Les said, the better II

I woke up very early yesterday morning and my back hurt. a lot. I think I slept on it wrong. It hurt all day yesterday. a lot. It still hurts today, thank goodness less. I want a chiropractor.

Nicole has gone home to the Inland Empire for a food-based holiday. Ha ha. Alas. I have class on thursday night, even. I don’t think I can figure out how to make a pumpkin pie.
My house is cold. I’m out of rice and vegetables. I have lab hours tonight, but the software we just learned isn’t installed on the mac yet, so I don’t want to go. Anyway, I need to do my UC Application essays, which are too long and very annoying. I wrote some music and it got played. Then I wrote some more music and it got played. Then I wrote a different kind of music. Yawn.
It’s going to rain down slushy muck on friday.
Last week (the week that Cola was here), I had class everyday from 10 am – 7pm, which ran late sometimes. This week, I have two hours of class on thursday night. My school has had toilet paper two days out of the last three weeks. That’s not counting the day one other student got upset and begged some off a neighboring studio. He went and complained. He was informed that it will take two weeks for new toilet paper to arrive. What happened to the old toilet paper? He suspects students may have stolen it. He has suspects in mind. We’re a suspicious lot. There are rumors going around about people stealing each other’s work and each other’s samples. Improbable, strange theories wherein the stolen samples were only heard when the informant was outside the studio, thus highlighting the sneakiness of the thieves. (I’m being deliberately vague here, but I’m not making these rumors up, just causing inadvisable drama by repeating them.) The tweeters on the main speakers are definitely out. The mixing board has dirty faders (smoking in the studio doesn’t help). The patchbay’s normalizations are going out. I have serious hatred for frustration with one individual (if you’re reading this, it’s not you.)
I want to get a job. My visa allows me to work 20 hours per week. If I had a job: 1. I could afford to buy more blazers. 2. I would know more people. 3. My french would likely improve. 4. I would have more than 2 hours a week of things I was supposed to do with other people.
Or I could go awol. Nobody at school is French. I don’t have any connections to the french performance scene. If I went to Berlin, I could make connections there through wesleyan people who did the german exchange. But I have a lease on my Paris apartment.
Nothing makes me feel more female-identified than sexism. Where is Hothead Paisan when you need her?
I need: a conversation partner, a transformer for my mixer, to finish my stupid application, to find out if I can fax it in or find somebody in the us to print and mail it for me, to request transcripts from previous schools, (It is such a pain in the ass to do these things from another continent.) to figure out how the hell to get gigs, to go buy some rice and vegetables and toilet paper and baugette and cheese. I’m thinking emmental and st nectaire, although i haven’t tried the latter.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

French food! What exactly is crème fraîche? Wikipedia says that it’s “a heavy cream slightly soured with bacterial culture, but not as sour or as thick as sour cream. Originally a French product, today it is available throughout Europe.” I don’t know if it’s available world-wide or not, but it’s a very useful thing to have. You can add it to soups and sauces to make them extra tasty. Here are a couple of recipes, one very easy, one harder. For those of you who are vegan, you can substitute cashew nut butter and a drop of vinegar to get a similar effect.

Grad student cream of broccoli soup

Optionally sauté onions, optional garlic and optional pepper in some butter or olive oil. If you choose not to sauté, then just put some olive oil or butter in a pan.
Add some dry rice, too much water and some bullion. Optionally add herbs de provence or other spices. Cook the rice until it is nearly done, then add a head of chopped broccoli. Cook the broccoli in the water and rice. After three minutes you have watery cooked rice and broccoli. Then add a spoonful or so of crème fraîche. You now have cream of broccoli and rice soup! This might go well with baked chicken.
There are many options in the above directions, because graduate school is an exploration in options, boundaries and the like. Also, it’s cheap, easy and fast.

