Ah, I have been remiss — I completely neglected to post my new URL here:
Miamor is not so much a personal blog as a draftbox, a clearing house for ideas and images and words. I’ve decided to stop writing personal entries in my blogs, or at least keep it to a minimum; all (well, most) rants and whinging will instead stay quarantined in Another Miyaw.
Thank you very much!
I’ve been thinking about it, and it looks like I’ll be closing down Stranje as well.
Although this may seem a little sudden, the underpinnings for this decision were laid weeks or maybe even months ago. I can’t pinpoint the details, but I do know that this sense of moving on, of having finished whatever it was that impelled me to write Stranje, has been present for a while now.
It sounds so ridiculously mystic to talk of senses and motivations I can’t even describe. Maybe it is. Nevertheless, I know enough of my projects to realize when it’s time to consider one finished. To close the book, as it were. I’ve done enough talking about myself; it’s time to shut up and do something to add substance to these words.
Some other things that influenced this since I have to focus on them–
Academic projects. Aside from trying to get a good grade in Microeconomics and ace Physics Seminar, I’m working on a research paper (minority games with death) and a thesis (a quantum-kinetic model of turbulence as applied to foreign exchange). I’m also trying to develop a few ideas that have to do with economic systems being modelled as non-equilibrium systems. Also, must learn game theory.
Creative projects. I’m trying to re-learn how to draw. Also have two short stories in progress (Unburnt, technically finished but in need of heavy editing; Like People, inspired by a film Jake and his friends produced) and a novel that is trying to split into two books. I’m thinking of learning typography and becoming more serious about design as well — letters are just as fascinating as words. I have a couple of online projects in mind too; one is a sort of group project involving the translation of old texts to the modern idiom — let me know if you’re interested.
Legal research. My mother is a lawyer, but up until recently she was also an associate professor at the state university’s law school. She’s teaching me and my brother to do legal research and our pile of to-be-read documents is several inches thick. In fact, as of now I’m supposed to be doing a case digest for a certain land reclamation case and– my goodness, my brain’s turning to mush just thinking about it.
…And so… and so. I’ve had to come to the realization — long-delayed, actually, but I am nothing if not stubborn and a master at denial — that if I spread myself too thin I will not only go crazy but fail in just about everything I want to do. The problem with having so many interests is precisely that you have so many interests; it’s the choice of what to do that kills you. Because you always have to give something up, but then again, that’s life, isn’t it?
I’ll still be in touch. Though I may not blog anymore, I’ll be setting up a site for my projects and a sort of “draft blog” where I can dump everything I’m working on. It’ll be password-protected though, since I’m a little shy when it comes to my creative side.
Also, personal posts will be found — Ia-cha’, don’t hate me for this — at the LJ, though they will be few and far between and will probably only consist of rantage and random babbling. (Not much difference from Stranje posts, but still.)
Stranje archives will still be kept online, but I’ll change this index page in a week or so.
That said, the only thing left is:
Thank you very much, and if you ever need anything or want to say something, just let me know.
My goodness, I’m sure that by now you’re familiar with this — are probably sick of it, even — since when is Mia not overloaded with projects and what-not (and procrastinating to death)? But in any case, I’ve decided to streamline things a little, combine some online projects so that I’m not spread so thin, stop writing so much about what I want to do and start doing them…
In that spirit, I will be retiring the following within the month:
ephemere
impassionata — not that I was regularly updating this, mind, but I kept intending to and now I will… stop intending
Also, I shall revamp lLnet to just include links to my sites (and also a hostees page) because I can’t have that “update your domain, you horrible owner” specter hanging over my head all the time.
I will be posting at K33G sometime soon; the reason I didn’t post for a while was because I thought it would galvanize other people to post. I don’t like dominating discussions. In any case, people have posted — yay! — so I will write something there, probably something weird about intelligence since my ramblings on girls and games have yet to coalesce into something coherent.
