Breakfast!

Today, while making my eggs, I decided to take pictures of the process - just for practice, and because I like talking about food. So without further ado, I present my very simple spinach scrambled eggs.

First, saute spinach, mushrooms, bell peppers, green onions, and other plant-like items of choice in 2 teaspoons oil - today I used safflower oil.






Next, add two eggs.






Scramble them in the pan.






Add 1 wedge of Laughing Cow Light Cheese in the Original Swiss flavor.





Squish the cheese in with the eggs, pressing it down with the spoon so that it melts and mixes in.






Plate up, add salt and pepper to taste, and enjoy a fantastic, healthy meal - delicious!

The Fish and the Kitchen Floor

I cooked a fish last week - a salmon fillet, using this recipe, all by myself and hundreds of miles from the person (otherwise known as dad) who usually cooks fish for me. It turned out pretty good - really good, actually, with a downgrading to pretty good on reheating because fish just doesn't reheat very well. However, this fish seems to have a strange, magnet attraction to my kitchen floor.



Of the five portions of salmon I had, two of them so far have ended up plummeting to my linoleum, thus making themselves inedible and depriving me of their salmony goodness. Sorrow is had.



I'm writing on the blog... which, of course, means that I have a paper due tomorrow. Much of it is done - I just need to finish one section in the main portion, clean everything up, and do a couple little sections at the beginning - but it's nice to have a break.



Mom visited a week ago, for my birthday, and it was much much fun - even if Gaidos wasn't as good as we were hoping. (Possibly our fault for not getting everything fried and dipped in butter and then fried again). There was even sun for part of a couple of days. Of course, now that she's gone back home to rainy cold Utah, it's been rainy and hot and muggy down here in Houston. I still step outside some nights and watch my glasses fog up.



That's a safety hazard, you know. If someone was waiting right outside my apartment or my car, I'd never see them!



Mmm, and mom brought me huckleberry jam, which is absolutely delicious. I'm going to be running out of it within a week.

Status: Res Ipsa Loquitur (The thing speaks for itself).

Lasagna roll recipe: Too much spinach, not enough ricotta. Short paper due tomorrow: in progress. Power: flickering during thunderstorm. On a scale of 1-10, level of desire to curl up in bed with a fantasy novel and a piece of chocolate cake: 13. Actual chocolate cake in apartment: 0. Freezer status: stuffed full. Vegetables in fridge that will likely go bad before I figure out a way to use them: 4.

Based upon prior experience, how many mushrooms I'll use before they become inedible: half the box. Level of happiness to be in school again and working on things: 7.9/10. (11.5 if professors or prospective employers are reading this).

Sudden concern that professors and prospective employers won't get sense of humor: 9.

Number of pages to be read in one class this semester: 1200. Weeks until final paper in Legal Research and Writing is due: 11. Number of BPA-free plastic bottles acquired: 3. Number of said bottles already accidentally abandoned (though recoverable): 1. Favorite item of the week: Kashi crunchy cereal. Favorite granola bar: FiberOne. Acceptable FiberOne substitutes: 0. Mornings awake in class so for this semester: all of them. Sleep schedule that has permitted said awakeness: not to be discussed.

Favorite food item ever: Vegas roll at Flying Sumo in Park City. Recent movies watched: Van Helsing and Runaway Jury. Cleaning agent used most often: distilled white vinegar. Attempts to properly season 'pre-seasoned' cast iron pan: 2. Lund cousins now married: 4 (yay!). Fiction books currently in the middle of, which will likely not be finished until after finals: 3. Books, notebooks, or supplements currently living on my floor: over 15. Ice cream bar made of Awesome: BlueBunny Aspen bars in raspberry with white yogurt covering.

Post-it notes attached to computer monitor: 2. Color of viscous liquid seeping out from under washing machine: yellow. Number of geckos seen on outside wall of apartment complex: 1. Number of wasps spotted in apartment: 2. Wasps accounted for: 1. Worry over missing wasp: present, but slowly in decline.

