Of lobster fishing and Italian desserts

Greetings from a new city, a new apartment, and a new cat. For those of you who don't know, I recently began a doctoral program in a new city. I've been here almost two months, although it has felt much longer than that. School has been going on for about a month, although it, too, has felt like it's been much longer. It's amazing how quickly one can forgot how to be a student. However a weekly average of 100-300 pages of reading has been a nice cold bucket of ice water to wake me up and remind me. Yesterday, one of my professors was talking about that show, "The Deadliest Catch," which is about one of America's most dangerous jobs (lobster fishing). "You should look at it sometime to make you appreciate the softness that is graduate school." I may have to take his advice.

As well as working on school-related assignments, I have also been making fairly good progress on my 2012 To Do List. I hosted a dinner party (Task 8) (although it was technically a pot luck) for my classmates around the first week of school. I've got to work on my hosting skills- I made them use coasters and placemats and freaked out any time something touched my newly refinished table. "Oh, please be careful. I just painted this table. It took a lot of work and if you mess it up, I will lose it." Okay, I wasn't that bad, but still...

I have now also made panna cotta (Task 21) and correctly and successfully poached an egg (Task 16). I'm kind of obsessed with poached eggs now. I grew up in a household in which our eggs were always cooked until they were good and dead, so the concept of eating eggs whose yolks aren't completely solid has been a novel and fascinating concept for me ever since sophomore year of college. Here I am, many years later, and I'm still mesmerized. Anyway, the panna cotta recipe called for whole milk AND heavy cream and made enough servings to feed the Avengers plus Superman and Batman, so I got tired of it pretty quickly. It's pretty much like vanilla milk Jell-o. Interpret that idea as you like.

Even though I don't have much free time (doctoral school is a full-time job plus homework), I have been trying to maintain the all elusive work-life balance. One of the ways I have been doing this is by taking a jazz dance class once a week (except when the exhaustion is too much). The class is at a really great studio that targets adults who dance, instead of the traditional preschool-high school studio that may occasionally have beginner adult ballet classes or something similar. At least one or two professional dance companies rehearse at this studio, so I can mark off Task 31 from the list (Take a dance class at a professional dance company's studio.).

Oh, and did I mention that I got a cat? Yeah, I did. She's an odd bird animal, and a klutzy one to boot, which, as you can probably imagine, is incredibly entertaining. She falls off of something pretty much on a daily basis. And she plays fetch. (No, you didn't read that wrong. My cat plays fetch.)

So, now for a confession. I have 5 articles that I need to read sitting next to me. Writing this long overdue post was a way to procrastinate. Wow, I feel so much better now that that's out in the open.