Why, How Do You Clean Your Fridge?

[caitri]

Okay, so today was One of Those Days, not least because I got a letter from the English Department and I'm on their waitlist for admission to the PhD program, and they should let me know by April 15. Which, okay, it's not a no, but still. And I know they only do twelve spots, but 1) I've worked with several of their faculty, so they know me, 2) I've published a lot academically (my writing sample? was a book chapter from an academic press with an acompanying review that said the book was pretty good but my section was stand out and I was a rare academic, etc), and 3) oh come on, they'll be getting a paycheck but won't have to find me an office or assistantships.

Grr. On top of that I got malware on my home pc and spent the better part of the evening troubleshooting that.

And I'm still behind on both fic and rl writing stuff.

Anyway. Being exhausted but twitchy I decided to experiment culinarily. I had a little bit of smoked salmon and cream cheese left over from when Scott brought home real bagels the other week, and a few stalks of asparagus sitting in the fridge. So I cooked some pasta, saved some of the pasta water and added the cream cheese to it to make a sauce, roasted and chopped up the asparagus, and then chopped up the salmon, and then mixed it all together.



I think the sauce would have been better if it had come out a little thicker, but overall I'm pleased as I got to clean out my fridge without wasting anything. :)

Comments

[morfin.livejournal.com]

Malware Bytes. Best thing to use to clean malware from your computer. I've used it for the last several years at work and it's great.

[caitri.livejournal.com]

Yup, Malware Bytes and www.bleepingcomputer.com for further instructions.

The hardest part was the fact that my home pc is on Vista and there didn't seem to be an easy way to get it into Safe Mode. I held down F8 while booting and neither the Boot Menu nor Setup Menu had the Safe Mode with Networking option, so I basically had to crash it and then do a cold boot to get into Safe Mode. Stupid Microsoft. But once there it was pretty easy, just time-consuming!

[canis-takahari.livejournal.com]

CAIT, NOT GONNA LIE, THAT LOOKS TASTY. I love smoked salmon. AND ASPARAGUS.

[caitri.livejournal.com]

<3

I was pretty pleased with it, too. And it was actually really filling, too!!

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

I hope they have the sense to admit you -- I'd want you in my program!

And hooray for cooking on the fly! I love doing that.

[caitri.livejournal.com]

I'm talking to some folks to get a read on it. One thing could be politics because it turns out one of my rec letters is from someone who has an enemy in the department. There's a couple other things too. In short it is on the face of it very much a "it's not me, it's them" thing which is simultaneously both a relief and...kinda drives me a little insane?

[caitri.livejournal.com]

Huh. That...is so counterintuitive to me. It's like "we want you to be good...but not too good." o_0

Clearly I need to figure out how to turn into James Franco.

[caitri.livejournal.com]

A three year program? ;)

[caitri.livejournal.com]

I approve of this. ;)

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

AUGH, humans and politics. I hope whomever can get over themselves, bb. I'm cheering you on!

[caitri.livejournal.com]

Well at this point I'm kind of sitting back to wait and see. There's a lot of advantages to me in doing the program here, but I also increasingly feel like having to sort of prove myself above their pettiness is energy I could expend elsewhere, y'know? Or maybe that's just my idealism talking. *shrugs* I don't know, I've gone back and forth over it all in my head the last couple days and thus far the only conclusion I've come to is how much I really *don't* like being in the middle of *other* people's plans!