Song to accompany this section: "I Never Harmed an Onion"
I was a bit skeptical about tuna casserole, but it looked like it would be cheap and relatively easy. Plus it's been so cool recently that I wouldn't melt the apartment if I used the oven.
First of all, I am never buying milk to drink in Alphabet City again. I didn't throw up this time because the milk I got, which was well away from its expiration date, actually tasted off enough for me to tell the difference between bad milk and regular milk (I'm not very fond of the taste, though I used to drink big glasses for the calcium. Now I'm relying on cheese and vitamins.). Fortunately the World Wide Web assures me that it is perfectly safe to cook with slightly spoiled milk, and since that milk is now mixed with other goodies and bubbling away at 350 degrees F, I'm pretty sure I'll be safe.
This week's substitutions: carrots for celery, the latter of which I'm not too fond of (except cooked and smothered in sauce); olive oil and water for half a cup of butter; cumin for mustard. I also made my own bread crumbs by folding two slices of bread in a paper towel and letting them sit in my cabinet over a couple of days. They crumbled beautifully.
As usual, there is more onion than the recipe called for, because I don't know when I'll need three quarters of an onion again. Which brings me to the song: you'd think that cutting up a lot of onions would make you immune, BUT NO. Tears streaming down my face. Not as bad as when I cut up the last of my first batch of onions--I think their power gets stronger as they age.
Everything came together quite well, though I left the casserole in the oven for the full half hour and seem to have crisped the shredded cheese on top. No problem--I actually like cheese like that, though I did put some extra cheese over top to melt.
For dessert I've been enjoying the mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups that Mom sent with me the weekend before last. Two a night when I can't help myself, one when I can. Got to make them last!
Edit: The tuna casserole would be a heckuva lot better without tuna in it. Maybe beans or chicken next time. But the milk hasn't killed me.
The Weekend
Pretty good weekend, all told.
Friday I was pathetic and also bombing through Close Quarters and craving more ships-sails-and-seas action, so I stayed in to read and to trawl Netflix for something other than the filmed version of To the Ends of the Earth to watch. I'd just pulled up Sea Wolf, a filmed version of a Jack London book, and was beginning what looked to be yet another long evening of starting and stopping to let the sound catch up to the video when Becky called to say hi. Ninety minutes later, she was coming in on Saturday for dinner and a trip to a comedy club she'd wanted to visit for ages...and the video on Netflix played pretty well. Apparently it just needs an hour and a half to think, then I can watch whatever I want.
On Saturday morning it was back up to Inwood Hill for more park clean up. This month's nemesis: green brier. (Picture links to source.)
As you can see, it has thorns. And they're nasty. I had on my old jeans and strong working gloves, and I still came out with bloody scratches around my ankles and up my forearms. They look a bit like cat scratches, so not too bad once I got home and washed off the blood. Unfortunately, unlike the porcelain berry a few weeks ago, green brier is native, so we couldn't just kill it whenever we saw it. We found small trees and bushes that were being swallowed up and then cut the green brier vines on them low, near the roots, and high in the tree, taking out a few inches at each end to ensure that the vine would die instead of taking root again. We saved at least a dozen little oaks and black cherry trees, and that was just with the quarter of the team I was working with.
After I got home and showered, I put on a dress because I wanted to look pretty, laughed at all the now-visible scratches on my forearms and around my ankles, and went to Port Authority to pick up Becky. We came back to the East Village for dinner at the Sidewalk Cafe, got tickets, and went a-wandering, stopping by People's Pops for some popsicles. She got vanilla-peach, I got strawberry kiwi; I thought mine was too tart, she thought hers was too sweet; we both liked each others' better, so we switched!
Finally, we went back to UCP, an improv comedy club, for a couple of shows. The first wasn't that great. Everyone was pretty drunk, laughing at the dumbest things, and to Becky's and my great dismay part of the story told by an audience member to inspire the first half of the show involved mental illness and attempted suicide. Needless to say, we didn't find many of the jokes funny--more like tasteless and even appalling. Fortunately, after a half-hour break in which we got sodas at a grocery store since Becky couldn't go in the bar, the second show of the evening went much better. I took Becky back to Port Authority and got home well after midnight.
