Pumpkin penne: A firm yes vote.

To Pumpkin Pasta, I say yes.


Creamy Pumpkin Pasta
2 garlic cloves
2 tbsp olive oil

1 pound package of Sweet Italian Turkey Sausage (removed from its casing)
2/3 cup to 2 cups pumpkin puree (depending on your personal taste)

1 can chicken broth
¼ cup half & half
½ cup sour cream (low-fat or fat free)

¼ tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp white pepper

1 tsp sage
2 tbsp fresh parsley, minced
¼ cup Romano Cheese, shredded
1 pound penne or rotini pasta

In a large skillet sauté the garlic in the olive oil on medium heat. Add the turkey sausage and cook until no longer pink, breaking the meat up with your spoon as you cook it. Remove turkey sausage and garlic from the skillet.

Pour the chicken broth into the skillet and deglaze the pan using a wire whisk, to bring up all of the flavors stuck to the pan. Whisk in the half and half, sour cream, pumpkin, and seasonings. Simmer for ten minutes.

Meanwhile, boil the pasta in salted water until al dente. Drain pasta and stir into the pumpkin mixture along with the turkey sausage, simmering for another three minutes or until the sauce thickens and hugs the pasta.

Stir in parsley and garnish with Romano and more parsley.





Note:  If the sauce is too thick, thin it with a little addition of chicken broth until you get it to the right consistency.

Who else rocked it?  Modite.

Name your price: how much is too much to pay for a baccalaureate?

 

Put your money where your mouth is by Bex Finch.

How much is too much to pay for a year of college?

When I first applied to college as a meddling senior in high school circa 2001, there were roughly four prices:

$36,000+: Private schools.
$20,000+: Public universities (at out-of-state tuition cost)
$12,000+: Public universities (in-state tuition cost)
$cheap: Community colleges

The New York Times reports that 58 private colleges charged more than $50,000 this year for tuition, fees, room and board, compared with only five last year [Source].

Granted, elite institutions also tend to offer some of the most comprehensive financial aid packages due to their wealthy (and generous) alumni and internal financing diversification. However, even the best financial aid offerings often don't approach the $50,000 mark in grants or scholarships.  The difference is generally always made up in loans.

How long can these costs continue to rise?

(And is it total poppycock to imagine a world where private colleges charge $75,000 a year?  $100,000 per year?)

The bloated price tag gives way to bloated expectations from students and their financial backers (often times including their families, scholarship foundations, student loan lenders, and communities at large).

Although an over-simplification, classic supply and demand theory suggests that so long as students continue to pay exorbitant amounts of money for the privilege of attending these schools, the institutions will continue to raise tuition. 

And provided the high hopes and expectations of their student body-- these schools are, in some ways, bound to continually provide outstanding service, resources, and access.

Question:  in an increasingly global higher education market, where are the limits?

A changing landscape: the 24-hour university?

 (T-shirt design, above, available at Threadless.)

Would you sign up for English Composition 200 held Wednesday nights from 10:00pm-11:45pm?

How about Psychology 101, beginning at midnight and stretching until 2:00am? 

Access for students in higher education has been extended in very real ways: community colleges around the country are offering courses that start as late as midnight, and end as late as 2am.

No surprise here: Community colleges around the country are experiencing booms in enrollment during these tough economic times, according to a recent article in the New York Times.  An emerging coping method with these bloated enrollment figures is to offer courses outside standard times, including both late-night and early morning courses (some beginning around 6am!)

What do these late-night courses present as considerations for our higher educational climate?

• They provide access to courses for students who work atypical hours, live alternative lifestyles, or plainly prefer nighttime hours,
  
  
• They accommodate instructors who fall in the same categories,
  
  
• They make a call for late-hour student services (tutoring services, parking monitors, safety officers, academic advisors, finance advisors, veterans' services, resource centers, libraries, etc.) on campuses,
  
  
• They make a case for additional support around key student health issues (like over-taxing it, developing harmful drug dependencies, or getting inadequate sleep),
  
  
• A furthering of our climate of open access and convenience,
  
  
• Additional commodification of formal education.
  

