H and G

Hi all!

In case you haven't noticed, I haven't been doing anything here for a while.

What happened? In the past couple months I have traveled quite a bit (Pocatello, Pittsburgh, Boston),  I'm starting a crazy semester at my current job while trying to look for a new job, and I decided to add one more chapter of results to my thesis before calling it finished.

***I just don't have time to write blog posts***

So Rambling Bug is going on hiatus.

Fear not, friends/family... the whole point of this was to keep YOU updated on the happenings in my life. I will keep in touch via email/phone-- you know, like a normal person.

You never know, maybe someday Rambling Bug will spring back to life.

I leave you with something funny I just saw on the internets:

Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

(funny/sad because it's true)

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year loved ones!



(This is especially for you D- I know how you love Zooey, lol)

A few thoughts from the last couple weeks:

1.  I have some incredible students this semester--enthusiastic, thoughtful, and dedicated.

2.  My family and friends are awesome.  I had a great time in Pocatello over the holidays.

3.  The last few months, K-man and I have changed our diet/lifestyle and have been gradually losing weight and just getting healthier in general. Before Thanksgiving, my weight had hit a "plateau" (as they call it in the diet industry), which was really frustrating. During my visit to P-town I threw caution to the wind and indulged in everything.  I LOST WEIGHT!  What?!!

So I've decided this will be my diet henceforth:
--my Stepmother's delicious leftover stuffing WITH gravy
--copious amounts of wine
--Grandpa's Punch, as we call it in the Kahm family (a delicious concoction of bourbon, sprite, and maraschino cherries, amongst other things)

4. The woman next to me on the plane on my flight home made the Sky Mall catalog last close to 2 hours.  She must have read every single word in the catalog, it was incredible. She didn't even touch the in-flight magazine; you could tell she had been looking forward to the catalog for weeks. 

5.  I appreciate all of you that read my blog despite its many typos and grammar errors :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Link.

I know I've linked to Oatmeal before, but this made me laugh out loud. 

I'm off to Idaho to eat some turkey. I hope you all have a good holiday.

This has been floating around my office for a couple weeks.

It is a doctor's excuse a student gave me so he could make up a missed quiz.  I guess my student didn't realize I would have let him take the make-up with or without the excuse, but whatevs.

Just for giggles, I googled the respectable Dr. David P. Hesse.  Let's take a look at his website, shall we?

I'm all for a good forged doctor's excuse, but if you're going to go to the trouble, shouldn't it be from a doctor that treats humans?

I've had some real doozies this semester.

Ossobuco

Whenever we visit K-man's family, I request that we make a trip to the Pittsburgh strip district--a great area with ethnic markets, fish markets, restaurants, etc. K-man's favorite comic book shop is located in the strip district, so we can usually make an afternoon of it.  The last couple of times, we also made an evening of it by dining at the fabulous Lidia's of Pittsburgh. One of our favorite dishes is her ossobuco alla Milanese. It is so amazingly delicious.  Seriously, I dream about this dish. Here is a picture of it from her cookbook:




(I hope that worked; I've never tried to embed a screen from a Google book search before.)

We have always wanted to try and make it, but it would have been too expensive to try and make as poor grad students in P-town, Idaho.

In  the past year, we have slowly checked off the necessary items/things needed for making this dish off of the list:

1.  Lidia's cookbook.  A gift from my brother!  (check)
2.  A specialty Italian store.*  (check)
3. A reasonably priced, specialty butcher.  (check)
4. A kitchen with enough room for two people working together on a very involved recipe.  (check!)

K-man did most of the work on the Ossobuco with me acting as sous-chef.  Then we switched rolls for the Risotto alla Milanese (my first try at true risotto). Here is our final product:

Sweet Jesus, it was good.  Totally worth the effort.  I think it may have been the best thing we've cooked together.


*Yes. This is where Anthony Bourdain went for a muffelata in his last New Orleans episode.

This is your chance to come visit me :)

Take a look at today's Living Social deal.

Student email of the day.

"I was in your office yu wasn't there when do yu want me come to give you my doctor note"



 That's it-- no name, no punctuation, and no indication of what class he/she is in.


 Is it really that old-fashioned of me to expect my students to treat an email to their professor differently than a text to their friends?

I get emails like this daily.

New Apartment

I'm going to show each Klimas family member's favorite part of the new apartment.

First let me show you what I hated most about the old apartment; the kitchen.  This is a picture of the kitchen in the middle of me trying to cook dinner. Absolutely no counter space.  It drove me bonkers.

Here is the new kitchen:

Not only does it have ample counter space, there is also an island with MORE counter space.  It's the perfect kitchen for someone who loves to cook.  I'm going to get spoiled.

K-man loves the walk-in shower.  He calls it his quintessential 80's movie bathroom. All he needs is the soundtrack to Risky Business.

I love the bathtub.  This thing is huge.  All I need is a walkman, a Prince tape, and Richard Gere offering me $3000 for the week.

The kitties love the fenced in porch.

Did I mention the 12 foot ceilings?

This apartment has about four times the usable space that the old one did, which is exactly what we wanted. That being said, it is a bit of a Monet (as Cher on Clueless would say).  Everything in the apartment is slightly off, for lack of a better word.  For example, every single switch plate is crooked and missing at least one screw.  The mirrors above the sinks in the (2 1/2!) bathrooms are slightly off center from the sinks. Random things like that.

I've decided it will be a good exercise in controlling my OCD tendencies.  I'll let you know how it goes :)

The oddest thing about the apartment is the bathroom in the master bedroom doesn't have a door....something we failed to notice when we toured the apartment the first time.  Now, K-man and I are comfortable with each other, but we're not THAT comfortable. We spent one night in the master bedroom and the next day moved our bed into the other bedroom.   So now the master bedroom is our office and our dressing room, lol.

Even with all the quirks, we love the new apartment and we love the new neighborhood. 

I hope you all had a good weekend!

The Walken Dead

For my Walking Dead fans.

(via i09)

Oh Gob.

(via: http://arresteddevelopmentgifs.tumblr.com/)

Btw, how excited am I about the supposed new episodes?!

We moved!

That's right, we now live in New Orleans proper.

Pictures soon!  (as soon as the apartment is organized)

Needless to say, I've been busy.

Without fail.

When I shop I'm not a person who likes to interact with people. I know, you're shocked.

Don't try to sell me anything,  I don't want anyone following me around--I'm what I'd call a "do-it-yourself" shopper.  This is why I shop at places like Sephora instead of Nordstrom's cosmetic counters.  I've usually done my research and I know exactly what I'm looking for. I go to stores where I can find it, buy it, and leave.  I find sales-people's "suggestions" for "other products I might love"  completely irritating, so I avoid those situations altogether. (Don't get me wrong, if I had the money to try random suggestions, I'm sure I would love them.)

Once in a while, however, I need help finding something.  I'm using Sephora here as an example, but this has happened to me many places.  Sephora has clerks milling around everywhere.  They usually ask you when you first walk in if you need help and if you say no, they'll let you be.

Unfortunately, by the time I realize I need help, I've already sent every clerk to hills which leaves me in the situation of trying to hunt one down. 

Every. Single. Time.  I pick the ONE undercover security guard that doesn't know anything about the products or where to find them. They always have to get on the walky-talky radio thingy and ask for help.  Immediately six real clerks are there to help me.

So, not only have I broken my no interaction with a clerk rule, I have now taken over every clerk's attention in the entire store.


Don't worry, the irony is not lost on me.

What's that you hear? Crickets?

Hi all!  It's been a while, I know.

K-man and I did something very out of character over the weekend:  We ditched school on Friday (shhhh...don't tell),  flew to Seattle, and went to an Ani Difranco/John Prine concert with my lovely Dad and his wife!

The concert was held outdoors at a winery and it was fabulous.

Now I am playing catch-up.


