Reason Breeds Insanity

A New Year. New Goals.

Posted on 2 January 2011 | Leave a comment

2011. For it’s ability to bring hope and fresh passion to an otherwise apathetic and decaying culture, I embrace the celebration of the new year. I understand that we might experience failures in the new year; we are a fallen people. This is no longer Eden. However, the festivity of New Year’s Eve and the solemnity with which people make vows, create resolutions, and set goals that theoretically will make them better people makes me know that each new year brings restored passion and compassion. There’s hope in the air. People have faith that this year will somehow be better than last. And, we give forgiveness for those failures we’ve previously experienced. Presumably, our goal is to make ourselves better this year. Here are my goals for this year. They’re not much different than last, but they attempt to take what I have been trying to do and to do it better.

Read. Both the bible and other books. Hopefully a little bit of each, each day. Watch less television, even though I already don’t watch much. It’s amazing to me how productive I can be when I don’t watch the television. I will however watch Bones and Big Love.
Run. Every day except Sunday. My goal is to run three miles a day on Monday through Thursday. On Friday, I’ll run two miles, and on Saturdays at least six miles. I also plan to add some other types of exercise. I want to finish two marathons: my own Ivanhoe’s Marathon and the Towpath Marathon.
Eat. Only food I can recognize as food. I want to remain vegan, but I want to narrow this down a bit more and eat only whole foods, such as beans, rice, vegetables, and the like. Cut out processed foods and sugars.
Dissertate. Two chapters. I want to finish two chapters of my dissertation this summer, and I have set forth a plan to make this happen.
Teach. To the best of my abilities. Love each student. Be firm with each student. Guide each student to his or her highest potential. Be more diligent in grading.
Attitude. Change it. I need to work on being more relaxed and carefree. I need to talk less and listen more. I need to remember that I don’t always have to be right. Loving people is more important than anything else. My stress level is through the roof, and I need to remember that the only person I have to please is God. What this means and where this will take me, I don’t know, but I am open to doing whatever it is I am supposed to do. I would just like to know what that is!

I am also working on an art/writing project. Once I get it going and hammer it out, I will post a link to the ongoing project. I am pretty excited about it.

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Posted in Dissertation, Fat, Food, Goals, Gym, Reading, Relationships, Religion, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan

Earthquake. Cheese Sauce.

Posted on 30 December 2010 | Leave a comment

I was awakened this morning by a miniature earthquake, registering 3.8 on the scale. The bed shook a bit, but it didn’t feel as strong as the one a couple of years ago. That one made the armoire doors bang. This one, for sure, made the dogs and cats go a little bit crazy.

More earth-shattering, though, is my need to create a recipe for good faux-yo-nachos cheese sauce. I found a recipe that was passable, but I think I am going to combine the recipe for plain cheese sauce (from American Vegan Kitchen) with the one I found for nacho cheese sauce. My problem with the one I found wasn’t the texture or flavor necessarily, but more the fact that it wasn’t at all spicy enough. I need my nacho sauce to be HOT! As I said, I am going to attempt to take the parts of each of these that I like and make my own recipe. We’ll see what happens.

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Posted in Vegetarian or Vegan, Winter Weather

Muddling Along on a Day That Was Supposed to Be Perfect

Posted on 30 December 2010 | 3 comments

Have you ever had one of those days? I have. Yesterday was a day that started off beautifully. I got up and walked the dogs a mile, playing in the snow along the way. The weather was just right, about 20º with no wind and no precipitation. When we got home we played inside for a bit, and then I went out for a run. The run was nice. I felt good. I ran the same route I ran a couple of days ago, only I ran it in reverse and about five minutes faster. When I got home, I made some delicious oatmeal and had a nice breakfast with some juice and my vitamins. I had everything in my backpack. I was ready to walk to Starbucks to grade. And then.

Someone sent me a text that ruined the day. You know how you have these things about yourself that you just embrace instead of trying to change? Those things that make you who you are? I have a few of those things about me that I fully embrace, but it seems like some people I know view these character traits as flaws. Sometimes, I can just say, “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke,” but other times the things people say really get to me. They make me look at those parts of myself I work so hard to embrace and question them. When I question them, suddenly I find myself comparing myself to everyone around me and coming up short. Then, of course, I just get sad, and I keep telling myself I can’t measure up and that I’ll never amount to anything. What bothers me is that I cover these feelings up really well, so even when I tell people to knock it off, they don’t stop. Like yesterday, when I told this person that the comments were getting old, the response was that they weren’t getting old for him/her. Seriously. I am asking you to stop, and you still don’t.

Sometimes I can’t handle it. I just want to leave and never look back.I spent the better portion of yesterday, the day that was supposed to be beautiful, doubting myself and beating myself up for being such a worthless slug. Then I realized. That person can just be an asshole, in fact, is an asshole. And that has no reflection on me. I can embrace those parts of myself that are a little out of step with the rest of American culture. I can embrace my inner-other-cultureness. I enjoy living my life the way I do. I think my easy-goingness is both a source of admiration and a source of frustration for my friends and family. But, frankly, I want to get back to the way I was before. I want to not care what other people think, and I want to just let things roll off my back. I suppose that’s my New Year’s resolution, along with others that I will list on the first. I am going to consciously work to do what I want, to let things roll off of me and not to impact me, and to not always have to know, to not always have to behave like a good little ladder climber. I like the bottom rungs. I should just revel in being close to the ground. And, then, when I do stumble, and I do fall, I won’t have far to go.

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Posted in Relationships

Vacation Breakfast

Posted on 28 December 2010 | Leave a comment

As I said in one of my last posts, I love vacation for the breakfast. This morning I made a nice tofu scramble, which may not be a big deal to those of you who eat eggs. But to those of us who don’t eat eggs, a nice tofu scramble is a good reminder of what breakfast can be! Oatmeal, yogurt, cereal, and fruit can get a bit repetitive for breakfast if you eat them day after day. Even waffles and pancakes can become monotonous. However, if you can mix it up with a little tofu scramble, yum! If I would have thought of it and made some vegan breakfast sausages, too, it would be the perfect breakfast to convince your favorite meat-eater that going vegetarian isn’t so bad.

This particular tofu scramble contains tofu, crimini muchrooms, spinach, onions, garlic, nutritional yeast, Italian seasonings, cayenne, black pepper, and crushed red-pepper flakes. It could have been a bit more “done,” but it was still tasty. I like my tofu a little crunchy, rather than a little soft, and this was a little soft. Still, it was good.

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Posted in Food, Vegetarian or Vegan

Egg Nog Waffles. Hookah Initiation. Joseph.

Posted on 22 December 2010 | Leave a comment

Let’s begin with Joseph. For some reason, whenever I hear of a meditation on Joseph of the Christmas story variety, I get a little pissed. In my mind, I wonder what else could possibly be said about a man who had so little to do withe actual Christmas story. As Sojourner Truth points outs about Jesus, “Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him” (Ain’t I a Woman). For as little as Joseph appears to play a role in Christmas, the gospel of Matthew does spend the better portion of the first chapter giving Joseph’s lineage. I assume that means that even though Jesus isn’t technically Joseph’s son, Joseph is still important in the life of Jesus and in the eschatological timeline of the Christian church.

Despite my reluctance to recognize Joseph as someone worthy of lengthy discussions at Christmastime, and despite my desire to scream, “Can’t just one Christian holiday be about how God used a WOMAN?!?”, I have to admit that God sometimes goes to extreme measures to get me off my high horse. This time, though, a simple article did the trick. And, what’s even better is I found this short meditation by accident, via Twitter. Frank Viola writes in Remember Joseph: Rethinking Righteousness, “Today, I’d like to give Joseph his due. By my lights, Joseph was one of the most righteous men who ever lived.” That’s a pretty powerful statement. More righteous than Noah? More righteous than Job? More righteous than (fill in any person who is described in Jewish Scripture as blameless or righteous)? Really.

Viola continues by explaining Joseph’s righteousness like this, “I’m sure Joseph’s blood boiled when he heard that the woman who was betrothed to him in marriage was pregnant . . . and not by him. But because he was a righteous man, he showed mercy. He treated her as if he were in her own shoes and was guilty of what he had assumed she did.” Um, yeah. How many of us would’ve done what Joseph did? How many of us would stand beside someone who was in Mary’s shoes? Think about it really hard. Would you? Would I? Could we do it without patting ourselves on our backs or privately commenting that we are just doing it because that’s what a good Christian would do? Can we live as Viola describes Joseph? He writes “It is to react like Jesus, living void of self-righteousness.” This is the part of this meditation I loved. Viola reminds us to be vigilant in our dealings with others, because our own character is really what God is testing and proving. This holiday season can I behave this way? Can I live void of self-righteousness?

I initiated my hookah today. I used molasses tobacco, and spent about half an hour listening to Christmas music, contemplating life, and smoking shisha. I love being Greek, and I need to go to Greece sometime in order to experience where I come from. THe only drawback to going there is that I’m afraid I won’t want to come back!

I took the dogs for about a two-mile walk this morning, and when I got home I realized the reason I love breaks and summer is the ability to live slowly. I got up at 7:30 AM. walked the dogs around 8 AM, and made breakfast around 9 AM. This is the way my life is supposed to go. Slow, easy mornings. Now it’s noon and I have already exercised, made food from scratch, done laundry, relaxed, socialized via Twitter and Facebook, and written more than I have on any day since school started. Come to me summer, and don’t fail me Winter Break! On break, it’s all about the victuals.

Delicious vegan Egg Nog Waffles (substitute ground flax seed and water for the eggs) I made for breakfast! Yummy.