I watched Moneyball tonight (almost made me fall in love with the A’s as much as my Giants, ALMOST… gah, I love Bay Area baseball!), and my roommates were impressed and glad I took a couple hours off to do something I almost never let myself do, which is to sit on the couch indulging in some form of visual entertainment with them rather than doing/pretending to do homework that I’d feel guilty I should be doing instead and that which usually wins my time.

They told their friend who was over watching with us that I’m a graduate student and an extremely hard worker. “What do you do?” he asked.

“Read.” I replied. “Forever.”

It’s true.

Been at it for the last day and a half, and here’s what’s left to do by the time Monday rolls around:

1. Finish the last 100 pages of a 300 page book (~3 hours)
2. Read a 170-page book (~4-5 hours).
3. Read ~50 pages of articles on the health of immigrants and email discussion questions to my professor on them (~4-5 hours)
4. Write a solid first draft of a fellowship application (allowing ~10 hours… I always lag and get distracted when trying to do that kind of shit)

(it’s 2:17am on Saturday morning, btw)

I’ve already planned out my sleep and wake times for the next 3 nights and 4 days to ensure that I’m not missing anything. Because it sucks to miss things in grad school.

 

Yup. I am in grad school.

It was a great weekend: I had Wednesday through Monday off, so I went back up to San Francisco and was in town to watch the Forty-Niners beat the New Orleans Saints with 10 seconds left in the NFC Divisional Playoffs this past Saturday, at home in SF. Normally I have possibly less than 0% interest in football, but I’ll admit (with my slightly more than 0% knowledge of football) that it was an epic game. Mike has been a fan since his diaper days… and was almost in tears when the Niners won. It was cute. I was happy to share the moment with him, and am rooting for the Niners to make it to Superbowl XLIV!

At halftime we made kimchi bacon deviled eggs, something I’ve been craving since I found the recipe on MomofukuFor2 several months ago (I was technically searching for bacon-wrapped kimchi kushiyaki when it popped up, and it seemed like the next best thing).

Halftime snack: eggs and wine... though I'd drink a white with these next time. GOOOOO NINERS!!

I’m posting the original recipe here, though my only suggestion is that you can be much more liberal with the kimchi count… other than in the garnish, we could scarcely taste it in the filling, and improvised with a few dabs of sriracha sauce before popping those puppies in our mouths. Try 2 or even more tablespoons of kimchi for 2 eggs… depending on your spice tolerance!

 

Kimchi Bacon Deviled Eggs (from MomofukuFor2)

• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon chopped napa cabbage kimchi
• 1 bacon rasher fried until crisp and chopped up
• 2 mint leaves, roughly chopped
• 1 tablespoon mayonnaise

1. Hard boil the eggs using your favourite method. I put eggs straight from the fridge into a pot with tap water and bring it to a gentle boil. I start timing when the water starts bubbling: hard boiled eggs usually take about 9-10 minutes.
2. When your eggs are done, take the pot, put it under the tap and turn on the cold water and let it run until the eggs are cool to the touch.
3. Gently peel your eggs and let them cool.
4. Slice eggs in half and pop the yolks into a bowl. Set the whites aside until you are ready to fill them.
5. Using a fork, break up the yolks until it is in tiny crumbs. Reserve a tiny amount of kimchi, bacon and mint for garnish, then add the rest to the bowl with the egg yolks. Add the mayonnaise and gently mix until the egg yolk mixture comes together. If it looks too dry, add a touch more mayonnaise.
6. Scoop the filling into the waiting egg white halves and garnish with the reserved bacon, kimchi and mint.
7. Enjoy!

 

The process…

I like how you can see the recipe up on my laptop in the background :P

The finished product:

NOM!

Bon Appetit :)

Sriracha made them nom x 10

Happy 2012!

I go back to school tomorrow, and I certainly did not hold up my end of the winter vacation bargain in terms of writing. Oh well… I’ll be doing a lot of that over the next 10 weeks! The end of my break consisted of a week and a half in SF, where I got to hang out with my buds and my boo. It also consisted of NYE at the Palace of Fine Arts, lots of eating, and some running (but not much).

And though it’s long-gone, I thought I’d share some “artistic” Instagram shots of Christmas ornaments and decorations around my house last month… because I’m already missing being home for the holidays.

