palace of winds

Oh lordy am I in love with Baton Rouge already.

Friday (Saturday morning, really) I dragged my butt to bed sometime after one. I think it was more like 1:30, but after I passed the one a.m. mark my brain refused to process anything later, for my own protection. I was going to get up at eight for showering and breakfasting and finishing up packing, but I woke shortly after six, and though looking at the clock my first thought was that I’d just go back to sleep, after lying there a minute I realized that even if I was mentally fuzzy I was Wide F’ing Awake and there would be no more rest that morning. So I got up and put in my longest Firm video and exercised my groggy little butt off (and was well-rewarded — I knocked down twenty or thirty more calories than I usually do!).

The first leg of the flight was pretty uneventful. I continued my streak of airplane magicness and was next to an empty middle seat, which was nice because I’d packed a *huge* lunch and I needed the extra tray table to shuffle all my containers. I was craving something big and green and I wanted to use up the last of the stuff in my fridge, so I packed a big container of spinach and romaine with green onion, a big thing of matchsticked carrots, and the last of the feta cheese, and whipped up a bit more of the creamy lime dressing that was so good earlier last week; rounded all that out with some mixed veg (just from a freezer bag, thawing overnight), a peanut butter and banana sandwich, and an orange. Which all turned out to be WAY too much food, but I love eating well on airplanes because you get so many jealous stares from people who just didn’t think to pack anything and who are now regretting it, munching on their overpriced and oversalted tube of ‘trail mix’. Personally I think eating that volume of nuts and seeds and other super calorie-dense bits is totlaly fine for people who are hiking all day and is total insanity for people who are vegging out practically immobile on an airplane all day.

Aaand I’m so rambling because it’s early. And I’m thirsty but Steph’s door is too loud for me to be able to creep to the kitchen to get a glass of water without waking her up, and I’m really trying not to wake her before eight today.

Ahem. I had a brief stopover in Memphis. The airport smelled like barbeque and fried meat — the former of which was pretty pleasant, because I love the deep spicy scent of barbeque sauce, and the latter of which was much less appetizing. I’d braced myself to come into the land of all fried meat all the time, though.

The second plane was smaller (two two-seat rows instead of two three), and I was next to a chatty environmentalist, and we spent a pleasant hour talking about food and the global carbon market and the Mississippi and trends in carmaking and gas prices. (And, weirdly enough, I ran into him again yesterday while we were getting groceries at Whole Foods. Small world here in Baton Rouge.)

After the requisite (controlled!) squeaking and hugging and rejoicing with Steph in the airport and grabbing my bag we headed out to her car, and I got a little tour of BR as we meandered back to her apartment. It has this lovely small-town feeling while still being quite a large place — large enough to support much more than just a Walmart, say, and to not feel back-water the way Kirksville does. Back at her apartment I got the tour, and we wound up on the back balcony, where I just sat for a while and marvelled at how green and summery everything looks, and all the wonderful sunshine.

We had grand ambitions to plan our menus and go grocery shopping, but halfway through the planning phase we decided Hello Sushi sounded a lot better at the moment, and dropped everything and went over there. It was cute (if freezing) inside, and the menu was adorable, and just the whole atmosphere, but disappointingly at heart it seemed to be much more of a chain than a restaurant, a distinction that’s only just coming really clear for me. (I mean, I’ve always known it unconsciously; I’m just really starting to think about it a lot more now — something I started as my eating habits changed and which has just gotten about a thousand times more important now that I’m a vegetarian). We wanted the sushi chefs to make us some vegetarian rolls, and we wanted to leave it up to him on the thought that: he’s the sushi chef, so he’s going to know way better than us what’s going to taste great. In my mind, a good restaurant response (a good chef’s response, that is) would be enthusiastic, excited at the opportunity to be a little creative. The chain response (and I think the sort of people who work in chains must be food preparers, like a Target check-out person versus someone in a specialty shop who’s intimately connected with and knowledgeable about the product) is what we got; that is, the waiter stared at us like we were crazy and said no, and that if we wanted to request something specific we certainly could, and that they had lots of vegetarians who did. To my thinking, then, the chefs must know what the local vegetarians favor, and maybe we could try that, but it was really no dice, and we were forced to invent our own.