All my creative projects and assorted odds and ends will be stored at likhain.net. As for the bits and pieces I’ve been posting at ephy, I’ll probably create a (password-protected) blog in which to store the drafts. It will be .htaccess protected, so if you’re interested in accessing the draft blog please e-mail me with your desired username and password.
That is all. As for personal stuff — how I’m doing lately — I still haven’t been able to reply to e-mails properly (gahhh) and in addition to thesis stuff and acad stuff I now have “night classes” in the form of lectures on law. We’re doing legal research for a certain case, and it’s very very interesting.
…So I was supposed to do things for my research, right, like set up the mathematical formulation of the morbid variant of the MG, and get to work on a generating functional analysis of it, but… I enjoyed drawing on the sketchpad I had brought (as a sort of cure for math/physics block) so much that by the time I realized I should be doing work my eyes hurt from the poor lighting and it was too late to think of physics, the afternoon was so nice outside…
I notice that my grammar and syntax tend to devolve whenever I’m tired. Which is very often.
Anyway, sketchy doodles. Larger versions of these will be posted over at ephy if I remember to do so. Or maybe I’ll post the finished inks (after I transfer the sketches, clean them up, do shading, etc) there; hopefully they’ll be properly scanned instead of digicammed. By the way, there are a few more postcard pictures at ephy too.
Disclaimer: I’m only a dabbler who turns to art/writing/whatever as a form of therapy (since they’re not as destructive as, say, drugs or stupid flings…) so– yeah. Also I didn’t erase the draft sketchy outliney lines because I like the way they look. (Which is why there’s a huge line running down Aezo’s chin– anyway.)
Okay, I’m going to do… physics stuff now and maybe collapse into bed after that. Thank you so much to everyone who has offered to help me with the books. Aaaaa. I have wonderful friends.
There are times when it sucks to live outside the U.S.
Such as when you’re buying your textbooks. I have a rather difficult problem: the books I need aren’t available here. Thus I have to place orders at online bookstores, but of course it takes them months to ship books here, and unfortunately I need the books ASAP.
Raaargh.
If anyone in the U.S. can help me with this — I’ll pay for your expenses, of course — please e-mail me. ;_;
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
And Wilderness is Paradise enow. (Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam)
…I could go on to say that yes, that’s what this is about — books, food, and him — but then that would be stating the obvious.
In any case!
We had lunch at a lovely Italian restaurant/wine bar/deli, which is priced very reasonably considering the delicious food (authentic Italian ingedients) and the quality of the service. There’s a set menu of antipasto, pasta, coffee/tea, and wine; you can choose from their large selection of house wines and four or so “pastas of the day.” Also, if you’re interested in a certain drink or deli product you can request a free taste and most of the time they’ll be happy to accommodate your request. The restaurant is called Galileo Enoteca, and it’s located at Calbayog St. cor. Malinao St. in Mandaluyong — just make a right at Libertad from Edsa, then take a right at the second street.
Afterwards my brother and I headed to the Hotel Intercontinental to attend RodCon. I managed to forget (or lose completely, or maybe I never did it in the first place…!) pre-registration information and so ended up buying tickets at the desk. Once inside we met up with Sarah, who looked terribly harassed but otherwise fine. Heh.
While at the convention I saw many things of note. Things that made me think, things that compelled me to resolve to help out next year, things that improved my outlook on human nature, things that worsened it. Also, several people I recognized but declined to approach. All in all, it was a positive experience, and I will think about the good things that happened, such as all the books I bought, as opposed to… bad things, like how much money I spent today.
We brought about twenty books for the book swap. There would have been more, except my brother didn’t want to give away any of his sixty+ Star Wars books, even the terrible ones (”Geek cred! The numbers count!”). I got one book out of the book swap, Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, then my brother and I bought a few more:
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
C.S. Lewis, Narrative Verse
Ursula le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
Isaac Asimov, Foundation
The Bhagavad-Gita, trans. Barbara Stoler Miller
T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess, Stardust (graphic novel)
Pablo Neruda, The Captain’s Verses
William Strunk and E.B. White, The Elements of Style
There is an immense satisfaction in finally having personal copies of books I first read years and years ago — and, of course, it will be wonderful to read new books. Mmm. I’ll be in book-heaven for a week or so, I think.