EDIT: OMG, I totally forgot this was my 100th post!!! Back at home I totally intended to write a thematically-in-line update to go along with it, but in the end, my toying with the idea of answering 100 random survey questions or writing a post that was exactly 100 words long made me tired and was an epic fail. But yay! Even if my blogging skills and frequency aren’t exactly up to par, here’s to 100 more posts anyway :)

Remember that to-do list I drew up a couple of weeks ago? If you don’t, just scroll down a wee bit.

I’m back in CA now, and in reviewing the aforementioned list it turns out that although I was not 100% successful, I was still pretty dang successful. Here’s what I DID do:

• Read half of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (50% of which happened on my plane ride back to LA yesterday, since I was super lazy while in Hawaii and barely got any reading done there).
• Wrote five (5) Yelp reviews.
• Wrote 5ish Christmas cards.
• Worried less! :)
• Watched The Descendants (on Christmas with my sister and grandma, since it’s sort of a tradition in my family to go see a movie on Christmas Day… PS, I really liked it!).
• Watched Love Actually, Home Alone 1, and 75% of Home Alone 2.
• Ran 20 miles.
• Ran 10 miles.

Not bad! Here’s what I did NOT do on the list:

• Finish The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
• Read blogs.
• Write blog (besides the last entry :-/).
• Journal.
• Read the news. I maybe paid 10% more attention to news than I usually do. Sigh–I live in such a vacuum… it’s bad.
• Watch The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (must. finish. book. first. damn you slow reading!!!)

It appears that I avoided doing those items which most resemble school-related activities. Hmmm… guess I can’t blame myself. I was pretty burnt out from my first quarter.

Here’s stuff not technically on the list but which I did a lot of anyway:

• Slept.
• Relaxed at home doing nothing much.
• Saw a good number of friends.
• Played mah jong with the fam (and won often, muahaha).
• Played with my puppy Koko and took him the dog park.
• Ate well and tried a few ono-licious places on the island for the first time (the highlights: Sweet Home Cafe, Uncle Clay’s, Cinnamon’s).
• Karaoke, karaoke, karaoke (are you surprised? Then I’m sorry but you don’t know me at all). Had a particularly fun session with my family members on Christmas Day!

Didn’t really get to go to the beach barely since the weather was pretty rainy and windy throughout. But all in all, a super awesome staycation :).

***

Tomorrow (or more like later today since I’m such a night owl/last-minute packer) I’m off on a road trip to the Bay to hang out with mah buds and mah boo. I actually do have to get some school-related work done while I’m up there, but generally it’s looking like a TRUE vacation lies ahead in my last week and a half of winter break. Super excited!!

While not too many people would consider Hawaii a staycation, I happen to be lucky enough to call this place home, and to have just gotten back two days ago to spend some time here for the holidays! After a busy, stressful first quarter of grad school I’m in DESPERATE need of a little r&r (or more like, a ton of it!), and so I intend to spend my two weeks here fully enjoying my freedom from the time- and energy-draining shackles of being a grad student. But because I admittedly have a tendency of falling into the trap of being too lazy if given the chance, I think it’s worth it to assign myself some FUN work to do on my staycation at home. I’m talking the type of personally-fulfilling work that’s so easy for me to forget or abandon with the demands of the school year. So in addition to eating everything in plain sight and spending time with friends, family, and my dog, here’s my agenda for the next two weeks:

Read more. Quantitatively, I doubt I’ll be topping the 100+ pages of dense article reading that was just another night of grad school, but I do plan to read more for pleasure than I have over the past four months. Starting with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. And blogs. And maybe even the news!

Write more. Again NOT in an academic stressed out all-nighter type of way that has made me forget that I actually enjoy writing! I’d really like to start up journaling again, and expect to see some fresh Yelp reviews and more new blog posts. Oh, and Christmas cards—damn, I better get started on those soon!

Worry less. It’s generally part of my nature to worry, stress and obsess over EVERYTHING, and grad school has been a particularly huge challenge to these self-destructive habits. I’m officially making the conscious effort to not worry about school, the path of my program, or anything else the whole time I’m here. This isn’t an easy task for someone who’s naturally a worrier and always seems to find something to contemplate or mull over unnecessarily. But for the sake of my health, I’mma seriously try not to listen to that nagging voice this vacation.

