I told her that I appreciated her offer but that I was fairly certain that her miniature shoes were not going to fit on my size-eleven feet.

"You wear a size eleven?!" she exclaimed in shock. "You would never guess that from looking at your feet!"

A whole bunch of my tiny-footed, female coworkers gathered around, assessing my feet. The result was a consensus—nobody would ever look at my feet and assume they were big enough to merit size eleven shoes.

For the first time in my life, I feel smug about my feet.

Night school

Torsten and I went to my parents' house in North Carolina this weekend with my sister and brother-in-law, primarily to attend the high school graduation of a family friend. On Saturday night my parents took my sister and brother-in-law to their dance lesson and Torsten and I had some time to ourselves. We first used it, obviously, to go to my favourite sushi restaurant ever, which is surprisingly located in Raleigh.

Afterward as we drove back to Durham, there was a major thunderstorm. The temperature during the day had been a miserable 90ish degrees, and as we drove we watched the number on the outside thermometer drop to 74. It was still early, so Torsten requested that I bring him somewhere nice that he hadn't seen before. Durham isn't exactly the most thrilling of locations, so I ended up bringing him to my old school, which I attended from kindergarten through high school.

By the time we got there, it had stopped raining. The campus was open, as I knew it would be, and nobody was there. In case you can't tell from the pictures on the website, the school strongly resembles a summer camp... a small, sprawling campus set back from the road in the woods. Some of the buildings are very old, built out of weathered wood. The wooden car that I used to pretend to drive when I was six still sits on the lower school playground. Newer buildings sprout among the older structures, but they mostly sit low to the ground and blend in fairly well. The ground was wet and there were a few orange streetlights lit along the driveway. I parked the car by the lower school and we got out and walked around. We could hear frogs, and insects, and electrical humming. I showed Torsten my old playground, my favourite places to play when I was six.

We walked up past the middle school and through what we used to call the "Quaker Dome," the open, barn-shaped structure where we played basketball and volleyball before the gym was built when I was in high school. We left the sidewalk and walked across the middle school soccer field to the bridge over the creek that separates the middle and upper schools. The upper school main building is the structure on campus that looks most like it belongs in a summer camp: an old, creaky wooden building with a huge, wide, wooden staircase leading up to it and trees all around. It was wet, so we didn't sit.

When we were done looking, we walked back to the car. Before we left, we drove to the top of the hill at the back of the campus and looked at the baseball diamond and the early school. The playground hasn't changed since I was five.

Unacceptable administrative oversights

Torsten just got a phone call from a doctor at the hospital where he had his surgery, saying that she just wanted to make sure that she had his positive HIV test on record correctly.

Let me clarify that Torsten is not HIV-positive. We both got tested for HIV last year, both of our tests were negative, and neither of us had engaged in risky behaviour before or since those tests.

But still. Imagine having a doctor calling you up and saying that to you. When he asked her what the hell she was talking about, she sympathetically informed him that during his hospital visit, they had done a routine HIV test and it had come back positive. Luckily Torsten had his wits about him enough to recall that when we were in the hospital, they offered him such a test, but he refused it, due to the aforementioned HIV test that he had undergone months earlier. When he insisted that she double check, she realized that his folder had mistakenly been placed on the wrong pile.

I understand that mistakes happen, and that things get mis-filed. But please, before you call someone up on the phone and tell them that they have an incurable virus that will eventually lead to their premature death, couldn't you just make sure that your information is accurate? Because once you've caused a heart attack on the other end of the phone line, "Oh, my bad" doesn't really cut it.

Obnoxiously bad parenting

I just read an article on CNN about the dangers of Heelys, those obnoxious sneakers that kids wear with the little wheels in the soles so that kids can roll around instead of walking like normal people. I already hated those stupid shoes, and find it really obnoxious when kids go weaving around crowded sidewalks, forcing people to jump out of their way. It's not like rollerbladers where you can at the very least see that they are on wheels... instead, it's very discreet and you can't tell that a kid is wearing them until they've already whizzed by you and/or bumped into you. Now I am reading this article that points out that a lot of kids have broken bones trying to learn how to use them, or even once they already knew how, and that even if the kids don't fall, it's bad for their feet and tendons to put all that pressure on their heels, which is required to make the wheels work. It doesn't seem surprising to me that kids break themselves using the damn things, because they are roller skates without the protective gear. But of course in today's culture of give your kids everything they want, make sure they're part of the latest trend, and never do anything so horrifying as forcing them to walk down the hallway at school instead of roll, parents don't think about things like, "Oh, my kid could crack his head open using those." Apparently there has even been one death caused by these shoes, though the article didn't detail the circumstances around it. And it describes one mom saying how her son got a piece of gravel stuck in his wheel, fell, and seriously hurt himself. Then she took the wheels away. Like it couldn't have occurred to her earlier that such a thing might happen? It seems like most parents belong to the "lock the stable door after the horse has bolted" school of child-rearing practices.

I can't stand most modern parenting practices. And I'm sick of babysitting for a bunch of brats whose parents have no rules, or never enforce their rules consistently, and as a result I end up dealing with kids who have no idea how to deal with limits. They think it's perfectly acceptable to get out of bed at midnight to demand a doll that they forgot to bring to bed with them, and who do really horrible things like try to rub their siblings with their dirty toilet paper (that happened to me a couple months ago). And their parents do nothing about it, except exclaim in mild horror, or attempt to force an insincere apology from their child.

I know I don't have kids and I therefore don't really know what it's like. And I know everybody who doesn't have kids always says this. And I'm not saying that my kids will be perfect angels and never selfish little brats. But at the very least, my child will never have sneaky, obnoxious wheeled sneakers. And if he does horrible, rude, bratty things, he will be punished for them.

In the meantime, I am seriously considering a permanent retirement from my babysitting career.

Nervous mishmash

I downloaded Google Earth last week and used it to check out my host families' houses in France and Senegal. I managed to pinpoint the exact house I lived in in each country. I have to say, seeing my old house in Dakar was particularly interesting, especially because I had never really seen a map of it before. You can't zoom in that close with Google Earth because the image gets blurry, but I could trace the exact paths I took to the student center, to my friends' houses, to classes at the university, and to my favourite beach spot. I could see the curves of the roads that I had forgotten that I remembered. I could see the colour of the ocean, unbelievably turquoise, but not unbelievable because I saw it myself and it really is that colour.

I am nervous and jittery right now, and thus having trouble concentrating. Torsten and I are thinking of buying a car. Would it be ridiculous to buy an impractical two-seater sports car because we both love it? My sister thinks so. I'm not sure I agree.