First, I would like to direct your attention to the vast quantity of vegetables required. Look! I did it all fancy in separate bowls too, all cut up ahead of time; except I didn’t give myself a commercial break to make my staff cut them up. Evidently, this is called something in French.

Chopping up and separating le vegetables, the French way

The first disaster strikes. I have no salt, and neither do any people in my wing, it seems. I rush to the student union and grab a handful of packets, naturally stopping at Papa John’s to get parmesan cheese (I’m going to make pasta one of these days…) Day seized.

I'm pretty sure having this much salt would make me either royalty or a thief in the Dark Ages

And now to wait for an hour as the eggplant soaks. As we wait, I will tell you a few weird facts that I either know or have guessed about eggplants.
*cheesy music*
Did you know… the eggplant is part of the nightshade family of plants. That’s the same family as tomatoes, and a bunch of poisonous plants. Monkshood, I want to say.
Did you know… if you don’t let the eggplant release juices with the salt it will soak up oil like an SUV when it’s cooking, and will also become nasty and slimy.
Did you know… eggplants are great roasted and mashed up as babaganoush? They are. You should try it.
Next step is to roast the eggplant in the oven. For this purpose I have checked out two baking sheets (along with the colander the eggplant drained in, and the pot I will cook the onions in) This is going to be a late, late dinner.
(After several long commercial breaks) Well, the eggplant and the zucchini are just about done roasting. I’m golden-ing the onions and some garlic, and will then add in the tomatoes.
Cooking in a dorm is a pain in the butt. Especially if you live on the third floor with a basement kitchen and then forget something.
Adding the tomatoes into the onion-garlic thing, and getting them (somehow) to look appetizing.
And finally… I stir in the eggplant and zucchini.

IT’S DONE.

It makes Pixar villains' hearts melt.

Om nom nom nom nom nom nom…

I went on a very brave journey to the Tucson Mall last week; it is not a journey that should be travelled on public transport, nor is it a journey that should be travelled often, but I did. I’m thinking of saying it will be an annual pilgrimage that started last year and ends this year. You may say “But… that’s a two year tradition”. Well, if I may answer your statement with a statement that also happens to be a question: How many pilgrimages have YOU been on?
The reason of my pilgrimage I will not mention here, but alongside the necessary requirements of the journey, I was able to look at a lot of puppies in plexiglass cages, and a Jack Russell Terrier that was stupidly put in an x-pen that was *much* too short for it. On this pilgrimage I was also able to try on a pair of skinny jeans. They were interesting, and are better left as a concept*.

*No! Don’t envision it! You can’t. It’s a concept. Like string theory; you can’t picture it.

I’m drinking one right now, and it doesn’t have a single drop of milk in it.

It is risen indeed.

Now quick! From where we left off in incomplete sentences!

Finals Yay GPA Home Unemployment Boredom Sad Goodbye Seattle Proposal Engagement Bermuda Dolphins Sunburn Wedding Dress Seattle (again) Boat Toy Story 3 Orange County <Arrested Development reference here> Disney Land Child-like Wonder Packing Moving Here

It is now the 2nd week of school, and sophomore year feels exactly like a continuation of freshman year. Same food, same homework, same guy on the corner handing out bar fliers with the stripper on them and same evangelist yelling about homosexuality/creationism/pot.

However, my favorite part of the year, without a doubt, is the part where I get my own room. My mother would like to point out that the last time I had my own room was NOT when I was 4 (when my brother was born) but when I was 12 (when we spent a sumer at my grandma’s house) None the less – I’m thrilled.

It’s the room originally designated as a “study room”, where two desks were put so one person could study while the other slept. That just seemed kind of pointless though, so I got my own room!

It has four windows.

Nor are they Tardisi*

*this is the pluralization. I promise.

http://twitter.com/talkinturkey

Meanwhile, here are the humorous happenings (things I’ve found time to mock)

I love polls.

I realize it is blurry so, here we go:

Who would you rather meet?

a) Sarah Silverman (10 votes)
b) Martin Scorsese (15 votes)
c) Leonardo DiCaprio (22 votes)
d) None of the above (24 votes)

New question:
Do you think the Pac-1o should expand?

If any of you guys want to take a swing at either of these questions, go ahead and leave it in the comments. I’m terribly curious. I just hope Ms. Silverman, Mr. Scorsese and Mr. DiCaprio aren’t offended by the original results.  I also think that to follow the “new question” we should ponder is, if we *do* expand, should we actually change the number at the end of the Pac, or is it just too much money to re-brand?

Also,

No.

No amount of “FREE” food will lure me.
Your background pic selection? Also NO.

A bad quality photo of how briefly cool I was. Note the tattoo-appropriate attitude face.

Also, while we’re on the coolness subject, or, the diminishing coolness subject, however you see it:

Croquet.

I am currently watching a cocktail of The Andy Griffith Show, Hogan’s Heroes and Leave It to Beaver, available on tvland.com for those of you with a case of the nostalgics.
Update on the academic front, we have finished “The Romanian Letters” segment we were reading in Ottoman, a rambling travel diary, and are now moving on to a knock-off of Sherlock Holmes. This should be fun. Updates to follow. And now for this week’s Book of the Week! Just so you know, this book beat out a civil engineering/environmentalist book titled “The Toilet Papers”. I’m maturing. Now, here’s to all of those who enjoy this lazy version of baseball:

As glad as I was to take a break from school, spring break was cut short due to the long anticipated Model United Nations High School Conference that us in the MUN club/class here put on. It was extremely exciting, busy and tiring, and I tip my hat to all the people in the Executive Committee who really did all the work behind setting it up. I was honored to act as the Resolution Processing Coordinator, though, I was the only one who wanted the job. High schoolers debate and caucus in meeting halls and ballrooms, and then runners type and send drafts of the resolutions they write to me, which I check, assign to a resolution processor, check again, and print. Easy as it  sounds, it gets really busy. We had, I believe, 7 or 8 committees sending in resolutions. Some of them relevant, some of them obvious (yes, we WOULD like to reaffirm that factories should treat women fairly.) and some of them offensive: “Stating that curling is not a real sport”… Are you kidding me. We had them strike that one.

For two days we all enjoyed getting up at 6, rushing resolutions through the process, urging our PMS-ing printer/copier to NOT eat our paper, and eating a LOT of leftover cake.

The Resolution Log.

Resolution Processors, processing. Also, a member of the "press"

CAKE.

We all enjoyed the perks of eating leftover cake from the delegate dance with leftover plastic utensils (mostly knives) from leftover plastic party cups (mostly neon green).

Other highlights from the conference included frustration, confusion, exhaustion, and enjoying absolutely every minute of assigning, rushing, printing, typing, correcting and occasionally yelling.

Our researcher, watching C-SPAN. On his computer.

*whispers* nerd…

WANT.

All in all, it was a great start to the other half of the semester, and has convinced me that, I UN (?) UN.

These are all words that could be used by FutileOhm to describe what I recently received absolutely free of charge from the UA:

Yes, yes it is.

I’d just say: Freaking. Awesome.

It all started with a call from my dad.
“Would you be ok with giving your sister your computer? Hers is absolutely falling apart.”
“Well, yeah, half the computer is held together with duct tape. But… then I would not have a computer.”
“Not necessarily. See, we got this letter…”

Evidently, the UA started an alternative scholarship program where they give a few hundred freshmen a free Macbook Pro for “academic achievement” and because they got their name pulled out of a hat. As long as they stay enrolled as a full-time student until the end of their first year, it’s theirs. Pretty sweet. I *never* win things like this. The last thing I won without writing an essay or something was when I was 6. I won a community center raffle and got a free backpack. It was black.

This, however, is silver. Shiny, gorgeous silver.

FutileOhm, being the helpful guy he is, single keyboardedly set it all up via iChat screensharing, and dubbed the new member of my techno-family “Charles”. If I get to know him any better, I think he’ll let me call him Chuck.

The two things you probably notice about the picture (look above to see the awesomeness) are that the Apple logo is red, and that there is a faint etching of the UA logo in the corner (kind of tasteful, eh?). Those are there to remind me how much UA wants me to pay them lots of money to become educated here, but they enjoy being really nice to people every once in a while. I almost took the red apple off (it’s a red film sticker on top of the legit one), but as I started to, I felt oddly ungrateful. So the sticker is staying there, as a sign of my inkling of school spirit  to this overall pretty cool university; at least until it has a run in with FutileOhm, who expresses his interest in restoring the Apple logo to it’s full glory.

Needless to say, I feel blessed beyond all reason. I keep on waiting to get killed by a falling icicle or something… It seems so off-balance, this good luck. It’s mind blowing how much God has blessed me these past few years. I am extremely thankful.

Hoping you all get your own Macbook Pros, or equivalent blessings.

P.S. Though the thought was resisted at first, it has been confirmed that this computer marginally surpasses the superiority of the FutileOhm Macbook. I win!

The previous post was actually written about a week ago, but I was too lazy to edit it until now. Posting it got me in a writing mood, and now I give you this monster…

I just got back from a shift at the library, and am currently listening to NPR and eating my dinner of cereal and orange juice. My shift was surprisingly interesting today, because shelving is hardly ever interesting. I was sent over to the science library to shelve. I have never shelved at the science library before, and now I know why.

Shelving at the science library is a change in my schedule, so of course I was not happy at first. I like knowing which carts I’m going to enjoy shelving (NOT 4A), where the bathrooms are, where the punch machine is, what I’m going to be facing when I exit the freight elevators and most importantly, the door code to the room I placed my purse in. Also, certain areas of the science library all of the sudden switch to Dewey Decimal. Don’t get me wrong, I know how the system works, I guess I just like putting letters in front of numbers.

Geez NPR, why don’t you play a *longer* version of that song?

On the more neutral to positive spectrum, the science library reminds me of my dad and things I associate with him teaching. Tile floors, lots and lots of white boards (there were whiteboard tables), vague collection displays of inanimate objects like seashells… and books, if you call the library a “collection” (I wonder if they also have a empty soda bottle collection?). Also, a certain scattered-a-bout look that I appreciate in my dad, but not so much in a public institution. Also, the place smelled very science-y. There were several large books that I had no interest in reading, such as a monstrosity titled “Geology and Exploration of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, 1974-1982″ (“Bears” seemed more enlightening, on a practical level). However, several books were very rewarding to shelve because they were so big and emptied the cart very quickly, unlike certain call numbers’ books (I’m talking to you, LB-PQ!). More on my annoyance with education, art and film (etc.) majors with their large quantities of books in a later post. Anyway. I think I will try to shelve at science again, although preferably not too soon…

A reflection of the bad choices I make playing Tetris.

The reason I play Tetris so late at night is that it is simple. Sometimes simpler than Solitaire, which is hard to do. The rules are pretty much:
1. Stack differently shaped blocks that are virtually thrown at you on top of each other.
2. NEVER ever ever ever ever play Tetris in front of someone who knows how to play Tetris “correctly”.

If you play Tetris in front of someone who is good at Tetris, they will notice as soon as you stack any block “incorrectly”. Their fingers will start to itch and they will start to mutter “no no no no no no no no agh no no ugh no no”. After a while you must hand the game over to them, otherwise, their brains explode. Anyway. I am not good at Tetris.

Recently, I joined the Model United Nations club/class here. It’s a great experience so far. I got the job of Resolution Process Coordinator. More on that in another post. Last week after class a large group of us went to a local Ethiopian restaurant.

The mindset behind Ethiopian food seems to be “let’s take a whole bunch of stuff and boil it until it is mushy, and then serve it in little piles!” Yummy, yummy piles.  I highly recommend .

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention- You eat with your hands. (These piles served 4 people. Very filling.)

On another note, I finally got my Ottoman-Turkish-English Dictionary! This may not seem like a big deal to you, but, it was for me, so I’m posting it. Because it’s my blog. Receiving this 6 pounds of a big deal means I can now do my homework, among other things.

I’m trying to get some continuity in my posts, so the new segment is “Book of the Week”. These will not be books I have read. They will be books I have shelved. Believe me, I’m not going to read “The Culture of Condoms”, not now, not ever. Also, this segment may not be every week. But I will try.

Book of the Week

I held this book up while I was sorting with my coordinator, J, and said the title out loud. He was not looking at me at the time, so he did not see the book, and quickly became very confused. I straightened the matter out in a timely fashion.

My dad looks like Santa.

Another post that I have been struggling to edit for the past month. Interesting fact: If you put too many pictures up, it screws everything, layout-wise.

#1 As a lot of you know, my dad has been working at Starbucks on the side. He seems to be enjoying it there. Mom and I drove through and told the girl who takes orders we were just “stalking Santa”. Being Santa pays off: lots of tips. The guy in front of us put a $5 in the pot. Also, he’s the only one qualified to be Santa (aka, the only one with a naturally Santa-colored beard).

#2 Luckily, we didn’t care about appearances by the time the clock struck midnight. (Mostly because we had turned into pumpkins)

Happy Woods.

Funny thing is, we had actually met before we actually met. A few months ago, I reunited with a long-lost childhood friend I had lost contact with, while waiting for the bus to Phoenix. Roommate is the other girl that was at the shuttle stop at the time.

First impressions are important- I unwittingly had naan and a mango in our fridge, and she had a copy of “The Ayatollah Begs to Differ” by Hooman Majd. So, yeah. She is neat in that she went home this weekend and went to the Phoenix version of Lee-Lee’s and got some amazing snack food. We had these as dessert tonight:

Also featured: Treppenwitz's pottery

For those of you who know about Biskrem from Turkey *cough*alginobanro*cough*, these are like that, but dime sized. Cookies that have chocolate injected into them. That is one vaccination I will not complain about.

On classes- I have a new Turkish instructor, fresh from Istanbul! Haha. She’s great, and is focusing a lot on grammar, which is relieving. I was getting anxious that I was losing it, since I couldn’t remember a lot of grammatical terminology from ninth grade. Gah! Should have saved my notes. Now excuse me while I go write a paragraph about Hasan Saltık in the two forms of the relative clause.

My brother started complaining that he was bored, and didn’t have anything to read, so I had to post something. Independence Day seemed a good enough excuse.

I’m coming home this weekend! After Ohm predicted that no one would come to my door to get the candy I bought because everyone would be partying, and the weather got really (or, relatively) cold before I could get any of my winter clothes down, I decided to come up during the weekend. Besides, I miss my dog.

And my family.

Since it’s been the last few weeks of October, and this is a college campus, Halloween has been on the agenda a lot. Unfortunately, even though there are so many people in scientif-icky  majors here, I have not heard one person mention dressing up as a mad scientist yet. Such a sad waste of a major. There are very few majors with such a conveniently built in Halloween costume.

Halloween is not celebrated in Middle Eastern countries, of course, but the department kind of got in the spirit.

We just assumed it meant "please, we need to get rid of all this delicious candy"

So conveniently located next to the room we watched our Turkish movie in.

Since discovering friends and buses, I’ve been getting a chance to discover a bit more of Tucson. With a friend from Turkish class I got the chance to visit a school here entirely run by Turks. That was interesting. The second languages offered there are Turkish and Spanish, and the entire math department is Turkish. I got to meet the token American science teacher. Haha.

Evidently, the teacher already submitted a picture of this to Engrish. Epic.

I was also introduced to Eegee’s, which is “the only real reason to live here”. I was slowly convinced. It’s kind of a more smooth icee thing, only so much better.

My tongue after half of a stawberry Eegee.

On a more unfortunate note: Do not attempt to explore the mall on a slow weekday. It is traumatic. I have not only re-discovered my hatred of malls, but, I hate this one more, which is kind hard to do. There is a Super Target though, which is quite nice. Not at all traumatic.

One of my coordinators has decided I should learn coordinator-ly things, so I am slowly learning, and getting to do things other than shelve books.

Anyway. This is what’s up over here. Can’t wait to see people this weekend. Hopefully I’ll have my very first Halloween post up soon!

I completed my training at the library with a 40 book shelving test. Despite the whole having to tell which numbers are bigger than the other, and having to recite the alphabet over and over in my head, it’s a really mindless, stress relieving job. I worked for the first time on Thursday, and was quite content.

From the weekend:

We went to CostCo. Enough said.

He asked to take one home.

This is CostCo.

Also, Lowe’s… What are you thinking!?

... everyone knows Santa doesn't play golf!

On my radar this week:
On my way to a certain evening class I have on Wednesday, I have been running into ROTC training people. They are not using real weapons, which is kind of disappointing, because that would be cooler, but also relieving because I don’t want to take the long way over to my class.

The weapons might not be real, but I got a death glare after taking this picture.

