The End is Near

So many things have been happening but mostly I've been working on thesis like a good girl. Right now my paper is complete lengthwise but I need to tighten it up a lot. Most of the panels to my sculptures are 80% complete. And I am so incredibly ready to have this over with.

In order to facilitate thinking clearer I cut off all of my hair.





Also, in order to get as much work time in as possible we have been eating like college students which has amounted to not one but two Chinese food delivery nights, lots of pizza and mac and cheese. I wish I could say I cooked well all the time and that it was only from our backyard or from the farm down the street. Alas, academia has forced itself down our throat on top of a frozen pizza.



Granted, this is not to say that we haven't eaten well at all. We've had plenty of home-made pizza (dough and sauce totally from scratch) with delicious toppings like artichoke hearts and goat cheese. I even made a really weird one with bacon, figs, and corn. I guarantee that the description could have been found in any Portland restaurant but unfortunately, the concept is way better than the taste. Butternut squash soup made with squash from the farm co-op also made its way to the dinner table recently. And a couple roasted chickens also somehow managed to make it to the oven this semester.

I am looking forward to being done with school so I can make bread on a more regular basis and that I can plan out dinner better. I love to cook and its been kind of sad in our kitchen without having as much time to lavish upon a meal as much as I like to.

I've also not been paying as much time on our garden as I would like to. This whole year has seen a dwindling in meticulous care for the vegetables and the chickens that we keep.








However, I have gotten a few decent-sized (and super delicious) beets from our garden and with any luck we'll have masses of Brussels sprouts for thanksgiving.




And perhaps even a cabbage will make it.



Orson keeps me company in my studio and in the garden. He has been especially needy which is great sometimes cause it means I have company, but other times, like when I using yarn in my studio, its not so great...



But the majority of my time has been spend writing and creating. I will need a break at the end for sure. But the end is in sight. I will be presenting my thesis in less than a month and I'm looking forward to possibly the biggest moment of my academic career to finally come to pass. It is so close and just about within reach.

Oh ya, and I just finished doing the biggest wedding invitation commission thus far (150 cards and RSVPs). And it turns out that they weren't that well received. Never again will I do wedding invitations at the same time as a thesis. Luckily I don't even think I have that option. *whew*

In other news, Joel and I will have been married for two years tomorrow!

THEN

© Allen Lessig 2008

NOW


Still just as in love today as we were two years ago, hurray! Here's to many more delightful years ahead!

Post-Graduation

I'm starting to make a list of things that I would like to do after I graduate in December. While I don't know what I'll actually do for money I do have an idea of what I want to do instead of homework:

1.) Pleasure reading. While there is hardly enough time to read one single book for pleasure during the semester there are lots of other books I'm reading for something other than pleasure. This would be the act of being responsible. Right now, my book list is about the size of my arm and I'm hoping to accomplish reading some of those books some day. Mostly they are farming/food non-fiction, graphic novels, turn of the century fiction and contemporary international novels. I feel like I have neglected the latter category in an indecent way and I want to rectify that as soon as possible. The majority of my international fiction reading is at least 50+ years old and predominantly Russian and Latin-American (even that is primarily Gabriel Garcia Marquez).

2.) Write/draw a graphic novel. Even if said novel only ends up being the size of a zine and distributed as such I really want to try my hand at this. That or I'll just spend the rest of my life trying to make the best graphic novel ever. (not really)

3.) More big linoleum prints. Card-sized ones are cute but big ones can be much more illustrative.

4.) Photograph underwater. I've been Google searching underwater photography, especially of fashion and I've gotta say, if I ever can make underwater photography happen you better believe I will. This is all to say, that "post graduation" is from December until the day I die. I didn't say I'd be doing any of this stuff soon!

5.) Write substantially. I've been given a lot of encouragement and affirmation regarding my writing recently and I want to do something good with it, beyond just filling out assignments/a thesis and blog posts. I don't know how this will manifest itself but I immensely enjoy writing and don't want to let this fall by the wayside just because no one is grading it or even necessarily reading it.

6.) Figure out the things in life that I really want to do. Where do I want my life to head? Where do we want to live? Joel and I have pondered these questions but haven't come to any good complete conclusions yet.

7.) Spend time exploring. Joel and I do this every once in a while but not as much as we could. I also haven't found much of any mushrooms this year (part of exploring) due to the lack of rain. Apparently the sunshine won't last very long at all and mushrooms should follow soon after that. But I think in the end I'd take sunshine over mushrooms.

While this list has been compiled rather selfishly, they are the things that have been rattling in the back of my brain while I try to study art history or read about the abstracted landscape. And finally having written them out hopefully those specters will quiet their gentle whisperings. And now, back to studying art history.

