My boss after observing me tucking my trouser legs into my socks:
Boss: Are you cycling home?
Me: No. [Making connection between trouser tucking and cycling] If I don’t tuck my trousers into my socks they’ll get dirty on my walk home.
Boss: And, presumably, you don’t mind people looking at you funny.
Me: I have no shame.
Filed under: everyday | Tags: editorial, fish and chips, gin and tonic, job
I haven’t updated in a while. Oops. I suppose my employment has got the best of me.
My original plan was to get a job but stay within the comforting umbrella of academia, attend medieval seminars in London and apply for PhD funding for the upcoming year.
But then I got a real editorial job for a real company in the real world working real hours.
And I haven’t really even thought about going back.
Part of me is completely unbothered by this, the part of me that knew if I finished with a PhD in medieval literature I would be at the whim of the university job market. The humanities university job market. The medieval humanities job market. What I’m saying is, it’s a tough market. And, when presented with the options of working and living in London as an editor at a good wage and moving to, oh I don’t know, Idaho for the one job I can manage to get as an untenured position as a lecturer of medieval literature, well, I know which option appeals more.
But there’s another part of me, perhaps the part that is overly proud that just really wants to continue and get a PhD in a subject that I’m passionate about. Or, really, it’s not even so much the pride as much as it is the fact that I genuinely enjoyed my research. I love researching.
But, yeah, I’m also really enjoying making money. LexisNexis has turned out to be an amazing company for which to work so far, and the people on the Halsbury’s Statutes and Statutory Instruments team are quite friendly. I mean for as friendly as you can get with your editorial colleagues; editorial work is a pretty solitary profession in the day-to-day sense.
So, on to the subject of this post: my amazing life.
I got home at 18.30 today, changed into my pyjamas, made fish and homemade chips for dinner, watched Project Runway and have just been lying around on the couch for the remainder of the evening. Now that it’s 23.30, I think it’s an acceptable time to consider going to sleep.
Except it’s a Friday night.
No, honestly, my life is amazing. I think I’m just still detoxing from the insane night that involved at least 15 gin-and-tonics at the Yelp birthday party.
I love gin and tonic. I’m proper British now.
Except I could really go for some guacamole right now.
I got a cheque in the mail from mom today along with a Christmas/anniversary card. It was written out to ‘Larissa Deere’.
I can’t cash it, because that’s not my legal name. (Not to mention the fact that it’s an American cheque, and I live in the UK.)
I thought maybe I could cash it if I brought it to the bank along with my marriage certificate.
But I can’t find that.
I’m awesome at being married.
Filed under: Uncategorized
OMFG, it’s completely disappeared. It’s gone. Like, completely. Nothing is left of it.
Documentary evidence to come in the morning. Unless it reappears overnight.
Filed under: everyday
When Red and I moved to Wandsworth, everything seemed normal. We would walk down Old York Road from the station and hang left to get to our flat. To the right, we would see some vaguely industrial things, but nothing that would blot out the landscape. Industry that just gave the area character, I suppose you could say.
This is the sort of character we’d see.
The industry in the area was so inconsequential that I didn’t even think about it, really.
Until one day I walked out of my flat and started walking down to the station and suddenly saw a GREAT BIG CIRCULAR RUSTY THING THAT WAS HUNDREDS OF FEET TALL!
WTF? Where did that come from? Has that been there all along? Am I imagining thing? Has the light changed and hit this monstrosity in such a way that I suddenly have noticed it where I hadn’t before? WHAT IS GOING ON?!?! Was there scaffolding around it when we moved in and I therefore just ignored it completely? THESE WERE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS!
After the initial shock, I got used to it. I mean, I thought I was going crazy, but I got used to that too. I sometimes thought the thing was changing heights. Yesterday, for example, as Red and I were walking to B&Q, we had a discussion about the fact that the big rusty circular thing looked shorter than ‘usual’.
But, this morning, everything went back to normal. The big huge circular rusty thing had disappeared.
I am not crazy. Vindication!
No, I’ve discovered that that circular looking thing in the picture above just changes height. By hundreds of feet. Bizarre.
Did I mention that I got a job?
Yeah, I’m going to be working as an editor for LexisNexis.
Fancy.
I don’t start until the 30th, though.
And before then, I’m off to the Christmas Markets in Berlin! Yipee!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: birthday, cupcakes, halloween, london buses, tfl, tube, where's waldo, where's wally, zombie
It was a dreary, dismal day in London on the 31st, but I had a suitably enjoyable day. It started off with me waking up at 7am after getting six hours of sleep, slightly hungover from the day before (despite only having, like, four drinks over the course of five hours. I blame drinking wine, champagne and rum all in one night). Then I transported 100 cupcakes on a bus that inched along at a snail’s pace through Wandsworth (where I live) and that, unbeknownst to me and the other passengers, was on a replacement route due to road construction and ended up dropping me off a mile and a half away from my intended destination, a destination that was only one mile away from my place of origin.
So I walked, carrying 100 cupcakes, for about 30 minutes to the Tube station in the drizzling rain. By the time I got to the Tube station, wet and angry, the next train was due to arrive in two minutes. Excellent luck! But then the train came trundling into the station, its driver hanging out the front window, saying that the train wasn’t in service. He may have given me the one-finger salute; although I admit that I may be remembering this inaccurately. The next train was in 15 minutes. Wonderful. Oh, how I love the District line in Putney.
I eventually got a train and made it to Earl’s Court station with my cupcakes, although I soon found that, despite my destination being Earl’s Court Exhibition Hall, I was really going to Earl’s Court Exhibition Hall II, which is just outside West Brompton Tube Station. Instead of getting back on the Tube, I walked with my 100 cupcakes nearly an entire stop to the other station.
Once inside the Exhibition Hall, cupcakes dispatched to the appropriate bodies, I had a wander around (there was a ‘Glam Show’ going on) and ended up buying a handbag. I like handbags.
I decided to forgo underground transportation completely and soon realised that a bus travelled directly between Earl’s Court and Wandsworth (where I live) and only had a journey time of 12 minutes. Time it took me to get to Earl’s Court from Wandsworth: 1 hour and 45 minutes. Time it took me to get from Earl’s Court to Wandsworth: 12 minutes. Did TFL (Transport for London) tell me on its online Journey Planner that there was a bus from Wandsworth to Earl’s Court in the first place? No. For that matter, did it warn me about road construction and buses and replacement routes? No.
In any event, I made it home in one piece, peered into the kitchen which was covered in a heavy dusting of icing sugar at this point, and decided I would take a bath. I took a long bath and decided to start over. After this, I had a leisurely afternoon and got ready to go to a Zombie Halloween party. Below is a picture from the party. Can you find me?
The grad fair at Kensington Olympia was an epic waste of time. All the recruiters were pushing their grad training schemes, which don’t have application closing dates until December 31st and don’t actually start until March ‘10. What use is that to me, a 26-year-old woman with a postgraduate degree and seven years of editorial experience?
Not useful. No use.
No one was actually interested in taking CVs from potential candidates, either.
On the bus home now. Dejected.
I didn’t leave the flat today until 5pm. The only reason I left the flat was to go to the supermarket to buy a swede. I have plans to make swede and potato mash for dinner tonight. That was the highlight of my day: thinking about what I was going to cook for dinner, being unable to think of anything but swedes since dinner last night, and changing out of my pyjamas only when I realised I had to actually go outside in order to obtain a swede.
Having returned from the supermarket, project buy-a-swede successfully accomplished, I have played with the rats for a whole 30 seconds until they buggered off on their own, hiding behind the couch to spite me, and now I am debating whether or not to get back into my pyjamas.
My life is amazing.
Filed under: recipes | Tags: bay leaves, brussel sprouts, cooking, marjoram, onion, potato, rutabaga, swede, vegan, vegetable stew
The weather lately has been turning colder. It seems as if it was just last week when I left the flat wearing sandals and short skirts. But at temperatures only creeping up to 16C yesterday, a hearty vegetable stew was on the cards for a lazy Sunday dinner. Passing by the vegetable area at Sainsbury’s, I espied one of my favourite things: swedes (or rutabagas to the Americans). When I first started cooking with swedes, I was really intimidated by them. I even went into the supermarket with a grocery list I had constructed while attempting to create a cookbook recipe that called for swedes, not even knowing what they were; and after wandering the produce aisles, I eventually asked an employee where I could find the swedes, pretending as if I just couldn’t, for the life of me, find them. I didn’t mention that I didn’t know what they looked like.
In any event, now I think they’re lovely. Sweet and starchy balls of root-vegetable goodness, swedes bring you all the gastronomic brilliance of sweet potato but with a firmer texture that holds up well under slow-cooking conditions. And they work marvellously in stews.
This stew is filled with hearty, stick-to-your-ribs ingredients. It has no pretences of being a ‘balanced’ meal, carbohydrate-heavy as it is. But I love it. Plus, the addition of brussel sprouts makes your mother happy. Except they also make me happy. I love brussel sprouts.
Ingredients
- 1 swede, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch chunks
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 10 brussel sprouts, halved
- 1 large potato (or two small potatoes), cut into 1/2-inch chunks
- 1 large carrot, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch chunks
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil
- 400mL water
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 1 tbsp marjoram
- 1 bay leaf
- salt and pepper to taste
- dash of tamari (or soy sauce)
All right, this recipe is super easy.
Step One Prepare all your vegetable ingredients (chopping). Heat the oil in a big pot, and throw in all your vegetables at once. Stir over medium heat for 3 minutes.
Step Two Add your water, tomato paste, marjoram and bay leaf; stir to combine. Raise the heat until you bring the mixture to a boil. Immediately lower your heat to the lowest setting and cover. Allow to simmer for at least 20 minutes, until all vegetables are tender (specifically the potato and swede pieces). But, better yet, transfer your pot to your smallest burner; turn the burner on to the lowest setting; and allow the pot to simmer while covered for as long as you can stand it (the smell will start to entice you and make you hungry).
Step Three Once you can’t stand it any longer, turn off the heat and allow the pot to sit for at least another 10 minutes. Butter some bread and ladle your stew into a bowl. Splash your stew with a few dashes of tamari. Eat stew with buttery bread.
(I have leftovers for lunch today. Writing about this stew has made me hungry well before lunchtime. Damnit.)
Yields 2 really big servings or 2 good-sized servings and 1lunch-sized serving.
