Radiation and the Preposterous Pomegranate

Doesn't this just make you drool?

Sam and I had good days. I finally broke the news to my supervisor that I was taking spring classes, and Sam had success with his measurements in the water tunnel. Sam and I had an agreement if I wasn't going to tell work about wanting to take classes before Thanksgiving then he could get an x-box. That wasn't happening, so I told him if he threatened with a $300 purchase, I deserve some pretzel m&m's for avoiding that bullet! So as we sprinted across the street in the rain to get small treats from a grocery store. However, while meandering in the store looking for a different item, I saw a huge bin full of red plump pomegranates. I was done for. Not a summer-sized joke of the fruit. Full, softball sized gorgeous shiny hard skinned pomegranates. I traded my pretzel M&M's for a pomegranate. If you don't know - I love pomegranates.

For one of my birthdays my parents even bought me a pomegranate bush. It is still there, in the left hand side yard getting the water from the blue-green swamp cooler drain hose. I don't remember getting significant harvests from it, but I remember scooping out the pine needles that accumulated around the base, seeing the gorgeous hibiscus-like blooms, and getting so excited for the small pre-pomegranate beginnings. I eat my pomegranates somewhat particularly. Sam thinks I'm weird, but I eat the entire arils. Sam eats them by sucking the juice out and spitting out the actual seed. He gets bored after a couple, makes a face and is done. But I could eat these for days...Plus ever since I got a CAT scan a couple of days ago, I'm convinced my cancer risk has gone up and I'll die in a few weeks without loads of fresh fruits, veggies and abundant antioxidants. X-rays have always kinda freaked me out. I've had probably hundreds, but seriously does the technician have to leave the room? Seriously? I'm the one on the table bud! Thanks a ton...While I was little I would get nervous. I still get a little nervous. Especially with the "warning radiation" flashing light. Goodness, like I already don't know I'm going to get cancer...

Back to the issue at hand. I immediately came home, pulled out a cutting board and cut into the firm rosy exterior to reveal....black and brown rotting avrils. Half the entire hemisphere was rotten! No indications of abuse on the outside. Still desperate for my pomegranate, I ran back in the now heavier rain, to talk to customer service. GIANT is a great store, and immediately apologized and said they'd give me my twice my money back and a two free pomegranates. So they went to the bin to check if there were any more bad ones....and they were all bad. They said nothing like this had every happened. My poor taste-buds. I could not satisfy my hankering! They were so good about it, and gave me a $10 gift certificate for my trouble, but I am yet without a delicious pomegranate.

Maybe I'll have a blueberry/banana/milk/honey smoothie to cheer myself up, and make sure I don't sprout an extra limb from my radiation overdose. :(

Foster the People and Blueberry Muffins

Our life has taken a regular tun. Life has been pretty regular, expected and predictable. Which is nice. Too much unexpected events make for lots of excitement, but too much stress. Sam and I head up to campus around 8am right after the sun has peaked through our windows around 7:15. We park in generally the same place in the parking garage, 4th or 5th (if we're running late) row on the second floor. Sam walks on my right hand side as he walks me to my building. We have a quick kiss and say "see you at 5". I work all day long and put my feet up and read in the Pattee library for lunch. Sam does schoolwork, and research and totes around a green lunchbox. We meet up at a building (exactly halfway) between our buildings and walk the rest of the way to the parking garage. By this time it is a dark twilight. We discuss our days, be it work dynamics and gossip, or research developments and classroom events.
Brave traffic - it takes for..e....v......e......r to go a mere 1.5 miles.

We arrive home. I go up to our apartment, and Sam checks the mail. If Sam doesn't have a pressing school matter he usually turns on some music. Right now we are thoroughly enjoying Foster the People and the new Justice album. Especially Foster the People. To me they sound like a version of Owl City, except there is a whole band and the songs sound different form each other. Very catchy too.

Sam and I mill around, perusing online sites and blogs until I decide I have to start dinner or dishes. Preferably dinner. I hate dishes. We eat, and usually lounge on our ridiculously comfy couches to talk and/or watch TV or some netflix streaming.

