Big mistake in little itty bitty packages

When I went to Target this weekend I saw the candy aisles, and suddenly remembering that Friday is Halloween inspired me to buy candy for my lab. I've done this every year since I came to grad school, using a plastic pumpkin to contain it on a bookshelf.

Well, now that I've had about 6 mini-candy bars in the span of 4 hours, I'm starting to wonder if this act of kindness is indeed a fault. Maybe the guys have enough self control around cheap chocolate (come on, you know some dark almond turtles from the local candy maker would be soooo much yummier and totally unaffordable), but for some reason I don't. Honestly I'm not sure they have much more self control either, but I have an added problem: the extra candy that didn't fit in the pumpkin is in my desk drawer. I did just lose all the weight I'd gained over the past year (thank you, exercise), but I suspect in the next week I may gain a few pounds of it back. Actually, I'm not sure it will even take that long...I've already eaten 4 more while writing this paragraph.

The funniest thing is that I was eating so healthy the past few weeks; I'd make a big dinner, and then eat leftovers for a few days, and then repeat. I haven't had an instant type lunch more than a few times in the past few months, and even though I've spent a good 10+ hours in the lab most days I haven't been snacking on junk food (because it wasn't here). So much for that.

Well, I guess I should enjoy my yummy holiday treats now, so that next week I can be better about it. Those evil little bite sized candies...yum...

Happy Birthday to me!

I just celebrated by 25th birthday this weekend! Although we had planned an outdoor event, a short thunderstorm managed to soak everything enough to halt those plans. It was still fun though! We made some stuffed mushrooms; bought some fruit, hummus, chips, and salsa; and mixed up a few delicious sangrias!



I also made myself a chocolate cake, with raspberry filling between the layers. I cooked two layers but cut them in half to make four shorter ones.



The real frustration was icing the cake. It was so hot and humid all day, that the icing would just fall off! I ended up freezing both the cake and the icing (thank goodness our freezer was only half full) so that the icing would be thick enough to stay in place. This did, however, mean that I had to ice in batches, as the icing warmed up rather quickly. Usually no A/C is not a huge problem, but for decorating this cake it was a big issue!



The cake turned out well enough though, I finished decorating it about 30 minutes before everyone was supposed to arrive. Everyone was impressed with the decorations (I just used a piping tip, and sprinkles for the blue inside flowers), and said it tasted delicious. I think the tartness of the raspberry really did give a nice contrast to the chocolate. yum!

Grad Student Eating Habits (summer vs semester)

I find that different times of the year bring about vastly different health choices, at least for me. This change was exceptionally noticeable between last summer and this past fall, as I was on an internship during the summer. Unlike most internships, I was not paid any more than during the regular school year, so money was not the main issue. However, I somehow worked out more, ate more fruit, cooked more at home, ate leftovers or "real" food for lunch, watched less TV, surfed less Internet, and saw more daylight.

Many of these changes are probably due to having more time in the evenings (although of course I had research to do during many of them), such as cooking enough dinner to eat for a lunch or two as well, and finding time for tennis in the evenings. I saw more daylight because my desk was actually in a room with a window (amazing!), and because daylight lasted at least until 9PM. I surfed less Internet and watched less TV because I spent more time on the phone with people who were not there, I read a few books (including the entire Harry Potter series....again), and I had to go to bed at a reasonable time.

Of course once I returned to grad school, I started eating instant lunch food again, sitting in front of the TV with dinner, not exercising as frequently, and sitting in a windowless room. I think somehow grad school just drains the will to put effort into this sort of thing.

I have been better this spring semester though. I'm on an intramural volleyball team (last summer was my first game of volleyball in about a decade!), I have weights and exercises to do at home, and I plan to bike into school once it warms up more. I've been better about eating fruit for snack instead of junk food as well! It seems like once you resign yourself to putting the little extra time here and there to keeping healthy, it's not really so hard. It's still hard for me to convince myself to exercise for the sake of it, but soon I'll have softball as well as tennis, so it should be a great summer again. Even without the internship definition of a work day!

Grad Student Thanksgiving

Ah, Thanksgiving as a graduate student who chose not to go to school in the same state as the one that houses their parents. It's an interesting experience.

Ever since starting graduate school I have yet to make it home for Thanksgiving despite the fact that every year prior I have spent the holiday exclusively with family. Part of this change comes from the fact that our last day of class before Thanksgiving is the day before Thanksgiving. Couple that with the choice between an 11 hour drive home (without holiday traffic) or a $500+ airplane ticket for only a few days visit, and staying at school sounds like a great idea. Besides, who has time for celebrating holidays anyway? A break means even more time to catch up on research! Right? Right?

Ha! Of course we celebrated. The first few years here I ate at a friend's house with a slew of other grad students, and this year my house hosted the party. The great thing about grad student Thanksgiving is that it's potluck. The bad thing about hosting is that it means you are in charge of the turkey!

Fortunately for us, the Internet is there to help and mothers are only a phone call away. Not only did we not set the turkey on fire, it actually turned out quite well! We (myself and the 2 housemates who were in town) also made mashed potatoes, biscuits, cranberry relish, apple pie, and stuffing. Everything was from scratch except the stuffing (because really, who can tell the difference anyway?). Everyone who came brought at least one side dish and/or drinks, and we had lots of help setting everything up just before eating. Not to mention that the first few people who arrived were put to work cutting apples for the pies!

Potluck Thanksgiving really is the best type of Thanksgiving. Not only are you not responsible for creating an entire meal in a single kitchen, but you have the chance to try food that others like and enjoy making, some of which you may have never before eaten! One of the best statistics about our group was that out of the 10 of us, only 4 were Americans! I should have invented some interesting tradition and made them all take part in it....

One of the other great things about grad student Thanksgiving is that you make the rules. It's like having family over, except that nobody fights about what to do. We decided to play Cranium, which was a blast. Although, the trivia was so incredibly simplistic that answering a red card was kin enough to cheating. Of course the foreign students had the hardest time with the game as it was all American trivia, or "act like this famous American that even some Americans don't know"...but my team (2 foreigners + me) was very proud of me when I knew that Transformers was the show were the leader was Optimus Prime! Everyone had fun despite the some of the boys being very competitive (I thought I said this was better than a family gathering??), so I would call it a hit.

I do miss spending the holiday with family, but our way is still fun. In a sense you can be even more thankful for family when they are a phone call away and not an elbow away! In all seriousness though, I hope to have Thanksgiving with my family again soon, but until then I will happily enjoy the time with my fellow academic sufferers.

Oh, and aren't you jealous that as grad students we can actually fit 10 people into our kitchen relatively comfortably along with all of the food? I knew you would be.

"Teaching" the Youth

It's great that the boxes of food that kids eat all seem to have educational material on them. Sometimes it's a puzzle, other times it's a lesson on eating healthy, and occasionally it's even a combination. Usually these box backs are more exciting than the boxes of cereal I eat, since my cereal usually tells me how I'm lowering my cholesterol by eating it.

So of course if I'm eating breakfast with a house mate and their cereal has puzzles for kids on the back, I'm going to read it. A few days ago it was exciting, because one of the puzzles was about computers! We were looking at it, and immediately noticed that one of the words to find in the word search was "softwear." Of course we were mortified, and we looked at the rest of the words to see if they were indeed talking about technology you wear, but no, they just can't spell. It was also misspelled in the word search itself.

Any spell check should be able to find this error. Even the Blogger spell check yelled at me for typing "softwear," not that I'm implying that Blogger software isn't topnotch. I hope that whoever designed this box was around the age of the target audience, both for the lack of spelling ability and for the lack of forethought in double-checking the spelling.