--When I was in junior high, I begged my parents for a tree frog.  At the time, I don't think I realized what I'd be feeding it.  They got me a really cool colorful one and I named it Cobi after my favorite US soccer player.  The downside was I had to feed it live crickets.  I tried not to let on how skeeved I was over the crickets (after begging for the frog), but I don't think I did a very good job at hiding it.

New Orleans' answer to Cee Dub.

I was worried when I moved that there would be no replacement for Pocatello native Cee Dub's "Dutch Oven Cooking" on the local PBS.

Look, they're friends!

Fear not, I found my replacement

LOVE this guy.

I also love that I run into people around here that actually speak like that.

I've been seeing a lot of advertisements for these lately.

Now, I appreciate wanting to give someone something functional and edible instead of flowers as a gift, but what do you do with this?  Is it a gift for fifty people? Does it have some amazing chemical on it that keeps it looking and tasting fresh forever? Why not just give a fruit basket? There are just so many questions.

I have this mental picture of the recipients sitting down and eating their weight in fruit to try to avoid wasting it before it goes bad.  I also have this mental picture that no one would be able to accomplish that and the arrangement would look like this in a couple hours:

 Seriously, so many questions.

I'm turning to you, internets:  Have you ever received or given one of these? Was it fabulous?  Should I go get one immediately? Will it change my life?


Yes, I did photo-shop this myself.  Can we say I have too much time on my hands due to being stuck indoors thanks to a tropical storm? K-man said:  "My wife, ladies and gentlemen--nothing but productive."

To say it's been a bad hair day would be the understatement of the year.

Tropical storm Lee has been pouring on us all day.  Crazy.  The wind is supposed to start tonight and major flooding tomorrow.

The one good thing about the moisture is a bunch of tiny frogs have emerged on our deck!  They are so freaking cute.  They range in size from smaller than a pea to about the size of a penny.  They're too active to get a good pic, sorry.

I hope you all have a good Labor day!

Back to school Sangria.

It is hot as hell in New Orleans.  Add a marsh fire that has filled the city with smoke on top of that and it's pretty miserable.  I decided a nice, refreshing alcoholic drink was in order so I made sangria. Yum!


I also wanted to tell you all about Flip-flop wines. They are a new winery that will buy a pair of shoes for someone in need (much like Tom's shoes) for the first 100,000 bottles they sell.  In New Orleans a bottle sells for 5.97 and really, they aren't bad at all.  They have 3 white and 3 red varieties. Give it a try!

Look at my new swag!

(Yelp bike bell)

Hells bells.

Normally I'm a jeans kind of gal, but the nuns that run my school expect a certain standard in dress so jeans don't really cut it.  Last week I bought a new pair of khakis to teach in. Yesterday I wore them for the first time.

During my office hours I was grading some papers with a red permanent marker.  Are you picturing Cameron Diaz grading papers in Bad Teacher?  That's really not how I grade. Usually I use a nice friendly green pen (yeah, I'm one of those teachers).  The red marker was my only option at the time so I used it.

After putting the score on the FIRST paper, the marker inexplicably fell out of my hands and landed in my lap, leaving a red line I had to teach with for the rest of the day.  Are you friggin' kidding me?  The first paper? The first time I've worn the pants? It was a sign--DON'T GRADE RIGHT NOW (and get yourself a drink).

I figured there was no chance in hell I could get the stain out.  Well, I followed what my Google search told me to do, and it worked like a charm.

I thought I'd share the method for you:
1.  Put a paper towel behind the cloth so the stain doesn't bleed through to other cloth. (This is very important. This step wasn't included in my Google search, and I ended up with a second stain on the back of my pants.)
2.  Put some nail polish remover (with acetone) on the stain. Blot with a paper towel to pick up as much of the ink as possible.
3. Gently scrub with a tooth brush. 
4. Rinse and immediately saturate with liquid laundry detergent.
5. I let it set overnight.
6. Wash.

The stain is completely gone!


side note: For some reason, blogger published a few draft posts this morning,  sorry if it littered your readers with random, unfinished posts :(  I took them down.