Vickilicious

Behind the library at my school is a beautiful rose garden. On my way home this afternoon, I strolled through on a sensory vacation and snapped a few shots. I will have to go back with my good camera, as the small Nikon I had with me has decided to break my heart and no longer functions anywhere near how it's supposed to (problems include shoddy focusing, failure to actually take the photo when I press the button and really worrying color shifts).

At any rate, I've made a Flickr set of today's images, which I will likely add to soon.

To begin, catering on Sunday went absolutely wonderfully. I even surprised myself. I hit some magical cooking Zen spot and was up until after 3am on Saturday chopping vegetables, arranging platters, and just getting it done.

I got to the pier earlier than anyone else and began panicking, since I knew I had scallops threatening to spoil and vegetables dying to wilt. Fortunately the day captain arrived before I got myself too worked up, and I got to work. I had two people working with me, wonderful ladies named Jeanette and Rhoda. Rhoda was hilarious and reminded me so much of my Grandma Jean in her wit and that cute little sparkle in her personality. It was a genuine pleasure working with them.

The only real trauma of the day was the sterno debaucle... as in even though I saw a stack of sterno candles on Friday, there were none to be found by Sunday morning. I went to the new Fairway across the street, which has been open all of a month and literally has everything in the planet in eighteen varieties, but since they've reorganized the store as many days as they've been open, no one could find the sterno candles. Managers and stock boys were about to get into a fist-fight and a large screaming match began between a floor guy and a customer service person about why no one updates the store layout diagrams when they make the decisions to move entire sections. Long story short, I didn't get them, after a near-tears half hour.

Fortunately this awesome girl Amy and her husband showed up to save the day and drove me a few blocks away to a dollar store that had a whole aisle of sterno trays and candles. Of course I have to wonder, if the captain knew these items were there the whole time, why she sent me to the tier of hell that is Fairway on a Sunday morning, but that lapse of sense only cost me a low-grade panic attack that very few people knew about.

Once all the food was set up and I had resolved the stupid sterno situation (cause seriously, my apartment and the entire hallway smelled so strongly of sausage and scallops that I was sure it would linger for days and there was no way all that cooking would be for naught), things went perfectly well the rest of the day.

The higher-ups of the organization were all really pleased and kept coming by all day to compliment me on how professional and appealing everything looked. Everyone was really impressed with these little signs I made that took all of 15 min in Photoshop -- to the point where I have to email a template over so everyone can use them from now on. The customers were thrilled with the food selection and quality - considering it's a voluntary donation and people came back with $5 bills to tell me how much they enjoyed it, I think I did okay. I was surprised how much people were charmed by the cucumber sandwiches, and of course the chocolate-covered strawberries made a lot of days.

The women working with me were thrilled that they barely had to cut anything up or arrange food on platters. I didn't know it, but usually food supervisors bring bags full of ingredients and have their workers spend the day cutting, the way I'd spent my evening before. Instead, they were able to chat up customers and enjoy the wine selection, which made for much more pleasant company all day long.

I can't exactly explain it, but that hospitable part of me which likes to make people comfortable and welcome with food was deeply satisfied with this whole experience, to the point where I could see myself being very happy running a restaurant or catering business. And of course that whole Martha Stewart wannabe aspect of my personality was thrilled that every single dish got rave reviews - it's pretty exciting to be called a great cook countless times over one day.

At any rate, even though I only took three shitty pictures, it was quite a sight and I was thrilled with how great everything looked and, well, was. As I was packing up, the organization people all asked if I would do it again for the next show, and I said that as long as I'm able to (since the show spans the time I am in Costa Rica), it'd be my pleasure.

Second bit of good news - I got an A on my midterm!!! At first I was a bit concerned - she gave our exams back just before break and I didn't have a calculator. My score was 34.25/36, which is kind of hard math to do in one's head, and I always get deceived by seemingly small differences plus some lingering thing in my head was saying that 4/5 was 80% so I shouldn't be too pleased yet. After an uncomfortably long exercise in long division, I had to call Eric to confirm and it turns out I got a 95, which is not bad at all.

Some of the other students failed miserably, so she gave them take-home versions. She said to one girl, "The images are in your book - I want you to look them up and just write anything about them so I can give you a passing grade," and the girl actually had the nerve to bitch about it over break, saying she'd already taken the exam, why should she have to do it again. There is a guy who sits behind me and has several intensely annoying habits which include kicking my seat at random intervals, eating chips for an ungodly length of time every single class, playing games on his cell phone with the sound on, and loudly sighing way too frequently with nacho-cheese breath. He just plain skipped the exam and had some lame discussion with her about being sick, so he too will be given a take-home exam pass/fail. I'm not sure why these kids aren't more concerned or don't realize that when a significant part of your grade will be pass/fail, your course grade is not going to be stellar.

It does honestly concern me because I've been considering teaching when I finish school, and I'm not sure I could handle a class this lazy and immature. We had a field trip to the Met which was meant to serve as both a review and a really great opportunity to see the work in person with our professor, and only 3 of us showed up! I mean, we have a paper to write about it, and most people didn't bother coming! Toward the end, 2 more guys showed up and one of them kept taking phone calls, so he missed almost all of what she said anyway. I can't imagine how that must have felt for my professor, as she had spent a really long time preparing her lecture and organizing our tour. The three of us really appreciated it and I definitely got a ton out of it -- my paper is going to be a breeze once I find citations for the notes I took -- but still, we all felt kind of embarrassed for the rest of the class dissing her. I know that when I was an undergraduate, I did a lot of stupid and irresponsible things, but then again, I made sure not to take any graduate classes where the level of expectations would be so much higher. It's confusing to me that the undergrad art history majors seem to consider graduate classes as just advanced blow-offs, but it also now makes a lot more sense that they require two more advanced degrees and years of experience to do any real work in art history.

Seeing these kids, I am also torn because I wanted to ask for a position grading for undergrad classes next semester, where you have to attend the survey classes and then grade tests and papers for the professor. I was all excited, thinking I could make them online study guides and hold review sessions and do all this hokey enthusiastic stuff... but now I'm fairly confident it would all be a waste of time. I also think I would get really impatient if I saw them goof off through the class period then demonstrate zero applied knowledge on an exam - I know I couldn't grade for spite, but it's certainly tempting to give them a decoddling. The deciding factor is of course that I didn't take a lot of art history as an undergrad (seeing as I was trying to major in neuroscience and then studio arts with a minor), so I will get to essentially audit all the survey classes I missed, so long as they don't disrupt my schedule too much. The faculty at Pratt is so amazing, though, that I consider it a genuine privilege to sit in on their lectures and get to interact with them, so the more the better.

With that, I have to get going on my research paper. It's one of those heart-breakingly beautiful days, so I kind of hate to spend a chunk of it at the library, but I'm hoping to get to New Jersey this weekend for Father's Day, so the paper must get done now.

The other day Eric and I lost our minds and spent an embarrassing amount of time setting up web presences for Iggy and Smokey on Catster. As if like, half of this blog weren't enough.

You can check out their profiles (and add them as friends!):

Though they're virtual and he doesn't know about them, both Eric and I feel a compulsion to keep giving Smokey treats. Even in cyberspace, he's a spoiled little piggy.

Oh and Hope got an amazingly cute little kitten - meet Sophie!

Seeing as Eric has been pushing for a new kitten since the Catster day, I worry I will have no defenses once he sees the overwhelming sweetness of Hope's little baby. I don't want to be outnumbered by cats, but then again... a kitten....

Despite the nervous breakdown I was having at the industrial grocery this morning, I think I have this catering thing under control now.

I brought home a second staggering amount of food and got to work preparing things. Thus far I've made:

• sweet Italian sausage with green peppers
• hot Italian sausage with yellow peppers
• cucumber sandwiches (recipe coming soon)
• angel food cake

I only have two real cooking items left:

• bacon-wrapped scallops
• chocolate-covered strawberries

And the rest is just cutting and arranging:

• crudités tray with broccoli, carrots & peppers, variety of dressings & sun-dried tomato and basil hummus
• selection of salami
• cheese & cracker tray
• cubes of mozzarella cheese (maybe marinated in olive oil & herbs... maybe just cubes - are stars cheesy? (pun half-intended))
• spring mix mesclun salad
• three bean salad
• bagel & cream cheese platter
• brownies
• coffee cake

I am trying to decide if I should have a fruit plate or not, but that depends on how much fruit is leftover from today (I saw how much she bought yesterday and I just refuse to believe people are that enthusiastic about grapes). Depending on how much bacon and energy I have leftover, I may also fry up some bacon and eggs in the morning for the workers' breakfast.

The only remaining challenge is to get all this food safely into my car, then set up at the pier. Oh and not dropping dead of anxiety as I try to keep service going all day tomorrow.

Yep, give me $125 (or so) and I will deliver a multi-course feast and all the nervous energy you can stand.

Let me begin by saying I am on a pretty strict diet. It's one of those well-balanced, low-sugar, low-fat, heart healthy type diets, the likes of which can be wrecked, for example, by drinking too much juice or milk in a given day, let alone deciding to go hog wild on treats.

Look at what is sitting in my fridge this very instant. Leering at me, in all their glory. Laughing scandalously because ha! they are ridiculously tasty and I cannot have any.

By Sunday there should be at least four times as many chocolate-covered strawberries I cannot touch. Plus a tray of sausage and peppers. And bacon-wrapped scallops. Already there are various salamis and cheeses and the most heartbreaking selection of crackers I'm not allowed to even think about. There will be cucumber sandwiches. Oh and angel food cake that I'm baking myself.

See, I am part of an artist's coalition that puts on very lovely shows on a pier in Red Hook. This time my work assignment is food supervisor for Sunday, which means that I spent the entire day today with the food chair at an industrial restaurant-supply grocery (oh my word) and Costco, lugging around untold masses of food and snacking away on free samples like it was my job.

When I came home, I decided I ought to try my hand at tempering chocolate in preparation for all the chocolate-covered strawberries I capriciously included on my menu (because it was suggested I have fruit, and to a girl required to eat servings of fruit and salad with every meal, I jumped at the opportunity to cover said fruit in something completely unhealthy). To be honest, if anyone else found cheese-injected, prosciutto-wrapped or beer-battered strawberries appealing, I may have offered those as well.

It turns out it is exceedingly easy to temper chocolate. Perhaps I have just discovered the single greatest cause of the obesity epidemic in America. Why has no one told me how easy it is to make pots and pots of molten chocolate?! You know what, I'm not going to complain -- I should be thankful I haven't discovered it until just now.

I was pretty restrained at first. I decided not to have a lunch meal, having snacked so much at Costco. I was the model of discipline and will-power. As I began heating chocolate and Crisco (did you know the best dipping chocolate is mixed with lard??), I resolved not to eat any. Okay or maybe just one, to make sure the flavor and consistency was decent, but only after I'd prepared them all and let them cool properly in the fridge (I still have not had any).

But that doesn't mean I can't lick the whisk when I'm done, right? Oh or take a spoonful out of the melted chocolate for quality control...

After dipping the test container of strawberries, I found myself suddenly overwhelmed with extra warm, delicious chocolate. Thinking fast, I grabbed the rest of a package of almonds and dumped them in. That's almost healthy, right? While they cooled on wax paper, I sliced a kiwi and dipped it in, fondue-style. When I realized I was going to waste the precious chocolate clinging to the sides and bottom of the pan, I got half a piece of bread and scraped every last drop out of it.

I think, just maybe, I have had enough chocolate.

I will be living with all this ridiculous deliciosity just staring me down for the next two days, mocking me every time I go to make an egg-white omelette or grab some low-fat cottage cheese. Suddenly that broccoli and mushroom pita bread pizza I was planning for dinner is not looking so appealing...

(If you do not hear from me for a few days, I probably have lapsed into a food coma and/or had a rapid heart-attack from overwhelming rapture as I lost my mind and ate every last thing in the fridge. Know that I went happily.)

Things have gotten too thoughtful 'round here (actually I'm studying for a midterm for my summer class), so I give you... video of Iggy versus a remote-controlled car.

Bonus - Eric's and my goofy laughs.

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(Wish me luck on my exam - if my amusement at a cat and a toy are any indication, my brain is decidedly out to lunch for the summer).

Usually I am one with our cats. We have many of the same loves, and often our loves are compatible - Smokey loves to be held, and boy do I love me some kitty-holdin'. Frequently I wonder what my life would be like if it didn't include these wonderful little animals. I can't imagine it, honestly, but I do know that it would probably involve better furniture...

To be fair, Smokey started this. When I moved into my first apartment at Ocean Ave, I owned almost no furniture. My mother located a barely-used couch (with queen-size sleeper bed) for an absolute steal and brought it up for my birthday. I was stoked. It fit perfectly along a wall between the living area and a little hallway, and it was comfortable beyond belief.

It was also irresistable to little cat claws....

I tried everything, from my vet's recommendation of wrapping the arms in aluminum foil (apparently cats hate the feeling so much they won't scratch anymore... at least in theory) to citrus spray. Smokey had no interest in his scratching post -- all he wanted was to dig into the couch arms... and continued to do so until he'd stripped them down to the wood.

