Rotate the foodstuffs!

I'm feeling fairly relaxed right now, which is good; the day started out hectically.  I decided that I definitely needed to be at dance guild today (after being, you know, sick.  for a quarter.), so I got up fairly early, made myself a fried breakfast of ham, egg, and bread, and headed off.  Unfortunately, there was a bit of behindness floating about, so I ended up driving to campus, dropping off Kevin en route.  It's far from my favorite method of getting to campus, but eh.  I'm happy to report that I didn't get there too late (and I remembered accurately where Royer is -- thank God I used it as an emergency bathroom stop a couple months ago), and that the guildian dancers are during a god job with Jenny Pluck Pears, which is, honestly, quite a tricky dance.  The division of the 6/8 meter switches from duple to triple partway through, and it can mess you up if you're not careful.  Working Title (the group of veterans I'm performing with: me, knightvln, pyralis_phyre, talyr, whisperwheel (and merodi_no_yami!)) performed the piece that we're doing for Madrigal, which was well-received.  This is nice, since I think I speak for all of us when I say our four-week break over the holidays had us all a little freaked.

Returning home, I made chicken paprikash, which I've been wanting to make for a while.  Kevin and I went to Penzey's yesterday (or the day before?) with bustysinclare (another convert!).  I picked up the spices that I was lacking for Kevin's fabulous dhal recipe, some shockingly sexy Vietnamese cinnamon (no, seriously), and two types of Hungarian paprika.  Specifically so I could make chicken paprikash.  I can't explain it, I've never had the dish before tonight, but it's so good.  How can you not like chicken in a paprika- and onion-flavored sour cream sauce?  It's usually served over spaetzel or some other kind of egg noodles; I used couscous, because that's what I had around.  I think they're just as creamy as fresh spaetzel, so that was nice.  Anyway, a definite success.  The two types of paprika were handy, since they meant I was able to do a 1:2 mixture of half-sharp and sweet paprikas, making the dish a little spicier than usual (and thus right up my alley) without overpowering it or ruining the flavor with something like cayenne or chili powder.  Plus I bought this random sour cream at Giant Eagle that turned out to be ridiculously thick, and that was a big boon.

After dinner what did I do?  Mostly I watched things that had been DVR'd: NUMB3RS, 30 Rock, Law & Order: SVU, Iron Chef America.  Also read Thomas A Vogler's "When a Book Is Not a Book" for Art seminar (it's an article on art books and book-objects).  And now I think it's time for bed, now that I've drunk a couple glasses of wine and caught up on my preferred slices of the popular culture.  Tomorrow's a day for a lot of reading, I think.  Lots of poetry to read -- including an issue of The Journal -- and some Middle English to read as well.

That reminds me.  I don't believe I've done the quarterly round-up of courses.  This quarter I will be taking

• Graduate Poetry Workshop with Hudgins
• Literary Publishing and Editing with Fagan
• Later Medieval English Lit with Green
• Seminar in Studio Art: Word and Image with Silver

Interestingly, Green directed me in Tartuffe oh so many years ago, so that's interesting.  That course scares me a little... It's an 800-level seminar in which I think most of the other students have taken prior coursework in the period; I haven't.  I'll be fine, especially leaning on my French experience, but it could be hard going depending on which way it all goes. Plus Dr. Green kept singling me out the first day as someone who has less experience in the field.  Now, this is true, but I don't need reminding, and I especially don't need it in front of my classmates.  Let no one tell you grad school is noncompetitive.  Oh well.  A couple of them are my officemates, so they've already judged me for better or worse :)  Word and Image looks like it's going to be terribly fun.  I think it'll be mostly discussion, and about really fun subjects.  And the final evaluation is either a project (I'll be doing that) or a 3-5 page paper.  Scary.  Lit. Publishing... hmm.  That one may be the hardest of all my classes in terms of work... or it might just seem that way since I missed the first class session and got caught up in about 10 minutes, so I'm still a little unclear as to what, exactly, I'll need to be doing.  Workshop is workshop.  Andrew runs his differently than Kathy did last quarter (as is to be expected), but I think it'll be good.  The only things that freak me out are the couple of blank verse assignments.  I have nothing in particular against meter (although it's definitely not my thing), but the line length freaks me out.  I've been progressively paring down my line, and the concept of a ten-syllable line... it's honestly a little scary.  I revised my poem for submission this afternoon, and my longest line was 6 syls, because any more sounded... verbose.  Wordy.  Excessive.  And then to write 30 lines of blank verse, like we'll do for next week's assignment... Jesus.  Jesus Christ.  Wish me luck, y'all.

Anyway.  Wow.  I just managed to get myself all worked up.  Jeez.  Bedtime it is.