IN WHICH The Girl Needs a Man

You mean women can work, drive, and even open tough bottle caps??? Who knew? Apparently, not the 1950s. Not that this is surprising. It is, however, entertaining to see ads from the 50s and 60s.

So I was looking for a new paper topic for my class, one they might find semi-interesting - a treat for getting through my enforced discussion of free speech in response to terrorism. Granted, my idea of interesting is usually very different from a college student's. I was looking for an article about the abundance of phrases like "man up" or "be a man" in commercials. Oddly enough, I couldn't find a good news article about this topic. You'd think there would be tons. Get on that, The New York Times. In the search, I came across this article, "26 Sexist Ads of the 'Mad Men' Era That Companies Wish We'd Forget." I was tickled by all the ads. So we are going to write about whether gender stereotypes have actually evolved or not in the last fifty years. Yay! At least they might laugh at a few ads.

Now, I just need some ads from today that display current gender stereotypes for comparing and contrasting purposes. Don't worry; I have some ideas. I'm always up for suggestions though.

Coincidentally, while writing this post, I was watching the Parks and Recreation "Pie-Mary" episode, which just happened to revolve around gender stereotypes during elections. Hilarious! 

“Where are the Male Men? You’re ridiculous. And men’s rights is nothing.”

"There is no bigger defender of gender equality than Leslie Knope. And my husband Ben is a progressive champion of women’s rights." ---- "Babe, the oven’s ready. Chop, chop. Time to get baking. Daddy want pie!"

IN WHICH The Girl Eats Quinoa

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I plan to eat healthier this year. I started this quest by completing Buzzfeed's Clean Eating Challenge. One of my friends from the Hundred Acre Wood, my very own Piglet [now before you get mad, I say this because Piglet is Winnie-the-Pooh's best friend, not because of any other connotation of the word], took the challenge several months ago and liked many of the recipes. You can see her comments about it on Antediluvian Salami. I looked it over and despite being on a website mostly known for funny lists and pictures of cute pandas, the plan looked healthy and achievable.

Essentially, the program asks you to cut out processed foods, keeping the focus on fresh fruits and veggies, lean protein, and gluten-free/low-carb meals for two weeks. It seemed to be a good way to reintroduce nutrients to my system after the holidays but still eat actual food - no juice cleanse for me. Testifying that most of the food was actually edible, my friend decided to do the whole challenge over again with me. Yay for moral support!

Shaved Asparagus Salad with Shallots and Fried Eggs. Yummy but shaving asparagus is a pain in the butt.

So now it's two weeks later. Overall, the challenge went really well. The majority of the meals taste wonderful, and the salad dressings are out of this world for being so simple. I've seen others complain that it's not enough food, but I was never unusually hungry. I cooked a lot of foods I've never made myself: quinoa, fennel, shallots, spinach smoothies, lentils, overnight oats, cauliflower steaks, and chia seed pudding, among others. This was a great introduction to new recipes that I may not have tried on my own. Some I will probably avoid  - the lentils didn't excite me and I reaffirmed by hate for Greek yogurt. Nevertheless, I will incorporate several items into my weekly meal plan from here on out, particularly the quinoa, spinach smoothies, and chia seed pudding.

Spinach and Banana Smoothie. Seriously, I wake up craving this deliciousness.

Since I love bread, chips, and other forms of carby goodness, I thought the low-carb and gluten-free aspects of the diet would be the hardest. Actually, I never really found myself craving carbs. The only times I felt really tempted by them was when others would place cupcakes or pizza in front of me and say, "Here!" While I did cheat in a couple of those instances, I stayed fairly true to course and am reassured that I can cut out many carbs at home from now on.

Turkey-Basil Meatballs with Collard Greens. Looks weird but actually quite good and filling.

