So I've noticed that, no matter how much time I'm given to complete a task, I generally end up working ten hours non-stop and late at night on the day before the deadline. Is it a persistent inability to estimate the amount of time required to complete something? Chronic procrastination which is overridden by panic only in the final forty-eight hours? Or the fact that no work is truly complete, and given more time I simply make more edits up to the final minutes? I suspect the answer is a combination of all three.
However, now the toughest 20,000 words I've ever had to put together, accompanied by some twenty images, have been submitted and are presumably in the process of being marked. Meanwhile, I'm left with the final hurdle of my final talk, which will be given in front of the entire department. I'm still putting it together, but I feel better about this one than my initial talk about six months ago. Back then, it was ridiculous how little I knew about my own project. Now, I know every weave of it. I feel ready to defend it against questioning. I want to defend it.
This is not to say that all my days so far have been occupied solely by work-related matters (although that has been my main preoccupation). I've also taken the time to watch The Dollars Trilogy - previously, I'd only seen The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which I now realise is a prequel to A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More (if Blondie's wardrobe is anything to go by). All three films are absolutely fantastic. They have a certain grittiness which seems to be lacking in modern films, even the "edgy" ones. Here, the violence isn't senseless; it seems completely natural, given the type of people and the harsh environments the film depicts. "Il Buono" himself is often self-serving and heartless, though to a lesser degree than the villains. Even Col. Douglas Mortimer, perhaps one of the most honorable main characters across all three films, illegally stops a train to get where he wants, nearly provokes a bar-fight in order to prove a point, and has no compunctions about gunning down men for money. But not all is grim, and the action is balanced with sprawling scenery, little instances of dry humour, and long scenes where almost nothing happens. It is like a reflection of life, really.
Also, now I want a green poncho so I can dramatically fling it over one shoulder.
I've also been shopping recently. While a poncho didn't feature among my purchases, I got both Hot Fuzz and 2001: A Space Odyssey on DVD, not to mention some really nice clothes. Also, the soles of my old shoes were starting to peel off, so I bought a lovely new pair from Skechers. While a little pricier than I'm used to, the shoes are ridiculously comfortable and I love them already. The box had an extra set of black shoelaces, so now the left shoe sports black laces while the right one has white. I wonder how long it will take for someone to notice.
The other thing I've been doing is baking. Recently we had a charity morning tea and I needed to bring something as a contribution, so I made cheese straws and caramelised onion dip. For the cheese straws I followed the recipe in the link fairly closely. I used Cracker Barrel's Extra-Sharp Vintage Cheddar cheese, and chili powder instead of cayenne pepper. I also didn't have any cookie sheets, so I lined my baking pan with aluminium foil. I twisted the sticks so they resembled drill-bits. This was a little tricky, because the dough had to be the right consistency. I think the best would be to take the dough out of the fridge and then leave it for about 15 minutes at room temperature before cutting and shaping the straws. I baked them for six minutes, then turned them over and baked them for a further seven minutes, which got them nice and golden-brown and baked through.
For the dip, I used half a cup sour cream and half a cup yogurt instead of a full cup of sour cream, mostly because I bought a house-brand sour cream which wasn't nearly sour enough. I didn't have balsamic vinegar on hand, so I used plain white vinegar. I have to say that while two large onions seems like an awful lot, both of them are necessary as the chopped onions shrink a fair amount during cooking. The caramelised onions were very good on their own, soft, dark golden-brown and very sweet. I can think of other uses for them apart from a dip component.
When serving them I placed a small Pyrex tub in the centre of a plate, and stacked up the cheese straws log-cabin style in a hexagon around the tub. It looked great, and people loved it. (One of my colleagues confessed to eating four of them.) I'll probably try making this again when I go home. Although someone else is going to grate all the cheese. Grating a 227 g block of vintage Cheddar - not fun!
You know, it occurs to be that within two months I'll be done with this Honours year and back home. My childhood will officially and truly be over. Seems funny, considering what I was blogging about precisely one year ago. That part of me hasn't changed, and I don't want it to. There's so much out there to experience, and I wouldn't want to miss out just because of some misguided idea of what adults are supposed to act like.
So anyway, that concludes the October update. Laters.
