Living Small

Black Friday

On Friday morning, David and I woke up at his mom's house, having spent the night there after a lovely Thanksgiving dinner.  After a copious breakfast (fruit, pancakes, biscuits, Danish) and much television watching, David announced that he wanted to go to the mall.  I was shocked.  Pretty much as a matter of principle, I avoid shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, which isn't really hard because I don't usually like to shop anyway.  But David is more of a shopper than I am and he wanted to go to the mall.  Not just any mall, but the big fancy Somerset Collection in Troy.  When he explained to me that he wasn't looking for anything in particular and just wanted to go out to do some people-watching, I became game.  Shopping is a lot more fun for me if I'm not looking to actually BUY anything, and the idea of watching crazed shoppers on the craziest shopping day of the year sounded kind of fun.  Since we were already halfway there at David's mom's, it didn't take us long to get there, and David expertly navigated the car to an awesome parking spot.  Once inside, we wandered through Neiman Marcus (where I briefly rethought my not-buying-anything stance when I saw an adorable pair of gray pants -- until I saw the $250 price tag!), sprayed ourselves with perfume, browsed Tumi luggage at several different stores (how is it that the carry-on sized suitcase is $600 at every single store?), bought address numbers at Restoration Hardware, fingered planners at FranklinCovey, and fell in love with the iPhone.  Forget paper planners, we are getting iphones!  David has been angling for one for about the last year now, and our current cell phone contract will be up in the next month and a half, and since we don't have reliable internet access at home...  Well, it all just makes sense now.  And we were particularly impressed with the salesman at the Apple store, who spent an hour showing us the iphone, and didn't even care that we weren't planning on buying anything that day.  Apparently, they don't work on commission, which is a business model I approve of.  I'm not sure we really did our patriotic duty, given that we spent a total of $30 on something we could have bought online at any time and wasn't on sale, but we are now planning to spend $400 on something we don't REALLY need, so perhaps that makes up for it!  

Going Home Early

One of the best things about long weekends is getting sent home early from work the day before.  It happens so frequently around here that it is now pretty much expected.  For days my colleagues and I have been talking about when they would let us go.  And, sure enough, at 1:25 this afternoon, we were told to leave.  Actually, in my unit, we were told that we are probably much too dedicated to our work to leave early, but that everyone else was being sent home.  So we are going too.  Or, at least, I am.  As soon as I finish this post!  So, happy Thanksgiving to everybody.  This year I am particularly thankful to actually be able to eat the meal :)

Decaf, Please

Regular readers (or anyone who has spent more than a few hours with me) know that I love coffee and hate caffeine.  Actually, I like caffeine quite a bit for the first half hour or so, when I'm feeling high and happy and excited, and then I start hating it when I get jittery and wired and can't sleep, which seems to happen no matter how little I consume or when I consume it.  As a result, I drink a lot of decaf.  But sometimes, after I drink my decaf, I'm pretty sure that it wasn't really decaf.  And then I'm even more sure the next day, when I'm still awake!  As a result, I now rarely get coffee anymore except at the places where I can fill my own cup (so I know exactly what I'm getting), and anywhere else, I won't get anything larger than a small (I used to drink a Venti every day).  But I think this might be exactly what I need to put my caffeine-addled mind at rest.  Just think how cool it will be to be able to actually TEST my coffee to make sure it isn't the real thing.  Or for even more fun, I could go around to ALL the coffee shops in Ann Arbor and find out whose decaf has the least caffeine.  Now that sounds like a fun (and productive) way to spend my week off between Christmas and New Year's! 

Fertility Test

Today was the second exam in my demography class.  Have I mentioned that I'm taking a demography class?  This semester, my boss recommended that I take an intro course in demography in order to get some of the background that I didn't have coming into this job.  It turns out that the professor is fantastic and the course is super-interesting, though I am learning what my boss means when he says that "demography isn't rocket science."  Not that it is easy, just straightforward.  David is amused when I read him excerpts from my textbook that state the obvious, such as "everybody is born single."

The first exam was on fertility, today's exam was on mortality.  It had been a VERY long time since I had taken a test.  There had been a couple of tests in my statistics class in the summer of 2007, but I hadn't had an essay test since college.  I have always hated tests, especially essay tests, probably at least since sixth grade, when I failed a test on My Side of the Mountain.  And I think I got a B on the last test I took in college, which for me was pretty much equivalent to failing.  I only managed to get through grad school without ever taking a test because I dropped out before prelims.  But the mortality test really wasn't so bad.  The professor gave us a set of study questions and I studied my ass off on them, but then the exam questions were exactly the same, so I was really able to show what I had learned.  It was the same drill for the fertility test and, since the mortality test had gone so well, I went into it with a lot more confidence and studied a lot less.  Again, the test questions were just like the study questions, and even though I hadn't studied as much, I felt like I answered the questions adequately.  I may actually be getting over my test anxiety!

These tests are unlike any other tests I have taken in the sense that they are take-home closed-book exams.  They become available on the internet at a particular time and have to be turned in later in the day.  We can't use books or notes and are not expected to spend longer than four hours on it.  Since the tests are during the day, I have been taking them at work, so I'm all comfy in my cubicle with my coffee, tea, or whatever.  It actually makes for a pretty relaxed testing environment.  I could take bathroom or stretch breaks whenever I wanted.  I finished the last question right around lunch time, so I took a break to eat my lunch and then read over my answers and then went to turn it in.  After I dropped it into my professor's mailbox I had this great sense of relief. And then I started wondering -- did I put it in the right mailbox?  There's that anxiety again!

Returning to Earth

For the last three years, I have eaten very few packaged foods.  Just about everything I ate came from either the produce section or the bulk bins.  My only processed foods were (natural) peanut butter and (plain) yogurt.  In the last year, I added one kind of bread, one kind of cereal, and  one kind of candy bar.  And when I wasn't eating packaged foods, I also wasn't noticing them.  Now I'm eating anything and everything.  Nothing is off limits and I'm looking at food with new eyes.  And I'm finding that the world of food has changed quite a bit in the last three years.  It seems like there is an endless variety of new cereals, new granola bars, new ice cream flavors, and new cookies (I haven't even started looking at all the new chips and crackers yet).  And what is up with all the frozen waffles?  Last time I noticed, there was pretty much just Eggo.  The other thing I'm finding is that people have become a lot more conscious of the health and environmental implications of what they eat.  Everything now claims to be free of trans fats and high fructose corn syrup, and when I went to buy sugar for the first time I was amazed at how many environmentally-friendly and fair trade options there were.  I even managed to find unsweetened ketchup!

So what am I eating now?  I'm really digging on Barbara's cereals, especially Puffins and Shredded Spoonfuls, Newman's sandwich cookies, especially the ones with peanut butter filling, and  Haagen Dazs ice cream, though I'm mainly sticking with vanilla.  I'm sure I'll get to granola bars, pop tarts, and frozen waffles eventually.  Let me know if you have any recommendations!

Making Me Smile

This morning, I received an email from my mother-in-law that brightened my mood and put a smile on my Tuesday.  What was it?  Photographs of chalk drawings by Julian Beaver.  I had never heard of this artist, but the drawings were pretty amazing.  I don't have the time or patience to actually put the photos on my blog, but you can check them out here.  The only thing that might be better is seeing them in real life! 

Bringing Home the Venison

David has gone deer hunting with his brother every year since before I have known him.  For those of you who are not so good at math, that's at least eight years (I'm not sure exactly when he started, just that he was already doing it before we met).  Amazingly enough, until last year, he had never actually SEEN a deer while he was hunting, or really at all during deer season.  Somehow they seem to know when the hunters are out and make themselves scarce.  Last year, he saw a deer, but not while he had a gun in his hand.  This year, however, determined for professional reasons to actually bring one home (one of his supervisors is a real hunter), David went out on opening day, saw a deer, and landed a perfect shot.  The deer fell down right there.  I'm guessing that most of my readers don't know the protocol for dealing with a freshly-shot deer.  I certainly didn't until David explained it to me!  First, you gut the deer, removing (and usually discarding) all the internal organs, intestines, etc.  Then you hang it for a while, and finally butcher it (much of the meat often ends up getting ground).  David's brother and his friends showed David how to gut it (which I later heard about in excruciating detail), and then he decided to hang it at the hunting cabin, rather than bringing it home to hang in our backyard to the horror of our Ann Arbor neighbors.  Next weekend he will go back to butcher it, but he did bring home the tenderloin (apparently that part doesn't age well), so I'll be cooking venison tonight.  And then I get to figure out what to do with another thirty pounds of it!  Anyone have a good recipe?

Don't Forget

To vote tomorrow.  The rest of the world is counting on us to do the right thing!