Carrot Cake

       Wow. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I have no excuses. I am a grown up and as such I have to own up to my actions…right? Damn. What can I say? I am as lazy as lazy can get. Ask anyone. True story!

       I was playing with Ares today and I remembered that my last blog entry was about him. “Shit! That was almost 9 months ago…” I thought. If I was a woman this post would be my newborn, and as such I shall give it the attention it deserves…with a year old entry.

       A little over a year ago (April 11, 2008 to be precise) I made my first cake EVER! A carrot cake, no less! It came from a box, but still! I was so excited because I had never prepared and baked anything by myself. My “wife” Ivy, being the baking Nazi that she is, turned her nose up to me and felt insulted I would dare call it a cake, let alone one I had made all by myself.

“It came from a box! That doesn’t count!”

“I make mine from scratch! I can’t expect anything less from my husband!”

“Okay, fine…I’ll give you props for at least trying…”

       It isn’t easy being married to someone that is proud of her mad baking skills. I don’t aspire to be a baker, so I don’t care. Here I give you my first baking adventure…in cake form!       

 

              Getting everything ready for my adventure!              

          

Behold…The Bowl of Togetherness and The Mighty Mixer at work.                    

The Mold Of Togetherness with Pasta in the background….FSM would be proud!

       

        The Donut Of Carrot Deliciousness! Ready to be eaten!

       My dear friend Lisa tried it and gave me props for it. She volunteered I forced her to pose with a piece of cake too!

 

Lisa rejoicing in its deliciousness.

Anyway, it turned out great! It tasted exactly the way carrot cake made from a box should taste like! What should my next kitchen adventure be?

The Dog of War

            Like I mentioned in one of my previous posts (Raven: Fishy Extraordinaire) I’ve always been an animal lover. I especially love dogs, and so does my mom. About 8 months ago we went to a mass dog vaccination activity in town to have my brother’s brand new Rottweiler named Piston properly vaccinated. Since it’s a small town we thought we’d see about 100 people at the most. Oh my, were we wrong. There were about 300 people and over 300 dogs. It was a sea of four-legged, barking fur. We waited for over 2 hours for little Piston (who is now a playful beast we have to watch out for) to get vaccinated. While waiting in line my mom was looking at the cute little puppies that were running around and squealing over the little ones that were in their boxes happily sleeping the day away. They looked SO cute! Too cute, actually.

 

            While standing in line my mom wandered away to say hi to some people she recognized at the back of the line (she knows half the town…). Not 2 minutes later she comes to me to tell me to go see a box full of Maltipoo puppies. I go over to see them, I look inside the box and there I am…absolutely in love with the little things! I asked about them and they had 3 females and one male, with 2 of the females already sold. Mother’s Day was coming up in a few weeks and I thought maybe she’d be up for a little puppy. She has always said that she’d want a small and fluffy dog, and what a better breed than a playful Maltipoo? So, I told the dog lady to save the little male puppy for me. After a month of thinking what we should name the new family member we decided on Ares. There’s more to the dog’s name than there is to his size. Without further ado I give you…Ares!

 

 

            He is a little ball of energy and a total attention whore. He follows my mother everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. His new thing is stealing whatever pieces of clothing he finds in my room, takes them to a corner inside the laundry room and takes a nap on top of them. I don’t know what is so appealing about my clothes that he feels moved to steal them and sleep on them, but it’s getting annoying. I no longer ask my mom for where my sock or my shorts are; I just go straight to the corner and get them myself. At least it’s better than his previous habit of pooping in front of my door whenever I was home! 

The Road and I

Driving back and forth between my hometown and the town where my campus is located is something I’ve been doing for the past 5 years. Be it every other weekend or a few weekends in a row it’s tiring all the same. I have a love/hate relationship with this hour-and-a-half drive. I don’t like it because it’s usually the beginning of a 3-day stay at home which, in all honesty, is nothing short of a chore. However, I love having that time to just forget about the world and just be in my own little thought (and very often singing and dancing!) bubble. Not having a care (other than the obvious driving ones) is an amazing feeling, even if just for 90 minutes.

 

The road and I have had our share of great times, like the time when some cutie and I would exchange flirtatious winks and smiles from car to car between the towns of Ponce and Yauco, or the time when I was singing at the top of my lungs to The Pussycat Dolls and got weird looks from a school bus! We’ve also had our share of less than good times such as crying sessions, speeding tickets, a flat tire and horribly dangerous weather.

 

We’ve been together through thick and thin, and even though both of us have changed in great and many ways, we still stay the same to one another.

Getting fit for WiiFit

      

“Screw you, bitch!” was the first thing I yelled at my TV today. Why? Because WiiFit won’t let me get fit!

       In case you have been living under a rock for the past month or so, Nintendo released a video game for the Nintendo Wii titled WiiFit. It’s a game that allows you to create awareness about being in shape (kind of harsh at times, I must add) in a fun way through balance games, running simulations and some yoga, just to mention a few of the game activities. The game works with a balance board, which is shown in the picture at the beginning of the post. The packaging of the game says that the board is designed to withstand a maximum of 330 lbs. About 2 weeks ago I checked my weight and I was in the mid 320s so I thought I was good. Right…

       Today I was able to snatch one of the two games that arrived to one of the video game stores in my area (I’ve been hunting one down for about 3 weeks now) and raced home to finally be able to experience WiiFit and put my ass into motion. The game asks about my height, weight and age to make whatever calculations. Then it asks me to step on the balance board to measure my weight, center of balance and Body Mass Index. I step on it and the game tells me that I am over the maximum weight it can hold.

Okay, I can take that.

       Since I’ve been eating junk food for the past 3 weeks, it was no surprise. Then it tells me that the software will reset itself…and effectively shuts me off. It won’t let me play the game at all! Yes, I need to get fit to play Wii-freakin’-Fit!

What the hell!?

How ironic is that? *sighs* I have never before been so pissed at a video game. Ever. So, tomorrow I start jogging with my friend Amanda to lose that weight and play the damn thing. I WILL play this freaking game before the end of the month, dammit!

Midnight French Toast

             It is no secret to my friends that there is nothing that I love more than a slice (or four!) of French Toast soaked in maple syrup for breakfast, for lunch or for dinner. French Toast Sticks(!!!) are great snacks too! Anyway, point is that I can have French Toast anytime and anywhere. However, every time I wanted some, they would be bought or made for me. As much as I love those fountains of gooey goodness, I had never tried to prepare them…ever. So, since I’ve been in some weird cooking mood lately, I thought I’d give it a try and what a better time do so than at midnight!

             My dear friend Amanda and I were studying (or at least pretending to do so) when we got the munchies. We wanted to hit Denny’s and stuff our faces with breakfast food, but being broke college students shot down our plan. After cursing at our empty wallets I had the brightest idea a hungry person can have at midnight. Let’s make French Toast ourselves!

Amanda:  Do you even know how to make them?

Me: Of course I don’t!

Amanda: …ok.

Me: This is why you’ll Google a recipe for me!

Amanda: Yay Google!

            So, she googgled a simple recipe that required nothing but bread, milk, eggs, sugar and cinnamon. No fancy ingredients and very straight to the point. Behold what came to be!

            Since I miscalculated how much we’d need to make 6 slices I ended up with a LOT of French Toast mix, and since nothing in my kitchen can go to waste I went ahead and made more…twice as more. It didn’t matter though. We ate about 8 and the remaining 4 were had for breakfast the next day! French Toast is love.

Closer through Distance

I’m a bad haircut and a wardrobe change away from being a Philosophy mayor, I swear.

       Yesterday I kind of bumped heads with my best boy friend (not boyfriend, as half the island may think) Benjamin and we ended up not talking all day. Being the stupid thing that it was, we met up as if nothing had happened and talked about the whole thing for a total of 15 seconds, and just like that the disturbance in the force was gone. After saying how much we didn’t miss each other (yes, I know, 24 hours apart, it’s an unhealthy thing) something like the following took place:

 

Benji: “Maybe we did need the time apart…”

Me:  “Why do you say that?”

Benji: “Maybe being apart gave us room to miss each other and moved us to be okay again.”

Me: “Well, yeah.”

Benji:  “See? Having you the weekend here instead of out of town had us together too much. Maybe we got sick of each other’s company.”

 

       That last sentence couldn’t be truer. As much as we may love each other we do get sick off each other’s company every once in a while. It doesn’t only happen with friends you’re really close with, it happens with family, classmates, and I would dare say it happens in serious relationships too. We really do need time for ourselves. We need the time to do what we must do in order to keep our sanity. We need time to just be.

       The same thing is happening with my “wife” Ivy! I rarely get sick of her. We sometimes do get on each other’s nerves after spending too much time together and we take a few days off and everything is good again. After having her here for so long and being used to having her around all the time I’m missing her so terribly much! She’s away in California having a great time with her brother, sister-in-law and adorable nephew. Having her not be here for almost two weeks now only makes me long for her to be here more. Once she gets back it will be like she was never away, and I’m sure we’ll get sick of each other in a few days’ time only to miss each other not long after.

       As much as we love to have the people we love around us it is definitely important to have our own time. Even if it’s to just collapse on a bed and stare at the ceiling looking for patterns in the cracks that aren’t really there, or sit down to listen to a CD you haven’t had the time to properly listen to, or maybe play that single-player videogame you don’t play when they’re around so you don’t make them feel left out, or read that book that you’ve been dying to finish…dropping hints much, right?  ^_~

       So, I can’t help but wonder…is distance crucial to make an up-close-and-personal relationship succeed?

The One

      

       I think it might be just me, but for the past few days I keep running into all these “The One” conversations. I don’t know if it’s because of coincidence or if it’s just that I’ve been paying more attention lately. Whatever the case may be, it’s been hovering over me for quite some time, and for whatever reason, it’s been bothering me.

       It’s not so much about being subjected to said topic so often, but because I keep hearing so many different opinions on it, so many different points of view, so many notions of “The One” that I just want to say “Stop it!”.

       I consider myself to be a hopeless romantic and quite old fashioned in some areas when it comes to dating and relationships, but I am the first one to think that “The One” is absolute and pure bullshit.

Nope, Prince Charming isn’t real, kids.

       However, I do believe that there is at least one person out there for each and everyone one of us. I don’t say “perfect for us” because there is no such thing. No one is 100% perfect for us, as much as we may try to say otherwise. No one has been, no one is, and no one will be. Am I contradicting myself? I don’t think so.

So, what is “The One”?

How do we find him or her?

How do we know?

       For me this person is not someone we find, or someone that finds us, but someone we create. It’s not someone that fits perfectly into our views, but someone who can change our vision of perfection and somehow fit in effortlessly. Instead of looking for someone that fits my vision of perfection, I want to find someone who will sway me into believing that they’re perfect for me. Isn’t that much more…romantic? Why write down a list of things to look for in a partner? Why not find that partner and then write down all the great things that come from that special someone? Even then it would be tricky. After all, a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

       Why not have someone who can break down all your schemes of everything you though of as perfection, turn you upside down, flip the world around, and show you what happiness is?       

       Many views and opinions have been exchanged between my friends and I regarding this subject, and we never seem to completely agree. Some of the criteria thrown my way has boggled me, some have made me realize I was missing something crucial in my thoughts, others have been completely nonesensical, but in the end, we want the same result. Love and happiness. Go figure.

 Life is really fucked up, I tell you.

Freedom in Disguise

       Summertime is usually a time to relax, have fun in the sun, wake up no sooner than 10am, catch up with all the projects and activities you weren’t able to do due to the lack of time to get around to them and just enjoy yourself. Well, not here in the mountains. Nope. Not. At. All.

       See, I live way up in the mountains of Puerto Rico in a town called Adjuntas. There are only about 20,000 inhabitants, one Burger King (only fast food restaurant), no shopping centers, not a single decent video store and no traffic lights in sight. Yes, you read it right. No traffic lights whatsoever. For the people living in Adjuntas the only way to entertain themselves is by going down to Ponce, the nearest city (also referred to as “the nearest establishment of civilization” by yours truly), which is a 15-20 minute drive. Not so bad if you think about it, but with gas prices up to 99.7 cents per liter it’s become difficult for someone like me, being a college student and all. Most of my friends are spending their summer out of the island, others are doing their thing on the opposite coast, and the ones who are in town are…Lisa. Just one friend in town, and she doesn’t come down from her house much (yes, she does live up higher than I do). What does that equal to? Me being stuck up high in the mountains doing nothing but read novels, listen to my mom bitch and moan about everything I do (and don’t do) and watch bad TV. After a week, all of it gets really old. Did I mention it’s been raining on a daily basis for hours on end? Hmm.

       It’s only been two weeks worth of the above mentioned, and I’m going insane. Which is why during this summer, just like pretty much every summer before, I’ll be taking summer classes! This is my freedom in disguise. I’d rather take classes during the summer than be stuck here for two months. I did it once, and for my own well being (and my mother’s) I can say it will never happen again. Ever.

       So, here I am counting the hours away until the gateway to heaven (Mayagüez in this case) opens up and I am able to drive to the hot hell that is Mayagüez. I have a very strong love/hate relationship with the town my campus is, in case you haven’t noticed.

Just twelve more hours. Just twelve more hours…

Prelude to a Storm

I am at a loss of words. I really am. What is this world coming to? I shall explain in a nutshell.

I am a student at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez. I work directly with the General Student Council (even though I’m not officially part of it) and it’s been a while now since the construction of a highway has been wreaking havoc among students, professors and administrative personnel alike. The highway is supposed to go straight through the campus’ Finca Alzamora, which is the area where the students of Agricultural Sciences use for research, class, lab classes, etc. It is a real shame that it is being threatened by the construction of said highway, and as such, the students are raising their voices (pretty loudly, might I add) and asking to be heard. As a means of letting the administration know their presence, they’re motioning the General Student Council to call for an assembly and see if the student body wants a 24-hour strike or not. This is all fine and dandy as I myself am against the destruction of said area. However, in my opinion, a 24 hour strike will resolve next to nothing and other measures should be taken.

It seems the group that wants the strike is not getting the results they want and are basically grasping at straws to see what they can come up with to belittle the General Student Council’s power because, according to them, they’re biased towards the non-striking crowd. As a result of this, my best friend’s (Ivy) blog was targeted. She expressed her thoughts on the whole ordeal in her blog, and now they’re questioning the GSC’s integrity and neutrality regarding the Finca Alzamora issue. What the hell? Regardless of her position on the issue, she has no representation in the voting process! She only uses her blog as means of expressing herself to her fellow friends (of which only a handful of us visit and very well know her stance). There’s no propaganda involved, there’s no influence on the resolution of the problem at hand so what’s their damage?

Another thing is that all her entries are in English and the people questioning her usage of her blog are misinterpreting her posts for their own convenience. Sure, some things can be lost in translation, but you can only manage to mess it up so much. So much for Puerto Rico having both Spanish and English as official languages, huh? As Ivy would say, “this island is bass ackwards”.

It is situations like this that make me question people’s intentions when it comes to finding a way to reach their goals. Whatever happened to freedom of speech? Why should we be censored in matters like this? Since when is it a crime to stand up for our beliefs? It doesn’t make sense what so ever. They cry and moan “freedom of speech” and yet want to censor anything that doesn’t embrace their views.

Tomorrow will be pure chaos. I’ll be in charge of looking out for the GSC’s table instead of mic detail, like last Tuesday. About 3 years ago the then president was physically threatened and chaos ensued all around campus. I only hope they don’t behave like hormone-driven howling monkeys and decide to take a civil approach to the issue…but knowing better only the former will take place. 

Let the 3-hour-long hell unfold. *sighs*

 

Before the Spring Break comes Spring Cleaning

I am not one to be able to say unorganized over long periods of time, but sometimes I digress. This semester, like every other, was no exception. I neglected properly cleaning and organizing my room properly after I got back from Christmas break. I brought a vacuum cleaner, cleaning supplies, a broom, a mop, the whole 9 yards. However, I refused to do anything. I would occasionally swipe the room with the broom, or wipe my desk with a wet tissue, nothing remotely related to actual cleaning.

One fateful night of February I walked into my room and I just couldn’t take it anymore. It took me one month to decide “Hey, this is starting to look like a storage room of a dollar store.” and do something about it. These are the fruitions of my night-long cleaning spree!

Before (Bed or Table?): http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/9691/bed1re5.jpg
After (It was a bed!): http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/6900/bed2um5.jpg

Before (Book, Cables and More): http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/5232/bookshelf1jb1.jpg
After (Just Books and More): http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/8835/bookshelf2kl6.jpg

Before (Closet or Nest?): http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/9830/closet1as2.jpg
After (Both…not as messy though!): http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/3976/closet2ry0.jpg

Before (Mess is indication of genius, no?): http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/1710/desk1cz3.jpg
After (There goes my genius then…): http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/5155/desk2rz9.jpg

Before (*pouts and hangs head*): http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/8428/tv1yk5.jpg
After (*grins proudly*): http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/6486/tv2yq7.jpg

After (The “before” of this one was just too shameful…) : http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/7254/drawershz6.jpg

After almost 3 hours of very hard work, I was left feeling very tired and proud. Now, almost a month later, is that time again. Not as messy, of course, but my room is in need of a makeover once again. Tomorrow, I shall do that…I guess.