Jake arrived at the Intercon late afternoon and we did some blitz shopping at Glorietta. We managed to find the black coat I posted about here…! Not quite a trenchcoat, not quite a jacket, but something in between. It’s not even black, it’s somewhere between black and gray. It looks very good on him. Dashing, even. <3
We also managed to watch a movie after my brother smuggled Sarah out of the Intercon. Stranger Than Fiction is my kind of movie — caught somewhere between philosophizing and ironic self-mockery and deranged comedy and random incoherent detailwork — and it manages to be meaningful without taking itself too seriously; brilliant without having to flaunt it. I liked it very much, and though I may not have the most trustworthy taste when it comes to movies (knowing next to nothing about entertainment) I highly recommend it. The movie has its flaws, but I think most of them were a direct result of its being a Hollywood movie and thus having to state the obvious from time to time.
Plus it’s about…! It’s very…! Ah, it’s too good to spoil, go watch it instead.
Books, good food, and him. I should try to have days like this more often.
This afternoon Jake and I went to the birthday party of one of Jake’s younger cousins. I enjoyed myself much more than I should have, considering that I played with the seesaws and swings and merry-go-round as if I was one-third my age. It isn’t often I can get away with running amok in a playground, after all.
Rather than inflict a forced sort of coherence on you I will just throw everything in my head onto this page and hope it makes sense (mental image — colorful fruits going splat on a whiteboard):
Wordpress and upgrading. I really, really, really do not like what Wordpress has done to Stranje, cool features notwithstanding. In a fit of irritation I downloaded Textpattern, but thankfully came to my senses before I transferred Stranje over to TXP. It was very tempting to move — at least before I started considering the actual implementation of it — especially since I saw in the TXP screenshots a lot of the simple elegance that drew me to WP in the first place. Ah, but I’ll give Wordpress a little more time. In the interim I have to get un-lazy enough to fix my links. Speaking of blog maintenance work, I have to fix my categories; will probably add a few more after this install is more… stable.
Item hunts. There are a few things I’m looking for, and any help regarding how to find them would be very much appreciated. Seriously, please help if you have any ideas, because I’ve been looking for a while. I need to know where to find the following: A black knee-length (or longer) coat or black trenchcoat, tailored for men (or unisex). Gift boxes, the sturdy, flat kind you can use for giving gifts of brownies or cookies. Also, cake boxes. Japanese paper, ones printed with patterns similar to these. A good set of watercolors, preferrably one that comes with a palette and a case because I’m terrible at organizing art materials. I think that’s it for now — the black coat is the really really important thing and I need it soon WAHHH.
Craft-y and cook-y. I decided to do something special for this year’s St. Sebastian’s/Valentine’s Day since it is pretty special. I’ll be baking a chocolate Bundt cake for my family — still trying to decide which recipe to use — and frosting it with chocolate ganache. Prospective recipes: Chocolate Lovers’ Favorite Cake and Pro Ganache. I want to give gifts to friends, though, so I’ll be making cookies for those I see often and postcards for online friends. If I was supposed to send you one, please forgive the delay; I wanted Sarah to see them before I mailed them, and I’m also trying to make them by batches so I can photograph them all together.
State of the Mia. Wound is better. Will be attempting to go to RodCon tomorrow; just need to find a way to get there. Have a huge backlog of things to write and an even huger pile of things to read. Must try to do proper research…! Also, cold. Happy, nonetheless. After all, I have a warm cat to cuddle and a very nifty jacket to go out in.
(Aside: that thing about not ending sentences with a preposition? Is so silly. It would make sense for propositions, though.)