Family missed: all of you!

Measure twice...

I should be working on my outlines (I will explain outlines, and their drastic impact on law school studying, later. They are evil). But I am easily distractible, and ended up puttering in my kitchen looking for breakfast/lunch. I am getting close to the end of the semester, and while I can't... really focus on things other than school right now, I'm getting close to a time where I might be able to start working on other goals. So, toward that end, I started measuring out my peanut butter M&Ms - the junk food that will hopefully help me live through the end of the semester.

As you see above, I was not over-filling the measuring cup, and I didn't miscount the plastic bags, but somehow I could only make six quarter-cup servings out of a newly opened bag that should contain eight. Hmm.

Do the M&M people not know how to count? Do they use measuring cups that are different from our normal measuring cups? Did a thief slit open my bag of M&Ms, steal exactly a half cup, and then seamlessly reseal the bag?

Questions, questions.



Things I Learned in Law School:
8. Visits from Grandma are nice relaxations (Hi Grandma :) )
9. There is not time in the day to do everything you should do
10. No matter how much you study, it will never be enough
11. This is why law students are all crazy by the end of the first semester.
12. (Some of us were already crazy).

All that glisters is not gold...

Usually, it's actually from Ross.

Tonight Jamie and Rachel, two of my law school friends (as well as Claire and her husband and my classmates and all my other law school friends, just saying that Jamie and Rachel were the primary influences and focus of the photographic evidence) dragged me/each other to the Barrister's Ball. South Texas holds a formal every spring for students and faculty, giving us a chance to dress up and eat a nice dinner in a nice ballroom (and drink nice alcohol, if that's your thing - Jamie bargained for the two drink tickets included with my meal, and enjoyed them immensely).

Granted, I might not have been the most willing participant, but it was a decently fun night - it was nice to get out and talk to everyone and relax in pretty clothes. Pretty clothes are, on very rare occasions, sort of fun.

Heels are a different story altogether - my feet aren't speaking to me.

The day started far too early - Jamie and I went to an exam-writing seminar the school offered. The information was good, specific and usefull and I felt a little better about the tests, but the seminar lasted from 8 in the morning to 3:30 - we had an hour break for lunch. The first four hours were good, but by the last two... no one could pay any attention. I liked the teaching style of the woman who taught the course, though: straightforward and simple.

After that long and brain-draining exercise, Jamie and I went back to her apartment and changed/got ready. This, naturally, took longer than it should have, but we were still the first people of our little group to show up at the ball.

Pre-Ball pictures:

You can see the cute shawl/wrap on me to keep my dress modest - yes, I kept it on all night.

More playful picture

Jamie actually took this one while I was stumbling... heels and grass don't mix.

The ball itself was pretty fun - mostly a dinner/talking thing. There was some dancing at the end, but by that point all of the women had been in our high heels for at least four, maybe five hours. Some girls danced... I don't understand how. A hidden streak of masochism, perhaps? They are in law school, after all... and we're all crazy here.

Me at the ball - this is actually a much better representation of my dress's color.

This is Jamie and me...






Annnd Rachel and me.






Never, ever argue with a camera.



The final showing of photographic evidence demonstrates that, in my opinion, I need to never, ever wear tights with this dress again. They aren't white - they're just normal nylon-color - but the visual combination of the dress and the shawl and the nylons is baad.





Things I Learned in Law School:

4. Words like 'consideration' contain whole encyclopedias of unsuspected information.
5. Houston thunderstorms are loud.
6. It's actually kind of interesting to look up a bunch of cases and decide what the law is from them... maybe I'm weird?
7. (I'm definitely weird).

Oh, what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice honesty.