The lack of my regular beverages killed me, however. I think the hardest part of the whole challenge was cutting out soda, and I definitely cheated a few times here. I know it's horrible, but I love Diet Coke. I'm not a crazy caffeine addict, but once a day I crave a drink with actual flavor. And then there's the alcohol. While I'm home by myself, it's easy to avoid wine and beer, but almost all social events involve drinks. I wouldn't want to be seen as unsociable.

Roasted Chicken Breast with Roasted Fennel and Spinach. Roasted fennel is excellent.

Two non-taste related issues came up as well: time and money. While not difficult recipes, most of these took a lot of time to prepare. Lots of chopping, mixing, and waiting for things to roast. I often spent an hour or two a day preparing food, which is waaay too much for me. While I was lucky and started this while still on my winter break, prepping food for workdays usually meant spending thirty minutes or more the night before getting breakfast, lunch, and a snack ready to go. In addition, healthy food is ridiculously expensive. I knew about the high prices of produce previously - and have even had my students write about this before - but I have never bought produce in such bulk before. It adds up quickly. Plus, some of the "superfoods" cost a pretty penny. A bag of chia seeds is usually seven dollars or more. Granted, they should last me a little while. I will be looking for ways to cut down on both the prep time and the cost in the future.

Greek Salad with Lentils and Lime Vinaigrette. Work lunch.

One challenge down for the year! I found the experience both interesting and informative, and I will definitely try to keep the clean eating idea alive in my cooking for the rest of the year, within realistic limits. I've already got a bunch of bananas and spinach in the freezer waiting to be made into smoothies this week!

Roasted Eggplant with Chickpeas, Cauliflower, and Lemon-Parsley Yogurt.
Chickpeas are wonderful legumes but this meal took forever to cook.

IN WHICH The Girl Returns From the Dead

Happy New Year everyone! To celebrate, I'm returning after several months of absence. This bear needed to hibernate for a while - just slightly early in the year as I know winter is just now hitting full steam. Last semester was crazy busy and sadly left little time for any extracurricular activities. Luckily, my new year looks bright. This semester I will only be working at one college near my house with fairly normal working day hours! This is a first for me in four years of teaching. Yippee!! As a result, I will have a lot more time to grace you with my wondrous tidbits of information.

The new year tends to come with all sorts of resolutions. I usually avoid said resolutions because I never follow through with them - Winnie-the-Pooh never could keep his promise not to eat the honey. However, there are a few new things I'm excited to try as 2015 gets started.

First, I'm pumped to use the Fitbit I received for Christmas, so I'm attempting to be slightly more active (I know I know. So stereotypical. But also needed). Ideally, my new toy will inspire more walking each day, especially when I'm thinking that taking the train home from work would be easier than the mile walk. For example, right now I know walking to the grocery store would be a good way to add a lot of steps to the day (plus I need to buy some kale for some foods that terrify me: see next paragraph). However, it's also snowing pretty heavily. So not quite yet.

I'm also doing that other super stereotypical activity of trying to eat healthier. Therefore, I'm starting a two-week clean eating challenge today. My morning involved chia seeds, which is certainly a first. I have lots more to say on this topic, so I will save it for a different post.

Lastly, I'm doing one other challenge - the Goodreads kind. While I've certainly looked at reviews on the booklovers' website before, I've never made much use of my own profile on it. Each year I attempt to keep track of the books I read on paper on in Word, but it never really works. Turns out it's fairly simple to log your books into the Goodreads website and it will actually connect directly to your Amazon account if you use a Kindle. I set my challenge for the year at 50 books. I'm really not sure what the appropriate number of books for me is because as I've said, I usually lose track of my books somewhere in the middle of the year. It also depends on whether I'm going to count all the ridiculous young adult science fiction novels I read and the romances I go through fairly regularly, or if I will just count the "sophisticated" novels. Ah who cares. I might as well admit to being as ridiculous as I am. I highly doubt the two friends I have on Goodreads care.

So here's hoping I stick with a few of these non-resolutions. Good luck to everyone else out there challenging themselves this year. And if not, drink a glass of champagne for me (no alcohol for two weeks - what was I thinking??). Cheers!