On Sunday, Mom, Dad, and Kate came in to visit. After a delicious brunch at Casa Mezcal (which I would definitely recommend!), we met at the Tenement Museum, where I enthusiastically convinced everyone to take the textile industry tour. I learned a great deal about the immigrant-driven textile industry in an independent study last year, and I was eager to see where it all went down. Unfortunately, I accidentally ruined the tour guide's point. She asked at the beginning of the tour what we thought of when we thought of "tenements." Most of the answers were negative, and I threw in "living and working in the same space," since that's what I'd learned; however, that turned out to be her tour's thesis: tenements weren't slums or sweatshops, but homegrown businesses that fell somewhere in between. Well, putting it nicely. If an oven and an iron sharing three rooms with a minimum of five people isn't the definition of a "sweat" shop, I don't know what is.
Afterwards, we took a long walk across Manhattan from the East Village to Greenwich Village to the Cast Iron District to SoHo to NoLIta to the Lower East Side. Oh yeah, fun fact: apparently I DON'T live in the Lower East Side; I live in the East Village. But there's still public housing labeled "LES I" and "LES II" a few streets up and over, so I guess it's all a matter of perspective.
We finally ended up at Cafe Katja, a fantastic Austrian restaurant. Mom and Dad got a sausage platter with sauerkraut and dumplings, Kate got fish something-or-other delicious, and I got something else delicious. The Austrian version of noodles, I think--thick lumps of potato and spinach in a delicious sauce with mushrooms and crunchy snow peas. Bliss. And the best part? Leftovers!
Dad rounded off the evening by gifting me an orchid and a pothos plant to console me in the loss of Edna. Yes, Edna has passed out of the city to the sun-soaked front porch of Kinnelon. She needed a bigger pot and a lot more sunlight than she could get on my windowsill. Heat-wise, being the shadow of the projects across the way is a blessing; Edna-wise, it's a curse.
The Work Week
The past week was pretty busy, even as I finally got caught up on a few things. Most of the irritations had to do with authors who didn't bother to read the entirety of of my emails, even when I kept them brief and used bold and underline to highlight the most important bits. To my great satisfaction, almost all everything was solved and almost everyone satisfied...except for one author, who I don't think will ever be satisfied.
My boss is off to Alaska for the next two weeks for her first vacation since joining Palgrave almost a year ago. She's been working hard and the Business and Economics lists have flourished under her care. While she's gone, I'm on a mission to get in contact with a potential author on my own and identify a hardback title that we could publish as a paperback. I'm moving up in the world!
This Past Weekend
Could have been better. Was quite lonely, despite my efforts to get out.
On Friday I went to a Trivia MeetUp. I was the youngest one there, though I wasn't completely alone in not getting a single answer in the first game--the second youngest didn't get any, either. In our defense, the game was one in which we had to identify famous people, and the game was from the 80s. So we were kind of doomed from the start. The only time I knew an answer, President Eisenhower, someone beat me to it.
After that, though, came Trivial Pursuit, where I could at least hold my own with a teammate whose strengths were almost perfectly opposed to my own. We made a good team, and even won the game. The night finished off with Quick Wit, which I'd never played before but enjoyed immensely. It's not just trivia: there's logic, vocabulary, image identification, and trick questions.
Saturday I headed out to the locations of two MeetUps that were full--and I walked the whole way. First I headed over to and up 1st Avenue, and once I was above 14th Street I slowly started making my way up five blocks and over one (approximately) to get to a pier on the Hudson at 44th Street. There was supposed to be a music festival there, but after reading and waiting for an hour and watching hundreds of people line up and file past, I still didn't hear any music. I gave up and started heading back.
I made it most of the way down 10th Avenue. Although it had looked interesting up in the 40s, there really wasn't much to see on 10th the further down I went. I did find one little shop to interest me: Printed Matter, Inc., which was between 21st and 22nd, was devoted to hand-made publications and zines, like the one I made for a class in the fall of my Senior year. The zines were fun to browse: everyone had a unique vision for balancing visual and verbal art. I think all the books I saw were at least rectangular, though there were some with plastic baggies attached holding CDs or other elements. I almost bought one cool little book in which an artist had created "constellations" by connecting the dots left when they'd erased all but the periods in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, but the budget prevailed. I don't know why, but I can spend and spend and have a good time when I'm doing it with other people, but when it's just me, I have trouble coughing up for much of anything. The books I got the other week for a buck a piece are still making me feel guilty!
I hoped east an Avenue to 9th and made it to the Chelsea Market--which looked pretty cool, but since it was an entirely indoors area, I figured I should save exploring it for the winter.
I made it down to Abington Square--which is a triangle and, therefore, horrendously named--and followed Howard Street down to the Fire Museum. Unfortunately, as I'd suspected, it was not a fire museum; it was a firefighting in the city museum, and it was closed. Ah well. I went the rest of the way down to Canal Street. After a quick break for an overpriced but much-needed pineapple-snow melon smoothie and a chapter of Master and Commander, I decided to walk back east along Canal to see what I could see. I kept an eye out for shops that might sell plastic dishes--for my new plants, which will need more water than Edna did--but it was all touristy stuff and knockoff purses.
At Canal and Mulberry I got distracted by the big green-white-and-red tinsel tiaras that hung across Mulberry and reminded me of Boston's North End. Sure enough, I had found pretty much all that remained of New York City's Little Italy...which now seems to have a lot in common with Disneyland. Mulberry street was closed to traffic, though I don't know if that was just for the weekend or a regular thing, and it was lined with Italian restaurants of all classes. Which was kind of nice, but then, it was all just a variant of the same thing--and man, were the head waiters working hard to get diners to come to their restaurants! One of them even asked me, single person though I was, if I'd like to eat there!
I headed back down to Canal and followed it all the way across to Seward Park, where it ends at East Broadway (not related to the Manhattan-long Broadway). This was supposedly where the second MeetUp would meet for the night market...but it wasn't much of a market. There were a few stalls, mostly selling sample outfits and second-hand clothes, and a couple of food stalls. I got a "Japanese hot dog" from Japadog, which was apparently on Psych (Mom, if you've made it this far (bless your soul and) let Becky and Kat know). It was all right, but not quite filling enough.
Even though my feet ached, I had to get groceries on my way back. I had set my mind in ice cream as a treat earlier in the day but hadn't found a good shop on my way home, and unfortunately I didn't think I could eat a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's (I've heard this is doable, but I remain a skeptic). So, naturally, I decided to treat myself to a giant pickle instead. The guy at the deli was amused that I only got one, and the gal at the cash register laughed at my odd assortment: eggs, applies, chips, giant pickle. I went home and enjoyed my pickle while finally watching Starter for 10, which I've wanted to see since I read Ty Burr's review of it in the Boston Globe back in 2007. 2007! It wasn't exactly a glowing review, so I'm not quite sure why I've remembered it for all these years when I can't even remember how long it's been since I chopped my hair off without thinking about it. But you may be as amused as I was to note in one line of the review: "the leader [of the quiz team] is a preening wonk named Watts, played by the splendidly named Benedict Cumberbatch." Or not. Who's even still reading at this point, anyway?
Man, I miss Ty Burr's movie reviews...
Yesterday, as usual, I headed over to St. Francis Xavier's to help out at the soup kitchen. What an unusual day. The regulars weren't there--all off at another wedding--we were the most short-staffed we'd been all year, and we had the longest lines all year as well. Usually there are two teams preparing food in the kitchen, which is mirrored. Each side trays a dessert, a salad, a vegetable, a side, and a main, and one side also dishes up vegetarian entrees. Yesterday we only had enough people to man one side of the kitchen! What a nightmare! It didn't help that one of the volunteers kept leaving their station to stick their nose in other volunteers' duties and complain about the hungry people who had the temerity to ask for their chicken without sauce instead of just being grateful for what we gave them. [Ouch!] I think the low point, though, was in the brief interim when we'd run out of chicken and the kitchen was preparing more. The nosy volunteer let the others eat the cookies intended for the homeless! I was shocked how many people went for it. I'd already declined the volunteer's offer to set one aside for me, and now I was glad I had. We always run out of desserts first.
We worked overtime, didn't manage to feed everyone and, for the first time since I've been there, had had leftovers. I almost took a box for dinner, but decided that I couldn't, in good conscience, do that when I knew that the organizers had had to turn away people who'd been standing in line. Then the volunteer who'd been doling out cookies whipped out one they'd set aside for me, provoking a mixture of annoyance, guilt, and a little bit of gratitude. I'm always hungry by the end of the day, and the chocolate chip cookies had, reportedly, been quite a bit better than the usual yellow cake with whipped cream. I wrapped it in a paper towel, tucked it in my pocket, and decided to have it for dessert.