Coconut Oil Convert

Tonight Joel and I are going to a potluck tonight and the ride is going to be cold. What could we bring that wouldn't suffer from a cold ten mile bike ride? And what about the vegans (they eat no animal products), how can we include them? What about vegan Pumpkin Oatmeal cookies? Perfect! Since I had to go to the grocery store anyways for the pumpkin I decided I would look for coconut oil. Since I can't use butter and I have moral conflicts with many vegetable (canola and soybean especially) oils I figured I would try something else.

So when I went down the aisle of oils to look at my options, and keeping other options open (not just coconut but what else is saturated besides olive and canola oils) I deliberated over what to get. I wanted to support a small company if possible, coconut oil if possible and there were three companies that had unrefined coconut oil available. Two were big companies that I don't necessarily have problems with but I wanted to support something smaller. And that was when I picked up Hope's Harvest Coconut Oil. After getting home I researched the company and coconut oil.

It turns out a.) Hope's Harvest is a small business started with a Yehu microloan in rural Kenya. And whenever a new employee is hired they plant a coconut tree in their honor as a symbol of their embarking on a "new life." They also use all of the coconuts they harvest, including the meat and the husk, and I highly respect any company that strives to reduce their waste in regards to food (all waste is more or less bad but I am really excited when people keep food waste down).

And b.) Coconut oil is really great for you -- NOT bad like the American Soybean Association would like you to believe. It actually lowers cholesterol and helps you absorb Vitamin E when applied to the skin. Because it is a saturated fat (a stable molecular composition) your body realizes that it is a good thing, as opposed to unsaturated fats which your body does not recognize due to its unstable molecular make up (i.e., canola oil, vegetable oil and soybean oil etc.). For more information I highly recommend this website which, albeit is very preachy but full of good information.

You can use coconut oil anywhere you'd use any other oil, butter or margarine. It's a bit expensive for frying foods in but other than that its totally worth it. And when you don't heat it above 450ºF you won't have the issue of the oil tasting coconut-y. My cookies only baked at 350ºF and I couldn't taste the coconut at all, and for some people (like Joel who isn't a big fan of coconut) this is a great thing. It also has no salt so you're able to regulate the saltiness of whatever you're cooking (granted you could get unsalted butter with the same result).



It also lasts up to 2-3 years and is solid below 76ºF. I'm very excited about using this oil in the near future and I wanted to share the information with the people I love and care about. I apologize if this sounded preachy!

In Other News

School is steadily barreling along to the end of the semester. I will be done 15 December and I'm really looking forward to it. I am also feeling really good about my thesis paper and my thesis work. I've been keeping that under wraps for the most part because I want to make a whole post at the end about my process, what the work is about and what it looks like when it is done. Needless to say is that yes, you will see the work in the end and no, I will not be posting my paper (over 15 pages on a blog just seems ridiculous to me) but if you're interested I'd be more than happy to send my paper to whomever wants to read it.

And Joel and I have been talking about what happens after I graduate. At this point in time there are so many options and ideas that we have been tossing back and forth and none of them are remotely concrete so until we have a clearer idea I'm not going to be posting about those either until we know better.

Time is Flying

School started back up three weeks ago and fall began three days ago here in Portland. Needless to say, things are busy at the moment. I think I may have decided on a topic for my thesis research paper and my thesis work is well under way.

Its been some time but in my last post I spoke about picking huckleberries, alpine blueberries and thimble berries. I really wanted to bring these with us when we went to California for my sister-in-law's wedding but I totally forgot to bring them. :0( However, they were still waiting for me by the time we got back and I decided to use one of my new Pacific NW cook books that had a delicious "Perfect Muffin" recipe. No joke, it may indeed be the perfect recipe. So I put all the berries in the perfect muffins and things went swimmingly after that.





My garden is growing well in this chilly weather. The best things are the Brussels sprouts, they're getting big! I'm looking forward to having them all grow up and sprout.






The cabbage is okay but I've been having a hard time keeping up with all the nasty caterpillars that want in on all the brassica action.




The front yard beets and butternut squash are coming along. The butternut was a volunteer from the compost but the beets I planted on purpose, neither is necessarily abundant but I think we'll pull through with a couple mini squashes and a handful of beets.





The chickens are good and happy little things. The gold-laced Wyandotte has been brooding (i.e., sitting on the egg that is sometimes under her and sometimes in my fridge...), but other than that things are copacetic. The black Australorp may or may not be hiding her eggs from me. She gets out of the coop for a couple hours and then flies back in which leads me to think that she's laying her eggs somewhere that isn't in the coop. Where that is, I still haven't figured out.





All in all things are generally good. Some days I am very encouraged about school and all the work I have to do and others I am very discouraged, however, the point is to get through this and be happy that I got through. :0) And right now, the day is good.

Meditation on Moss

I went huckleberry picking two days ago and I didn't pick as many huckleberries as I probably could have, largely because I was busy taking photographs of all the moss and lichen. We were really close to Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams.