Anna and the Blustery Day

I don't know why I am so happy about fall this year.  The cool weather just feels so good!

(it doesn't look like this yet, but it will soon!)

I was also happy to wake up to no hip pain from my amazing run yesterday!  I biked to class after a frustrating morning trying to figure out how to transfer iTunes playlists from my iPod to my new computer (no success) and baking these banana coconut bars (with a coconut free, chocolate chip section for someone who does not like delicious coconut).  I arrived on campus WIIINDBLOWN!! Exercising in the cold windy weather is wiping me out!

I was not as productive as I'd hoped to be this morning, which is not good since I just realized our reading for Intro to Geog. Research (i.e. Geography bootcamp) is 160 dry boring pages eek!!  I want to catch up on school stuff before the weekend, because B is coming to visit me yay! We haven't seen each other in 4 weeks, due to field trips and car issues, so I'm excited (obviously) and already planning things to do. 

I like to make fun plans for life, because even if they never actually happen it gives me something to daydream about and look forward to. 

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let the rain fall down

If I had an extra $700, I would buy this camera...

In the meantime, I will just have to make do with my trusty little point and shoot (until B wins the lottery and can buy me things like a yacht).  It can actually produce some fine art creations:

Not bad!

$3 walgreens print+$10 walmart frame. Thanks, wal's.

I took the picture on a run in NC. Even though people look at me like I'm crazy, running and taking pictures, I don't care.  Hey, it's less touristy than walking around and taking pictures.

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 I had a fun Tuesday working in the Vegetation Dynamics Lab (or at least as fun as it gets).  The name of the lab sounds fancy, but it is just a couple of cluttered rooms with expensive forest chopping and wood-working machinery and random logs and parts of trees... which make it smell like a pine forest when you walk in (mmm).  I'm helping another grad student take tree cores (that are bored out of live trees and are about the size and shape of a drinking straw, which they are stored in) and "date" them, comparing the rings to known years of growth (wet year) or not much growth (i.e. drought year or some kind of supression) and doing tons of other measurements.  It's cool to be able to look at a tree's rings and interpret a story of the forest, going hundreds of years back.  I have a plot of trees that all grew like CRAZY for a few years when they were babies, then suddenly stopped growing for another decade. Why? did they all start to outcompete each other? or was there another population of faster growing tree or shrub that overtook them and stole all the light? i don't know...

SAVE ME! I'M TURNING INTO A TREE-GEEK!

Today was drizzly and chilly; which could be interpreted as either DEPRESSING or PERFECT RUNNING WEATHER! Since my hip has been completely normal for the past few days I decided to take my chances and get outside, and had the best run in as long as I can remember! A loop on a trail that goes around the golf courses, finished in 35 minutes (including only two 1 min. walk breaks...go me!) I LOVE running when it is in the 40's/low 50's. It is so invigorating.  The run made me feel awesome but exhausted. I am getting a little bit of a head cold (congestion) and hoping it doesn't morph into the dreaded Swine Flu haha. 

Oh well, as Coach Fred used to say, running in bad weather won't make you sick/er as long as you take a shower right afterwards.  And also, if you are too congested to breathe, just run harder and breathe through your mouth, because it gives you 85% more oxygen than your nose anyways! 

And with those little inspirational gems, I am headed off to get cozy and do some reading.

results of a productive but lazy weekend

Allow me to introduce...

My NEW colorful apartment!

I'm really excited about how the purple turned out. 

My kitchen is a wonderful light sunny yellow now too, but it is too long and narrow to get a decent picture.

I also went to the futon outlet and ordered a pine frame futon that will arrive Thursday! (yay!) Imagine it beneath the tulip pictures...

I chose the smallest frame possible but I'm afraid it will still overtake the tiny room!! Oh well.  It also folds out into a full size bed SO if you want to come visit me...

My weekend consisted mainly of painting, and running random errands in the rain.

This is my new best friend, Foamy:

I have been DYING for a foam roller to roll out my quads/IT bands.

It hurts so bad, but feels so good

(that sounds like a Greg Smithey quote hehe)

I have been rolling my legs out allll day; I know it will be good for my hip. I discovered my IT bands are TIGHT!!! yesterday I went to the fitness center on campus and tried the (awesome!) stationary bikes with a t.v. that programs you into intense video-game like courses and also one of the FIVE different kinds of ellipticals (some freak me out!!) and then lifted so my body is sore from all that too.

Today my hip felt like...nothing! (go figure) so I tried a slow 2 mile run up and down my street to loosen up and get outside.  Success!

On my trip to get paint I stopped at Wegman's (the "fancy" grocery store) for the first time.

HOLY FOOD!

That place is daaangerous.

A warehouse-sized produce section, organic anythingyoucanthinkof, there is a whole room for just tea, and also for candy, and ethnic foods, AND they (probably the only grocery store in PA) sell beer! (because they also have a restaurant). 

[If you didn't know, alcohol is severely regulated in this state...you can only buy it at liquor stores, but only if you want wine or liquor. Beer must be purchased at special "bottle shops" or restaurants, and you can only carry out one sixpack at a time. Now I am not a huge drinker, but I miss Hy-Vee!!!!!!]

So this is what I am eating for dessert:

Yay fall! Yay candy corn! Yay beer+sugar!

Speaking of food, I went outside of my ethnic and social boundaries tonight and made Otsu, which is evidently a Japanese noodle dish, with tofu. I have never cooked tofu before...it is one of those things that is weird, but in a good way. Like Kitchen Cooked potato chips.  I also cooked soba noodles for the first time, aka Asian noodles made of buckwheat. Tastes like spaghetti, looks like spaghetti, but cooks in 3 MINUTES! And is somehow better for you, I think.

Anyways, it was delicious.

The recipe came out of Heidi Swanson's cookbook again.  [If you want to make it, go here (I didn't have sesame seeds but they make it look 100x prettier)]. I am pretty obsessed with her right now!! and getting into natural foods cooking. I LOVE having all this free time to cook and experiment with food, now that I don't have my 16 hour days of extra-curriculars and jobs like I did in the undergrad years ;)

Also, I came across a food revelation that shook my world. Ginger is one of my faaavorite spices, but I always saw a hefty price of $4-5 on fresh ginger root at the grocery store so I never splurged.  Well evidently, the price was per pound, and ginger is very light! So I bought fresh ginger for the first time, a huge root for $1, and my life will never be the same again. 

Lovely cool rainy day

photo

and I'm just in the mood for it :)

Happy weekend!

Fall!

Today was almost perfect.

The weather has finally turned (for the second or third time again, ha) which made me so happy.

Even though I love summer and warmth, I have been CRAVING some cooler days, and I don't know why! I am definitely NOT ready for winter again. ugh.  But the humidity level has plummeted and it just feels completely refreshing. It also has made me realize that the trees are starting to change, which I guess I didn't even see before since it felt so much like summer.

The fiddle player was back at the farmer's market, and I bought lots of apples and more peaches, since they will soon be gone!

I love me some farmers markets

(Over the summer, I set a goal to get as much of my food locally as I can.  It's been really easy to do that here so far, out in Amish farm country, but we'll see if I cave to the convenient globalization of the grocery store once summer and fall's fresh produce supply dwindles to winter squash and greens...)

It was so nice out, I ended up wandering downtown for a while.

Tomorrow night is the first "real" Big 10 home game, against Iowa, and things are already beginning to gear up for it downtown and around campus.  Crowds of people and ESPN tents galore.  I wish I was into football so I could be excited :P Instead, I just have to strategically plan my errand-running so I don't get stuck in the traffic nightmare that occurs when 50,000 extra people pull their Winnebagos into this tiny town.

What I love about it here is that it feels small and cozy, but there is SO MUCH crammed in.  Every time I am out I discover some new little restaurant or alley.

Here is the Corner Restaurant, which serves really really bad paninis [and is overall the only "bad" restaurant experience I have had here so far. Well, B had a bad experience :)]  On the left side of the building, under the awning, is the basement bar Zeno's where we go Monday nights after our Intro to Geog. Research class (all incoming grads have to take it) and I expand my beer horizons.

Aaand here are some lovely rose bushes on the way back to my building :)

On Friday afternoons, the Geography department has a 40 year tradition called Coffee Hour.  We host a speaker (either from our school or some other notable researcher or "friend" of the dept.) and have an informal social gathering before the lecture.  The first year grad class is responsible for bringing food, making coffee, and designing a poster to advertise the speaker each week.  Today three female faculty members talked about their different international service learning programs, which pretty much made me want to pack up and build wildlife corridors in Peru to save the jaguars.  THEY ARE SO PRETTY!!!

I am really excited for this weekend. Not because I have any huge fun plans, but because I have two empty days to myself, to do anything! I love that feeling. I have been so hyped up about my first fieldtrip-free 2-day weekend that I have been riding on this ridiculous and crazy adrenaline high for the past couple of days and have turned into an insomniac.  I am so weird.

I'm thinking I'll have to re-evaluate my color choice for office/living room paint, since this sample looks a little too dark (full coat is darkest splotch on left)...yikes! I like bats, but I don't want to live in a batcave!!

The only thing spoiling the perfection of today is my stupid hip. Hurting again. I am so frustrated and feel like I won't be able to really run again for a loooong time. It's like a part of who I am has been taken away, and it sucks.

please don't stop the music

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For some reason, I have been music-depriving myself lately.

All summer I had no internet, so I never turned on my computer to use iTunes

Then they came out with a new version or two and I was just too lazy to deal with it

(Plus having to figure out how to move my music to my new computer... yeah, way too much work)

Now I'm going to have to make an effort to find out what new artists have emerged while I've been in hibernation and return the music to my life!

I've rediscovered the site Daytrotter.com.

It's a recording studio right in Rock Island that lets traveling up and coming indie rock bands stop by, record a few songs, and then puts the mp3 files on the site FOR FREE.  GO THERE.

Similarly, I don't even remember the last time I played piano. Maybe once this summer. I do know it's the longest I have gone since I started lessons in 4th grade. Um, I am now in what, 17th grade?!

I have already found the music building on campus; maybe this weekend I will crash the practice rooms and bust out the Debussy.

It's strange how sometimes, I am just not motivated or inspired to pursue the creative activities that make me who I am. I take my talent for granted and let it stagnate.

Why?

time

Things to do before September is over:

-finish painting apartment

-buy futon

I guess that's it. I don't want to be overambitious since a week from tomorrow is October already!

It is too warm out to feel like fall. Just like spring and summer were too cold.  My mental seasonal calendar is off.

I love my apartment but it will not feel like home until I complete my September goals!

I just know it.

Happy Birthday Coleolshkins!

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 Eight years ago today, my baby sister Nicole was born!

*sidenote: last Christmas I convinced her that Mama and Papa really named her Coleolshkins but we just call her Nicole for short. She believed me, for a good 2 minutes.

Fairytale

I remember telling B a little while ago that I don't really like roses in gardens, because they are all scraggly.  I am going to have to take back my words because gorgeous rose bushes are alllll over campus and I love them! Especially lining the front of the old French-manor style fraternity houses. 
I still don't like bouquets of red roses though.

of food and recipes

This is my pet pear. Sunna and I harvested the backyard pear tree (so instead of basiltopia, it is pearpalooza now), and this one was the cutest.  No name; I don't want to get too attached!

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In Anna's world, weekends mean FANCY BREAKFAST TIME!

Meet the Banana Espresso muffin.

[recipe from this book]

-2 c whole wheat flour

-2 t. baking powder

-1/2 t. salt

-1 1/4 c. chopped walnuts

-1 T espresso powder

-6 T butter

-3/4 c. sugar

-2 eggs

-2 t. vanilla extract

-1 c. plain yogurt

-3 mashed bananas

Mix first three ingredients, and most of the walnuts, and the espresso powder (I used instant coffee)

In large bowl, cream butter with sugar, eggs, vanilla, yogurt, and bananas

Mix in dry ingredients but do NOT overmix...with muffins you should still see some dry powder after you combine wet/dry ingredients.  If you overmix the batter like it is cake batter, the muffins will be dense and tough!

Put in muffin tin up to the brims, and sprinkle with remaining walnuts

Bake 375 F for 25-30 minutes

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Aaaand lastly, here is a recipe for my famous STIR FRY

dedicated to E-kins.

[I eat stir fry a LOT because I usually have lots of random veggies around, and it is the easiest thing to throw together when you are lazy/need food NOW! aka college food.]

