Experimonth 2012

Hello.

Oh, what’s that? I’ve been surprisingly absent for my blog in recent months? You’re right. I have.

Yes, I do plan on correcting this behavior. Regularly scheduled blogs full of exciting things will resume shortly. We have for you many things like a recap of my trip to New York, and a BUNCH of books I haven’t gotten around to reviewing yet, AND most importantly EXPERIMONTH.

What is Experimonth exactly? Well if you google it you end up with all sorts of results like: ooh, an actual blog that does something with scientists and citizens (does that mean scientists aren’t citizens?) and has generally set off all sorts of alarm bells in my head. I hope they haven’t copyrighted the name because Pam and I came up with it two years ago… Anyway…

I have a 50/50 success rate when it comes to Experimonth. Some of you who know me in real life know that I identify as a vegetarian (albeit it sometimes a pretty terrible one… if only starchy french fries were vegetables. Congress, can you work on that please?). This eating identity started as an experiment (or Experimonth) in good ol February 2010.

Last year I tried to delve into the world of reported news in effort to determine if I in fact actually hated the news, or just how it was generally delivered to me. I made it one day in. I blame the crushing assignments from my 19th Century British Lit class that pretty much CONSUMED my life last year.

This year we’re going back to the food front. This time, I’m going to learn to make four dishes completely from scratch. I’m not so good at “home things” as some of my friends discovered in July. Though I do make a killer red velvet cake pop if I do say so myself. Basically, I’m good at baking. Which, I mean, is not something to be terribly proud of ever since the invention of Easy Bake Ovens for kiddos and instant boxed cake mixes. They take all of the stress out of the thing. And if I’m attempting to make myself attractive as a future wife I need to be able to make things other than just brownies and cookies.

It’s February 3rd and all I’ve really decided that I want to make is a loaf of bread or biscuits. And then I found this:

Baking with Carl Sagan

Sadly, I cannot accept this challenge because a pie falls under the category of baking. Hrmph. Oh well, Dr. Sagan, your point will remain out there un-refuted,, for the interwebs to make fun of. See this.

And we’re back to bread. But never fear, next Friday I will have pictures and the story of my attempts to make bread, from scratch, for your entertainment. You’re welcome.

Until then, you’ll have to look at random pictures from New York and possibly suffer through another couple book reviews. Because you’re kind of a captive audience. See you Monday.

January is like Monday

Before I really get into the meat of this post I’d like to let you all know that the SPAM comments I’ve been getting recently have been absolutely hilarious! I’ve been tempted to approve them, but I fear this will allow all other kinds of weird things to happen, so I just read them, chuckle, and then delete. My two most recent favourites include: “This blog is kind of boring, sorry to be so blunt, you should eat some Norwegian carrot cake to cheer you up.” AND today I got some kind of ad for a torrent site that was in Swedish and I had a lot of fun reading it out loud.

Yesterday it occurred to me that January is like the Monday of the year. The first week of 2012 was sort of an odd week, starting with an holiday and all, and it made getting a cracking good start on New Year’s Resolutions seem a bit too enthusiastic.

I took my time, gathered my thoughts, read some inspiring blogs, (caught a cold), watched a dear friend run a 5k at Disney, (got more inspired), and stayed up way too late into the night thinking about things I want to change in my life. I have all new levels of motivation on this side of 25. For a long time I’ve been dissatisfied with my status quo, but I haven’t made much effort to change anything. And you know what the definition of insanity is, right?

Watching the Disney 5k I felt tears pricking my eyes most of the morning. It could have been that we’d had a mere 4 hours of sleep the night before and my hair had been wet for something like 15 hours and it was only 42 degrees. If you were cranky you could say that. But I was really moved by the people leaving everything they had on the asphalt, or crossing the finish line hand in hand with their families. The parents who stopped running in order to snap a picture of their kids crossing, letting them have the victory, all of it was so happy. I pretty much converted to the religion of running on the spot. There’s some very strange sort of community in those types of races. And at Disney, everyone wins, but everyone feels really freaking good about it.

Sunday night I took Camille along to the Creative Loafing reading for their Heat fiction contest. A professor of mine ended up winning the judge’s pick with a story called “Bag Boy“. It’s a beautiful and sad story. As I was waiting to say hi and congratulate her I overheard a large, bearded man confess, “I loved your story. You made a football player cry.” I smiled, nodded my agreement and waited for Rita to turn. Her response to seeing me caught me off guard. She was SO excited and interested in my life. She admitted she missed me and a few other of my classmates (we had her two semesters in a row, so she got to know us pretty well).

I left Sunday night with a clear understanding for why I didn’t even come close to the top ten contenders. But instead of defeated I was elated. I’m still new to this writing thing, and all the stories I’ve heard are of great writers being turned down many, many times. I’m not a great writer yet, but I will be.

We’re almost half-way through January and I find myself pondering what my “Experimonth” challenge will be this year along with what I will abstain from during Lent. But today, as I sit here typing this, with vaguely aching leg muscles after a 30 minute walk-run and my ever expanding to-do/dream list running through my head, I’m happy with this little progress I’ve made toward the identity I’m chasing.

What things are you hoping to do this year? How was your first week’s attempt?

Day 1

Holy cow! I picked a hell of a week to start news-ing(?). I’m conflicted about which verb to use because I’m watching, reading and listening to all sorts of news sources. So, if you’ll indulge me, we’ll call it “news-ing”. I’ll probably drop the dash, too.

Ok, so the plan is that the news sources for this week are BBC World News (because I’m a bit of an anglophile) ABC7 Local News (which, it turns out is not quite local), the NY Times (free subscription through USF Library online), TBT (free everywhere, very local) , and Piers Morgan Tonight Podcast (because it’s the most popular in iTunes “News & Politics” Podcasts).

Can you tell I sort of picked these last minute? Logistically, I will attempt to absorb all of them daily, let’s say Monday-Friday, do a major sum up blog on Saturday, enjoy 60 Minutes with my dad on Sunday and otherwise rest/look for the next few news sources. Ok? Okay.

I’ll go ahead and be honest right here, I haven’t listened to the podcast yet this evening. I’m not sure if I will. There is a stack of books glaring at me for homework AND The Civil Wars’ full length Barton Hollow came out today and I really just want to listen to it. So, no Piers tonight. Also,  I’m a girl who generally gets her news from Twitter and Facebook feeds. It’s a slow trickle down, but I’m okay with it. Watching the local newscast left me sort of reeling with an overload of information and whew so many things… so here we go

BBC WORLD NEWS

-I really love the sleek look of the show

-I think Karin Giannone was the presenter. She was very calm in her delivery. I liked her a lot.

-The majority of the “programme” was focused on the Crisis in Egypt. Which, was good because I didn’t know much about the whole thing, but now, I know a whole mess of a lot of what’s currently going on… just a little fuzzy about the historical details.

-Favorite parts: so many different aspects and voices in the different correspondents; the super polite one that said, “swelled, if you like” describing how the protestors’ numbers have grown in the past few days, and it made me giggle; the international weather report also had me giggling a bit; and all the factoids near the end of the broadcast that were really more of a filler between the programmes. Overall, I liked it. Though almost the entirety of the episode focusing on Egypt got a little boring. I kept checking Twitter.

 

ABC 7 LOCAL NEWS

-I picked this station because it was first in the Guide on Verizon Fios and I figured I would go through them in order. MISTAKE! This news station is primarily for a region that’s about an hour south of where I live. So, the news was not quite as local as I’m used to. The Sun Coast is what they kept referring to the region as… AND I learned about a new place I’d never heard of “Nokomas”.

Here are some of my notes:

-Dolphin Tower issues – Max Winitz… crack in the foundation forced tenants to move out last summer… whose fault is it…

-Taxing for water supplies in Nokomis – where the hell is that?

-Comment about the census showing we’re getting younger, weather showing it’s getting hotter… commercial break (I’m going to take a moment to share HOW MUCH I HATE BANTER IN THE NEWS!! I hate it as much as I hate having a rock in my shoe during a ten mile hike with now breaks. That’s how much. It’s not their job to be real people. It’s their job to tell me the freakin’ news. That. Is. It. ENDRANT).

-The next four things I think are funny -

-Half way through the news and I feel like my head is spinning. Also, commercial about IBM Watson on Jeopardy!!!!!!!

-Monster Storm – regions in path of monster storm, 2000 miles from end to end, correspondent in Chicago, science lesson about how the storm is developing, affecting flights north from the Suncoast. (They used the term “Monster Storm” repeatedly throughout the broadcast. I found it a bit cheesy and imagined something like this movie.)

-BOB THE WEATHERMAN?!?!?! Siriusly?

-THE LOCATION OF NOKOMIS IS REVEALED!!!

-Longest freaking weather forecast ever

-And then there was some stupid sports coverage. Nothing very exciting since nothing is happening until next week anyway. They didn’t even cover college basketball… THE LAMEST.

-Then there was another commercial break, the fifth I think in an hour long broadcast. Which means five sections, each 12 minutes long, with a ton of crap crammed in at the beginning and mostly banter at the end. I guess they figure since it’s Sarasota no one will be up past 7pm… much less 11:30 so they can just lob the ending. The last thing they said was, “Join us again at 5:30 am for tomorrow’s news.” Really, what happens in Sarasota between 11 pm and 5:30 am?

Ugh, I have such a bad attitude about TV news. I’m sorry.

 

THE NEW YORK TIMES

-I’m beginning to get sleepy, so not as much to say about this one. But I did really like this link about the Timeline of Mubarak’s Presidency. It incorporates images from his presidency (including helping establish peace with Israel) as well as video footage and interviews from the past few days (there’s a 7 minute video of Hillary Clinton discussing issues in Egypt in there, too.)

-I like the layout of their website. It’s not the simplest I’ve seen but it does a good job of reflecting their print publication. Good branding and all that.