When Iggy moved in last summer, it was a lost cause. Eric and I decided the cats could just have the damn couch as long as they didn't scratch anything else (Smokey had moved on to digging the lacquer off a cedar chest I've owned since infancy). And have at it, they did. By the time we moved that couch to this apartment, Eric was insisting we throw it out, but I refused because seriously, it's just the arms and it's a deliciously comfortable couch!

I even still like its shape. Seems to me that made it a perfect candidate for slip-covering... so the year-long debate began, and only just recently did I take the initiative to just say heck with it and get what I want. I really like Eric's taste on most things, but navy blue? Really? No, I don't think so. I decided on a taupe kind of brown suede since it'd go with all our existing stuff, be basically neutral, but not be the off-white I really wanted. I thought I was being very compromising here.

It was remarkably difficult to get the cover to fit tightly. Now that it's been on a few days, I realize I'm going to have to read the "Tips for a Better Fit" sheet, as it's looking more and more like a sheet thrown over a lumpy couch.

However, I've not yet met a problem throw pillows can't fix!

And, in an astonishing turn of events, the cats have made their peace. They no longer seem even remotely tempted to claw at the not inexpensive suede (a huge concern of mine, once I realized the potential damage they could do). Occasionally they half-heartedly scratch at the new blue sofa or the coffee table, as if to keep me on my toes, but basically they're well-behaved. They both enjoy snuggling into the suede and look very cute doing it.

Now they scratch at the walls, making the most high-pitched screeeeeeeeetchy-screeeeeeetch sound I've ever heard, typically between 5-9am. Naughty kitties...

So most of you probably know that today is the 25th anniversary of the first reported case of AIDS (though some have interesting disputes of the exact date).

Among the surge of media coverage this anniversary has generated, I came across a fascinating and very thought-provoking biography of AIDS in NYC, published in last week's New York magazine, which I'm coming to consider a must-read.

At first I was stricken by how deeply some communities were affected while the generally conservative attitude of the nation at the time prevented any sort of dialogue at all. The gross misinformation disseminated just appalls me (example - Cosmo actually printed that straight women can't get infected if they have sex with HIV-positive men, further elaborating that AIDS can't be contracted while in the missionary position!). I was getting all indignant and infuriated when it started to occur to me... maybe they just didn't know?

I was born five months after the supposed first confirmed case of AIDS, so I have grown up with this disease as it has developed and consumed lives around me. I came of age in a very, very conservative town, where our AIDS education included "You don't have to worry about it - it just gets gays and poor people," as if a disease discriminated along the same lines as my misguided teacher. Students were given the opportunity to attend a taping of Donahue with Ryan White, and they auditioned for this by coming up with the most provocative questions they could imagine, which included "Are you gay?" and "Do you hate gay people for getting you sick?" One girl boasted that she was going to get his autograph... completely missing the point.

I wonder to what extent bigotry and intolerance has really factored into the lack of national awareness and education - were the first known cases of AIDS not sexually-transmitted, would we have responded more appropriately? Say, the way we did with SARS or mad cow disease or bird flu? You don't see anyone saying only Asian people get SARS, you know?

Despite the argument that most people contract HIV or AIDS as a result of their actions, can we really condemn them if they just plain did not know what the consequences of those actions could be? Imagine if you heard a report tomorrow saying anyone who drinks coffee is suddenly at risk for a nasty, fatal disease we don't understand and have no conceivable treatment for. I can't imagine hearing some moron saying "They should have known all along -- drinking coffee is dangerous and unnatural!" To pass moral judgment about contraction was an unconscionable thing to have done, and it does honestly revolt me to know how many people over the years have done so -- and how many of those people included teachers, friends, and respected members of my community.

What I find most disturbing, though, is that in light of our atrocious historical handling of HIV and AIDS, we aren't doing more now. I know people personally who will say AIDS is no longer an issue, who will advocate flagrantly irresponsible sex acts because, once again, they've decided to shove their heads firmly up their asses and decide "It doesn't happen to people like me." I was shocked at how many of the samples of donated blood at Trinity could not be used because they tested HIV positive, as well as when I learned how many of my friends have never even thought of getting an HIV test despite numerous sexual partners. There are so many startling statistics, including the alarming rise of new infections in black women. The world-wide infection rate is still absolutely horrifying... but if asked, I suspect a lot of people would act as if it's not a big deal. After all, it's no hurricane or tsunami, right?

So anyway, I encourage you to donate if you can afford it, and do whatever you can to help raise awareness and education. Get tested, and encourage your friends and lovers to do the same. We're not safe yet, and people are continuing to die needlessly because we can't get them the information and protection they need. As human beings, we owe each other more than that.