skiing

So there is something you all didn't know and even i didn't' know about myself. I am an AMAZING skier. I have this theory that we are all great at 5 things. We can be good at lots of things but we can really only be great at a finite few. Some people are good at doing free throws. Some people have excellent balance. Some people are good at memorizing state capitols. My big talents are that you can drop me anywhere in any mall in the world and i can find my way around and out. Same goes for mall parking lots and finding my car. I also am amazing with maps because i have an internal compass. Also i can figure out how to work any television remote control after looking at it for 5 minutes or less. finally the last one i have become aware of is my ability to remember mundane details from movies, actors names, characters, and song lyrics. i figure this is all in the same genre of talent so i will just include it as 1 talent.

Well today i went skiing and perhaps i should add to that list, because DAMN i am fucking good! ok i mean i'm not like a professional but seriously for being an out of shape 25 year old who has never done winter sports i feel like i did really well on my first try. My friends kept saying "you are actually good! we can't believe it! we thought you would be awful!" I didnt' take offense because honestly i thought i would suck too. We did 2 runs down the bunny slope and we were like..fuck this let's move to the beginner slopes. And than 3 rides down that one they all agreed that i was ready for the intermediate slopes. So how did thye teach me to ski, you might ask? Basically they said, blaze down that hill and try not to fall. Sure there were 5 year olds zooming past me BUT THAT IS NOT THE POINT!! the point is that i fell like 4 times in a matter of 3 and a half hours of skiing and i mean, I BLAZED! i truly embodied what it means to blaze!!

I would never call myself a sporty person, nor would i call myself someone who does adventurous activities. But for some reason i decided when i moved to michigan i would try to be the me i had never been in california: ie nature loving and what not. It's kind of like how when i went to college i decided that i wasn't going to be a loser anymore/josie grossie. Well so far despite becoming super white, which i feel is inevitable living in the epicenter of whhhiteness, i have also come to appreciate things that i never woudl have loved before. Like leaves falling, and snow on the ground and shit like that.

Step Up 2: THE STREETS!

Guys, it comes as no surprise to those who know me best that I love dance movies. I love them the way that most people love foreign films or Wes Anderson flicks or the Coen Brothers. I mean, I like, love all of things too but my most favorite genre of all is the Dance Movie genre. Girl/boy from the wrong side of town who learns to channel their anger toward something positive and somehow wins in the end via an awesome dance off ending sequence!! It's the American fucking dream! I have mentioned before that I should have been a dancer. Not because I have a particularly good body made for dancing or rhythm or anything like that. But i have concluded that because if i were a dancer i would be able to wear all of those awesome layered thin articles of clothing that dancers wear all the time. I mean there is also the negative side of being a dancer as depicted in Center Stage with all of the bulemia and inability to socialize like normal people because DANCING IS LIFE!! But seriously, dancing equals freedom.

So it is spring break and after a day of exploring Birmingham, Michigan, another town with another Main Street, i decided to take a little bit of time to myself and celebrate this oscar sunday watching a film at the local theater. I could have picked from any quality film showing but i decided to go for a movie that i knew no one else would see with me. A film that if Cathy were with me, we would eat a del taco nachos grande and than sneak into. I saw Step Up 2: The streets.

guys, no lie, i have seen a lot of dance movies in my day and this was by far one of the top 3. I cant' think of what the other 2 on that list would be, but this would definitely be up there. The first 20 minutes or so are a bit slow and you're liek "this girl is not such a great dancer." But then she picks out her new crew of motley dance school kids and the shit gets CRAZY!!! It all culminates, as all dance movies, withe big dance off at the end. And since i'm sure none of you will actually see this movie i won't consider telling oyu what happens spoiling the end. They have this ridiculous dance off, but the brilliant movie makers decided to add the elements to the mix. So they are doing this crazy street dancing IN THE FUCKING RAIN!!! and i mean it's like raw and powerful and got me super pumped. I would consider buying this movie. that's how much i loved it!

DANCING IN THE RAIN, BITCHES!!
Sure it's it bit fucked up how as usual teh white people come and revolutionize something that is "of the streets' and make it better. But i suspended my disbelief, and my tendency toward noticing social inequality and just went with it.

ok i thought of something pensive to write. I am sitting in the library not working, looking out the window and it's really quite a beautiful day. I mean it's cold as balls, but there is sun, and rolling clouds and the skyline of the UofM is looking especially hogwartsian. it looks like those days when it just rained and it makes you grateful for it because it's all so clean.

I think spring is coming soon. I mean there are no sure signs but i can just feel it in my soul that those bulb plants are as frustrated as me and about ready to burst free from the ice shackles that have bound them the past few months.