The wound’s mostly closed up now and the biggest bruises have faded, so I’m (slowly) getting back to work. I didn’t feel well enough to start reading physics papers or doing research yet — but come to think of it, who is? well enough, I mean — so I did a little experimenting with colored pencils and botched quite a few drawings up. Eh. I think I need to loosen up my lines.
I also upgraded Wordpress to Version 2.1 and… I don’t like it. Most of my plugins and modifications will not work, and the sidebar is wonky and I’ve lost my links page (for some reason no PHP-executing plugin will work). Rawr. I’ll fix that over the weekend, I suppose, in between playing with my art materials and trying to do generating functional analysis.
This morning I entered my room — didn’t sleep in it last night — and I found this on my bed:
–
In a comment on one of my previous posts Sexy Mom of The D Spot asked me about the apple pie recipe I used. Here it is, with some modifications (and a lot of commentary) by me. The original recipes used were for Grandma Ople’s Apple Pie and Best-Ever Pie Crust.
Ingredients
Notes on the ingredients: I reduced the number of apples needed (we had nine and ended up with two pies) and added cinnamon and vanilla as ingredients. To compensate for the vanilla you can reduce the amount of water (for the filling) by a tablespoon or so. For the crust, I multiplied all proportions (except the salt) by 1.5 since my family liked the crust so much the first time I made this that they wanted more the next time I baked. If you’re concerned about the salt (hah) you can leave off adding the salt to the crust; it will still taste good, though not as rich.
I’ve also taken quite a few liberties with the directions, as you may see below.
For the crust:
For best results, chill everything first. You’ll need to work quickly because you don’t want the butter to melt or blend into your flour mixture, so on a hot day be careful not to over-mix the ingredients; in addition, let the dough stay in the refrigerator for an hour instead of thirty minutes.
In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Cut in butter (with a bread knife, or spatula, or pinch it into the mixture with your fingers) until the mixture is crumbly. Add water little by little, mixing just enough after each addition so that it’s evenly distributed throughout the mixture. By the time you’ve added all the water you should be able to form a ball of dough. It will not be smooth, but it’s not supposed to be. It should just barely hold together.
Divide the dough into two parts and wrap each part in wax paper or plastic. Refrigerate for at least thirty minutes before using.
For the filling:
Prepare the apples. Peel and core them, then chop them into even slices about 1/4 inch thick. What we did was cut them into quarters, lengthwise, and then into wedges, crosswise. If you like you can just cut the apples in half and then slice from there (that’s what Allrecipes suggests, anyway) but we find smaller slices more manageable. Once you’re done, cover them or soak them in water (if you want to keep them from turning brown) and put them somewhere predatory family members won’t find them.
Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F/220 degrees C.
Over a low fire, melt the butter in a saucepan and add the flour to make a paste. Combine white sugar, brown sugar, water, and vanilla to make a thick syrup. Add this to the butter. Mix well, then add the cinnamon and vanilla. Bring to a boil, then let it simmer for 5 minutes over a very low flame. Separate the syrup into two portions: one for mixing into the apples, and one for glazing the top crust. I suggest a proportion of about 4:1.
Putting it all together:
Take one ball of dough out of the refrigerator. Roll it out between two sheets of floured wax paper. If the dough feels somewhat sticky, you can either dust it with flour or chill it some more. Roll out the dough enough to fit a 9-inch pie pan. Dust with a little flour if the surface is sticky, then transfer the dough to the pie pan. To make the transfer easier, we up-ended the pie pan over the dough (having removed the top sheet of wax paper) then turned the whole thing over. Once the crust has been fitted to the pan, brush it with lightly beaten egg white. After this, roll out the other crust (and slice it, if you’re making a lattice-top crust), making sure to cut vents or holes into it. Optional: Bake the crust in the oven for about 5 minutes to ensure that it doesn’t end up under-cooked. While it’s baking, roll out the top crust.
