Let's Recap, Part I

Fall semester: day sixty-six

It is Monday morning, and finally I have a chance to sit down and relax. It's been a very long weekend, filled with every sort of interaction and/or task I could possibly think of to take care of over any given weekend. So, on that note, let's recap everything that happened, starting from where I left off...

Daisy came in on Thursday night. She didn't get here until about 7 or so, which allowed me the time to write the vast majority of my previous post here -- a post which I've since edited down a bit because I was originally (in my opinion) a bit too harsh on my parents, I think. I see their viewpoint, etc. I'll get to that in a bit. Anyway. Daisy came in and we were finally, finally able to get some time together.

I've mentioned before how when Daisy is here, everything else seems to stop. Most of the time, this is the case. However, as we are entering the last few weeks of the semester, nothing stops. I spent a large portion of our weekend together checking my email, conferring with my students on a number of issues, trying to organize and/or brainstorm the plan for the final paper in our Surrealism class (more on that later, as well), and the main reason Daisy came down aside to spend some time with me was to go to the "reader's theatre" performance on Friday night, at which our class's plays were read aloud on stage. We'd also planned a Saturday with Rae and Jay, so our weekend was already pretty filled with things to do and places to be.

So what do I do? I set the kitchen on fire.

Well, sort of. As always, let me explain.

When Daisy comes in, I always cook and eat vegan. Because she's vegan. I feel guilty eating any sort of meat or cheese in front of her (slightly non-vegan stuff is fine, but outright animal products I tend to avoid when she's here). Because of this, it's become customary on the night that she arrives that we go out and get something for dinner. Doesn't matter what, but something we can cook and eat at the house, as it's difficult to go out to a restaurant and eat vegan. On Thursday night, I had no ideas. It had been a really long, really tiring week, and I was also out of most of my own food in the house because I'd just not had time to shop. So, because they have a much better produce section and selection of items (plus a vegetarian/vegan section), we went to Dillons.

Mind you, I used to work for Dillons. I do not like that company at all, for many reasons which you know if you were reading this blog...oh, three years ago. We were also going in there at 10PM-ish, which meant that I would possibly run into members of the night-stocking crew that I might have worked with then, if they were still around. I did not, however; all the faces in there were new (which should tell you something about how they treat their employees).

Anyway, we settled on vegan burgers and vegan chicken patties, and got a bag of potatoes to cut up for fries -- this is important, so remember this later -- along with some vegetables and lettuce for salad. We figured that was enough of a variety to feed us, purchased the stuff, and went home. I drove Daisy's car to the store and back, as I'd wanted to try it. It is a completely different animal (so to speak) than the Monte Carlo is. The steering and pedals are so smooth (and touchy, compared to my car), the turn signal doesn't click but rather smoothly slides into position, and the lights are super-bright. That's what 13-plus years of innovation in automobiles will do, I suppose -- her Hyundai is a 2009 model, while my Monte Carlo is a 1996.

So, we got home, and I began cooking. I like to cut up my own french fries, as doing so is superior to getting some in the store. This means that I chop up potatoes, I let them soak in heavily-salted or spiced water for a bit, and then deep fry them in a pot on the stovetop. I have to be careful with this, as the oil can sometimes boil up and overflow a bit, which sets a small grease fire on the burner. This isn't unusual, and it burns off quickly. A flame or two, etc.

This time, that did not happen. The oil went crazy (by a lot) and set the burner on fire, like big time. To spare some of the gruesome details, I was able to put it out by putting a pot over it and smothering it (after a few minutes, anyhow), Daisy had to call 911 -- who didn't answer, and called her back after everything was out -- and after she explained what had happened and that everything was fine, they sent two officers over to the house to make sure everything was okay anyway. This was Thursday night, around midnight. It wasn't particularly pleasant, but eh. There wasn't any damage (it's an electric stove), but it filled the house with smoke from the burning oil, which took about an hour to vent out the windows with all the fans running. Of course, the entire thing could've been avoided had I had a box of baking soda anywhere in the house -- which, of course, I did not. As I said before, I've been so busy that I haven't had time to shop for anything, much less ancillary stuff like baking soda. I never keep it in the house because I never use it for anything.

As an aside, I purchased two boxes of baking soda at Walmart the next night.

Anyway, I cleaned the stove off on Saturday morning and de-gunked it, getting all of the oil off the burners and out of anywhere it could've gone, and everything's fine now. The stove is also cleaner than it's ever been since I first moved in. Lesson learned -- use a huge, tall pot from this point forward to deep-fry things. Luckily, I have huge, tall pots.

Some of you are probably thinking "well, maybe you should just stop deep-frying things, then." Yeah, that's not gonna happen.

Friday, the next day, Daisy and I had to go to campus for the "reader's theatre," as you know.

This was a bit of a nightmare, though that's not really anyone's fault.

I mentioned previously that I had been volunteered, along with my buddy Ryan, to help move chairs and stands over to the actual theater in which we'd be performing. That required being on the main campus at 4. This was fine; I didn't mind. The main campus is about two or three miles from where the metroplex theater is, and Daisy and I didn't have anything else to do, really.

The short version of the story is that we were there from about 4PM to around 11PM.

The longer version is that our professor wanted all of the members of the class to be at the performance theater by 5PM. When 5PM rolled around, it was me, Rae, Jay, Ryan, and Daisy. Other people filtered in slowly -- very slowly. She wanted all of us there early so that we could do a read-through rehearsal before the audience showed up, something that should've taken maaaaybe an hour at most. The rehearsal took until 7:10. The performance started at 7:30.

I also didn't realize that our preparations and rehearsals would basically mean that we would be performing all of the plays twice, back to back, with a short window of time between when we finished rehearsing and when the audience showed up. I figured we'd give the copies to the readers, they'd look them over individually to decide what "voice" they/we wanted to use in the characters, and then the show would go on. Oh no. No no no, no. We went through each play from start to finish in the rehearsal, and then again in the actual performance.

It's hard to describe how draining this is. Yes, it was good to see the audience's reactions to everything, of course, and hear the laughter. Yes, I loved the plays our class produced; they were, as Rae said in her job as emcee, "all good in their own ways," or something akin to that. But that was a long night. We stuck around a bit after it was over, and then went home -- Daisy hadn't been feeling well for most of the performance, and everyone else was wanting to go out drinking afterwards (because that's what normal college students do these days, I suppose). Not only was I tired, but Daisy was as well, and all I wanted to do was go home, make a late dinner for us, and spend time with her. It's really all I wanted. I'd been on campus all five days last week, and was exhausted.

Saturday's happenings, as well as yesterday, will be written about in my next post.