If I'm still in the mood to exert some extra energy in the kitchen, I'll make our current food fix-blueberry muffins with streusel topping. By food fix I mean that thing that your mind dwells while in a state of hunger, as well as after you've eaten and are full. We have a pretty relaxing life right now. It feels nice.

Recent Developments

We've made some fantastic friends in our ward - the WINDERS! They are so awesome. Sam gets along great with him, and I love her. We all coerced Sam into playing (and enjoying) a card game! (believe it or not, he had fun :)  We hung out with them in DC for a day and had a great time. Whitney has dark hair and looks shy until you start talking to her. She is absolutely hilarious! She went to hair school in Utah, and is currently working at a medical office here. She's got killer style and I'm hoping this will rub off on me. Her husband Aaron is a neuro-engineering grad student. He's in a math class with Sam. He can relate enough to the engineering that they have plenty to talk about, but does enough different things that he and Sam can share different aspects of what they like and what they do. Sam really misses Jeremy still, and all the car-talk, but is happy to finally have a man-friend.

Life is good. It has it's ups and downs, but for right now it's ok.

PSU craziness

I wanted things to calm down a little bit to comment on the PSU recent events. In a matter of days, this entire community has been devastated. I mean that in every sense of the word. Here PSU is a way of life, a family, it is a name, a university that people feel they represent, respect and rear their children to attend.  On work Monday when all this started to unfold a co-worker broke down and cried right in the office. She said she felt personally violated. Every since she could remember she's been Penn State. She went to a game earlier in the year that got snowed on, and said "So what - I'll just wear a trash bag I'm not there for the location, I'm there for the view!" Although Liberal Arts is not associated with the football or athletic program at all, the dean herself spent hours writing personal notes to donors pleading with them not to pull funding. She asked them to remember who was benefiting from their funding-the students, and what good is coming out of the research and education they were contributing to.

As far as the "riot" there were hundreds of peaceful protests in the form of a candlelight vigil, but less than 30 people decided to do something stupid (most likely while intoxicated) and all pictures of the crowd were people that were watching. The news people in the area were have said to egged them on.

This last week there were news crews everywhere, and people quick to judge thousands of people over the actions of literally a handful of people. A call came into our office from another university. This was just a business call about some financial information. The first words from the other line were "I hear you have a lot of sex addicts out there". It's all anyone can every talk about. It's very upsetting, and very sad. It's sad what happened, it's sad who was involved, and it's sad how high up this went. It's also sad that the employees who could have stopped it were too afraid for their jobs to speak up for those who couldn't speak for themselves. It's sad. This event has a lot of time until it fully unfolds, but we all know it's pretty bad.

So as to not end on a sad and depressing note, I'll share with the world this amazing blueberry muffin recipe. I've tried quite a few blueberry recipes out there because they're Sam's favorite. A lot of the trials included fresh lemon juice and zest, fresh blueberries, butter, and careful mixing. I've tried Martha Stewart's, Pendulum Court recipes, and even Alton Brown's. I decided to try this  new recipe as a treat for Sam to come home to after his San Diego trip. That way if they were really bad, he wouldn't mind because he wouldn't have eaten all night and would be touched that I tried. I thought I over-mixed the first batch and so started on a second. But they both turned out, and we went through all of them in 2 days. A dozen muffins! These are the most moist, best streusel, most delicious muffins, and by far the easiest, and cheapest.

This recipe was given by a co-worker, a friendly blonde budget-wiz woman named Brandy. If I had to eat one item every day for the rest of my life it would be these. I changed the recipe a little, and these work best with muffin liners, but oh boy I have sensual dreams about these muffins.

Makes 6 large, 8-9 smaller muffins

Timeline: Turn oven on, make streusel, put muffin liners in pan, mix dry, mix wet, mix dry and wet, top with streusel, cook & drool, EAT!


Make the streusel topping:
1/4 cup white sugar
1/6 cup AP Flour (guestimate - I halved the original recipe and it's not crucial)
1 Tablespoon butter
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Mash up the butter into the sugar and flour with a fork. Make sure there are no visible bits of butter left. This will take several minutes.


Mix dry ingredients:
1.5 cups AP flour
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder

Mix wet ingredients:
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1/3 cup milk

After you run a whisk through the dry ingredients, and whisk the wet ingredients, combine the two. Stop a few strokes before it looks done. This means there will be floury parts, and wet-ish parts.