So we got the veggie roll on the menu (cucumber, avocado, and…something else, I don’t remember what), a roll with apple and cucumber and cream cheese, and a spicy asparagus roll. I found the set veg roll to be okay but nothing spectacular. The asparagus roll ended up just being asparagus with a little dollop of something spicy on top, and while I like spicy it was kind of a one-note song, the roll ending up as just a vehicle for whatever the paste/sauce was — and while it had a nice play as far as spicy goes, going through a whole slow range of flavor, I wasn’t able to taste the asparagus at all. Our apple-cuce-cream cheese invention, though? With a tiny bit of wasabi on it for spice and a dip in the soy sauce for salt, it was amazing. Clear crunch from the cucumber, slightly grainier crunch from the apple and its own brand of acid-sweet, and pure heavy creamy sweet from the cream cheese, along with that spice-salt edge — that was the one that had us both Mmm and slit-eyed in pleasure.

We followed up with a cheesecake roll (as you’d expect, wrapped in pastry) with chocolate and caramel sauce. Nice and sweet but again about what you’d expect.

And wow, I actually meant to make this an entry about yesterday, which I haven’t even gotten to at all yet, but it’s already past eight and my tummy’s rumbling and we have to get moving so we can get to work on our sandwiches for this afternoon’s tea party! :D

Things I did as intended (more or less):

• scrubbed bathtub (I got an early start, actually: Friday evening, whereupon I discovered that Wednesday’s little push-up exercise [which involved kneeling across from your partner, chucking a medicine ball at them and at the end of the throw motion falling forward into a push-up, from which you spring back to catch the ball as it's being chucked at you in turn] had well and truly murdered my chest/shoulder area; I scrubbed till I was nigh on tears from the ache and called it not good enough but stopped anyhow)
• scrubbed toilet
• scrubbed bathroom sink
• put away all books (or, nearly; there is a small, *small* stack still on the floor, but they are the ones destined for sale, so don’t belong on the shelf; and there is a poor lost stack on top of the bookshelf which still requires arranging, but my bookends aren’t heavy enough to hold them up and so I’m currently at a loss, and anyway they’re not on the floor so it counts)
• put away all action figures! (I actually did this one! All of it! Well, except the Sideshow figures which are lying down instead of in neat poses, but dude — the boxes are packed *and* stored away [er, I'd already had the shelf arranged -- not that I've put them all away or anything, just the ones I don't have out right now; no more random floor-scattered limbo-life for the tiny Buffy stars])
• and cleaned up the desk, which I give myself 85% credit for; it’s night and day but I have to admit that it’s not finished, and there are still a woeful number of ‘things which must be sorted’ because I haven’t yet figured out just exactly what I want to do with/about them.
• washed dishes & did not create *too* many more
• exercised (Friday – yoga; Saturday – UCB [and oh the sweating])

Things I did not do that I should have:

• scrub kitchen sink
• wet-jet floors
• dust
• take boxes down to storage locker
• exercise (Sunday)
• Sunday dishes

Things I did that I should not have:

• phone call – 45 minutes with Mel, which lead to:
• shopping (Sunday morning and half the afternoon), and
• eating out (Big Bowl, where I discovered that my very favorite thing is made with fish sauce and so I can no longer have it, and my second-favorite thing made without fish sauce tastes deeply, deeply disappointing, to such a point that I kind of have no desire to ever go there again, which is sort of a surprise since this was among my top-five favorite restaurants prior to yesterday, woe)
• untimed breaks (though, really, I give myself a pass on this one because I worked *all day* on Saturday — I ‘slept in’ until 6:45 and then I was up, and though I was fairly puttery and did take lunch and snack breaks I worked for about twelve hours before calling it enough)

And then there is the issue of reading, which doesn’t belong in any of the above categories, because it’s not something I should have done, and while it did slow me down some it wasn’t the forbidden sort of reading and kept me from going insane, I think, on Saturday. I listened to the entire audiobook of Ursula LeGuin’s Gifts, and I’m a good way into Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, which I unexpectedly adore. (I didn’t think I’d hate it but I sort of expected it to be a bit laborious, some work, something I did for the enrichment of it, literary merit, etc yawn, and Steph so strenuously hated it, but so far, for me? Love, love, love. Oh Tolstoy, oh precise poetic soul. And thank you translator, whose name I did not pay a whit of attention to, and sorry for that; and thank you narrator for your pleasant British accent and your lovely subtle voices.)

