Optimality

seb — Tue, 22 May 2007 06:05:00 +0000

A piece of paper, crumpled and ironed into the street in the silhouette a squashed, bleached little human. I thought briefly about picking it up, leaving a chalk outline to mark the crime. I thought, wouldn’t that be a neat-o litter campaign?

It would probably just waste chalk.

I start my new job tomorrow! And in 3 months, I’ll have health insurance again.

“back” to “normal”

seb — Sat, 19 May 2007 15:55:24 +0000

I stopped writing here (shortly after I started writing here) because I broke up with the boy and in the turmoil of changing my life routines, this got thrown by the wayside. But now things are settling down, slowly. I’ve defended my undergrad thesis, written my final final paper, graduated from college (!!) and found a job. It’s not a good job — it’s actually mindless and kinda crappy and my grandma will insist I’m too smart for it — but it’ll pay the rent, and help bide my time while I figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Yeah, I’m just like everyone else. But hey, I’ll try to write.

chocolate stout cake

seb — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 06:37:18 +0000

Yesterday a friend and I made this cake to take to a party. It came out wonderfully moist and chocolatey, although somewhat crumbly. The recipe yielded more batter than we really knew what to do with, so we threw it into every muffin and loaf tin that we could find in her house. One of these was a mini muffin tin, and there was no way in hell the crumbly chocolate cake would extract itself from the pan in one piece. The larger cupcakes and loaves came out great, though. At my friend’s insistence I brought home one of the cakes (most of them were bound for a party, and she kept the largest “loaf” for her housemates to share.) I’m not sure why, as I don’t really have a sweet tooth — I think I might take it to class with me tomorrow, but two of the six people in the class are vegan and the cake, with its four sticks of butter and four eggs, is most definitely not.

At any rate: thumbs up for the recipe, but if anyone comes up with a way to firm it up a bit, I’d love to hear it.

I spent most of the weekend in meetings or at parties; the upshot of it all is that I’ve eaten too much greasy, fatty food and drank too much beer. I think I might spend the week inventing tasty, tasty salads to detox a little bit.

seb — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 22:32:34 +0000

I’ve realized that if I wait until I have a Truly Original Wonderful Blog Idea to write in this, it will probably never get written, and will have an air of forced pretension to it should I actually ever write a post. So I will write about my life, instead, which incorporates all the things I’d kind of like to write about, anyway.

I’ve been fighting with my housemate-and-close-friend for a while now, on and off. Throughout the fall and early winter I was having a difficult time dealing with some anxiety, and I figured that as soon as I started to feel a little bit better, it would go away. Unfortunately, it hasn’t. I’m a little at a loss for what to do — she and I have been good friends for a long time, but I moved in with her even though I knew that I sometimes need some distance from her. Is this just a matter of two people living together who don’t get along as roommates? I’m afraid that might be the case, but I want to exhaust the other possibilities first because any situation involving one of us moving out of the house would probably dissolve our friendship, at least for a while — not to mention the fact that I don’t particularly want to move or look for a new roommate for the last three months of school.

It’s a little frustrating, not being able to understand what’s going on in the head of a close friend. I’ve tried to write without revealing too many details, just to avoid being rude — but I’m realizing now that I don’t have a good idea of what the details actually are. It’s almost as if we just, one day, completely stopped being able to communicate without irritating one another. I think she talks to much, she thinks my terseness is annoying, and so on until we’re blowing up at each other during breakfast (which is what happened today.)

I think the best solution at this point is to give it some time, and then I need to get my thumb out of my ass so we can have a heart-to-heart. I dislike them, as I don’t really like talking about my feelings, but it needs to happen. And then I can write here about more interesting things.

new shoes?

seb — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 06:22:17 +0000

I decided, impulsively, that I needed a blog. I’ve been on a self-improvement kick, lately, and I’m happy about it: I’m coming out of six months of aggravating anxiety and entering my last semester of school (ever, I hope.)

I can’t be entirely certain what shape this space will take. I created it to force myself to work on my writing, and force myself to actually think about things when I’m not working on my thesis. This is not to say, of course, that I will actually write about anything important, but rather that it’s an exercise in writing freely and in forming my opinions about issues.

Generally, the things I care about are: feminism, triathlon, vegetarianism and nutrition, language, psychology, and animals. I like a challenge. So far in 2007, I have developed crushes on Jimi Hendrix and House. I’m slowly learning how to drive, and might even have a driver’s license by the time I graduate college.