New Year, new me?

I'm usually not one for new year's resolutions, and I'm not sure if my determination to get back to being in my whole body and not just my head qualifies, but there you go. 2008 was a tumultuous year, full of extreme highs and lows. I'm ready to take care of myself more in 2009.

Which is why, in part, I started with the soup. (It was a hit, by the way). And why yesterday, instead of punishing myself for not getting through my "to-do" list, I still went for a quick hike in Sabino Canyon with La Essin.

Sabino Canyon is one of those lovely, very popular hiking areas in The Coronado National Forest (for those of you who think "forest" and "desert" are mutually exclusive, think again--but embrace the fact that this particular forest is full of scrubby trees and saguaro at its lower elevations). About five years ago, many of the trails at Sabino Canyon were destroyed by flash flooding, but the folks around here did a lot of fundraising, and now all of the areas are once again open.

Sabino Canyon is a busy place--perhaps busier than places I normally like to hike. Yet it was a gorgeous sunny Saturday afternoon in January, so you put up with a few extra people to feel the sun on your face (and to wear shorts comfortably!). I took a few pictures, but it's hard to capture the ragged expanse of things in the desert.

Despite getting more winded than I wanted (I'd love to blame it on the cold from which I'm still recovering, but really, I've been that much in my head over the past year that my cardio is pretty shot), it felt so GOOD to be out and enjoying the weather. I am determined to do that more.

These posts won't be in order...

Lots of catching up, or starting over with 2009.

But first:

It's not really a new year's resolution, but my crazy colleagues and I are determined to move beyond survival mode after our first semester together this fall, and try to thrive. One of the key issues for all of us (whether it be emotional, psychological, financial, etc), is FOOD. All three of us are single women living alone, and not long ago were bemoaning the issue of fresh veggies going bad before we can eat them solo.

So: this spring, we'll be cooking for each other. The idea is that one of us will cook a big meal a week, and the fourth week of the month we'll try out a new restaurant here in town--treat ourselves, after being economical for the month. We haven't really set a "start" date, but I'm expecting them for dinner tonight.

So I've made soup--or rather, potato/corn chowder.

It's a recipe I've adapted mightily, having had initial success with it after one of my "chill and grills" while living with J & K in Maryland. We had a TON of leftover grilled corn, and I didn't want it to go to waste, SO...

When I can, I make sure the corn and peppers are grilled or roasted, to give a fuller flavor to the soup. Unlike most versions of this chowder, mine's all-veggie--I have too many vegetarian friends, and really, I'm not a big fan of bacon-flavored veggies, anyway. So, here's the version of the soup I made tonight:

Roasted Corn Chowder

About 3-4 cups roasted corn (Trader Joe's has an excellent frozen roasted corn)
About 1/3 cup chopped celery
2 or 3 cloves are garlic, sliced
one red bell pepper
two small sweet orange peppers (these came from the UofA's hydroponic greenhouse--my stepdad hooks me up)
some olive oil
red, white and blue baby potatoes (I like the color variety, and with the baby ones you can leave the skin on and just wash them well)--cubed (I used two of each color)
1 can veggie broth
About 2 cups veggie bouillon
A little over a cup of milk
A tablespoon of flour
some salt
some pepper

Okay, so here's what I do with all that:
First, I cut the peppers in strips, toss them with a little olive oil, and throw them in the oven at about 400 degrees to soften them and give them a little extra flavor. I suppose you could do the same in the soup pot...but I didn't.

I did soften the garlic and celery in a little olive oil in the soup pan...I think doing them all together may cause a little more liquid to be produced than you want at that point.

Anyway, once the celery started getting translucent, I added the peppers (which by them I had removed from the oven, cooled a bit, and diced). Then I added the potatoes, and the broth and bouillon, brought it to a boil, and then simmered it for about ten minutes (while I made some guacamole). Then I added the corn, and let it simmer for another ten minutes or so.

Then I took the flour, milk, salt and pepper and combined it, and then added it to the soup to thicken it--stirred it for about a minute, went and checked my email, came back, and decided since I'd used 1 percent milk, it didn't "look" creamy-colored enough. So I added a splash of heavy cream I had to make some cheesecake later on.

That's it!

The girls should be here shortly, so we'll have the taste-test then. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Wow.

It's been a long time since August 27th, when last I posted.

Much has transpired. Much of that is stressful, and I prefer not to rehash it.

But speaking from the other side of those particular tranches I've traversed, things are looking better now.

I've finished that major writing project, I've begun to get a handle on the additional duties required of me at work....I've got one more major push this weekend in terms of immediate deadlines, and then I can concentrate on planning for an event in January that does need immediate attention, but is in January.

