"distance has a way of making love understandable"

HPV CARWASHso i'm here at the cia, and it's like bizarroworld or something. well, at least yesterday was kind strange. or funny, or something. i took the plane to la guardia, then the bus to the train station, then the commuter train north to poughkeepsie, ny, then a cab to the cia in hyde park. big day of transportation. i met up with steph's roommate and went in the dorm while steph was still in class. hungry, i made my way over to the "pub" in the rec center about a half a mile away until my walk was cut short by ambulances, fire trucks, police cars and dozens of people standing around gawking. on the road through campus there is a very small man-made lake, which is much more like a pond, and the road runs right along it, separated from it by only a 2-ft. wooden guardrail and about a 30-ft. drop into the water. sometime around 4:30 pm a red camaro, driven by a drunk cia stduent and filled with three other drunk ones, swerved off the road, smashed through the wooden guardrail, plummetted into the water and submerged completely. nuts! i guess everyone here is just drunk all the time, ha. then, on my way back from the "pub" [which looks more like a pub from the set of the old degrassi junior high], there were some students having a car wash in a parking lot. they had a sign and had made t-shirts that read "HPV CAR WASH." alright. bizarroworld.

UMAMI, GOOD MOUTHFEELafter class she met me at a demonstration from a couple who had compiled a cookbook on umami, "the fifth taste." umami is considered to be a taste sensation quite like salt, sweet, sour and bitter and has something to do glutamates in food. some very umami foods are parmesan cheese, vine-ripened tomatoes, mushrooms, asparagus, asian fish sauce, soy sauce, ketchup. [note: i think umami explains why i want to eat thai food every day.] you can read more about it here ---> more on UMAMI. in the night, i taught steph how to crochet a bit, we saw a mouse, i slept in the bed, and she slept on the floor. i worried about the mouse nibbling on her face in the night, but luckily she awoke, face fully intact.

PICKLED EGGS AND DEVIL FISHthis morning she gave me a tour of the kitchens and storage room/refrigerators, which was totally cool because you could see all the way-fresh food that supplies the kitchen classrooms. i snuck a plate of food at lunch. i had the salad nicoise, and it was delicious. the tuna was seared on the outside and raw [yummy] on the inside. the egg was pickled, and the red onions were marinated. i ate the tuna in spite of my allergy or whatever to it, and i must admit i don't feel amazing now, even two hours later. i wish the allergy wasn't an allergy but more of a tolerance issue, but i'm quite sure that's not the case. meh. i can't imagine being able to eat gourmet meals [even way better than salad nicoise, of course] every day. i'm looking forward to dinner where there are even more options from multiple kitchens like middle eastern, asian, etc.