Watch more movies. It’s tough living in a town where everyone is always talking about movies and TV and I have little time to attend to neither! On my in-theaters list this break is The Descendents (filmed in Hawaii, and my next-door neighbor apparently plays George Clooney’s comatose wife!) and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (after finishing the novel of course). On video, my favorite Christmas movies are a must to start: Home Alone (1 & 2) and Love Actually.

Keep up with my marathon training. I’m up to 20 miles this weekend, my longest distance yet. I’m kind of iffy just because I’m not used to running in Honolulu, where it’s way more humid than SF or LA and the terrain is just different, but I’m also pretty much running it alone and that can also make it hard. However, I am gonna try to get my family to set up camp at some support stations along my route to refill my water bottle and such. And I just gotta do it! So that I can resume eating every delicious local fried food and Christmas yummyness that crosses my path.

According to the running mentor for my pace group this morning, many marathon training programs stop at 18 miles… which basically means if you can run 18, you’re ready for 26!!! I found this to be fantastic news. Only 8 miles more to go! (Btw, can you believe this movie is already 10 years old? RIP Brittany Murphy).

Paper-writing for finals was literally giving me a HUGE headache this evening, so being the tea junkie I am I busted out the Old Faithful: my favorite loose leaf herbal tea, a combo consisting of lavender, pink roses, and osmanthus. Lavender is supposed to help you sleep, so in the colder winter months I love sipping this tea before I go to bed. Its taste is flowery (obviously, there’s a crapload of roses in it as you can see) and comforting. If this sounds like something you’d like and you’re in San Francisco, stop on over at Aroma Tea Shop, a little gem of a tea shop in the Inner Richmond, to pick up a package of these little individual packets of the lavender combo (they also do endless free tastings!). OR,  purchase it at their online store here!

Tea therapy essentials!

^Insulated carafe (borrowed from my boyfriend whom I need to give it back to but don’t want to because it keeps tea hot FOREVER) containing lots of favorite tea: check!

^Favorite pig mug present from Japan (with an accompanying mug cover that keeps tea hot forever only in theory but is still pretty ingenious) to take small sips of favorite tea: check!

Paper? Not even remotely close to finished.

Lykke Li fans hopefully got that reference ;)

I went to Portland to visit my sisters over Thanksgiving, where I got to experience a real Autumn. It was lovely. Also, my older sis got engaged! It was a short, but sweet, vacation before the insanity of my first (but not even close to last) taste of finals rolls around. Which would be about… now. Sigh. Cue new song: where are you Christmaaaaas….

Also, as you may have noticed I’m learning how to use instagr.am. I don’t really *get* it. Furthermore, I thought I’d note that I have not ONCE spelt “Thanksgiving” correctly this year while Facebook commenting, texting, or typing up this blog. It always comes out “Thankgsiving” (well, it actually came out right that time… figures). And to think I used to be such a good speller! Maybe just not such a good typist :P

I swore to myself there was no way I’d find myself on campus every single day this week. Yet here I am, in the library, at my school (though I technically don’t have school today) for the 5th consecutive day in a row. What is this??? I did not sign up for this!

Weekend, come hither.

What?

The arm bicycle!

So yeah, I mentioned I sprained my ankle a couple of weeks ago and that it really sucks because I was in the middle of trying to train for a marathon. Two Saturdays have passed since the incident, which is two Saturdays when I’ve woken up early to test out my ankle on a long run and failed miserably. It’s a sad thing :(. So today I tried out one of these arm bicycles at the gym for the first time–in hopes that I don’t lose all of my cardiovascular super-duper-abilities while the foot heals. An arm bicycle is basically a regular bicycle where your hands take the place of your feet, and is apparently a good cardio alternative for someone who’s recently broken a leg or rolled an ankle in the fashion of moi. The resistance is adjustable, just like the bikes in spin class. Come to think of it, I really could have used the motivation of a structured spin class while using this thing… I don’t know, it just didn’t seem to really feel like it was doing much for the hour I spent cranking away. Maybe my arms will feel differently tomorrow morning?

Demonstration time: