cream of chicken
I've been on a cream of chicken kick. I have been cooking everything with cream of chicken. It's not even because cream of chicken is very good. It seems to be more of a result of living an effectively single life, if only in theory and not in reality. Ok, it's not that bad -- those of you who knew me in graduate school saw how I lived, and my place is really impressive now compared to those days, even if my eating habits haven't followed suit.
"How can you eat that?" A said. "It's all one flavor." I can inexplicably, for long periods of time, tolerate the same flavor in my food if I have enough other activities in my life to enable me to forget that my food is all the same flavor. It's not like my men, in whom I require great variety. And if K even dares to come along and say "What do you mean, all your men are white," I'm going to respond "All your women are asian," and we'll leave it at that.
I think perhaps at times I am not food motivated. This is not to say I don't like to eat; in fact, the small amount of modeling I did confirmed that I really like to eat, especially after a three day fast so I could photograph well wearing a bikini in an office park.
I've trained a lot of animals (yes, this is related). Animals tend to be, overall, highly food motivated, just like many people I know. Food motivated animals are easy to train. As long as they know the reward involves something edible, they will go to the ends of the earth for you. The non-food motivated animals were something altogether different. I had this border collie mix I used to take care of, and food did not convince her. In fact, she often refused her regular dinner and sometimes didn't even show much enthusiasm for gravy coated dog snacks. Getting her to do what you wanted mostly involved delicate emotional coercion and canine brainwashing. If she thought for a second you didn't like her or something she did, she became irate and impossible. If you were too overbearing, she'd run and hide in her crate until you went away. While I'm not trying to say I am anything like this animal, I guess you can draw your own conclusions.
I used to cook all the time. In Pittsburgh I even baked a lot, which dabbles dangerously near a level of domesticity I don't even like to think about. I still don't wear an apron, but there were days last summer when I was unemployed and out of school that I baked so many pounds of brownies, cookies, and banana nut bread that I probably should have watched my step in that department.
The latest is that Superstar suggested we cook our own giant Thanksgiving dinner just for ourselves this November, right here in my under stocked kitchen, and my guess is he won't let me cook the whole thing with cream of chicken. Is it a disgrace to admit that you've never cooked an entire Thanksgiving meal yourself before? I've boiled corn. I've purchased apple pie. All signs point to me throwing down my polo mallet and hockey stick to frantically drive to my mother's house every weekend from now until November, trying to learn to cook a turkey with some respectability. I've also received some not so subtle hints about remedying my lack of a television "issue," and instructions on how not to cut my hair short, ever again, till an asteroid hits the earth bringing on the second ice age and the earth then crashes into the sun, neutralizing the whole problem. Now what's going on here? You'd think we were dating or something. Er, I think that's supposed to be a secret, so don't tell anyone you read it on this web page that apparently pops up on Google by searching for damn near anything.
"How can you eat that?" A said. "It's all one flavor." I can inexplicably, for long periods of time, tolerate the same flavor in my food if I have enough other activities in my life to enable me to forget that my food is all the same flavor. It's not like my men, in whom I require great variety. And if K even dares to come along and say "What do you mean, all your men are white," I'm going to respond "All your women are asian," and we'll leave it at that.
I think perhaps at times I am not food motivated. This is not to say I don't like to eat; in fact, the small amount of modeling I did confirmed that I really like to eat, especially after a three day fast so I could photograph well wearing a bikini in an office park.
I've trained a lot of animals (yes, this is related). Animals tend to be, overall, highly food motivated, just like many people I know. Food motivated animals are easy to train. As long as they know the reward involves something edible, they will go to the ends of the earth for you. The non-food motivated animals were something altogether different. I had this border collie mix I used to take care of, and food did not convince her. In fact, she often refused her regular dinner and sometimes didn't even show much enthusiasm for gravy coated dog snacks. Getting her to do what you wanted mostly involved delicate emotional coercion and canine brainwashing. If she thought for a second you didn't like her or something she did, she became irate and impossible. If you were too overbearing, she'd run and hide in her crate until you went away. While I'm not trying to say I am anything like this animal, I guess you can draw your own conclusions.
I used to cook all the time. In Pittsburgh I even baked a lot, which dabbles dangerously near a level of domesticity I don't even like to think about. I still don't wear an apron, but there were days last summer when I was unemployed and out of school that I baked so many pounds of brownies, cookies, and banana nut bread that I probably should have watched my step in that department.
The latest is that Superstar suggested we cook our own giant Thanksgiving dinner just for ourselves this November, right here in my under stocked kitchen, and my guess is he won't let me cook the whole thing with cream of chicken. Is it a disgrace to admit that you've never cooked an entire Thanksgiving meal yourself before? I've boiled corn. I've purchased apple pie. All signs point to me throwing down my polo mallet and hockey stick to frantically drive to my mother's house every weekend from now until November, trying to learn to cook a turkey with some respectability. I've also received some not so subtle hints about remedying my lack of a television "issue," and instructions on how not to cut my hair short, ever again, till an asteroid hits the earth bringing on the second ice age and the earth then crashes into the sun, neutralizing the whole problem. Now what's going on here? You'd think we were dating or something. Er, I think that's supposed to be a secret, so don't tell anyone you read it on this web page that apparently pops up on Google by searching for damn near anything.
sweet philosophy
I was eating a donut on the way to work this morning and it occurred to me I should probably write in my blog. I brought a dozen donuts to our staff meeting last Friday and even with fourteen people in the room, two donuts were left over, with some commentary about it not being "healthy." Good grief, what kind of hippy designers do I work with? Gone are the days when I worked in engineering, and the programmers would happily chow down whatever you brought them, the more sugar the better, and be grateful for it too.
Of course, as I was riding up in the elevator this morning to the tenth floor, two guys riding up to the twelfth floor started talking about the Linux boxes they were building and what flavors they should install. It was all I could do not to break out of the elevator on the fifth floor. I guess, in short, I'll take the hippy designers over the engineering geeks anyday.
In the spirit of randomness, and so as to make it really hard for myself to give this entry an appropriate title, I am back from U.S. Sporthorse Nationals last Saturday. This is only related to donuts in that I was eating a donut while thinking about how to approach this entry. I'm still waiting on the photos for the show, and those will probably be a long time in coming, so you'll have to be content with my detailed descriptions in conjunction with your own vivid imagination.
I'm not sure a horse show warrants a philosophical account, but the events of the weekend left me with a facial grimace that could only be described as "troubled." To give you some background, there was a break in my horse showing career for about a year and a half, when I went to graduate school and redirected my efforts towards user interfaces and love and trying to skate backwards. What I also subconsciously redirected was my competitive streak, that innate intensity to one-up everyone and everything in my path. Sometimes, in my mind, I make myself believe that I am tired of this, and that I want a break. I told Superstar on the phone last night that I didn't want to show horses anymore, that I didn't want to compete, that I just wanted to move away to the middle of bum-fart nowhere and sip piña coladas all day. "Oh, you'd still find something to compete with," he said. The rocks? The trees? I can spit farther than that there neighbor's pet llama... I guess I should probably stay within the confines of civilization.
All right, so what I say and do are often two different things. It's not an uncommon human foible. In fact, I used to show horses with a zeal that I know was not always in the best interest of my horse. And so the question arises...shouldn't we be doing this because we love horses and we love the sport, and not just because we love winning? I guess the argument is that winning is so much more than a ribbon or a trophy -- it's supposed to be the result of hard work rewarded, of hours spent in the saddle and sacrifices made to ensure that you and your horse are the best you can possibly be. Obviously, you want validation. It used to be that having a "good ride" at a show was validation enough. There were jumper rounds I had on my old horse that were just stunning, that I was enthralled with, and that didn't result in that blue ribbon I wanted. There were also classes I won where I felt I didn't have the best ride of my life, but of course, it was still nice to win. I guess, after reflecting on the past weekend's events, that the win vs. the quality of the ride is completely subjective and the conclusions drawn are based on the perceptions of the riders, owners, and trainers. These unfortunately don't usually coincide.
Riding is such a different sport from all other sports in that it involves an animal who shares none of the values we hold dear, including perseverance, determination, and winning. That is not to say that horses don't compete; everyone knows that when a group of horses are galloping abreast, they often battle it out for the front. But horses don't fight for first place in expectation of some great reward. They race because it's fun. Horses love all the things that feel good in life -- standing in the sun, eating, drinking, going for a run, sleeping on the grass. If horses were capable of choosing between the horse show and the pasture, they'd pick the pasture every time. I am far from condemning horse showing. I used to love horse showing, and to some extent, I still very much enjoy it. There is a synergy between my horse and I when we compete, a trust we've established that will convince him to do the things we do at home in an unfamiliar place, and to listen and believe in me no matter what I say. When we win, it's an amazing feeling, but just as amazing is the feeling I used to get at home when jumping him, or hunting with him, or even galloping to the top of Windy Hill and staring out over all of the valley, high above everything, and all by ourselves.
I loved that horse. During my last year of horse showing with him, however, we were on and off performance-wise. I know he sometimes suffered because of it, because I was unhappy with him, because he was sloppy over fences for various reasons. It was about this time two things happened. I had started to rethink my partnership with him, and then I received an offer letter from CMU that acted as catalyst. I had told my trainer that even if I didn't get into school, I was looking to get a new horse. In reality, a break is what actually crossed my mind. If I sold my horse and took a break, my attitude about horse showing would improve and ultimately, any horse I owned or showed in the future would benefit from my healthier state of mind. Graduate school sealed the deal, and Bandit traded hands in July of 2002. He's still with my trainer, and has a new owner, and his life is different and he's grown fat and shiny.
My break treated me just as well. While I'm hoping I'm not fat and shiny, I think I am whatever fat and shiny is in people terms, and I came back from school with a positive attitude about riding. In fact, I was itching to get back into it, since I hadn't ridden consistently in nearly a year and a half. When I was offered the opportunity to jump and show again, I didn't turn it down, and I found myself resucked into a competitive world of cash and trendy britches colors. I still wear my traditional colors when I show. Firstly, I'm too cheap to buy new clothes, and secondly, I think if you ride well on a good horse, you're going to beat the pants off anybody no matter the color of your hunt coat. The trouble is this mindset. I will admit I was noticeably more relaxed going into this show season than I have been in the past. I still had the competitive edge, still had the desire to win, but it wasn't this life or death situation anymore that would have me up at 4 a.m. schooling my horse the morning of the show. What I had forgotten is that nothing was different for the people who continued to show the year and a half I had been away. They didn't have a break, they didn't give their horses the break, and they were as intense as ever to win titles in the show ring.
This is an element of horse showing that, while not yet lost on me, has been so watered down since I left that I now have trouble understanding it. Last Saturday I saw what happens when it all comes to a head. When it isn't about the horse anymore, just winning, and beating others, and taking home prizes. While I did feel the horse's owner had every right to be angry, didn't I also have a right to be angry? Didn't I work just as hard to get this far, to try and win with this animal? But I wasn't angry. I was happy with my ride, and if anything, I can chalk up our little mishap in the arena with that horse's particular personality. Like people, they're all different, and like people, sometimes they just don't change.
One of the kids came up to me after the class as I was leaning on the fence and said sorry about the loss. I turned to her, perplexed. "I had a good ride," I said to the kid. "I rode the best that I could." We both turned and continued watching the horses work in the warm-up ring, with no further conversation between us. Everyone who rides knows what it means to "have a good ride." You really don't have to prove anything more to anyone.
This has taken me a long time to learn.
Of course, as I was riding up in the elevator this morning to the tenth floor, two guys riding up to the twelfth floor started talking about the Linux boxes they were building and what flavors they should install. It was all I could do not to break out of the elevator on the fifth floor. I guess, in short, I'll take the hippy designers over the engineering geeks anyday.
In the spirit of randomness, and so as to make it really hard for myself to give this entry an appropriate title, I am back from U.S. Sporthorse Nationals last Saturday. This is only related to donuts in that I was eating a donut while thinking about how to approach this entry. I'm still waiting on the photos for the show, and those will probably be a long time in coming, so you'll have to be content with my detailed descriptions in conjunction with your own vivid imagination.
I'm not sure a horse show warrants a philosophical account, but the events of the weekend left me with a facial grimace that could only be described as "troubled." To give you some background, there was a break in my horse showing career for about a year and a half, when I went to graduate school and redirected my efforts towards user interfaces and love and trying to skate backwards. What I also subconsciously redirected was my competitive streak, that innate intensity to one-up everyone and everything in my path. Sometimes, in my mind, I make myself believe that I am tired of this, and that I want a break. I told Superstar on the phone last night that I didn't want to show horses anymore, that I didn't want to compete, that I just wanted to move away to the middle of bum-fart nowhere and sip piña coladas all day. "Oh, you'd still find something to compete with," he said. The rocks? The trees? I can spit farther than that there neighbor's pet llama... I guess I should probably stay within the confines of civilization.
All right, so what I say and do are often two different things. It's not an uncommon human foible. In fact, I used to show horses with a zeal that I know was not always in the best interest of my horse. And so the question arises...shouldn't we be doing this because we love horses and we love the sport, and not just because we love winning? I guess the argument is that winning is so much more than a ribbon or a trophy -- it's supposed to be the result of hard work rewarded, of hours spent in the saddle and sacrifices made to ensure that you and your horse are the best you can possibly be. Obviously, you want validation. It used to be that having a "good ride" at a show was validation enough. There were jumper rounds I had on my old horse that were just stunning, that I was enthralled with, and that didn't result in that blue ribbon I wanted. There were also classes I won where I felt I didn't have the best ride of my life, but of course, it was still nice to win. I guess, after reflecting on the past weekend's events, that the win vs. the quality of the ride is completely subjective and the conclusions drawn are based on the perceptions of the riders, owners, and trainers. These unfortunately don't usually coincide.
Riding is such a different sport from all other sports in that it involves an animal who shares none of the values we hold dear, including perseverance, determination, and winning. That is not to say that horses don't compete; everyone knows that when a group of horses are galloping abreast, they often battle it out for the front. But horses don't fight for first place in expectation of some great reward. They race because it's fun. Horses love all the things that feel good in life -- standing in the sun, eating, drinking, going for a run, sleeping on the grass. If horses were capable of choosing between the horse show and the pasture, they'd pick the pasture every time. I am far from condemning horse showing. I used to love horse showing, and to some extent, I still very much enjoy it. There is a synergy between my horse and I when we compete, a trust we've established that will convince him to do the things we do at home in an unfamiliar place, and to listen and believe in me no matter what I say. When we win, it's an amazing feeling, but just as amazing is the feeling I used to get at home when jumping him, or hunting with him, or even galloping to the top of Windy Hill and staring out over all of the valley, high above everything, and all by ourselves.
I loved that horse. During my last year of horse showing with him, however, we were on and off performance-wise. I know he sometimes suffered because of it, because I was unhappy with him, because he was sloppy over fences for various reasons. It was about this time two things happened. I had started to rethink my partnership with him, and then I received an offer letter from CMU that acted as catalyst. I had told my trainer that even if I didn't get into school, I was looking to get a new horse. In reality, a break is what actually crossed my mind. If I sold my horse and took a break, my attitude about horse showing would improve and ultimately, any horse I owned or showed in the future would benefit from my healthier state of mind. Graduate school sealed the deal, and Bandit traded hands in July of 2002. He's still with my trainer, and has a new owner, and his life is different and he's grown fat and shiny.
My break treated me just as well. While I'm hoping I'm not fat and shiny, I think I am whatever fat and shiny is in people terms, and I came back from school with a positive attitude about riding. In fact, I was itching to get back into it, since I hadn't ridden consistently in nearly a year and a half. When I was offered the opportunity to jump and show again, I didn't turn it down, and I found myself resucked into a competitive world of cash and trendy britches colors. I still wear my traditional colors when I show. Firstly, I'm too cheap to buy new clothes, and secondly, I think if you ride well on a good horse, you're going to beat the pants off anybody no matter the color of your hunt coat. The trouble is this mindset. I will admit I was noticeably more relaxed going into this show season than I have been in the past. I still had the competitive edge, still had the desire to win, but it wasn't this life or death situation anymore that would have me up at 4 a.m. schooling my horse the morning of the show. What I had forgotten is that nothing was different for the people who continued to show the year and a half I had been away. They didn't have a break, they didn't give their horses the break, and they were as intense as ever to win titles in the show ring.
This is an element of horse showing that, while not yet lost on me, has been so watered down since I left that I now have trouble understanding it. Last Saturday I saw what happens when it all comes to a head. When it isn't about the horse anymore, just winning, and beating others, and taking home prizes. While I did feel the horse's owner had every right to be angry, didn't I also have a right to be angry? Didn't I work just as hard to get this far, to try and win with this animal? But I wasn't angry. I was happy with my ride, and if anything, I can chalk up our little mishap in the arena with that horse's particular personality. Like people, they're all different, and like people, sometimes they just don't change.
One of the kids came up to me after the class as I was leaning on the fence and said sorry about the loss. I turned to her, perplexed. "I had a good ride," I said to the kid. "I rode the best that I could." We both turned and continued watching the horses work in the warm-up ring, with no further conversation between us. Everyone who rides knows what it means to "have a good ride." You really don't have to prove anything more to anyone.
This has taken me a long time to learn.
new pics
The Montreal photos are up. And someday I'll even write the entry.
fall cleaning
I had to move some stuff around on the site, but it's all still there. The modeling pages now have their own subdomain: modeling.superlativelove.com. This goes to the same page as before, but I had to remove the links from the navigation. My portfolio is finally updated.
wish you were here
I dig my toes into the sand
The ocean looks like
A thousand diamonds
Strewn across a blue blanket
I lean against the wind
Pretend that I am weightless
And in this moment
I am happy, happy
I wish you were here
- Incubus, Wish You Were Here
The ocean looks like
A thousand diamonds
Strewn across a blue blanket
I lean against the wind
Pretend that I am weightless
And in this moment
I am happy, happy
I wish you were here
- Incubus, Wish You Were Here
