Resolutions

Honestly, I'm not even sure what I want from this anymore. I started this (after several failed attempts) because I was bored at work in undergrad, and only really stuck with it because I was working the overnight shift at a McDonald's and needed something to keep me from snapping.

I'm not sure that last part has changed significantly. I work eight hours, have some sort of terrible meal roughly in the middle of it, then spend an hour getting angry at traffic. I still have long stretches where I'm not actually doing anything, but I'm not writing because I don't want to be confrontational or because I've set this huge road block for myself where I've got to come up with something brilliant because I haven't written since last year.

That's ridiculous. There are somewhere around five blogs for every person on the planet, and no one's reading this. So to hell with it. This "only writing for March Madness" thing isn't cutting it anymore. The confrontation thing doesn't make sense either, except that I'm hypersensitive to it. When we moved in to this apartment, we nailed something to the wall at 10pm, and our downstairs neighbor came up and asked us to knock it off. Totally reasonable request. Since then, I've been terrified of making noise and have been sneaking around this place like an overweight, lumbering, ineffective ninja.

It's ludicrous.

That's not to say I haven't been trying to get myself to get back to this. I'll record half-assed attempts at notes on my lunch break at work and buying these tiny little notebooks that are annoying as shit to write in because I've convinced myself that if I carry paper and a pencil around I'll become creative and turn this nonsense into something read and fawned over by millions.

The only time I update reliably is when I set some sort of schedule, like I'm forced to with March Madness. Which is great, and I can get myself worked up over a theme, but then as soon as I'm done, it flames out and I'm left with nothing again. I'm not even sure why I'm so reluctant just to relegate Murphspot to the pile of half-journals I've had over the years that go nowhere. It's probably some nonsense about a crippling fear that I've become unremarkable, which I have. And that's fine.

That happens to almost everyone.

Jesus, Peter Francis Gerasi. Could your commercials be any louder?

I thought about doing some sort of list of resolutions challenge to myself. Given
that I never posted it and it's nearly February, that's failed. It was too concrete and too ambitious and changing everything because it's mid-winter and we're out of holidays is completely arbitrary. The upside of that, I guess, is that there's nothing particularly wrong with claiming a resolution and starting it whenever you want.

So then. Let's start now? I guess? The original idea was to use this as a sort of checkpoint, so that I'd give myself goals and then could write about the progress. I'm not sure that's a terrible place to start, but at the risk of jeopardizing the chance that I'll get anything done, I think I'd like it to be less restrictive than I'd thought at first. I'll still post bits of progress on various goals I've got for myself that I'd like to make progress on before next year, but I'm going to not try to set something up that I'll fail at, which'll just lead to me stopping all posting because hey, I've already fallen behind.

At the moment, I'll just resolve to stop insisting that I have fully formed and brilliant posts as a prerequisite for writing, and I'll try to stop holding myself to some kind of unattainable standard. When I posted most often on this, it was primarily because I was getting off of work at 7am and no one was awake, but I don't see why I can't get back to the sort of mindset I was in when that was happening. The first post after a long break is always the most difficult, and maybe I'm still being too ambitious with this, but to hell with it.

Attempting Chili

So Food Network has taken over most of my TV watching. I think it started when I got bored in lab and decided to watch Hell's Kitchen (the US version) on Hulu while things were stirring (which isn't on Food Network, but it involves food and that's close enough, damn it), then finding the US version of Kitchen Nightmares on Comcast On Demand, but that wasn't so much instructional from a culinary standpoint and more "Gordon Ramsay's going to yell at some more stuff, humiliate people, and make you feel better about your personal housekeeping because hey, you don't have rotting food and disgustingness everywhere, hopefully". That led, slowly, to watching reality shows about cooking that actually involve "making food taste good" as part of the show concept. I stopped short of actually using any of the programming for instruction (though Alton Brown tempted me, with his seductive, alluring approach and hairstyle). But I think it might have shaken up the part of my brain that whispers "You should cook something other than frozen pizza. It's sort of like chemistry. You could probably not screw it up too badly."

Usually, I gleefully ignore that part of my brain, rip open another flattish cardboard box, preheat to 400 (without looking at the dial, so engrained is that in my muscle memory) and resign to another night of DiGiorno (if I'm feeling ritzy). A few days ago, however, I got it in my mind to try my hand at a chili. A few notes as to my thought process here.

First, I decided on white chili. I always assumed I wouldn't like chili in my childhood (I think because I have an intensely negative reaction to the idea of kidney beans which may or may not be tied to the urban myth where you wake up in a bathtub of ice). White chili, or at least the recipe I used, uses "Great Northern Beans". They're great! It's right there in the name! That's pleasant. So, that was settled.

Secondly, for being a chemist who's used to changing the size of whatever reaction I happen to be working on (and currently working on scale-up at a process development plant), I sure have no concept of when a recipe's too large. The five (!) cans of beans should have clued me in. Now, I'm sure chili keeps for at least a day, and I did have the foresight to buy some containers so that I don't have to buy lunch tomorrow, but my word. There's so much chili.

Third, and this has nothing to do with the chili, but Wikipedia claims that DiGiorno's website makes a claim about "having been around for over ten years". Which is great, and I'm certainly no expert on the fast-paced world of frozen pizza brands, but going back ten years only gets you to Toy Story 2. Or the second Austin Powers. And given my own concerns about how quickly time is passing, I'm going to maintain that those were pretty much yesterday, and "over ten years" is not something to brag about.

As for the actual chili, it turned out pretty well. And now I own cumin and cayenne pepper, so I'm planning on doing this again. When my "endless-cans-of-beans" budget is back up.