Sometimes
I wonder why I feel so lethargic and tired. Like yesterday. Yesterday it was hard to get it in gear just to get to the farmer's market, which I love, and buy piles of delicious vegetables (there's something about carrots with their tops on that's just so cute -- I think maybe because I feel like Bugs Bunny when eating them) (with slightly less buck teeth). And then I felt tired thinking about looking up recipes to use them in ways that aren't just straightforward baking (beets, squash), stir-frying with garlic and sesame oil (bok choy, pea shoots, om choi), or tossing in a risotto (chard, spinach, leeks, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, etc.). I used to know how to cook. Maybe I can relearn.
In any case, I was musing on my last month or so, and realized that one explanation for my apparent lethargy might be the fact that in the last five weeks I have traveled at minimum overnight to, in order: Palm Springs, San Francisco, Irvine, Santa Barbara, and New York. Three of these trips were work-related, and involved lots of prep time and shmoozing and also being generally nice to people in a kind of intellectual way, which does end up a bit wearing. And if not for airline ineptitude, I would have snuck a Chicago in there as well. And I had houseguests twice (the kind you clean for). So I guess maybe I'm entitled to be a bit tired after all. I'm giving a final today, which should be three hours of utter boredom -- I wonder how bad it would be if I brought my laptop and tried to do some e-mail catch up while my TAs did the serious proctoring. Those three hours will look like nothing by the time we hit Wednesday, which will be the all-day grading fest at my house, catered by Trader Joe's and the Chinese "bistro" on the corner. Nothing is more vomit-inducing than grading, I think. Well, except for Russian vodka.
In any case, I was musing on my last month or so, and realized that one explanation for my apparent lethargy might be the fact that in the last five weeks I have traveled at minimum overnight to, in order: Palm Springs, San Francisco, Irvine, Santa Barbara, and New York. Three of these trips were work-related, and involved lots of prep time and shmoozing and also being generally nice to people in a kind of intellectual way, which does end up a bit wearing. And if not for airline ineptitude, I would have snuck a Chicago in there as well. And I had houseguests twice (the kind you clean for). So I guess maybe I'm entitled to be a bit tired after all. I'm giving a final today, which should be three hours of utter boredom -- I wonder how bad it would be if I brought my laptop and tried to do some e-mail catch up while my TAs did the serious proctoring. Those three hours will look like nothing by the time we hit Wednesday, which will be the all-day grading fest at my house, catered by Trader Joe's and the Chinese "bistro" on the corner. Nothing is more vomit-inducing than grading, I think. Well, except for Russian vodka.
posted by Pangea at 8:12 AM
4 Comments:
Pangea + carrots = this.
You were missed in Chicago.
What's funny is that I gave my mother a carrot last Thursday, a purple one I'd picked up at the previous farmer's market (carrots were originally purple -- these were an heirloom variety). Before I gave it to her she asked if it was obscene. And I thought, "I have a reputation for giving obscene carrots?" Forgetting that that's in part what started off this very blog. But that magnificent creature pictured (via link) above, that one I'd somehow completely forgotten about.
If I had the chance, Colliculus, I would give it to you all over again!
Whoa, whoa whoa! "Carrots were originally purple." You can't just casually slip in a line like that without providing some further explication. All carrots were purple? And then they were bred to be orange because market research showed that people would buy more carrots if only they weren't so purple? And this was accomplished by injecting beta-carotene into them?
If there's an alternative explanation, I'd like to hear it!
Lance, I hand over all explanations to the good people at the Carrot Museum (UK):
http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history.html
A quick summary -- it was originally purple and kind of bitter; believed by the ancient Greeks and Romans to be an aphrodisiac, the early physician Galen felt it helped with breaking wind, medieval doctors prescribed carrots for syphilis, and so much more. The carrot became orange through the work of 16th century Dutch agriculturists who used a mutant yellow carrot seed to create an orange carrot in honor of the House of Orange, the Dutch royal family. Cross-breeding yellow and red carrots made sweeter orange carrots. By the 1700s, the Dutch orange carrot had become dominant and almost all other varieties stopped being planted. So it really mostly stems from bizarre patriotism and agricultural experiments - who knew?
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