Stir the filling portion of the syrup into the apple slices. Make sure everything’s mixed well, then transfer the filling to the crust. Gently fit the top crust over the filling. Brush the remainder of the syrup evenly over the top crust.
Bake the pie for 15 minutes at 425 degrees F/220 degrees C. Reduce temperature to 350 degrees F/175 degrees C then bake for 35 to 45 more minutes. If you notice the crust browning prematurely or feel that the sugar glaze may burn, cover it with a sheet of aluminum foil; just don’t do this before the first 15 minutes are up.
Let the pie sit for a while before serving so that the filling has time to set. I suggest you not serve this with vanilla ice cream (as is traditional) so you can fully enjoy the sugar-glazed crust. This would be wonderful drizzled lightly with caramel, eaten in a comfy setting with a warm drink near at hand.
Was going to post the apple pie recipe (in response to Sexy Mom’s question), plus answer comments and e-mails, but will have to hold off doing any computer work for a while. I got into a little accident a while ago. Please forgive any delays in things I was supposed to do; rest assured I’ll get to them once I can think straight. Or my version of straight.
The specifics of the accident are pretty embarrassing, so let’s just say it involves: blunt force trauma, my forehead, blood, and a car door. Now I’m sporting a bandage that makes me look like a victim of some sort of car crash.
I have to go, I’m dizzy and it hurts to change expression (the wound is just above my right eyebrow). Here’s hoping the bruises fade soon.
Wonder of wonders, the job problem I posted about last entry has apparently been solved, thanks to people who noticed the mess I was in and offered their help. Happy! Also I might manage to finagle another job as a legal researcher, so I will stop worrying about the financial issue for now. (Which is not to say that I will not worry about it ever again, because — well — I like to be prepared for the strange twists and turns life takes.)
I’m in the middle of reworking my resume (the latest version, which I submitted for my website admin job application, is not exactly suited to webcontent development/webdesign/whatever; for instance, one section is devoted to all of the popular PC games I’ve played) and also of trying — trying — to understand a mathematical method enough to come up with a proper presentation. Truth be told, the presentation required “original research and results thereof” but my goodness, I have no results! So I will just talk about the method and hope I make sense — barring, of course, the usual stupidity involved in transcribing equations that cannot fit into one presentation slide.
Ah, but I am happy. Yesterday I felt like the lowest of the low; everything was falling apart, going wrong, self-destructing, exploding, running off cliffs and getting itself killed… but that was yesterday. Today I was too tired to try to fix anything, so I finally gave up and entrusted everything to God — and it worked. He is wonderful.
In light of the celebratory mood, I was thinking of posting the pictures Jake and I took at Circles last Saturday, but it looks like Jake is asleep. So instead you get:
Pie! Apple pie, to be specific; the brownish glaze is cinnamon-sugar frosting. We were originally supposed to make a lattice crust — so it’d look prettier — but we were tired (we had to chop and peel nine apples for two pies, plus make dough, plus make merienda) and so we decided it’d probably taste good no matter what the crust looked like. And oh, it was good. We had to wait a while for it to cool but when it finally did the whole thing disappeared in less than ten minutes. Apple pie tastes nice with red wine, it really does.
I feel better today than I have since Saturday, so I can go back to thinking about the oodles and oodles of things I have to finish. Resume, presentation on the de Dominicis generating functional analysis… then I have to read (and — horror — understand) a whole thick pile of scientific papers–
–also polish a few stories, shop for clothes, review for a special relativity makeup exam, finally start on my stupid thesis and the stupid minority game paper (which I don’t even know how to write: should I do it for economists or physicists?). Mm.
Ah, but! A few postscripts!
- I have new contacts! (After wearing the same contacts for two years!) Also new glasses! (After wearing the same glasses for three years!) I’m inordinately thrilled.
- We’re going to a birthday party this weekend! Also to RodCon, yay, which means we’ll be coming home with tons of new books…
Alright, I’m off to read the Coolen papers. Then the Challet ones. (Too… many… to… read… gasp…)