-The list down the side offers easy navigation to areas of interest. Which is nice.

-The ads are a bit sneaky. I find myself looking at them not entirely sure what’s happening at that part of the page. So I guess they’re doing their job.

-Also, I discovered this plethora of Podcasts which is exciting for a girl on the move.

-Further in I continue to like the navigation and layout of the stories. Overall I think I’ll enjoy newsing with The NYT over the week.

 

Hopefully you’ll stick it out with me. Until tomorrow then!

 

 

 

So it begins. Or Experimonth 2011.

It’s 8:41 am Monday, February 1, 2011 and I will for the next 27 days be reading, watching, and listening to all kinds of news. Why do you care? Because I hope to make the experience entertaining, otherwise I may not finish. AND I hope to learn something about/from News, though I’m skeptical.

A Little Background:

EXPERIMONTH: Last year just before February hit I was at Panera with my friend Pam and we decided to have an experimonth. We both thought we’d invented it. Alas! The internet quickly proved us wrong. However, we put our own little brand on it and each tried something new. I tried to be a vegetarian for a month (and have been mostly vegetarian since last February). Pam became a UniTasker, motivated by a book by A.J. Jacobs. This year Pam is off at Duke University being an awesome Graduate Student, so I’m going ahead alone (we should all cheer her on as she learns very important things. You can all tweet her or something.) I may regret this decision, because as an English major my reading load is already pretty high this semester, but I think I can power through.

 

ME: I started University as a Journalism major. Specifically Magazine Journalism. It was a deluded and misguided idea. I spent three semesters in the program and loathed every moment of it. Why did I pick Journalism? Because I got it into my silly head that an English degree is useless and Journalism seemed like the next best thing. I love to read and write, so I figured I could learn to love reporting. Really, I just wanted a job at RELEVANT magazine, because I think they’re super cool there.

I gave up on Journalism, though, and university for a while as well. But now I’m back pursuing a silly English degree and loving every minute of it. I’m in the Creative Writing Branch and now I’m holding out for a job that allows me to live in an Airstream and travel a lot. If you find this job, let me know.

A Little About the Plan:

I came up with this idea in, like, November. But I procrastinated and haven’t compiled a complete master list of all the news sources I want to tackle yet. I do know, though, that I want to daily listen to, watch, or read from at least four news sources. Probably not in their entirety, we’ll see. I’m hoping to get a good taste of local, national, and international news. I am excited about some of the news programs, though overall skeptical.

I’ll post again later today after some newses. But check out that quote by Ben Hecht up in the info. And if you can get your hands on it the short story “And the Rock Cried Out” by Ray Bradbury (of course).

See you later.

Experimonth: a summary of the food

So, I’ve knocked out the first meatless week of my life and as I’ve mentioned before: it’s been a lot less challenging than I expected. In the past seven days I haven’t been THAT experimental… but I have tried a few things that were very tasty and I believe deserve mention. Mostly though I’ve eaten a lot of cheese and crackers, a few peanut butter & Nutella sandwiches, and a WHOLE LOTTA Tex-Mex. Basically I would categorize myself more as a dairy-tarian…

Anyway, the two things that have been the most surprisingly tasty were 1)the Bean Patty at Chili’s (that you can substitute for any burger). From a girl who has never really liked beans AT ALL unless there were in green bean casserole, that’s a pretty big admission. Not only was it tasty, but I felt like I was eating a burger. It felt right, filled me up, and was delicious with my toppings of choice. And 2) The Grilled Veggie Burrito from Qdoba. Now, I am a Chipotle girl through and through. But I decided to give her counterparts a chance this past week. Moe’s failed to impress in their veggie friendly quesadilla (I think it’s just too greasy for me). But Qdoba, she came through. I’ve gotten two of the burritos so far because the sauteed veggies were just so… I’m looking for another word besides the already over-used tasty and delicious… my computer offered these options: delicious, palatable, luscious, mouthwatering, delectable, ambrosial, toothsome, dainty, flavorful; appetizing, tempting; informal yummy, scrumptious, finger-licking, lip-smacking, melt-in-your/the-mouth; pick any of them.

I also picked up a Vegan Minestrone soup February 1st that was pretty good. It was perfect for the weather at work and the lentils and red beans weren’t that hard for me to stomach.

The moral of the story is: if I wasn’t allowed to have cheese I would starve, also, I really need to go grocery shopping. I want to make something involving eggplant and I’m trying to work up the nerve to make a quiche with tofu.

Originally, I was going to allow myself eggs, fish, and cheese the first week and drop the eggs and fish for the second week. I am not sure how I feel about this decision now. I didn’t eat a lot of egg at all the first week and I didn’t touch any fish. I may go get some sushi or hummus today for lunch.

So, that is what I have been eating and what I plan to eat. From here on out, whether my posts have anything to do with Experimonth or not I will try to add a summary of daily foods to the end of the post (for those of you who are curious). If you have any good recipes or ideas, send em my way.

Peace