Turns out that turning on the air conditioner (yet another concession to increasing age and decreasing ability to sleep off a rough night well into the morning) was the way to sleep in Istanbul. It continued to be a gorgeous city, although never that well suited to travel with a toddler in the near 90 F sunny days. Not enough playgrounds nearby. And I think M was more than a bit worried in a big, new city, and wound up trying to constantly establish a 6 ft circumference safety circle around A. Good luck with that in a city where even the mosque guards can be found cooing to a baby, giving him their walkie talkies to chew and slam on the carpets, and later young women take the same baby for a walk always within sight of his parents. The people were so lovely and kind, and loooooooove children. Their own, yours, that one over there, all of them. There was not much personal space for A to inhabit when everyone wanted to pinch her cheeks. She declared in the middle of the trip "I no like Esstanbul," which I'm sure was not referring to all the gelato she ate, the birds she chased or the food she happily gobbled up. M and A and Aunt P had a tour guide show them around for a few days while I was at the conference.
I finally hit my stride at said academic gathering. My poster was moderately attended, I chatted with a handful of attendees, at coffee breaks and lunches, I hung out with the Brazilians. It was okay. I had time to think about my own research and where to take it from here, and went a few steps forward during the meeting, listening to the various English-as-a-second-language speakers' presentations. Know what? In a meeting like that, where even the native English speakers are working hard to keep up with the galloping change in accents that roam the span of each session, more text on slides is a good thing. As is reading directly from a slide. I'm a convert of the extreme context specificity of the "little text; no direct reading" rule.
Once I got home, work is again slow, and so I feel the same. And in an ill-advised google search of Candida Diet (something I might at some point need to consider, due to a combination of the d&c after the miscarriage and probably the cortisone shots), I am once again reminded of why "we don't do google searches on medical problems", children. Ugh. Look it up - you can eat beef, eggs, macadamia nuts, and peppermint tea. Oh, and eventually work your way up to yogurt. It is depressing, but not as creepy as all the folks discussing it on the forums (children, if you didn't obey, and actually did the google search, for the love of Pete at least don't read the forums...). They are busy writing things about the Candida Die-Off in which the candida is described as being angry at you, who are not offering sugar on its altar of gut and other parts destruction and attacks you. And you feel like crap.
So guess who tried a mini-version of no caffeine (coffee beans and tea leaves are moldy, apparently), sugar or carbs today? Someone with a death wish who really should have known better, but thankfully had daycare for both child and dog at midday. And then drank black tea finally. And then had a pizza and ibuprofen for dinner in hopes that the sudden flu symptoms (huge headache, aches, nausea, and I kid you not, even leg pain from my back) would go away. They did. I'm chalking it up to either caffeine/sugar withdrawl, or the ability of ibuprofen to handle flu symptoms. And pretending I didn't read anything about angry microbes.
In either case, I will most likely be offering white bread and jam and coffee to "the beast" tomorrow for breakfast. M replied to my texts about how horrible this felt by telling me to "feed my Trill." Nerd.
Showing posts with label chocolate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chocolate. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Almost tomorrow's post
My laptop clock says 11:56pm. So it must be. By the time I finish writing, it will be tomorrow, so this post will count towards Friday.
Can a bar of dark chocolate really keep me up like this? I should stop experimenting with it. I don't really like the milk chocolate, and tonight, around 8:30pm, I ate a bar of dark. Like, the whole thing.
The city is finally under a dark sky, and the lights of the industrial area peek through the outlines of sunflowers and zucchini plant leaves in the garden. I'm not usually up this late. At least, not after sunset this month.
....
Hmm. Well, dang. That bar was about 3-5 oz of chocolate. Which apparently has 60-100mg of caffeine. Really? As much as brewed coffee or espresso. I guess that settles it, we need both dark and milk chocolate in the house for desserts. And I need to start eating chocolate in place of a coffee drink. Ok, maybe not that last part. So eating the bar of dark chocolate was pretty dumb.
So many things to think about when you can't sleep. Played too much of the Doodle God game, that isn't as logical as I'd like, but keeps sucking me in. You just keep trying to cross different pairs of items to create new ones, and the goal is 248 items, from zombies and superheroes, to seeds and lightbulbs and fish and sky scrapers. And money. And law. And concrete and wood. And you get a new hint to help you out every 2 minutes. Maddening in a slow enough drip that you keep going back.
Ooh, there's A, coughing and crying a bit.
And quiet again. Sweetie pie.
There is also a talk to think about, on my dissertation and on impostor syndrome, to a women physicists group next week. And the book on quantum physics and consciousness that has finally arrived at the consciousness chapter. So if there really isn't much of a self or an "I", where do all these hangups we have (low self-esteem, fear, embarrassment) come from? If the Buddhists have it right about there being no singular, constant self, why all these issues and therapists? If there is no "me" why should I care what someone else thinks of that "me" that doesn't even exist?