The question that invariably comes up is, when, if ever, do we learn best? And, do we all learn around the same times? There's something to be said for circadian rhythms, and wakefulness, but I'm no neuroscientist and I'm not going to delve into that debate just yet.

One thing I do know, however, is that adult students (and arguably all learners) learn best when their stress levels are low.

I hypothesize: for students who experience above average stress in a later night course (for whatever reason), a late-night course offering can be detrimental to overall learning regardless of perceived convenience.

However, for students who actually experience lower levels of stress in a later night course, these midnight showings may very well be an optimal choice.

Take stock of what's in front of you, said she.

Things I've done so far this week:

• Gone to bed early  (It's only Tuesday! Yesss)
  
• Visited the Portland Art Museum (and caught a little one-on-one action with the visiting Raphael)
• Finished two mixed CDs for my best friend ("So Far Gone"-- an ode to moving, and "Take On The World")
• Woke up early and cooked myself breakfast
• Ran a 5k race
• Ate two different kinds of lasagna (at a friend's dinner party)
• Watched the first two episodes of True Blood on DVD
• Survived a torrential downpour on the way into work
• Mailed a bill

Because Teddy R says go for it!

Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.   --Theodore Roosevelt.

How I cope with the changing of seasons

It is Autumn in Portland and this week I'm dealing with it by rocking bright red sneakers for my commute.  Unashamed.

On the value of dancing solo

Sometimes you just gotta dance it out all by your lonesome.

Because being that guy feels so good.

A quote that struck me today

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.
- John le Carre, "The Chancellor Who Agreed To Play Spy", The New York Times, May 8, 1974

On the value of going for it

Sometimes, we just gotta pick somewhere to start and go for it.

My grandfather captures this with CAVU: Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited (this from the man who built his own airplane in his late 60s and then flew it).

It means, between the lines, go the fuck for it.

Zombies > Vampires

 

Screencap, Shaun of the Dead.

Three Zombie Movies I can watch over and over again:
1. 28 Days Later (2002)

2. Dawn of the Dead (2004)

3. Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Shaun: [to a girl in the garden] Excuse me?
[no response]
Shaun: Excuse me?
[no response]
Shaun: Hellew?
[no response]
Ed: [picks up a pebble and throws it off her back] Oi!
[girl turns round, a zombie]
Shaun: Oh, my God! She's so drunk!

5 great television couples, ordered

1. Lily and Marshall (How I Met Your Mother).
2. Paul and Jamie (Mad About You).
3. Josh and Donna (The West Wing).
4. Cliff and Claire Huxtable (The Cosby Show).
5. Xander and Anya (Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

Honorable Mentions:
1. Dan and Roseanne Conner (Roseanne).
2. Bette and Tina (The L Word).

Lessons learned in college: Water is gospel.

What did you really learn in college?

Lesson #1:

Water is gospel.

It's simple, and it's like this: when in doubt, drink water. Think about it: Infection? Flu? Too drunk? Caught between realities? Can't sleep? Want better skin? Dealing with a break-up? Tired from a work out? Broke? Rolling on E or dancing all night? Playing in the sun all day?

Water: it's always there for you and it's always a good idea.

Hangin' out nakie

Things that made me happy today:
-Waking up at 8am and reading a magazine in bed... for an hour.

-Going on a run in the mid-morning

-Picking up coffee from the shop across the street before heading home post-run

-Finishing a shit ton of projects and chores in the span of a few hours

-Trying a new place for lunch with a friend

-Realizing that not only is it a paid holiday.. but I only have a 4-day week!!

-Saving $27.27 on my grocery bill

-Text messages from a friend

-Hanging out nakie in my clean apartment

On gratitude and laughter

I laughed so hard last night that tears came to my eyes and I wept.