I've been "interim" division head of my program this fall, which has been a wealth of additional duties and stress, and has meant I've barely been able to get things done on time (and frankly, some of them haven't been on time, which adds to the stress). My mentor and supervisor has been on emergency leave this semester--but is in town this weekend for our director's retirement party and to have a gabillion meetings, since he will be taking over as "interim" director. I think both of us are realizing that there may well be nothing "interim" about either position, since hiring freezes are now in place so we can't search for a new director at the moment. But having a chance to meet with him, to go through what we've been able to accomplish so far, was really excellent. That meeting we had with him yesterday was the first time I really felt like things are going to be okay. Now, they may not be pretty, and we still don't know what things are going to look like once the budget cuts come down (or keep coming down), but I have less of a sense of doom.

That's really important right now. Because frankly, it's hard to teach when you feel like the rug could be pulled out from under you at any moment by people who fundamentally don't understand what you do.

That still may happen, but now I don't feel like it's going to break my neck.

However, there's still quite a bit to be done this weekend, so I'd best get to the doing of it.

But I just wanted you all to know I'm alive.

Sorry.

There will be no posts for a while...the universe has other plans for me.

Here comes the sun...

I've always been an early riser. It's hard for me to recall a time when I've ever consistently "slept in". Okay, maybe the summer I was ten, but my room that summer was under the eaves of an old camp, and I could spend hours watching the shadows of the leaves cavort on the ceiling.

But naturally, I'm an early riser. Makes me a bit of an odd duck in theatrical circles, but....it is helpful to already be awake when someone from the East Coast forgets that there's three hours time difference until about the third ring....

I like getting up early because, in part, the world has a different kind of quiet in the early hours of the day. And my mind is at its most clear and functional, which also helps. Angled sun begins to stream through my skylights, the sound of coffee gurgling through, normal quiet house sounds. Nobody's rushing around yet. It's good. It's peaceful. And peaceful is what I need in my life right now.

This fall seems to be predisposed toward tumult. And to a certain degree, I have to embrace that. It's kind of like having to let yourself be carried by the rip tide, until your thrown free of it.

It's daunting, but I'll survive. I'll survive, in part, because of the quiet I find in the early morning sun.

good for the soul, good for the soles.

I just went for an hour long walk in and around my 'hood...it was indeed good for my soul. Walking some of the stress out. Having some solitude. Composing some of the various emails that must must must be sent this weekend.

So I'm sitting here cooling down (yes, at 7 am this morning it was already 78 degrees--welcome to my world) and figuring out what I can get off my plate today before I have a little outing adventure tonight. My dear friend (the person who really runs the School of Theatre Arts here!) has invited me to come up to her house and finish my syllabus poolside, and I think I might just take her up on that. I think the pieces of the class are beginning to come together--I've just been struggling with exactly what my pedagogical goals are for the class. I have some pretty concrete practical goals, which I'm excited about--but laying down the theoretical framework has been complicated by the fact that the materials out there on the topic are not...well, to be honest...useful...for those that are DOING the work in a real-time, real-life way.

On the up-side, if I attend to the work of the semester appropriately, I'll have at the very least an interesting pedagogical article out of it. At most: I could have the beginnings of a book outline.

Hmm. The thought of that both excites me and exhausts me. So I think I'll read yesterday's mail and throw myself in the shower.

O. M. G.

Classes haven't even started yet. And I am EX-HAUST-ED.

If I escape this semester without being meetinged to death, it will be an act of a higher power. It looks like I'll be spending roughly six hours a week in the classroom, and 30 hours a week in meetings. And I'll be in rehearsals from now until November 29th. And somewhere in there I have to prep for classes--oh, and defend. Let's not forget that. And let's not forget the yeoman's work necessary for that prep.

I nearly burst into tears at a meeting today--one that I had scheduled as "Interim Division Head" of my area....there's just way too much on my plate. But my new colleague was awesome, and immediately offered to take some of the load. She totally, completely rocks.

I don't think it would have been nearly so overwhelming if I hadn't been CORNERED in the restroom after a college-wide meeting by a development person who wanted me to speak to the Dean's Advisory Committee--in October. For the record: October is going to be HARD. Super Super Hard. I tried to get her to wait until the spring, but there was no way.

Now, I've always been pretty attached to a more pagan sense of the calendar...October has always been a kind of "completion" month for me, with November marking the transition into something new. But this year seems to be marking that even more so.

And really, I'm too tired and too wrought at the moment to go into it further. Perhaps a good night's sleep, and the miraculous appearance of that last syllabus, will cure what ails me.