: on cooking crawfish

Well, Happy Mardi Gras everyone.

Mardi Gras means all kinds of things: bright colors, extravagant parades, wanton debauchery, and OF COURSE, delicious food.

In honor of my friend Dane's departure to Nashville, TN, I'm making a Creole-feast for dinner tonight. And what Creole-feast would be complete without, you guessed it: crawfish?.

Now, I've had crawfish several times. Mostly the tails, and it always arrives cooked. On my plate, and usually simmering in buttery goodness. And being the adventerous cook that I am, I didn't really worry too much about the prospect of cooking them myself. So I called up Whole Foods, ordered a couple of pounds, and proceeded to search for recipes on the internet. Much to my horror, the directions kept saying things like "they must be alive when you boil them" and "discard the dead ones." Oh, Lord, forgive me. For I am about to murder.

I'll let you know how it goes.

: on six-hour classes.

Seriously? Seriously. Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Seriously! 

Like, come on, people. I think the grad-school planners must have figured a way to manage the monotony of teaching the same material year after year: mean-spirited nastiness. Because frankly, I can't think of any other way to describe a six-hour long class. Painful? Mind-numbing? Abysmal? Any of those would work too, I suppose. The fact that the material is actually interesting is negated on an inverse correlation to time-spent in the same seat.

But anyway. So here I am: numb-butted from sitting in the same chair for four-and-half-hours, when it's announced that we will be doing group-work. Ah, what joy is mine. This means listening to people who like to listen to themselves give irrelevant judgements on strategic board management; specifically, board-education planning. The next 30 minutes was spent counting backwards from ten in my head over and over again to calm my irritation as I listened to my groupmates try to yell over each other about anything and everything that they thought would best showcase themselves whilst mostly ignoring the scope of the assignment. For reals: I find your resume wholly useless to this task. I'm sure you are incredibly experienced in your various areas, and do your jobs very well, and stuff and things. But pleaseeeeeeeeee. So what happens? I every-so-gently try to steer back to the assignment, and get lectured like a kindergartner. So I work out the presentation by my lonesome while they take turns interrupting one another, which I read off to them three minutes before deadline and then they SERIOUSLY all say, "Wow! You nailed that. You need to be on a board, NOW." This statement was followed by a soft 'POP'- the sound of my head exploding.

Ahhh, grad school. I love you, but I don't have to like you right now.

Other things that are just AWFUL:

1) Having to google-search terms that my professor drops like acceptable English, during lecture, while taking notes.

2) 50-page reading assignments emailed the day before class.

bologna sandwich.

I don't like bologna anyway. It's like the hot-dog of lunchmeats.

Here's how lunch played out today:

Co-worker #1 brings a bologna sandwich in a wonderbread container.

Co-worker #2 and I have already finished our burgers.

3 minutes later we are greeted with a rancid wave of smell like onions and cheetos marinated in mayonaisse.

Co-worker #3 walks in and says "What IS that?"

10 minutes later: The fan is on. I've covered my face with a scarf. I've gagged.

Co-worker #2 to Co-worker #1 "Your stale lunchmeat smells like a trail of tears [another term for crop-dusting, apparently]. And it's just not giving up."

Monkey See, Ursine Do.

So while working on those very important things that I sometimes work on while at work today I came upon this artist-photographer Jill Greenberg. She takes expressive pictures of Monkies, People, Bears, and Celebrities (a seperate category from normal people, obviously). Here are two of my favorites!

Her collection can be found here.

Recipe for a Cranky Rachel

1. When she goes to bed early, make her bedroom a brisk 45 degrees.
2. Force her body to refuse to listen to reason, and therefore, her toes remain frozen all night.
3. Rattle her window all night, in alternating frequencies and decibles, so to be certain to wake her up every time.
4. Call the police, and have them circle the neighborhood in a heliocopter periodically. Flashing lights are in no way discouraged.
5. Take the neighbor dogs for a walk. The little, yippy ones. Annoy them so they yip. A lot.
6. Add Trash-Day (optional).
7. Add snow (recommended), she hates scraping her car.

Combine all ingredients before 8a.m. and shake vigorously. Better yet, shake her vigorously. Then stand back and watch the clouds gather overhead.

things you DON'T expect to hear at the office

"No, that's a toe-ring."

From the mouth of the associate director.

another day at the office

Jarrod tried to change his junkmail folder to read "junk in the trunk" but it wouldn't let him. He expressed this with much disappointment and mumbled something about changing outlook to reflect a more urban feel.

Three minutes later he yelled, "I want some more root beer!"