I doubled over, fell out of my chair and snorted, gasped, choked, coughed, hacked, laughed and guffawed with abandon.

It occurred to me afterwards how rare this experience can be-- and the fact that when something is really, truly funny we are, simply, overtaken by the moment.

Favorite movies directed by Quentin Tarantino

From favorite to least favorite:

• Pulp Fiction
• Kill Bill vol. 1
• Reservoir Dogs*
• Inglourious Basterds
• Sin City
• Deathproof
• Kill Bill vol. 2
• Jackie Brown

Not rated (because I haven't seen it):
My Best Friend's Birthday

*I definitely need to see this again.

On Kelly Ripa

Kelly Ripa makes me seethe with anger. There's something about her that's so easy to hate: her bleached teeth, her perfect blonde hair, her flirtatious, modern-women-can-do-it-all! cheeriness. I found her an annoying blip in the beginning, and then came that lame television show, and that Kenmore commercial where she runs around and finds time to do-it-all and collapse, exhausted and happy in the middle of her white bread myth.


It was the commercial that really did me in – Kelly Ripa, you're cute, but cut the shit.

My favorite things about fall

-Sweaters
-The smell of seasons changing
-Back to school season
-Hearty dinners with lots of side dishes
-Sleeping in on rainy days
-Wearing slippers in the house
-Raindrops on windows from sideways rain
-Pumpkin patches
-The holiday season on the horizon

Titles of Mixed CDs I've finished

• It's Raining and I'm Feeling Kinda Gay – self explanatory.
• Sounds of SE, Vol 1. -- a tribute to livin' in Southeast Portland, Oregon in Spring.
• Summer Bromance – dedicated to my friend DJ Adam, originally gifted for his birthday on July 4th.
• Take On The World – a highly percussive mix that jacks you up.
• Drug Mix – not for the faint of heart, intended for trippers and rollers
• Say Hello To Good Times – soundtrack for drives to the pool with a slurpee in hand on hot, hot days.
• Bathtime with Baby – an eclectic mix of singable musts for bathing your favorite newborn.
• When I Get Home – for that last 40 minutes of a road trip, as you're nearing the place you're going.

Why I love Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, in short

Tom Petty's music is my perfect version of Americana. It's just plain, honest, casual, no-bullshit music that makes me want to slap my thighs in rhythm and croon along in over-sized sunglasses while driving into blinding sunlight in a bigass American car.

Change is constant and good, but not constantly good.

It is so hard to be confident in this world, where most of us are struggling to be who we are. Generally, by the time I gain confidence in a certain thing, it has invariably changed. By the time I am fully confident in myself, I'm a different me. Fuck. Right?

On sex and sexual attraction

My attractions oscillate between genders and sexes. Although I'm tempted over and over again to make a decision and be straight or gay, I think I'm approaching a place where the temptation may be less and less visible to me.

Falling in between the extremes of gay and straight is a niche that I've found suits me. A loved one recently expressed his struggle to identify with this position emotionally (intellectually, he's a smart cookie, and gets it). I laughed and shrugged--- I don't think you can identify emotionally with me in this way unless you share in it. Sorry!

He went on to say that if his future mate had this same fluid sense of sexual orientation, he might find it very hard to find peace with. I concede his point but offered, “The person I'm going to be with will be fine with it.” Or, they won't be, but that ain't my issue!

I told him: to say I'm lesbian is as much of a lie as to say I'm straight. I'm just not. And I won't chose or make any declarations until I'm sure-- to do so would put me right back in a closet out of which I already came.

So to the whomevers of my future: I'm glad you're cool with me being me.

Thanks for letting me fly my freak flag.

And no, I don't miss wo/men.
Yes, you're exactly enough.

I miss the 90s but never want to go back

I just finished watching My So-Called Life on DVD. It made me:

-desperately want to wear hipster flannel

-remember the first time I heard Jane's Addiction

-want to watch Hackers and Foxfire

-miss, temporarily, adolescence