Smells of my apartment building….

Eau de Gagging: Stinky diapers, laundry soap and cigarettes.

People on the bus go up and down

In the last week, I’ve met the following umm… interesting?… people on the bus or the subway:

The lady who knew which stop I was getting off at the minute I got on, and shouted and talked to me about it the whole way. That was weird, because it was not my regular stop, so she couldn’t just have seen me get off there before.

The guy alternately weeping into his hands and peeking up with a smile to see if anybody was paying attention.

The lady yelling at the top of her lungs at everybody to get up and give her a seat when the train was half-empty.

The guy who kept smelling his hands and then rubbing discarded newspapers on them.

Smells of my apartment building….

Eau de Chinatown: Durian, sweet and sour pork and fish sauce… Almost didn’t think I’d make it through the hallway today, that was NOT RIGHT.

Mmmm sewage…

Sometimes, when it gets a little cooler and the drains on the street let out steamy, sewage-y air, I get all nostalgic for Leuven. We lived in the Begiijnhof there, and right behind the building we were in, there was a canal running through the city. It contained the river Dijle. This same canal ran past my school. If you flushed the toilet there and ran outside fast enough, you could see your toilet paper coming out of the pipe. That is why that hint of sewage in the air will always remind me of Belgium.

Makin’ it from scratch

So, see, here’s the situation. We are broke and poor and this isn’t likely to change soon: We’re both students and we have a toddler. Good planning, eh? We exist on a combination of student grants, student loans, and several different part-time job sort of things. It works, but just barely. So I cut corners wherever I can. This means making things from scratch, a lot. It takes extra time but I count it as leisure time since I can listen to music, watch TV, or interact with D. while I do it. I don’t mean just making dishes from scratch that you can buy frozen… I bake a lot of our bread myself. It only saves about 80 cents a loaf, but it adds up since we eat so much bread. Plus, I can make it wholewheat and preservative free. Other baking-type things we regularly make ourselves are tortillas and rolls. Lots of my starting recipes come from here. The Beginner’s Bread is what I started on before branching out. I’m still looking for a good, easy, plain bread recipe that I can make completely wholewheat without it getting sort of brick-like…

Smells of my apartment building….

All is in harmony today…. Eau de Thanksgiving: Turkey, etc.

Law

I’m taking a law class this year and it is completely fascinating. I had no idea I’d be so engaged by it. It is my favourite class this semester, even though some of my others are the “every point is debatable and hard to wrap your head around” type of classes I usually love to BS my way through. Reading the endless long cases is thoughtprovoking. Working through precedent to where the law stands as of now is exciting. Getting to know the Supreme Court Justices through their decisions and their pet peeves in cases and their pet issues is entertaining. Memorizing reams of cases and their details and impact and relationships to other cases is kicking me hard, but in general? This law thing is FUN. Who knew.