You can use virtually any combo of sauce, veggies (fresh or frozen), meat, grains but tonight I used

-garlic

-shallots

-red pepper

-zucchini

-broccoli

-chicken

-ground ginger

-quinoa

1. Chop garlic and shallots (or onions) and saute in a pan with oil or non-stick spray for a few minutes

2. Add any frozen veggies so they defrost

3. Push everything to the sides of the pan (off the center heat source) and cook chicken/meat if you are using it.

4. At any step, liberally sprinkle everything with S/P and ground ginger

5. When the chicken is almost cooked (chop a piece in half and check for raw-ness), add the rest of the vegetables and cook everything together for a few more minutes

6.  Douse the stir fry with any kind of Asian sauce (I like sweet and sour sauce, stir-fry sauce, or plum sauce)

7. Serve over your favorite grain (Instead of rice, try quinoa--it cooks the same way, has more protein, and is overall more fun than rice!)

Happy Weekend!

I spent the day in Black Moshannon State Park with my small Forest Geography class, collecting data from about an acre plot of trees.  Lots of the canopy has been opened up in this forest (and all around the area) from a plague of gypsy moths that eat and kill trees, so that combined with the overabundant hungry deer population has allowed ferns and groundcover to explode.  Eventually, since the deer are eating all the young saplings, the mature trees might not be replaced after they die and the forest could become a vast fern field.  Interesting.  It was a gorgeous day to be wandering about in the forest, but I am VERY GLAD this was our last Saturday excursion.  I'm looking forward to having two day weekends and being able to actually see my boyfriend again!!  [All these field trips have been bringing me back to last fall's S.I. family days, except this time I am getting pretty good at plant identification!  The only prairie plants I can still pick out comfortably from class last year are compass plant and goldenrod, but I can now identify lots of the Eastern trees by merely looking at their bark.  Useful skills? I don't know. But kind of fun.]

Fridays in State College mean the big downtown Farmer's Market and running in the golf course!  Past all the pretty stone houses that I wish I lived in, with their multi-colored shutters.

The path is pretty and the mountains rising in the background make me wish I were a golfer so I could better appreciate these golf courses. [But I am not a golfer. DEFINITELY not HA!]

The best part about the run was that TODAY I have not felt my hip at all. That's a first!!

strawberry yogurt smoothie

Yesterday, in the gloomy cloudy cold, I wandered over to the public library to check out Grey's Anatomy season 4.  I was really sad to discover that the State College branch of the Centre County Libraries doesn't have it and if I drive to the Bellefonte library I can only check it out for 3 days (NOT doing a 3 day season marathon) so I bought myself a consolation smoothie from Panera on the way home...

 

Which inspired me to recreate The Most Delicious Smoothie, out of yogurt and frozen strawberries. That's it!

I don't know why I haven't thought of making yogurt smoothies before. 

Happiness [+venting]

Wednesdays are my favorite day of the week.  All day I only have one class, so I can stay home all morning and work on whatever I want to, then go back to doing whatever I want to all afternoon.  Fall is definitely approaching; I can't BELIEVE September is half over!! It was sunny out today but very cool.  Ever since I got home I have been FREEZING so I am going to make a raspberry tea latte :) 
 

I also can't believe I have been in school for four weeks already. I feel like I am getting in better shape--it only took me 25 minutes to bike in this morning instead of 30 wooo! (but probably because I stuck to the main road through campus instead of the back roads/sidewalks I usually weave through in an attempt to avoid annoying undergrads aimlessly biking/milling about and the CATA buses that are quite scary when passing your bike on a narrow street).   In a feat of over-achievement I also went for a run around the campus golf courses this evening, probably the highlight of the day!  I discovered a gravel path that goes farther into the courses and followed it.  It was the best run I've had in weeks (as most of you know I've been battling the MOST ANNOYING hip injury EVER since July), my legs felt amazing instead of sluggish and I actually picked up my slow-jog pace for a tiny bit to get some endorphins ;) and it was surprisingly easy.  Now I have to wait and see how my hip responds to all this extra activity ha.  It was the perfect kind of run weather, slightly breezy and the setting sun backlit all the trees with leaves JUST beginning to turn colors.
 

On another note, it seems that while I'm out here in my little happyworld, lots of my family and friends have been facing personal and professional issues and have NOT been excited about each day ahead when they wake up.  This maelstrom of stress upsets me too, because I want everyone I care about to be happy when I'm happy (duh), and to figure out "life" so they can be completely satisfied they're doing what they were meant to do. 