Which reminded me of something a counselor once told me regarding worry or sadness. That sometimes, for a chronic worrier like me, the sensation of worry comes before the assignment of that sensation to something. In other words, the body and brain worry first and then a reason is found for that worry. But since they happen so closely together, it feels like the reason comes first, followed by the physical response. I've noticed, now that I'm on a lower dose of antidepressants, that I'm a bit more emotional again. I get more teary more quickly during conflict. And I just feel sad sometimes. And for some reason, this time around, it makes sense what that counselor said - maybe because I'm really watching my moods and tracking when I should be PMS-ing, to try to see if the depression is coming back. I just feel sadness, or hopelessness sometimes. Okay, today a headline about child abuse started that feeling, but somehow I can step back more than before and sense that it isn't always caused by something. Sometimes I just feel sad. Like a hormone thermometer, that fluctuates with some chemical level. Maybe my body is just more sensitive to that kind of thing, and I need to practice not looking for reasons I feel sad.
12:15am, the webpage announces that my draft of this post is autosaved, and I'm going to try to go to sleep again.
Can a bar of dark chocolate really keep me up like this? I should stop experimenting with it. I don't really like the milk chocolate, and tonight, around 8:30pm, I ate a bar of dark. Like, the whole thing.
The city is finally under a dark sky, and the lights of the industrial area peek through the outlines of sunflowers and zucchini plant leaves in the garden. I'm not usually up this late. At least, not after sunset this month.
....
Hmm. Well, dang. That bar was about 3-5 oz of chocolate. Which apparently has 60-100mg of caffeine. Really? As much as brewed coffee or espresso. I guess that settles it, we need both dark and milk chocolate in the house for desserts. And I need to start eating chocolate in place of a coffee drink. Ok, maybe not that last part. So eating the bar of dark chocolate was pretty dumb.
So many things to think about when you can't sleep. Played too much of the Doodle God game, that isn't as logical as I'd like, but keeps sucking me in. You just keep trying to cross different pairs of items to create new ones, and the goal is 248 items, from zombies and superheroes, to seeds and lightbulbs and fish and sky scrapers. And money. And law. And concrete and wood. And you get a new hint to help you out every 2 minutes. Maddening in a slow enough drip that you keep going back.
Ooh, there's A, coughing and crying a bit.
And quiet again. Sweetie pie.
There is also a talk to think about, on my dissertation and on impostor syndrome, to a women physicists group next week. And the book on quantum physics and consciousness that has finally arrived at the consciousness chapter. So if there really isn't much of a self or an "I", where do all these hangups we have (low self-esteem, fear, embarrassment) come from? If the Buddhists have it right about there being no singular, constant self, why all these issues and therapists? If there is no "me" why should I care what someone else thinks of that "me" that doesn't even exist?
Which reminded me of something a counselor once told me regarding worry or sadness. That sometimes, for a chronic worrier like me, the sensation of worry comes before the assignment of that sensation to something. In other words, the body and brain worry first and then a reason is found for that worry. But since they happen so closely together, it feels like the reason comes first, followed by the physical response. I've noticed, now that I'm on a lower dose of antidepressants, that I'm a bit more emotional again. I get more teary more quickly during conflict. And I just feel sad sometimes. And for some reason, this time around, it makes sense what that counselor said - maybe because I'm really watching my moods and tracking when I should be PMS-ing, to try to see if the depression is coming back. I just feel sadness, or hopelessness sometimes. Okay, today a headline about child abuse started that feeling, but somehow I can step back more than before and sense that it isn't always caused by something. Sometimes I just feel sad. Like a hormone thermometer, that fluctuates with some chemical level. Maybe my body is just more sensitive to that kind of thing, and I need to practice not looking for reasons I feel sad.
12:15am, the webpage announces that my draft of this post is autosaved, and I'm going to try to go to sleep again.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Chocolate
I live in Switzerland. This probably means I should have a lot of opinions, experiences of and suggestions for chocolate. I do like chocolate. In cakes and tortes. In solid bars or spheres. In liquid form.
I have vivid memories of my favorite chocolates.
When I was in Germany in my junior year of high school, the Ritter Sport square bars and Lindt milk chocolates made up a significant part of my diet, which was the opposite of a diet, since I gained my first freshman 15 that year. The food at my school just wasn't as comforting as this stuff.
Then there was the three color chocolate mousse and truffle cake at a sadly long-departed Le Bistro restaurant in Tucson. They would serve you a slice of this thing, only about 3/4 in thick, and at first you'd think you'd been overcharged for dessert. Until you tasted it, had the dark truffle part coat your tongue like velvet, gone to paradise, and then couldn't finish the last 1/4 because of how rich it was.
