I have watched so much Mythbusters over the past week or so that... I don't know. But it was a lot of Mythbusters. Love me some Mythbusters. I have now watched every episode of Mythbusters on the TiVo, except for "Cooling a Six-Pack" which I'm pretty sure I've seen before. My favorite was the one where they chopped up a plane.

I've gotten into a bad habit of not eating dinner, just having lots and lots of snacks. I've actually become too lazy to get up from my desk to buy or prepare food.

Classes start next week, and so my goal for this week is to get everything I possibly can out of the way before that happens. This includes, but is not limited to: (more) apartment-cleaning, total laundry*, a haircut, at least setting up a dental appointment if not actually getting my teeth cleaned, major grocery shopping**, and other things which I fully intend to write down as I think of them. Am I intending to check out of Life for the next three months? Perhaps a little bit. But once I'm done with this, I promise not to pursue any more academic degrees for at least a year.




*"total laundry" means everything, even the washable rugs.
**likewise "major grocery shopping" means stocking up on nonperishable items that I think I might need over the next three months.

So, yesterday I tried a very simple recipe that I'd been meaning to try for a long time, which is: roasted chickpeas. Basically, this is (canned or pre-cooked) chickpeas tossed with olive oil, garlic, and salt and pepper, roasted at 400° for 15-20 minutes (shake the pan a few times during cooking). And wow, they are so good. So very good. I think they are my new favorite snack food. I ate them with my fingers. Awesome. I could have eaten the whole can. For lunch today I had sauteed grated zucchini, which was good but kind of weird -- the whole (medium-sized) zucchini cooked down to maybe half a cup of cooked zucchini. Which I ate all of, because it was pretty yummy.

Feast season has started in my neighborhood -- in the North End, in late July and August, there is a procession and festival just about every weekend, some more important and/or interesting than others. I think this past weekend was Saint Joseph -- I ran into the procession on my way to work yesterday, and I think they were calling out "Viva San' Giuseppe!" I hope I'm not away for Saint Anthony's -- that one is right on my street, which means I have even better access than usual to various delicacies (many of the deep-fried variety). Mmm, calamari. Mmm, fried dough. Mmm, cannoli. Eww, tripe. Mmm, pizza.

All right, it's clearly time for me to start eating my dinner.

Wow, it is rather warm out today. In honor of my successful completion of most of my coursework, and my imminent completion of the remainder of my coursework, I have treated myself to a lovely sandwich at Beanstock, where they make sandwiches which, shockingly, are about the same size as a sandwich you'd make at home; this seems like a real rarity in America today, where generally if you order food in a restaurant you can expect to receive enough to feed a family of four, and I actually like it. It's nice to leave a restaurant wanting more. Plus, now I have room for gelato, a necessity in hot times such as these. I think today is a good day for something fruity.

I'm setting a course -- for gelato!

I really, really love cherries, and for the last month or two my local fruit and vegetable store ("Going Bananas") has had awsome ones. I have been eating about a pound and a half to two pounds of cherries a week. I am spending like 20% of my grocery money on cherries. (If you don't count the money I paid up front for my farm share veggies, I suspect I spend more than half my grocery money on cherries.) They're just such good cherries, though! I can't stop! And of course they're fruit and therefore healthy so that makes them easier to buy. No real problem here, I guess, except it just seems a little weird and wrong to have one kind of fruit account for so much of my food spending.

Today I learned an important lesson: grated cheese, especially cheese that you grated at home on your own cheese grater, does not pack well. I had some cheddar at home, and I have some tortilla chips here at work, and I thought, "Hey! Two great tastes that taste great together! I will bring cheese to work and microwave nachos for dinner!" But alas, by the time I got to work, my cheese had re-solidified into a highly unattractive cheeselump, which I decided to throw away. So no nachos for me. I think I will have to buy myself a consolatory burrito.

Also, this makes me wonder what they do to the packaged grated cheese in order to make it stay grated. Although probably I don't want to know. Well, I hardly ever buy packaged grated cheese anyhow. And when I do, I mostly feed it to other people.

Today there was a LISSA (student association) meeting right after my class, so I went and was social for a few minutes, and I ate a slice of free pizza. Now. I have been making an effort to eat more healthily lately, but I still eat all kinds of disgusting things all the time; indeed, this weekend was a regular orgy of PMS-induced junkfood eating, with the chicken tender, brownie, quesadilla, and soft-pretzel-stick food groups all more than adequately represented. And I never, ever suffer any ill effects from eating all this crap; I have a true iron digestion.

Or so I thought. That slice of pizza made me feel like I was going to die. Upon being swallowed, that slice of pizza immediately tried to claw its way out of my stomach. In short, that slice of pizza had it in for me. Others were eating the pizza with no apparent ill effects. I do not know why my body so forcibly renounced the pizza and all its works, but damn! That hurt. I will probably go to another LISSA meeting if they continue to meet right around the time I have class, but I will not be eating any more pizza. Ow.