The Fig and Flower

can't wait

In exactly three days, I'll be on sitting next to Kevin on a plane, about to pass over the Atlantic Ocean. Destination: LONDON!

September 2011: Me and my parents at a church bombed in The Blitz, now an urban garden.

I'm getting really excited about this trip, although I haven't been able to fully wrap my head around it quite yet with what feels like an endless to-do list between this trip and my impending move in exactly seven weeks. In between finishing up things at work for two weeks, getting ready to go abroad this weekend, and catching up with friends (Katie & Rebecca, Alexis, Sandy, my sister and Claire), I've been doing things like: getting up-to-date with all the vaccines, titers and TB tests required by the UW School of Public Health, sending final transcripts to Nutritional Sciences, preparing to register for classes while I'm in England, buying much-needed clothes, researching moving companies, and dashing home on my lunch break to get in-home estimates. I just signed a contract with North American Van Lines and finalized important dates (my last day of work is July 26, my stuff gets picked up on July 31, and I drive away from Southern California for good on August 1). There's a lot to do now to make up ahead of time for the two weeks I'm taking out of my normal life to go do something fun. Because when I get back, it's going to be mere days from July 1st! And my July is crazy!

I only have a few more things to do before Saturday - pick up snacks at Trader Joes for the flight, let my bank know I'll be overseas for 11 days, scan passports and credit cards and encrypt the file for Dropbox (oh wait, that's Kevin's to-do list). And grab some good books from the library to get me through 24 hours of flying and airports, plus several hours on trains. Have you read anything good lately (that's not brand new)? I'd love suggestions!

Once we're finally there our accommodations are pretty darn sweet: my parents' studio apartment in central London (which they bought thirty years ago when they were first married and have rented out ever since), so we'll have amenities like laundry and a kitchen, and the plan is to save money by eating in most of the time. With a couple guidebooks in hand, we're going to take each day as it comes. No rush, no fuss. While we'll definitely see some of the sights, I'm envisioning at least a day or two spent wandering around on foot, having a picnic lunch in a park.

And we do have a couple definitive plans: going to the closing show of The Taming of the Shrew performed by an all-female cast at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (on Friday at midnight), having dinner with my Scripps friend Catherine and her Italian mathematician boyfriend, and spending two days in the countryside near Bristol to see my mom's side of the family and visit Bath, a once-ancient Roman spa, now modern town.

It's going to be lovely being somewhere entirely different and exciting, with so much to explore and enjoy. This is my first-ever trip to England without my family, which will be a new experience. And after a crazy year-and-a-half, I'm very much looking forward to two weeks of uninterrupted time with my boyfriend. I think we'll have a ball!

the end of pre-reqs

It happened rather anti-climactically after over 18 months of non-stop coursework. I'm done!

Last weekend I submitted my final quiz and clinic question for my UCLA Extension online Physiology course. It was posted a few days early, so although the class officially ends tomorrow night, I grabbed the opportunity to be done with everything.

This was by far my easiest class (even if I hadn't taken Physiology before it still would be easy) so finishing the class by itself didn't feel like an accomplishment. But finishing it means I am DONE with all my grad school prerequisites, and that's a huge accomplishment! From enrolling in General Chemistry in September 2011, when I was still just pondering the idea of a Masters in Nutrition, to going through Microbiology, Organic Chemistry, Anatomy & Physiology, Molecular Gastronomy, Biochemistry, the GRE (which I considered a class), Human Nutrition and then finishing this second quarter of Physiology ... it's been a challenging but satisfying journey. Now I'm very excited to spend three months with no homework, reading, studying or exams to worry about, before I start my next adventure. Time for summer break!

ode to the bay area

So I've been writing for the last few weeks about looking forward to my trip to Ann Arbor, Michigan this past weekend. Unfortunately, my dear friend Claire, whom I was to visit, fell ill the day before my flight so we decided last-minute to postpone our rendezvous. While I was so sad not to be able to see Claire, very luckily my flight was on Southwest so I got a credit for the cost of the flight, and all other reservations for parking, shuttle, etc were completely refundable. But with a bag packed, a house clean and a mind that wanted to go on a vacation, I had to figure out something! So I pulled an old-school-2008/2009-Katherine: I hopped in my car and drove up to the Bay Area.

Minus a family trip when I was little, the first time I truly spent time in the Bay was during the summer of 2008, the most transformative summer of my life thus far. I was 20 years old and interning at the Mono Lake Committee in a beautiful but remote area, and by August cabin - or small town - fever was taking hold. So one weekend in late July I drove through Yosemite, down the west side of the Sierras, across San Joaquin County and down into the Bay Area (little did I know how often I would do that drive a year later.) What was this amazing place that I had only just discovered? With water and hills and vistas and fun shops and great food and public transit? There were lots of  cool young people, and older ones too, but all seemed to be generally green-minded-and-politically-and-socially-conscious folk who think outside the box. I felt instantly at home.

I stayed one night each with Eva, Keri and Alexis, my college friends who were all living in the East Bay for the summer. Alexis, a native, was the one to introduce me to the inimitable Hudson Bay Cafe, a place I've now spent dozens of hours over the last five years reading on the black sofa as the sun sets.

Food Stamps Challenge: Reflection

May 30 marked the end of my month-long Food Stamps Challenge, and I'm taking away a lot from the experiment. For previous FSC posts, click here:

Food Stamps Challenge, week 1
Food Stamps Challenge, weeks 2 & 3
Food Stamps Challenge, week 4

Dinner one night: cold whole wheat pasta, half a can of tuna, roasted red peppers, grape tomatoes, basil from the garden, and grated parmesan, with a little olive oil.

I finished my Food Stamps Challenge on Thursday. To recap, I spent the month of May limiting my grocery bill to $50/week, ($200/month total) which is the maximum monthly food stamps benefits for a household of 1 in California. As I explained in my initial post, I didn't follow all of the recommended rules (such as including meals eaten out towards the weekly limit, not accepting free food and not using foods you already own), but because the federal government expects food stamp recipients to spend some of their income on food and use the stamps to supplement, I feel that my approach was still valid. I acknowledge that many food stamps recipients cannot contribute any income to food, so the fact that I found the challenge quite difficult even with being able to eat out once in a while (and not counting bottles of wine and chocolate within my grocery bill) indicates to me that living on food stamps is exceptionally hard.

long lazy sun-filled days

How was your Memorial Day weekend? Mine was fantastic! It was the first time ever that I stayed home alone... and I loved it. To review, this same weekend in:

2012: I drove up to Mountain View to visit Kevin and get a glimpse into his summer intern life in Silicon Valley (which, since I apparently didn't post about it last year and I want to remember, included luxury temporary housing in a Sunnyvale hotel, a tour of his amazing work "campus", delicious Japanese food in San Jose, mini golfing and a movie with his fellow Mudder interns, and a day trip to Half Moon Bay, plus two six-hour drives)

2011: I spent a week with my family in New York for my brother's college graduation in Ithaca and then fun times in NYC

2010: I moved from my Echo Park apartment into my first solo space in Silver Lake with Kevin, who moved in with me for the summer

2009: I had just graduated college and was bouncing between Southern and Northern California for a few weeks before heading to Mono Lake for my second summer internship

While Memorial Day weekend is a great time to travel or move or get stuff done, this year it was actually really nice to not go anywhere. I had lots of time to do whatever I wanted and completely re-charged my batteries.

Saturday

My friend and former Silver Lake neighbor Heather came over in the morning and we made our monthly batch of raw cat food.

Freezer freshly stocked with cat food for the next 6 weeks. Each bag is about a day's worth of food for the two of them.

Food Stamps Challenge, Week 4

It's the final week of my Food Stamps Challenge! I feel like finishing this challenge on a strong note, so I went all out to ensure I'd spend no more than $50 this week and, unlike last week, documenting everything for the blog. I love this kind of stuff so its really fun for me. (I think I'm going into the right field.)

This is what happens when I open up the Ikea bag to pack up my recycling.

graduation weekend

 

Here we go!

just around the corner

Remember this palm tree I brought inside last summer to "rehab"? Well, it's been about a year and the tree doing marvelously - now taller than I am! It's actually getting a bit unwieldy now, but I really like having a tree in the house.

This is a busy week for me. Where to start? Academics-wise, this is the second and final week that my group writes a paper together on a special topic (Treating HIV in Pregnancy, part of the Immune System chapter), in addition to the regular weekly coursework for our online UCLA Extension Physiology class. I volunteered to be Project Leader this time, so I've been piecing together six people's contributions to create a readable paper, pestering those who didn't write enough to write more, re-formatting the Works Cited page, finding good images and graphs to include, and writing my own section, plus the Intro and Conclusion. It's a lot of work, being PL, which I knew it would be, but since this class has been super easy I felt like working quite hard one week out of the ten in the quarter would make me feel like I earned my A in the class. And thankfully, its a really interesting topic and I learned a lot - I hope in grad school we learn about nutrition for HIV/AIDS. The paper is due Saturday night, but as of right now its mostly done because I didn't want to be doing it last-minute. Plus, I can't, because I've got a busy evening on Saturday.

Food Stamps Challenge, Weeks 2-3

What about $50 can get you in organic food at Trader Joes, week 2.

Weeks 2/3 of the Food Stamps Challenge are going well. I stretched out my meals by having smaller portions and supplementing with bread and cheese, so I'm just now making my second set of meals for the challenge: chicken, white bean and kale soup with homemade turkey stock, and chana masala.

I also bought a can of salmon with which I topped two lunch salads. For protein I bought 1 pack of organic chicken thighs ($8.50, for the soup), the salmon ($3), and two cartons of organic eggs ($8), nearly 40% of the week's budget spent on animal protein. Pricey stuff. I also have milk and yogurt, sunflower seed butter and various beans (though more carb than protein in my book). I may end up $20-$30 over the $200 monthly limit, but it'll still be the least I've ever spent on groceries!

thunder and light

Time is flying! We're almost 1/3-way through May already. Didn't this month just start a second ago? To be honest, I kind of love it. I really am trying to take advantage of/appreciate my life right now because you should live in the present moment and I know everything is going to change and I'm going to miss this. But with everything to look forward to, its hard not to feel sad that the days are peeling by.

Goodness these guys are cute.