Detox: day whatever

guys, confession, which is less of a confession and more of a statement. I kind of veered from the detox. I got sick last week and i really wanted some chicken soup, and let me tell you ginger soup is not as awesome as some homemade chicken souop when you are sick. so i was like, fuck this shit, and i made myself some chicken soup. Does this mean that i have not stuck to my guns on this stuff? No, i have still been eating pretty well and feeling good and running and looking mighty fine if a do say so myself.

Nothing else has really been going on aside from having an allergy skin test and finding out that i am allergic to mold, dust mites, and possibly milk. RANDOM!

Politically i've been feeling extremely apathetic. I'm over these elections. Can we just say that obama won already and have it be done?

It's cold, it's icy. winter is never ending. It's michigan, i mean what else is there to say.

I haven't been watching any tv lately, which has been really weird for me so i'm filling my time with people and books and things. TRULY ODD! but i kind of like it! i recently read a short story by Melville, per suggestion of a guy, and guys, he's not as boring as i just assumed herman melville would be. It was downright good, even.

this has been an extremely dull update. i'm ending it now

Detox day 4

So it is the morning of my fourth day of detox and guys, seriously I FEEL GREAT!! The first day and a half were really rough but i've been playing around with my meal portions and that has really helped. Also i've started looking into what nutritional value my foods have and so i'm adding and taking away accordingly. Like i added some spinach to assure that i'm getting enough iron. and i'm sticking with yams which are crazy full of vitamins. I've also been trying some homeopathic remedies like making soups out of licorice root, ginger, and dandelion root. serious guys, this was actually way more delicious than you would imagine. Oh the other big thing was that i added some Texturized vegetable protein to my veggies mixes because i was feeling like i didn't have enough protein. Guys this shit is great!! I mean seriously i fit into my suuuper skinny jeans again with no sweat. I've been running and i'm getting muscles in my thighs that i didn't know i had. But perhaps more importantly, i feel really healthy, like really really.

Last night i had my first night out while sober. I went to a karaoke bar, the kind where you rent your own room like Azian style. Initially i was really wary since the only real reason that grad students hang out in groups larger than 3 is that they want to drink and forget about how wretched their lives are. But i started thinking how when i go home to LA, minus the times i hang out with cathy, i am usually completely sober. In fact, i often do sober karaoke with my cousins and i manage to have tons of fun. More fun even, because i don't feel like i made a giant ass of myself the next morning. Well low and behold i had a fantastic time and i totally was getting a contact high from other people. I even stayed out until like 2 am playing dr. mario at this girls house. And the best part....i woke up at 8:40 naturally with no hang over and have been up ever since doing various things. I'm going to play raquetball today with my new friend. She's potentially bisexual, goth, and loves pin up girls. doesn't that sound fun?!!

Pozole Recipe

This one is for Emily:
So when i cook i don't really get enjoyment out of doing it for myself, but i really like cooking for large groups of people. And whether or not my cooking is good i enjoy doing it. Most people bond with their mothers over cooking for their family. But i always bonded with my dad by cooking for other people. It's what he does for a living and he does it in mass quantities. So when it comes to family parties we always go to my dad to do the cooking, and since he worked so much this tended to be the way that we bonded. This is my paternal grandma's recipe which was passed onto my dad and now onto me. We are the only people in our family who know how to make it. But as you will see it's super easy so everyone should just do it. I have tweeked it a bit but i think for the better.

first off a couple of notes
1. i HATE meat fat. It grosses me out so this recipe involves lots of extra steps that will prevent your soup from being greasy. If you want greasy, fatty meats than do not strain the broth like i do
2. I will give you a bit of an arduous recipe for the chili soup base but you can also use cans of Las Palmas "chile colorado" and honestly it's just as good if not better.

Ingredients:
- 1 large can of hominy - you can find this at any mexican super market. they have giant cans and small cans. Take note that the hominy is most people's favorite part so make sure to get alot. Although when i made it my chinese friends preferred the pork. That is the first time i have ever seen that happen in my whole life.
- 1 large bag of dried Chile California peppers. If you can't find these, like i couldn't, you can also use Chile Guajuillo, but it's not as tasty and in that case i'd just get the cans of Las Palmas. they are big and reddish brown since they are dry and you can always find the dried chile section at the mexican market
- 3 cloves garlic
- Pork Shoulder, cut to fist sized chunks. Go to a mexican Butcher (carneceria) and you can either ask them specifically to give you the meat to make pozole or you can ask for pork shoulder. They will know and sometimes they have meats labeled according to what you can make with it. They should cut the meat for you, and ask for the least fatty ones. My dad's rule is to get 1 lb per every 2 people. He tends to overestimate but i stick to it. so you'll probably get like 5 or 6 lbs and it will seem like a lot but it will boil down to much less
- maybe 1 lb or 2 of pork espinaso (pork spine). If you cant' find this than most places have some kind of pork bones set aside. These are what's gonna give it the flavor so you wont' actually eat them

