This Girl Named Jill

Skip to about the middle to get to the good stuff. The first half is your faithful reporter (named Jill) wheedling the performance out of an otherwise occupied musician by bribing him with promises of Domino's Pizza. (It's black because I'm standing outside Jo's door and the lighting was bad. You can briefly see Grace standing at the top of the steps watching us.)

And FYI, the Roundabout Ramblers are performing at Babycakes this Wednesday! Everyone should go!

Infectious Hiccoughs

TA37 has emerged unscathed once again from the second major weather disaster to hit the Northeast this semester. We were snowed in for the campus Halloween party, which wasn't so bad (though it means I'll have to actually eat those radishes I bought for my Luna Lovegood costume). Instead, we had a toasty warm dinner of 김치찌개 (kimchi soup) while Grace battled her way through the storm to return to us from her long sojourn in the city. Chocolate chip cookies, hard cider, and Boys Over Flowers rounded off a great night! I put a pinch of cinnamon in the cookies--they were fabulous. Cinnamon makes everything better.

Speaking of BOF, lately there's been this great romantic tension between 'good girl' Ga Eul and 'playboy' Yi Jung. In the last episode, Ga Eul finally worked up the courage to "confess" her feelings for Yi Jung and ask him out on a real date (not a pretend date to make your friend and your friend's ex-girlfriend upset so they'd work together to spy on you and hopefully rekindle their romance but for the interruption of your friend's domineering mother--but I digress). Anyway, this was Yi Jung's response to Ga Eul:

I have three rules when it comes to women. One, I don't mess with good girls. Two, I don't mess with stupid girls. And three, I don't mess with girls who are friends of my friends. And you, Ga Eul, fulfill all three categories.

Man, who writes this stuff?? At least we only have 5 episodes left.

Today we made spaghetti spaghetti squash! Here's the recipe:

1. cut a spaghetti squash (yes, it's a thing) in half lengthwise, put it on a greased baking pan, and bake it for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees, or until it's soft and baked-looking.
2. While that's going, sautee some garlic and onions in olive oil. Make sure the onions are well-cooked so He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named doesn't put a curse on you or anything.
3. Make Grace boil some spaghetti.
4. Once the spaghetti squash is roasted, scoop out the insides (which look like spaghetti) and add them to the pan. Toss with salt, pepper, and fresh parsley.
   
5. Pour the pan's contents into a serving bowl and mix in Parmesan cheese. Serve the meal with that spaghetti Grace made and some more Parmesan cheese to taste.
6. Bonus Step: heat up some Ragu Alfredo sauce for the certain someone who rejects spaghetti squash outright on the basis of its perceived visual similarity to sauerkraut.
   

We had a lot of guests from around campus this weekend, which was great, but we're closing the doors now and going into decontamination lockdown, because it appears that an extremely infectious case of hiccoughs is running rampant throughout our TA. I was the first to fall--not even drinking water upside down, holding my breath, or looking at Jo's face could make them go away. Now Grace, too, has fallen. The other two are surely not long for involuntary diaphragm spasms.

ADDENDUM: I just want to note that certain parties have chastised me for my relatively high consumption rate of milk and soymilk. Therefore, I am now on milk half-rations. It's been a struggle. Thank goodness the cashiers at the Retreat and the Kiosk let you add milk to your tea and coffee for free...

Gone to the Dogs

We're babysitting dogs this weekend! Two Korean Jindo Dogs, or 진돗개. Their names are Animal and Sophie.





Now we're finally going to watch more Khot Boda Namja. I'll update y'all later on where the thrilling story has gone since we last watched!

He Wasn't All By Himself...

Jo, looking at a box of Totino's Pizza Rolls: Whoa, these things are like, super convenient.

You put six on a plate, and then microwave for 55 seconds. Then leave to cool for 2 minutes; this part, Jo wasn't such a huge fan of.

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Jill, after a guest leaves, to the rest of us sitting in the living room doing 'work', loosely defined: Good job pretending to be normal, guys!

Back from October Break

TA37 is together again this Sunday night after we parted ways for October break. Hopefully we'll actually watch more Boys over Flowers tonight (YiJung, why can't you see that GaEul's the girl for you?); the suspense is killing me!

The reason for the previous episodes of media censorship have been because one among us wishes to leave only the most pristine of virtual footsteps on the internet, for the sake of future employment. We will honor the wishes of our friend, and only leave you with this transcribed conversation:

Perez Jillton: "You know, real celebrities can't choose whether or not to be written about."
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named: "Yeah, well, I'm like Communist Russia; I AM the media."

Happy Birthday, Ming and Jeff!

Whoops. I meant 'congratulations.' In any case, TA37 had a LOVERLY time in Queens this weekend to witness Meff's entrance into holy matrimony.

The lovely bride.

So anyway, Jo, Grace and I got down to Queens Friday night, and stayed at Grace's church with a few other Vassar alumns. Some of us had a sweet jam session in the meeting hall while the rest of us (Grace) finished a paper.

Then it was Saturday morning, and wedding time! Most of the TA37 readers were at the wedding so I'll just take this opportunity to embarrass Grace. (This is for making me write this blog post, you procrastinator!!)

Cuuute.

Fantastic evening at a bar in Queens (even though it wasn't McKenna's, sadly enough). It was great to see everyone! And here's a picture of the best wedding cake EVER.

And the best part was, the cake was nowhere as sweet as Ming and Jeff <3 <3 <3

That really takes the cake!

Okay, I'm done! I'll leave on this note--the brilliant G-Tan suggested that TA37 do an Alumn Weekend! That way we'll be able to put a big old 'X' through every single face tacked onto our dartboard all at once...

Happy Birthday, Grace!

The last twenty-eight hours have been devoted to a celebration of our dear Gracie's birth, twenty-one years ago today! (Or yesterday, by the time this gets posted).

Monday night a few of us went to Main Street Pizza in Poughkeepsie and got to meet some folks from Poughkeepsie over a few fabulous pizza pies made by Dominic and Melinda! The whole thing was orchestrated by Tian An, Grace's bf (though if you didn't already know that you probably should't be reading this blog), based on the gospel of Luke, ch 14.

Tonight, Tuesday, we went to the Dubliner for "drinks with mates," as they say. What friendly people there! The owner gave Grace a free drink, and then the bartender gave us free Baileys' shots when we left! (Mmm, creamy...) Anyway, we'll be back there as often as our pitiful college finances allow.

We are SO CUTE.

Birthday girl holds court

And, while we were there (and after Stuart had had one or two 'Drunken Pumpkins' in him), this happened:

I KNOW, RIGHT?!?!?!! Well. If this is true, it's certainly something to look into...

Anyway, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRACE! (And happy birthday to Kristine, too!)

Two Recipes

You know, I could maintain a whole blog just on the food we eat at TA37. In particular, I would like to present the dinners we've had yesterday and today:

Saturday Night: Vaguely Irish-Inspired Potatoes and Other Foods
cooked by Jill

1. Potatoes: First skim through four or five online potato recipes. Decide that none of them got it quite right, turn off the computer, and make it up as you go along. Or, alternatively, follow my instructions for making what I made up as I went along: Cut up six or seven potatoes to the thickness of iPod Nanos and put them in a baking dish. Add a chopped onion and as much garlic as is legally permissible. Then top it with parmesan cheese and a few of those Half&Half coffee creamers you've had in the fridge since Freshman Orientation Week because you don't have any real milk in the fridge. Put it in the oven and bake for about half an hour. Give it one halfhearted stir about halfway through if you're feeling bored.

2. Cabbage: Cut up half a head of cabbage and boil it over the stove in an amount of water that I probably should have measured out before I poured, but didn't. Add sugar, a pinch of salt, and white vinegar. For an authentic TA37 experience, take the cabbage off about five minutes before it's done. Mmm, crunchy cabbage.

3. Corn: Husk the corn and boil it on the stove--but NOT the same pot as the cabbage. Otherwise the universe will explode, apparently. Whatever. Anyway, add pinches of sugar and salt. Again, for the authentic TA37 experience, take the corn out of the water before it's done. Oh, and it's best if the corn's been sitting in your fridge for a while before the dinner, too.

4. Chick'n Nuggets: Follow the instructions on the box. Mmm, fake chicken. Fricken.

Serve all this with a bottle of cabaret sauvignon. Only the classy stuff for TA37, of course. And may I say that this was darn good, if I do say so myself. Though you may want to use real milk instead of coffee creamers if you have it.

Sunday Night: Tennessee-Korean Fusion
cooked by Stuart (with assistance from Grace)

1. Fried tofu: slice the tofu into thin rectangles and fry on the stove. Serve with a sauce made of a mix of soy sauce, sesame oil, white vinegar, and sesame seeds.

2. Green Beans (pronounced with the accent on the second syllable): boil the beans in water with salt and pepper. Add some oil. Then, to make it authentically Southern, add more oil.

3. Buttermilk biscuits:Buy the Stop & Shop brand of biscuits. Pop the canister. Put them in the oven. For the authentic TA37 experience, take them out when the bottoms are burnt.

4. Gravy: make it from a package. Tell people it's made of bacon fat and flour stirred in a pot for twenty minutes. Based on how it tastes, this blogger suggests adding a surfeit of black pepper.

5. Rice: make rice.

For the Authentic TA37 Experience^©, eat with chopsticks and be confused about your cultural identity.