And in another long-gone restaurant named Spring, in Chicago, there was this after dinner hot chocolate shot that was more like drinking a.... Actually, I have no words for this one. It was light in color, warm, and I think there may have been some thyme in it. It felt like almost nothing going down your throat because it was so smooth but thick - not quite liquid, softer than a pudding. It was glorious. And M and I had hot chocolate served late night at our wedding, at best as a tribute to this drink, because I'm thinking it was only ever meant to exist for a few years in this universe and I was lucky enough to stumble upon it. Never to meet it again.
I remember and search for good chocolate like I do a book or movie.
Now I live in Switzerland. There are large company chocolatiers downtown: Sprungli (the no-export part of the Lindt empire), Teuscher (whose shop windows would give Willy Wonka visual overload), and Laderach (my favorite). There are smaller places, too, like in our village where one of their specialties is, not too appetizingly to me for a gourmet item, chocolate prunes. But I'll have to give it a try some day.
I like my chocolate dark, mostly. Around 60%. And here is what graces our cupboards when they are full of my favorites:
1. Caotina dark chocolate cocoa powder, for mornings when I'm planning to nap after A and M leave
2. Lindt dark truffle bar, from the COOP grocery store, it is the best thing I've found for straight up, eat it plain, dark (no point in getting anything else from Lindt for me). It is sort of the more chocolate, less truffle version of those black wrapper Lindt balls you get in the US.
3. The dark chocolate "bark" from Laderach. This is made in sheets and broken into pieces. The Florentiner has almonds in crunchy caramel. This will always do very very nicely, especially for a gift. Their other barks have all sorts of nuts, or chili, or fruits in them. They have a milk chocolate. You always see tourists stop and salivate at the window before they go in to buy some. We discovered it the day I went into labor.
4. Ritter Sport dark with marzipan, milk with biscuit or milk with corn flakes. We're getting a little less classy now. But these have, on a few occasions, been my lunch when I'm running late to get A from daycare. And they were fine lunches, I remember with fondness.
5. Currently, crispy M&Ms. Yup, we're talking vending machine choices here. I like them chilled in the fridge. Mostly the crispy part is what I find addictive to crunch and it will force me through a whole big bag in a few days. I'm not too proud to admit that. I am a bit upset, though, that there are no plain M&Ms here, because I think they would have been a better option. They only have the crispy or the peanut.
6. Schoggi gipfeli. Swiss German way of saying chocolate croissant. Croissant, filled with chocolate. How can this be a bad thing for all the bakeries to carry? I can't think of any way.
And there you have it. My list.
I have vivid memories of my favorite chocolates.
When I was in Germany in my junior year of high school, the Ritter Sport square bars and Lindt milk chocolates made up a significant part of my diet, which was the opposite of a diet, since I gained my first freshman 15 that year. The food at my school just wasn't as comforting as this stuff.
Then there was the three color chocolate mousse and truffle cake at a sadly long-departed Le Bistro restaurant in Tucson. They would serve you a slice of this thing, only about 3/4 in thick, and at first you'd think you'd been overcharged for dessert. Until you tasted it, had the dark truffle part coat your tongue like velvet, gone to paradise, and then couldn't finish the last 1/4 because of how rich it was.
And in another long-gone restaurant named Spring, in Chicago, there was this after dinner hot chocolate shot that was more like drinking a.... Actually, I have no words for this one. It was light in color, warm, and I think there may have been some thyme in it. It felt like almost nothing going down your throat because it was so smooth but thick - not quite liquid, softer than a pudding. It was glorious. And M and I had hot chocolate served late night at our wedding, at best as a tribute to this drink, because I'm thinking it was only ever meant to exist for a few years in this universe and I was lucky enough to stumble upon it. Never to meet it again.
I remember and search for good chocolate like I do a book or movie.
Now I live in Switzerland. There are large company chocolatiers downtown: Sprungli (the no-export part of the Lindt empire), Teuscher (whose shop windows would give Willy Wonka visual overload), and Laderach (my favorite). There are smaller places, too, like in our village where one of their specialties is, not too appetizingly to me for a gourmet item, chocolate prunes. But I'll have to give it a try some day.
I like my chocolate dark, mostly. Around 60%. And here is what graces our cupboards when they are full of my favorites:
1. Caotina dark chocolate cocoa powder, for mornings when I'm planning to nap after A and M leave
2. Lindt dark truffle bar, from the COOP grocery store, it is the best thing I've found for straight up, eat it plain, dark (no point in getting anything else from Lindt for me). It is sort of the more chocolate, less truffle version of those black wrapper Lindt balls you get in the US.
3. The dark chocolate "bark" from Laderach. This is made in sheets and broken into pieces. The Florentiner has almonds in crunchy caramel. This will always do very very nicely, especially for a gift. Their other barks have all sorts of nuts, or chili, or fruits in them. They have a milk chocolate. You always see tourists stop and salivate at the window before they go in to buy some. We discovered it the day I went into labor.