Soup of Potimarron

Take one small or medium potimarron (a pumpkin or butternut squash may be substituted) and bake it around 175 degrees C (or 350 F) for 40 minutes to an hour. You can tell it’s done when you can easily pierce it with a fork (the same is true of the other squashes). At the same time, also bake, in the same oven, a handfull of chestnuts. You can tell their done when around half of them have cracks in the shell. They will take less time than the squash.
Peel and dice the chestnuts and set them aside. Put a lump of butter in a pan and sauté in it an onion, two or more cloves of garlic and a hot pepper. When the onions are getting translucent, add a small amount of rice (a handful) and broth or water + bullion. Also add a tablespoon of herbs de Provence or other european soup spices, two centimeters of ginger root, a pinch of dried red pepper flakes (to taste), and a teaspoon of cinnamon. Cover and let simmer.
Cut the squash in half and remove the seeds, which you should save too cook later. Scoop the squash insides into the soup. Then add the chestnuts. Let simmer until the rice is cooked and the squash is breaking apart. Then add a head of chopped brocoli. Cook that for 3 – 5 minutes. Then ladle the soup into a blender and blend it. Return the blended soup to the pot and put it over low heat. Add 0.5 – 1 cup of soy milk and a few spoonfuls of crème fraîche, until the soup tastes really rich. Salt and pepper to taste. Your soup is done.
Beware if you try to cook the chestnuts in a frying pan or something instead of in the oven. Take them off the heat after most of them crack. The ones that don’t crack can explode, which is extremely messy and probably hazardous.

Squash seeds

Now take the seeds that you saved from the squash and wash most of the squash goop off of them. Put then in a frying pan with oil that takes high heat (like canola or corn or whatever) and some soy sauce. You can add black pepper and your other favorite spices, like curry powder or herbs de Provence or anything else. Cook them until the soy sauce evaporates away and the bits of squash goop burn to the bottom of the pan. This differs for different seeds. Potimarron seeds take a long time because they’re so thick. When you’re done, the seeds are a nice browned color and crunchy when you sample them. If they start to explode like popcorn (watch out for butternut squash, esp), they’re definitely done. Eat them with salt.
Tags: Food, Crème fraîche, Paris, Celesteh

It hit zero today, as I wined earlier, but fortunately, I had the foresight to go out yesterday and buy a coat. It took most of the day, alas. I’m skinny, but with long arms and I didn’t want to spend too much. Before, I left for here, I posted something about wanting to get as many clothes as possible before I left, because of not knowing what it would be like to cross-shop. Oh, what a fool I was.

First of all, only one guy gave me a kind of disgusted look and that was the extent of anything negative. Much better than home. (People are reading me as female now because my hair has gotten longer.) Also: blazer-type jackets for sale at every store. In velvet(ine). In corduroy. In my size. Picture: blue velvet blazer. Royal blue!! Oh my god!!!!! There was a whole store for very scrawny slightly femme-y guys who still wanted to dress like it’s still the mid-to-late 90’s! I was a size medium there! They had tweed jackets with elbow patches, something I spent months looking for!!! For only 230€, ahem, yes. I had to leave without buying anything because it was lovely, but it was just too much money.
There’s a store called the C&A which has ads in the metro where they show whatever their featured sale item is. This week it’s a black corduroy jacket for 30€. I’m going back to buy one tomorrow, but their coat selection, alas, didn’t fit me well. But every fashion in the store was really nifty, as far as I could tell. A city where I can shop for men’s clothes where it isn’t suspect for men to wear anything other than trainers or sweatsuits!
Anyway, after a lot of looking, I walked into a fairly fancy-seeming store and tried on a tweed coat in a size medium. It was too big. But a sales person came over to help me. At home, I try to duck sales people because they’re not entirely friendly. The woman clearly thought it was a little odd that I wanted to try on men’s coats, but was happy to help. She went and found me a size small coat in black. It fit very well. I bought it. At the register, she went through the script, kind of laughing as she did so. Did I want men’s gloves to go with my men’s coat? How about some men’s dress socks? She would have smiled and sold me some if I’d said yes. We chatted a bit in frenglish. She wanted to know how to say, “would you like anything else?” in english.
Sometimes, it’s really good to be foreign. I have no idea about modern french cross dressers and what their experiences are like (I’ve seen some around in bars and whatnot, but not had a conversation). But I think I get away with a lot because I’m foreign and people expect me to be kind of different. That’s true in Paris and it’s also true in Nebraska.
Anyway, I have never before enjoyed shopping for clothes that I can remember. Right now, I am pondering buying a whole new wardrobe. And coming to Paris from anyplace else in the world when I need clothes.
Tags: Cross Dressing, Paris, Celesteh

No, it’s actually freezing. 0 degrees C. Why do I keep moving places that are so cold?

I might have a concert on Wednesday night, but I might not. grrrr for uncertainty.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

I have many of the UC application documents in PDF form, however I don’t have easy access to a printer. Can anyone recommend me a free application which would allow me to type on the pdf? The preview application’s annotation function seems insufficient. I want to be able to modify the pdf and save it in pdf format. Must run on OSX 10.4. X windows ok.