I have this strange sort of habit of eating very well for a while, five to ten days I’d say, and then going on a bit of — well, I’m going to call it a binge even though it’s a creature that is so entirely unlike even my normal habits of eating a few years ago. But for me, now, an extra five crackers with cheese can be a binge. It feels like one — dizzy and ill-advised and afterwards physically and mentally uncomfortable. I’m sort of terrified that my body is revolting against refined-carb-centered meals; I didn’t feel entirely satisfied after Friday evening’s pizza, even though it was my own whole wheat crust. There just wasn’t enough else, I guess, though I was absolutely stuffed. And then Saturday morning was the cold cereal, and me out of fruit again, and from there it was just a mess of grazing, all popcorn and frozen yogurt and bits of chocolate, and then Sunday Big Bowl and I just feel sort of exhausted with this deep knot of craving for whole veggies and oh, oh, fruit, and sincerely damn this town for being yuppieville and having only an expensive grocery store, because I need a banana like I used to need a frozen pizza or easy mac or a McFlurry. And lately I’ve really been trying to listen to my body but I find it hard to believe that it’s really kind of whacked out over some white rice and frozen yogurt (or maybe it’s just the Big Bowl sodium overload?), so I sort of suspect my head, or hormones, or god knows what.

Except I’ve noticed that every time I’ve eaten out in the past month, I just don’t feel as good in the ensuing hours, into the next day. And I mean, I like going out, I like being able to sometimes eat food that I haven’t had to make, I like the social aspect, but every place I’ve been lately — Applebee’s, El Azteca, Santorini, Big Bowl — has been a disappointment, even taking into account my low expectations for the first two. To a one I’ve left wishing I’d just cooked something at home. Which honestly? Really kind of sucks. My family already thinks I’m kind of loony tunes. (And my mom is, apparently, afraid I’m not coming to Easter now because I’m a vegetarian. Which is just too huge and ridiculous to deal with in any manner that isn’t sighing and moving on.)

In other news, ABC has my undying Sunday-night love. The feeling that Grey’s Anatomy gives me is sick and sad and shameful because it is huge and glowing and it’s like that moment in the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast when the prince is transformed because this feeling is so huge and bright that it’s rays of sunshine out of my f’ing fingers and toes and I’m floating three feet off the floor — only in my conception no one has to recoil in horror because there’s not that whole revelation of a prince who really looked better as a beast, no sudden scary eyes and weird girly lips. My love for this show is unhealthy. There is gasping. There is chair-dancing. Self-hugging. Weeping, laughing. If I could only have one hour of television every week for the rest of my life there is no question. God help me, I like this show better than Crocodile Hunter. I’m uncomfortable being tied to any television schedule (and was sort of pleasantly surprised to find that though I forgot about Survivor on Tuesday I’ve been too lazy to look up a recap — though that’s probably partly because they lost me with that stupid clip show [I freaking hate that episode] and then their few-week hiatus), but whatever. Grey’s is love.

Today I:

Got up at 5:45.

Met Jo at Yum! for breakfast. It was gorgeous. The inside is really nice and filled with all sorts of delicious-looking things. We had a vegetable quiche that was creamy and delicious in this perfect flaky buttery crust, with fresh fruit (including pineapple, mmm), and an applesauce oatmeal scone, and a cinnamon pull-apart, which reminded me of the monkeybread Mrs. Bobzien used to make us some mornings, only Yum! has this gorgeous thick frosting on and I think Mrs. B did more of a glaze/icing thing.

Made cards. Giggled quite a lot.

Went to Ikea with my mom and sister and nephew. Tried the new chocolate bread pudding, which was surprisingly pretty good. Snagged a low tv stand in their as-is area; stand is now functioning as a pretty shoe rack in my front closet.

Bought birthday gifts for my little cousin. Lusted after the fantastic storybook-associated puppet sets which were, alas, about three times my price range.

Ran into my across-the-hall neighbor coming back from shopping and was unexpectedly gifted a gorgeous antique-looking chair. White with claw feet and an elaborate back and a white brocade cushion. Chatted with him (the neighbor, not the chair) about cycling and anime and the other neighbors. Found myself telling him something unexpected and having to bite my tongue to keep myself from asking him not to repeat it, as M— doesn’t know.

Read Indian cookbooks until I was dizzy. Ate an entire zucchini and, later, an orange. There is no pleasure like skinning a whole fruit and eating it raw.

I find that exercising is at least 50% wardrobe.

I came home yesterday afternoon exhausted and shuffling and squirming mentally, trying to find excuses. I don’t want to. I’m tired so I shouldn’t. Blah blah blah. So I thought: Okay. I will compromise and get on the elliptical and do the interval program while watching Desperate Housewives. Then I’ve gotten in activity and found time to see the show. Once I was dressed, though, well. I’d gone to all the trouble to get everything on, and now that my hair’s shorter it makes a swingy little exercise-inducing ponytail, and it seemed a shame not to get a more aggressive use of the time.

So today I’m pleasantly sore — though less so than I’d expected, having spent the remainder of the evening moving about a little shakily. Half that was maybe muscle exhaustion from really working out for the first time in over a week (after a few weeks of general slackitude), but I think at least half was just straight exhaustion. I spent yesterday and now this morning stubbornly denying that I’m not feeling well. I think it really is the sore throat of tiredness, though, and not the sore throat of virusness or anything that could be remedied with pills or syrups or drops of any sort, more’s the pity.

Also I feel sort of disgusting and house-sized. I think it’s just the usual that comes with the territory, but I’d forgotten it a little. I can’t be too put out, though; I’m thrilled to have it back. Relieved, elated, etc. We’ll see how long that lasts. I give it this time, tops.

Last night we had this really fantastic chili blanco, with chicken and white beans and mushrooms. If I remember when I’m home I’ll put up the recipe; it was terrifically easy. Especially since I skipped the bit where you’re supposed to roast peppers, since we didn’t have the sort the recipe called for anyhow. I’ll also put up the caramel apple salad recipe — it’s this mix of diced apples with cool whip and butterscotch pudding and pineapple and marshmallows and peanuts and it’s dangerously addictive and so fluffy and tasty that I just want to cuddle it and eat it forever and ever. And now I’m making myself hungry. I had shredded wheat and a banana this morning; I’m not sure what to expect as far as staying power goes. I’ve found Kashi Go Lean, as much as I adore it, doesn’t last as easily to noon as oatmeal or my smoothie. I’m not sure why; it’s got enough protein and fiber that it should.

Speaking of food, Origami Sushi on Saturday was wonderful fun. From least favorite to most: The California roll was okay, but I’m not a huge fan of crab. The pickled ginger, however? Lovely. The shrimp tempura roll was good, which I’d expect of anything fried with mayo in. Warm and mild. The spicy tuna was my favorite. The spicy was of a different quality than what I’m used to in Mexican and even other Asian food, which I liked. I’ve really been enjoying experiencing tastes that are entirely outside my frame of reference. I found I liked most the crunchy bits in the rolls — I think mostly it was cucumber. It’s a nice additional texture. My boss was delighted I’d tried it, since last winter we talked about how I never had. (I said then that I expected I’d try fish before the year was out, and I was quite right.) He’s said we’ll go in the next few weeks, and I’ve promised to try eel. So, that’s: a few varieties at least of fish; mushrooms; peppers. Anyone have any other foods they think it’s a travesty I don’t like? (Apart from olives. I tried; it did not fly.)

Note to self: Set VCR for House; 8 p.m. on 9.

Had a good and half-productive weekend. Spent a few hours at the Aveda Institute on Saturday getting my hair cut; well worth $12. I also bought some of their universal styling cream, which is a complete miracle. A miracle, I tell you. And it smells really good.

Jo and I had dinner at Vescio’s, which is a tasty Italian place in Dinkytown. I ate things I probably shouldn’t've, but not a terrible lot of them, so at least that’s something. Then we went over to the Purple Onion and got very hyper on coffee and tea, respectively. And then we stayed up far, far too late playing the Sims. Shamefully late. So late I won’t even say.

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