Though I asked several people, no one wanted to grab a late lunch with me, so I headed over to Panera's, where I knew I could get a good, filling meal for little money. No use spending when I'm alone, after all, but I have started to see my Sunday meal out as the equivalent of the old Sunday dinner. Not one avenue away from St. Francis, I walked past a homeless man who asked if I had any spare change. I never keep change in my pockets or at close hand--don't know why, but I don't--but this time I did have something. I asked if he'd like a cookie, he nodded, and I handed it over. And then I shed a tear inside, because I'd really wanted that cookie. Fifth Harry Potter all over gain. I'm such an awful, self-centered "nice" person. How do I exist without exploding?
And that's it. Ta da/blah. Oh, there is one more thing:
The Update Nobody Needs
(Cross-posted on Tumblr)
As I read Close Quarters and Fire Down Below, the two books following Rites of Passage, I kept track of odd uses of "was" and "were"...except I don't think there were any "were"s. Instead there were lots of "was"s and, interestingly, all of them were in dialogue, and most of that dialogue was spoken between people of upper classes or who were familiar with each other. This could quite easily be because Talbot doesn't really associate with anyone from a lower class, though I wonder if it's part of the over-emphasized eloquence Miss Granham calls him out on, which shows up most often when he's flustered or trying to act according to his (presumed) station.
(I find a bit of a parallel with myself there. There are two extremes when I use over-the-top language: when I'm uncomfortable and trying to sound in control; and when I'm trying to joke. [I don't think Talbot's ever joking, poor pompous, privileged thing.] However, I've caught myself doing this before people people get to know me, so that they end up thinking I talk like that on purpose. I've also had to fight down the urge to write in elevated speech in email. Maybe Mom, Felicia, Aundy, and a select few others know when I'm trying to poke fun at myself/a situation, but it's far too hard to convey tone in email for a joke that sometimes misfires face-to-face.)
Anyway, here's the list, much good may it do anyone:
Close Quarters
- "You was picked up and there's an end to it." (53)
- Talbot to a familiar servant
- "You was pleased to call me 'Celia' as I asked and even held my hand." (64)
- Mrs. Brocklebank to Miss Granham-to-be-Mrs. Prettiman
- "You cannot go at this as if you was boarding an enemy." (80)
- Talbot to an unliked equal
- "It is no longer wartime and not as if there was a mutiny." (80)
- Talbot to previously mentioned unliked equal (same conversation)
- I mention this one only because it seems to be used correctly even though this also seems like a chance to use the subjunctive were
- "I thought you who was a gentleman and not one of the cursed jumped-up lubbers..." (82)
- Previously mentioned unliked equal to Talbot (same conversation)
- "The rumor went, Miss Chumley, that you was a prodigy." (91)
- Talbot flirting with a younger (?) social inferior (while under the influence of what I call a triple concussion)
- "You was only brought in to make up the numbers." (92)
- Lady Somerset to a familiar servant/maid
- "If we was to have these steam tugs large enough to engage an enemy, we should need double crews to keep them clean." (101)
- Sir Henry to (Mr.) Talbot, ridiculing the latter's idea of steam-powered boats
- "You was a lucky dog, you know." (155)
- Talbot to a familiar servant (see first example)
- "Anyone would think you was a girl!" (196)
- Talbot to an unliked older slight social inferior, who's a maudlin drunk
- "Do you suppose I myself would be so cheerful if we was about to sink?" (239)
- Talbot to two older slight social inferiors
Fire Down Below
- "I thought you was a seaman who intended you some harm..." (58)
- Talbot to Miss Granham-to-be-Mrs. Prettiman, an older social inferior
- Also fun: "Unfair, amn't I?" (72)
- Mr. Prettiman to Talbot, a younger, slight social superior (but Mr. Prettiman doesn't bother with classes, mostly)
- "I believe you was the originator here." (110)
- Captain Anderson to Lieutenant Benet, a respected inferior of rank (similar social status?)
- "If you was to regard me in the light of more than a friend--" (304)
- Talbot to Miss Chumley, a younger (?) social inferior to whom he has matrimonial aspirations
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