Everyone faces set-backs and trials and uncertainty at times, but it is SO important to KEEP PERSPECTIVE always. I wrote those words in huge letters in my journal last year (I wrote a whooole depressing book) because I knew I would sometimes have to kick myself to keep going and remember that each day is only a miniscule fraction of the rest of my life, and if one day sucks, or even lots of days/months/seasons/a phase of life, it's ok because there will be better days eventually to even the bad ones out.  You might not even have realized just how good those future days are if you hadn't battled to reach them.

One other thing I discovered (the hard way!!!) is that you MUST make time for yourself to keep mentally balanced.  This time will not just pop out on its own, either because you are "busy" or because you feel selfish for not thinking of others 24/7, but you have to sacrifice "important" things to fit in some personal time or you WILL go insane and lose your sense of deep-down personal identity.  And cry.  And be no help to anyone else anyways. Nothing is ever more important than a little bit of quality me-time, no matter how many other things are on the to-do list.  That's just the way it is.  So go sing, lift, walk, read, whatever it is that reminds you of who you really are.

[On a third note, more specifically, if you just so happen to have been unfortunately smashed in the face with the obvious truth of a person's true personality that you have been trying to ignore for months and months, just know that your life WILL go on (and will get better!) without them sucking your happiness and good-spirited energy away.]
 

Whew, that's enough soapbox for the day!

Eggplant Lasagna

ES this post is for you. It is how to make delicious eggplant lasagna!  A recipe I invented with the inspiration of my rare, no longer in print 1971 New York Times Natural Foods Cookbook that I bought off Amazon for $0.01 (plus 4.95 S&H).

Eggplant Lasagna, the Recipe

-Take one eggplant and a couple tomatoes from the farmer's market and slice them very thin.
(You are supposed to peel the eggplant first, in every recipe I looked up. This made me sad because eggplant peel is one of my favorite colors. Can't you eat it?)

-Layer in a baking dish with sliced garlic, sliced onions, parmesan cheese, mozzarella, salt/pepper, basil, or whatever else you have.  Make as many layers as your ingredients can handle!

It may look something like this:

-Bake at 400 degrees F for about 40 minutes

Yumyum!

got basil?

I dooo!

-the result of some "aggressive harvesting" with my landlord(lady?)

after we chopped and snipped for half an hour we gazed into the bucket and she said, "Well, now you have basil!"

then we looked up at each other and laughed hysterically

that bucket is 2 feet tall, people.

pesto till kingdom come

 

Also, I finally painted my room! This was a very exciting day for me haha. It was the easiest painting job ever...white walls and low ceilings so I could reach all the way up.

Not anything like my PREVIOUS paint job:

RACshack, Rock Island circa 2008 UGH

 

Here are some glimpses of my beeeautiful new colorful room

Yay, pretty!

hello, September (in which I move to PA for grad school)

Well girls, we gave it a well-intentioned try, and somehow failed so I am going to branch out on my own. (Viva Brac forever though!)

-inside nonjoke
  

B asked me if I liked living by myself after all, since I had been looking forward to it for so long, and I had to think about it.  Yes I do like it very much and I am happier here and now than I have been in over a [long long] year and a half.  But I also miss Greg Smithey and Charmed and pizza aka cheese bread nights and having someone around to do nothing with on lazy boring weekends.  When did we grow up? I don't know, but my best friends are scattered around the world doing grown-up jobs like teaching children, or are going to school in order to be grown-up Halloween-costume-inspiring things like doctors and lawyers. 

As for me, I am living in an entirely new community where absolutely no one knows my past or where I am from, or what it is like to smell fresh corn growing in the summer.  I am taking death defying leaps out of my comfort zone by bike commuting ten miles a day and driving to Baltimore all by myself when I get the chance.  I am confronted with a completely new sense of self and identity

since when am I a geography grad student???

which is an identity that is ridiculously fun and exciting.  Like, ridiculous.

My classmates are going to recover wetlands, discover the science behind the melting of the glaciers, develop new technology that describes how we view and analyze the world, work towards restructuring the socio-economic disparities of American cities, and many other things.

These are the things that geographers do.

So far I am working on projects that deal with the effects of forest fire suppression in California national parks, and have confirmed that I like trees better than prairies (but not as much better as I anticipated. Papa D had more of an influence than I realized after all.)
 

So far, I looove it here