I have a Jack O’Lantern! (Thanks, Mom):

This is why I love the department:

I went and watched a Turkish movie with a fellow student I’ve been assigned a project with… It was not bad. No one committed suicide (I know, weird…) and it was actually really Turkish, and not Westernized. I had the opportunity to share my dried apricots and Turkish Delight filled amazing chocolate with her. Thanks, home group! The package was amazing.

The plan was: I read the packet, I get to “play” with the wooden block books on this little book cart they had, and then arrange some flash cards, and then I was to take a quiz on the computer to ensure I would have %95 accuracy.

Well, I read the packet, and we pulled the little cart out with the wooden blocks on it, and she pointed at wooden blocks and explained all about the books and the Dewey Decimal System and the Library of Congress, which is great, ’cause it’s a cool system, although a little bit too dependent on a shelver’s ability to distinguish with decimal number is bigger than the other, but even by the end of this little lesson I was not given the opportunity to even touch or rearrange a single one of those really cool wooden blocks.
I felt kind of cheated.

I had a nice surprise while sorting the flash cards… Half way through the first stack I realized they all had their number order written out in Turkish on the bottom of them. This makes sense since my direct supervisor is Turkish, but still unexpected. After arranging the first set I pointed this out to Cleo, and asked if they had any that were not numbered in Turkish, ’cause I felt like I was cheating, but I don’t think they did, ’cause she gave me another stack ordered in Turkish.

Anyway. I passed my test. Yay!

Other happenings this week:

The choirs here had their first performance of the year, and our director had a really cool tenor solo in the graduate choir.

The Near Eastern Studies department threw a brunch, and it we all had some good times eating Turkish food and watching the first year Turkish students learn a belly dance.

… and for the second time, I hung up on my brother when the opportunity to pet something small and furry arose:

Brother's last words on the phone: Oh no, you're totally right to hang up.

Ingredients:

A tin of the canned chicken your mom sent you

Whole Saltine crackers (NOT crumbs)

3 little packets of mayonnaise, stolen from that one restaurant

2 packets of mustard, kind of stolen from that other place

Salt, Peper

Instructions:

1. Open the can of chicken and get all the juice out of the way.

2. Put the chicken in a bowl, and squeeze in the packets of mayonnaise and mustard in one by one, and mash the combination up with a fork until it looks pretty beaten up.

3.  Scoop the mixture on to  the saltine crackers.

4. Garnish with whatever you have on hand:

Red pepper flakes (very good)

Another Saltine cracker (if you like crackers)

Thin slice of apple (surprisingly good, actually)

Bay leaf (do NOT eat the raw bay leaf. This is just so you’ll feel like you’re eating pretty food)

Ta-da! Serve on a plate with a beverage of your choice, the rest of the apple (if you used apple), and an episode of the Office (optional).

I really liked them with red pepper flakes.

I discovered what my true pet peeve is: When people move my laundry from the washer to the dryer the second it’s done, without waiting a minute for me to do it.

I usually just say “When people punch me in the face” or “Being burned at the stake” or “My brother” or something…

Can you see it? CAN YOU SEE IT?!

No brother’s feelings where hurt in the production of this photo.

He totally understands.

Anyway. I thought about a week ago that I had run out of things to take pictures of around campus, but it turns out that I was so very wrong.

I totally forgot that we had a game until I saw this:

Paradise Bakery has school spirit.

For Office fans:

It gets a laugh like, a quarter of the time.

I knew I’d be able to find one of these:

I wish there was a bike locked to this.

Very exciting week. Lots of pictures, lots of  listening to screaming people coming back from the football game (I tried to guess which of the people screaming were drunk and which people were just hyped), lots of cupcakes, and Glee! Don’t laugh.

It was exciting to have Treppenwitz and SuperWoman and Belâ over on Saturday. I don’t think I’ve had a more enjoyable weekend for a long time. Thanks to “Lenore”, sister, for the cupcakes. They were delicious! And I like the nickname, although the destiny of Poe’s girls were never much better than Shakespeare’s…

P.S- Sweet N’ Low doesn’t do much for it either.

I understand this:

Putting your baby's head on a wildcat. I didn't think that was legal.

I even understand this:

...to some extent

What I do not understand is this:

UA is trying to infiltrate my undergarments!

I refuse to buy this unless you provide matching toothpaste.

Why.

I’m still trying to decide what to think about this:

Metaphorically depicting our journey through college, or just merchandise?