I will be honest here. That might... get a little uncomfortable, sometimes. I'll try not to use this as a forum to vent - more like a collection of random thoughts. But sometimes my thoughts might be of things that are sensitive in nature, things that are personal to me and the ramblings of my mind. As I'm assuming it will be mostly friends and family (if even you poor souls, heh) who read this, that might lead to some awkwardness when we're together again in person,. I'll try to avoid writing anything that's too personal or issue-causing, without holding myself back from being me. Sound like a fair deal?

A lot of this will probably be law-school related, to give y'all sort of a glimpse of my life and Texas and all that, but there will probably be just journal-like entries too, thoughts that I want put down and readable by people (like my rambling discussion of love in the previous post). Try not to read too much into these; if you have questions, comments, concerns, put them in the comments or email or call me - I love to hear from all y'all (and there's a phrase I never thought I'd use...).

Speaking of law school: forty days til my first final exam. Yikes - the clock's ticking... and that means I need to go study.

-Whitt

Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be

Love makes you better.

You don't realize this until you first really love someone. Until the first time you comprehend how it is possible to love a person even when and while you're furious at them. The first time you know with absolute certainty that you can tell them, that one person, anything. When you balance their needs with your own and find them equal, when their happiness is an essential part of you being happy, when you trust them with anything and everything. When even when you don't understand each other, you still know, still trust, still love. It doesn't have to be sexual or even familial. The first person who really teaches you how to love might be a friend, a brother, a companion. Parents teach us something different: what it is to be loved unconditionally, a love we cannot ever equal.

Perhaps no love is ever really equal - there always seems to be a push and pull, a time when one loves more, then the other. Or perhaps simply it's a time when one needs more, and then the balance of need shifts. Such things can happen over months, or weeks, or days, or even hours and minutes. But love... love is constant.

Each person might have his own faults, her own difficulties, but those are faced and known and accepted, even if they are not comprehended. Maybe I don't understand why certain words trigger a reaction in you that you don't even recognize - but I do, and I know those words, and I step lightly around them. Perhaps you will never be able to understand why my vulnerabilities run narrow and deep, a core handful of issues the mere touching of which is enough to send me into a tailspin that might last days. But you remind me of them, remind me when I am most exposed to them, and when all else fails... you pick up the pieces and form them into me again. Love means that I watch myself carefully, so that the tailspin doesn't harm you; love means that you're there for me even when it does.

Love doesn't require wholeness, or enough-ness, or change. Love sees you exactly as you are today, with every flaw and fault and issue, every wound-tight tension and heavy load, every imperfection of character or form or thought, and says one thing: "Let me be closer to you."

And then love shakes its head. "Let us just... be one in heart, and I will be happy. Let me know that the hurts we do each other will not last in the long run, that you will always be with me, that no distance will part the closeness we have in heart."

Love doesn't care that this morning we were fighting, if you need me now. Love will shelve any difficulty, irritation, or upsetness until it can be faced and handled - but love will make us face them, so that no weaknesses from them fester in either of us.

Love does not fight dirty. Two who love know each other's fault lines, weak points, know the words that would hurt the most, know which idea will do the most damage in a moment of weakness. Love is fighting without using those cracks in the soul to win. Love knows there are things it will never say to you, no matter how true, because they are the things you need love most not to say.

Love is not spent, or limited. Loving one person, even infinitely, does not infringe upon the ability to bear more love, to show it to others. Love is not hoarded or reserved for special occasions, because it cannot be restrained. And yet... love is imperfect. Or perhaps it is just that we love imperfectly.

Sometimes we say the things we shouldn't; sometimes the issues between us become more important, for a moment, than us - and sometimes in that moment we make mistakes. But even then, love is there to understand, to regret, to repent, to forgive. Love lets your hurts pull me out of mine, so that I may attend to you; by such, love helps us both.

Love is a moment and a memory. It is a smile, a hug, a family, a friend, an understanding of something no one else in the world knows. It bends, perhaps it changes, but when it's real it never goes away.

And as the Clint Black song goes... it is truly something that we do.