What a day!

Today my day started at 6:15 AM. Yes, I actually woke up at that godforsaken hour. It was dark, still night I should say, and no birds were chirping. So now on Tuesdays I have to wake up early so that I can be at work at 8:00 and leave at 4:00 so as to attend a class that starts at 4:30 and ends at 7:00. Today wasn't too bad though, considering that it was the first day trying to keep up with that schedule. And so I got to work really early and gave more than one person a heart attack because they thought that something was wrong. Even the lady I buy coffee from asked if the sky had fallen on my head... literally. My day at work was fruitful but with moments of extreme sleepiness, at least this time I had a good excuse, and not my usual 'I'm a Mediterranean and need a nap' at 3:00.
At 4:00 I ran to school to attend the first class that will lay out the rest of my career, an introductory class for a masters in bilingual education. I'm excited, this is it, this is what I want to do! And so I get home at around 8:30 PM feeling like this was probably the most important day in my life, and what do I see? the State of the Union: the president's annual (how close to another word I so want to use here) public address. My brain has suddenly gone into a comatose state. So much greatness pumped into my head throughout the day and then this. I can't even think let alone write.The only hope to somewhat save what is left of the evening: An interview with Senator Barack Obama... must log out and see what he has to say.

Update: nope, not even that saved it. But I did sleep very well mind you...

Cooking

Cooking is an art form. It is one of those activities that should only be attempted by those who know how to do it and like to eat; if you don't like to eat you have no business next to a stove. I am one of those who considers that eating is a sensual pleasure in its most unrated form, and cooking while having a glass of wine and listening to good music the ultimate selfish experience.
Now, I've discovered that there are days though that even those who enjoy cooking should not attempt it. I'm having one of those days. It all started with my inability to identify the piece of meat my husband took out of the freezer. Pork, lamb or beef? It turned out to be breast of veal, which it seems appeared in the freezer by some miracle since neither of us recalls buying it. I never buy veal, nothing against those cute animals, but the meat has no taste. You have to season it to no end so that it can absorb the other flavors having none to call its own. And so once the "piece de resistance" identified I went on scouting around the kitchen to find what would ideally complement it. Potatoes, onions and garlic seemed like a sure bet. I decided that a good way of enhancing the breast of veal was to cover one of its sides with coarse salt. Once the onions were sizzling in the olive oil I put the veal with herbs and garlic in the middle of the pot, I proceed to salt it and pepper it. Bad idea if you're having one of those days. I completely forgot about the coarse salt and on top of it, instead of just sparingly put some salt, a whole spoonful comes out of the shaker. How bad could it be? I leave it cooking for a bit, taste the juice and realize that unless I want to send both my husband and I straight to the hospital with a heart attack I better rinse the whole thing out. So much for absorbing any kind of flavor. And so the whole thing properly 'de-salted" I start from scratch. As I write this we have a piece of originally unidentified meat cooking with some potatoes.The music is playing and the glass of wine (or beer in this instance) is present, but as for the result of tonight's culinary adventure, we should have stuck to delivery, not even scrambled eggs would have escaped from my stay-away-from-the-kitchen day.

Blog!

I've become a blogger! Is that even a word? I count editors among the people that might be reading this, "might" being the key word, so I better be careful. I'm sure many of you will be happy, you won't be getting mass e-mails from me now that I can write in here, it's actually a little nerve-wrecking... I'm sure I'll get used to it. I'll blog away until someone tells me to stop making a fool of myself, or do some spell-checking before I post this. And so starts the modern version of a diary; I wonder if it will be "monitored"...