4. Ritter Sport dark with marzipan, milk with biscuit or milk with corn flakes. We're getting a little less classy now. But these have, on a few occasions, been my lunch when I'm running late to get A from daycare. And they were fine lunches, I remember with fondness.
5. Currently, crispy M&Ms. Yup, we're talking vending machine choices here. I like them chilled in the fridge. Mostly the crispy part is what I find addictive to crunch and it will force me through a whole big bag in a few days. I'm not too proud to admit that. I am a bit upset, though, that there are no plain M&Ms here, because I think they would have been a better option. They only have the crispy or the peanut.
6. Schoggi gipfeli. Swiss German way of saying chocolate croissant. Croissant, filled with chocolate. How can this be a bad thing for all the bakeries to carry? I can't think of any way.
And there you have it. My list.
Friday, April 22, 2011
I highly doubt that
What makes for sleepless nights? I'm still coughing from my cold, so falling asleep is hard, but even so, actual sleepiness is hard to find tonight. Baby A also only found her sleep after 9:30pm. No weariness for M, either. We stayed up way way past our normal bedtime, until 11:30pm, watching half of Chocolat.
I remember last time I saw the movie how I suddenly wanted good chocolate. Really good chocolate. I think I went to the Godiva store at Park Mall in Tucson. I think I was disappointed. Or maybe it was just late at night and nothing but Walgreens was open. I just remember wanting chocolate like Vienne made in the movie. That would touch your soul through your senses. And then wanting to make chocolate like that.
Leave it to me to live in Switzerland now and see that film again on Good Friday. I don't celebrate Catholic holidays the same way anymore, but this country sure does close down all its stores for weekends like this. Except, tomorrow. Many stores will probably be closed, but I think that the chocolate shops might just be open. One last shopping day to Easter baskets.
The movie got me thinking about religion, as well. About doubting. About why it was such a horrible thing that Thomas doubted Jesus was going to rise from the dead. Like no man had ever done before, since people don't do that. In some way, wasn't the rising from the dead one of the first ways you could actually tell Jesus wasn't just human? So here's poor Thomas, just being rational, and he gets this horrible reputation. And the man even lays out his conditions for believing Jesus has risen, like a good scientific thinker would ("here's what would make me change my mind - fingers in wounds"), and somehow every sermon I've heard about him faults him for these things. Oh ha ha, that silly Thomas. Had to go and open his mouth and be all cocky. Anyway, whatever I do or don't think about Jesus, I still think Thomas sounds like a pretty good guy.
And tomorrow, I might just go in search of some soul-hugging chocolate. For now, I'll just try to forget about the chocolate and stop rethinking where else in this apartment I might have lost my phone. Maybe I'll finally fall asleep. Right after I sneak off to the fridge to have a go at those crispy M&Ms I bought a few days ago. Because, let's face it, chocolate that feeds your soul and chocolate that stops hunger so you can fall asleep...two completely different creatures.
I remember last time I saw the movie how I suddenly wanted good chocolate. Really good chocolate. I think I went to the Godiva store at Park Mall in Tucson. I think I was disappointed. Or maybe it was just late at night and nothing but Walgreens was open. I just remember wanting chocolate like Vienne made in the movie. That would touch your soul through your senses. And then wanting to make chocolate like that.
Leave it to me to live in Switzerland now and see that film again on Good Friday. I don't celebrate Catholic holidays the same way anymore, but this country sure does close down all its stores for weekends like this. Except, tomorrow. Many stores will probably be closed, but I think that the chocolate shops might just be open. One last shopping day to Easter baskets.
The movie got me thinking about religion, as well. About doubting. About why it was such a horrible thing that Thomas doubted Jesus was going to rise from the dead. Like no man had ever done before, since people don't do that. In some way, wasn't the rising from the dead one of the first ways you could actually tell Jesus wasn't just human? So here's poor Thomas, just being rational, and he gets this horrible reputation. And the man even lays out his conditions for believing Jesus has risen, like a good scientific thinker would ("here's what would make me change my mind - fingers in wounds"), and somehow every sermon I've heard about him faults him for these things. Oh ha ha, that silly Thomas. Had to go and open his mouth and be all cocky. Anyway, whatever I do or don't think about Jesus, I still think Thomas sounds like a pretty good guy.
And tomorrow, I might just go in search of some soul-hugging chocolate. For now, I'll just try to forget about the chocolate and stop rethinking where else in this apartment I might have lost my phone. Maybe I'll finally fall asleep. Right after I sneak off to the fridge to have a go at those crispy M&Ms I bought a few days ago. Because, let's face it, chocolate that feeds your soul and chocolate that stops hunger so you can fall asleep...two completely different creatures.
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