My network is crashy crashy crashy and it goes down for a day and then comes back. bah.
Tags: PDF, Celesteh

“In an essay, discuss how your personal background informs your decision to pursue a graduate degree. Please include any educational, familial,
cultural, economic, or social experiences, challenges, or opportunities relevant to your academic journey; how you might contribute to social
or cultural diversity within your chosen field; and/or how you might serve educationally underrepresented segments of society with your degree.”

Well, I have a vagina, therefore, I can make almost any gathering of composers more diverse. And I’m as queer as a 3 euro coin. And I don’t really want to write an essay about how I have a vagina and am as queer as 3 euro coin, but I also want to go to your school very much. It’s not that I don’t value diversity, it’s that I don’t feel comfortable having certain labels pinned to me and I guess I could be a poster boi for queers, but I’m really not in the mood to talk about how i could one day be a positive female role model for future generations, which is what I think that they mean by social diversity. Also, I mean, it’s very clear to me that every music department is enhanced by having feminist genderqueers as TAs or professors, but maybe they’re trying to ask about class issues. How liberal is UC these days, anyway?
I just want to be one of the guys.
Tag: Celesteh

“Describe the degree of your proficiency (reading, speaking, and writing) in languages other than English. List courses you have taken in each language. ”

French: I can slowly read a newspaper. I can ask the man at the fromagerie to recommend a cheese and the guy at the electronics store for a computer power cable. I can write a note to my landlord. I’ve taken french 1 & 2
Esperanto: I passed my language exam at Wesleyan University in Esperanto. I can read a magazine if I have a dictionary handy. I can tell some puns that I know. I can write a note asking for tech support. I audited the Esperanto class at Stanford.
German: I cannot read a newspaper because the compound words are insane. I can explain that I’m a vegetarian and give directions on how one might get out of a catacomb if one were frightened of caves but decided to take a tour anyway wherein the tour guide only spoke Italian and English and the phobic individual spoke only German. I took German House in college
I don’t think this is exactly what they want.
Tag: Celesteh

Everybody complains about hold music. How often is it the worst of elevator music’s greatest hits or jazz so smooth you would swear it wasn’t ethnically other or soft rock so soft, it’s not rock or major key movements of overplayed symphonies played at 75% speed or some other form of musical torture?

I’m pleased to report that this is not the situation in France. I’m not being subject to any form of piped music except the 10 second melody that plays under the French version of “please hold” over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again

Better or worse than Kenny G playing the Ode to Joy on flute (with piano and drum set accompaniment) in largo?

Hm, I think the tech support guy just lied to me. I wish I spoke French better. It’s a normal update, he said. Wait one day and it will fix itself.

Perhaps monkeys will also fly out of it.

Weasely, lying tech support! I’m used to being lied to by French service workers but I’m not sure what to do in this case. If one bank says what you want is impossible, go to the one across the street. I can’t just change ISPs, though. I guess I’ll call back tomorrow when it hasn’t started functioning again. Or if it does magically work again, I’ll type an apology out 100 times and post it.

Tags: Paris, Celesteh

Last night, my network box freaked out and now it’s in the land of the error-mode. The LEDs are blinking on and off, a few times a second. One possibility is a DSL error. The other is a configuration error. The box’s main connection mode is via USB, which requires special drivers. Quite frankly, the box is a piece of shit and mac support was most likely an afterthought. I don’t want to install the drivers on my lovely development / DAW machine. I was trying to figure out if it would be ethical to convince Cola to install them, but I’ve just remembered the existence of the reset button. Huzzah! If it’s a config error, then reset will fix it. Otherwise, well, maybe I forgot to pay my bill or something. The english-language telephone line opens again on monday.

It’s highly likely that it’s a config problem, since it crashed while I was trying to add my friend to the network. (Which reminds me that he would like to point out that universities are open campuses and we were not trespassing the other day. ok.) I would like to point again that the I have to pay 1 or 3€ a month extra for this thing and it’s config interface is broooooken even under the best circumstances. bah.
So I post from school. It doesn’t matter, since I’m doing music on my laptop anyway. I used to come to school to be offline . . . . .
I’m not happy to be offline, but it’s nice having Cola’s attention in the morning, rather than her nose buried in the New York Times online.
Tags: Wanadoo, Celesteh