THAT WAS LITERALLY IT! can you believe it has so few ingredients....ok wait i lied cuz you need the side fixings
- cabbage - to cool down the spice
- tapatio - clearly, this is a mexican dish
- diced onions - i never put these in but the world loves onions so blaze
- limes
- good tostadas (fried corn tortillas that are whole and round) - maybe bought a a bakery or tortilla factory. no, tortilla chips won't cut it
- if you want to be real traditional you should eat radishes with it too also to cool down the heat, but most people don't actually eat the radishes. only real mexicans will
- dried oregano flakes
- chili flakes (optional)

So basic chile anatomy. The heat of a chile is in the seeds and in most salsas to make them edible you will usually take out all of the seeds like you would a bell pepper. So remove the stems from the dried chiles and using a knife cut down the middle and just wash out the seeds under the sink. since they are dried the seeds will flake right off under a little water. Take the de-seeded chiles and place them into a pot with water to boil. Just let them boil and when the water is bubbling let it simmer with a cover. This can be left cooking while you do the meat stuff.

wash your pork and in a big ass stock pot bring the bones and meat to boil. fill it up with enough water to really cover all of the meat. Make sure the water is high enough as it will assist you during the next step. To the water add plenty of salt and the 3 peeled garlic gloves. No need to mash or anything as they will basically disintegrate into the stew. Adding salt to the water as the meat is boiling is key to giving the meat and soup flavor. After the water has been boiling for about 15 minutes the fat from the pork will start to rise. It will look gross and foamy. That is the fat. You can skim it off the top with a spoon. There will be ALOT and you won't be able to get it all. to makes sure you get as much as you can though, you should mix around the meat so that the stuff from the bottom will rise to the top. This skimming process will most likely go off and on for about 30 minutes. Once all the fat has been skimmed you turn the heat to simmer, cover the pot, and just let it sit. The cooking should take like 45 minutes to an hour. When the meat is tender and you can shred it fairly easily, that is when you know it's done

While all that is cooking take the boiling chiles w/ water and set them aside. Blend the boiled chilies with some of the water they were cooked in until it is smooth wiht no chunks. Then take the blended mixture and sieve it through a really small colander. You are gonna have to use some elbow grease to squeeze all the juice through the colander and you'll end up with some really thick skin paste. You don't want this in your soup so dump it

Here is an extra step that i added because, as i said, i hate fat.
Once the pork is tender you will remove it from the water and put it in a covered dish. Sieve the broth with the small strainer making sure that all the left over fat does not end up in your final soup. Here is where it gets crazy. I then take the pork and run it under some warm water and kind of rub the fat off with my fingers so all i'm left with is plump, juicy, chunks of fat free pork. Clearly you do not have to do this, but for seers, it will make it taste bomb. Once the meat has all been cleared of fat you can add it back to the broth and remove the bones if you like.

open up the cans of hominy and add them to the pot. make sure there is not too much water that it will overflow. To make real hominy that is not canned i think you boil the shit out of dried corn kernels that are special but really i am not sure so just used the can. You want to also add the water that the hominy has been canned in as this has lots of yummy corn flavor that adds to the taste. mix that shit up and then slowly add the chile blend. At this point it's all about tasting and seeing how much is enough to make it good. the soup shouldn't quite coat a spoon but it shouldn't be clear either. i say just taste and add salt and chile blend accordingly.

As a backup you can buy a few cans of las palmas, and if the flavor just isn't right then add a little bit of those.

Let that all simmer until your guests arrive and BAM, you have some real, authentic, guadalajara style mexican pozole.

serve with squeezed lime, cabbage, etc, and dip your tostadas into it. for reals, this is the best hang over cure ever, which is probably why mexican restaurants only make it on weekends.

enjoy and tell me how it works out!

detox day 1

guys, detox is actually like really hard! I mean i knew it was gonna suck a little but i didnt' realize how hard it would be. i opted not to do the whole 10 day lemonade cleanse thing (lemons, water, syrup, and cayenne pepper) because i don't have that kidn of time to give to starvation so i think jen is gonna do a 3 day lemonade cleanse with me this sunday. But like i'm doing this other cleanse which is just herbs and veggies so here is what it entails.

do not drink anything 1 hour before you eat because it will water down your stomach acids...true story guys

wake up and drink 3 glasses of water (1 with half lemon squeezed in it).
- 1 hour later eat 1 fruit...banana whatevs
- 20 minutes later eat bowl of quinoa or some other weird grain. Quinoa is pretty filling but to now avail. i was still hungry come noon
- noon - eat 1 to 2 bowls of steamed veggies. So today i ate one bowl cuz it seemed like a huge bowl (yams, potato, cabbage, zucchini, eggplant, basically everything in my fridge) but i was starving by 4:30.
- found a nectarine in my bag and ate it (thank goodness it was there!)
- at 6 i ate the same thing.
2 times in the middle of this day you drink the water that you steamed your veggies in. It tastes liek broth...not too awesome.
supplements are like multivitamin, psyllyium, acidophilus, and various teas made of like all kinds of roots and shit.

the weird thing is i had a lot of these things already. go figure! but anyways i think this is gonna be liek alcoholism, a day to day thing. Like "today i won't eat meat" or "rice" or "pasta" or "toast." but yeah i was hungry so and it made me realize that a) i probably over eat as does everyone in this fucking country a b) maybe i should learn to subsist on less, or something. i mean i don't know.

so i think tomorrow i'm gonna eat 2 servings of veggies and see if i feel fuller.

i'll let you all know how it goes and maybe tell you about all these herbs i've learned about and their benefits.

PS i don't know if it's cheating but i came home and ate a handful of nuts. this couldn't have been bad.

But overall i feel like...i don't know how to describe it. you know how alot of times after you eat you feel full and totally gross at the same time? I don't feel either of those.

redecorating

so i have this tendency of taking about 8 months to fully move in and decorate any room that i live in. i do'nt know why this is the case but it is. So i finally think that my room is "done" meaning i have no more real space to put anything.

what you see when you walk in
my bookshelf. Febreeze, vaseline, and flonase...all essential apparently. weird blue painting of woman i bought at teh antique store for 10 dollars.
dresser, curtains, new frame reorganization
cool old pictures on ledge of my grandma, mom and her sister along with a prayer candle.
place to hang shit behind my door
cool old pics of my great grandparents and grandparents wedding
and finally proof that i need to seriously downsize. ladies and gentlemen, my closet.
i think that at some point i would like to paint the room since i am going to be living here for at least another year. I do'nt know waht color though. Maybe that will be my big project when it warms up.

Ski Lodge!

so the ski lodge party was a great success. I remember very little of it and we were definitely all hung over until approximately 5 pm this evening so you know it had to have been a good party.

so my french roommate whom we just refer to as "the french" has this tendency of over drinking and then passing out like an hour into the party. We try to get him to pace but he blazes and so i will give you the party according to the timeline of the french.

9:45 to 10:05 the french lays on the couch and laments the fact that he has suddenly had an onset of depression. this is pretty standard and he uses the world "depressed" like i use "ridic." Also he's extremely melodramatic and on a weekly basis throws himself on the couch and listens to old french jazz while he an says "man, this place is so depressing."
10:05 to 10:15 the French puts on his long johns and decides he needs to feign a large penis with a banana we have lying around. He then noted that he'd liek to make a porn called "3 women, 1 man, 1 banana, 5 possibilities." I don't know how all that math worked out but we'll go with it. We all take our first drinks and it's all downhill from here
Then a guy shows up with my friend. I proceed to tell him how he did a good job stuffing his long johns with a banana, just as the french had done. My friends whispers to me 'it's not a banana"...I want to die a little inside.
10:15 to 11:15 the french does a very intense 5 shots of red bull and vodka in one hour and proceeds to have a blast. This is the last time we saw him.

midnight - We lose the french. he informs us this morning that he ended up passing out on his bathroom floor and was too tired to get up so he just pulled his towel down and used it as a pillow. The party blazes on as you can see from alex's expression
12:30 my friends and I start our big psych experiment of the night. We make up our own line dance and see how long it takes the White girls to join in. Since we are drunk it takes us a bit longer to synch up so 2 minutes is how long it takes. Our record to date, 10 seconds! note how initially people are like "oh what is that" and then by the next picture they are joining in.
1:00 to 2:00 various pictures of me are floating around that i vaguely remember taking such as me and a corn cob pipe.
me excited about somethingme and teh man who was 6' 6. note where my head is relative to his body. this might be my favorite picture
me and my rabbit fur hat. aren't you all jealous. i bought it at the super market. yes supermarkets in michigan sell fur huntin gear.
me and nishi taking action shots of ourselves jumping into the mountain of coats on my bed.
a snow fight organically starts on our front lawn. This must be waht growing up in winter is like for kids.
we woke up this morning feeling really really dreadful. I think it was more that we had gone to bed 5:30 and less that we were hung over. Although as big O came out of his room i said to him "why are your underwear inside out." he looked down wiht surprise and said "i have no fucking clue." that kind of summed up the night when you really think about it. The 4 of us then sat around and watched "the cutting edge" and "mystic pizza."