Pour 1 cup frozen blueberries in (I got these wild blueberries in a big bag at Wal-Mart) and only mix 2-3 strokes. Any more and you will have purple tough muffins!

Divide the batter evenly into 6-8 muffin tins and pour the streusel on. Don't be shy, it's great stuff and Sam licks his off the plate...

Put in oven at 350 for 25-35. Check earlier than this because I'm pretty sure my oven goes hot. To tell when muffins are done tap the top gently. If you feel it's wet and/or collapses a little at your touch they're not done. Once you feel that they hold their shape after you touch them you're good! These go well with hot chocolate, but who am I kidding - what doesn't!

Caution: don't tell your significant other the moment they're out of the oven. Sam has been too eager and burned his tongue. Then tried to take another bite and burned his tongue again. Then he gets angry because he not only has a burnt tongue but he can't even eat his muffin to make himself feel better.

Be careful, these quickly turn into...

These!
As a student of nutrition it is my obligation to tell you these are not calorie free. 

Sam did this shot for the camera. But he does it every single time. No joke.

BTW it snowed. This was the view from our bedroom window

Test Burning Party

Once a semester one of Sam's teachers holds a midterm test burning party. This faculty member is renowned for having difficult tests. When older graduate students heard Sam and his friends were studying for this particular test - they just laughed. When Sam and his friends asked for tips, or what to expect... - they just laughed.

The day of the test started with the TA (nicknamed Pie - seriously) wheeling in the teacher on a hand cart. The professor was in a straight jacket with a hannibal mask on. He sadistically quoted "Hello Clarise..." had the TA hand out and administer the test while he was wheeled out laughing.

From what Sam has told me he is an excellent teacher, and from what I've gathered from my conversations with him is that he is a really good teacher with a lot of perspective of bridging the gap between school and an actual profession. He tries to steer the students away from having easy solutions handed to them, because in a real profession you have to account for many different things at once. The problem itself isn't difficult but all of the small things you have to account for can be. He doesn't like using the textbook because each problem is labeled in a format: 5.3. This lets the student know that the answer is in chapter five section three without him having to guess what principle he has to apply - the student is told. He wants to prepare his students, and it sounds like he's doing a great job.

Because the midterm is so notorious and awful, after it is graded the professor holds a party where he gives all of the students and their +1's dinner and a bonfire fueled by their tests. Sam and I had a blast! A lot of the acoustic guys are really fun, and their +1's totally understood how sometimes the acoustics can become a little...much.

The professor himself is a very fun person. He had a sweater and a music collection right out of the 70's- but the preppy non-hipppy 70's. He also had an eclectic mix of artifacts in his home. The only overlying theme that I could think of was  non-American items. From everything from a huge German soup tureen, japanese theatre masks to a Moroccan lantern (which was gorgeous - I totally want one!) and a brass Indian tea dispenser made into a lamp! He became especially excited when I understood what Italian and French hot chocolate was.

The actual burning of the exams took place after a short speech of "you are no longer amateur acousticians!" and each student ripped his individual test up. All of the pieces were put in a small stout barbeque. Phrases like "Curse you delta E!" and "Take that Tailor Series!" were heard. He then doused the mixture in a high proof solution and set fire. He was a little too cavalier with the alcohol the deck itself caught on fire for a few seconds-he didn't seem phased at all. Although I did notice that his wife brought out a fire extinguisher. After the burning he and the students chanted five rules that he drills into the students and cheers and pictures followed. It seemed like many got a real sense of closure. I'm wondering if this could be a regular therapeutic way to conclude an exam.

Sam and I are headed to DC tomorrow for a temple trip. We just happen to be going with some great people we met in the branch and staying a little longer to shop and eat, and avoid some of the State College madness.

My comments on all of the PSU scandal will be forthcoming. Please keep in mind that this small community has literally been destroyed. I've seen adults break down in public and cry. Hundreds of thousands of people are suffering, and will suffer because of the acts of a few. Awareness for the victims is paramount and the entire city has sold out of blue ribbon. The blue ribbon is a symbol of awareness of child abuse as well as PSU's colors. We mourn with the rest of the country, and are outraged.