IN WHICH The Girl Grades Papers

So I'm a horrible blogger. I haven't posted in a few weeks. It's definitely not for lack of topics to discuss, but just for lack of time.

I passed another teacher in the hall today, and when asked how he was doing, he replied,"It's that time." My sentiments exactly. It's that time of the semester. It's almost midterms, and the "new year" excitement is long gone. Now there are just tons of papers to grade. Just this week I have graded over 60 papers, received another 30 to grade, and look forward to getting 60 more next week. Oh the joys of teaching five courses of college composition. When I see other teachers run sheets through the scantron machine, I want to start crying and severally regret my decision to teach English of all subjects. Why couldn't I be interested in math??

At about this point in the semester, the number of student excuses increases significantly as well. I can't make class because my car broke down, my sixteenth grandparent died, my cousin is sick, my boyfriend was being stupid, etc. etc.. I can't turn in my homework because my printer is out of paper, I never bought a book, I forgot what the assignment was, I lost my flash drive, I was in jail etc. etc. I had a student, whom I hadn't seen in a several weeks, come in one day and in one breath explain that he had missed one day because his grandparent died, the next because of the funeral, the next because he hurt his foot, the last because he was sick, and then state he had to leave early for a job interview. Say what?

The last thing that occurs about this time is that students start to think they can get away with disobeying the rules more. It's been awhile since those initial syllabus threats, especially about cell phones. Those little buggers start popping up under desks, behind books, under notebooks, or even outrightly on top of desks or held in hands. I'm starting to think the devil invented cell phones, and I would gladly give mine up if it meant never seeing another one in class. One day I'm going to follow the example of the lady in this video. And then I will get sued. It may be worth it.

Anyways, I'm done with my teaching rant for the moment. Despite my complaints, I do generally enjoy my job. I'll be back as soon as possible with some actual posts. Look forward to observations on female television characters chopping off hair, Neil Gaiman's fantasy novels and movies, the new fall seasons of television, my first experiences with comic books, the outside world in dystopian novels, and vampires. Be excited.

IN WHICH The Girl Apologizes for Her Technological Ineptitude

Dear regular readers (i.e. the two of you),

Thanks for visiting! Anyways, I'm slowly learning how to use blogging (or just generally computer) technology. I recently realized that you can't actually see the videos in my posts when viewed from a phone, despite their appearance on a computer screen, so I have learned to embed rather than attach videos. Therefore, you can now go back and view the videos from earlier posts on a phone screen. Should you want to. Or not. I understand. Well, the option is now available. Yay!

To show you how much I'm improving, today's video will reward every grammar enthusiast: Weird Al's "Word Crimes"!

IN WHICH The Girl Discovers a Pot of Golden Lectures

And now a word from our sponsor... Kidding, but I am going to promote a website.

Several months ago, a friend introduced me to Open Culture, a collection of free course lectures online. It's wonderful. The site features hundreds of courses ranging from Hannibal to car design to game theory to the Lord of the Rings. At first I figured these would just be lectures by some randos who think they know everything about string theory, but they are all taped lectures by professors at legitimate universities, mainly elite universities like Yale, Princeton, and Berkeley. To top it off, this is the advantage of school without any homework or deadlines. You can randomly pick to watch one lecture on a topic you like - say The Birth of Jazz - or you can go through an entire course of lectures on Jazz and Culture at your own pace.

A few of us decided to start the course on Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. While we were originally going to read and watch the lectures on the same time schedule, that plan quickly disintegrated. Now, we are all just going at our own pace (I'm definitely the slacker of the group). This set up gives some structure to my reading, which other than book club choices tends to jump all over the place. It also has forced me to try some new books, like Hemingway's In Our Time, and re-read others, like Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. In addition, the lectures provide background and analysis by a Yale professor that I probably wouldn't search out on my own. So seriously, go check it out.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming...