Refraction

I hope none of you ever has to subsist on a liquid diet, but in case you do, I have a few pointers:

1. Get a blender and a strainer/sieve. NOW. You may also want to get a food mill, which is what they use for baby food, apparently, but it just looks like a strainer with a few attachments to me. No doubt it makes life easier, but it might not be worth coughing up the money for a few weeks’ worth of food.
2. Fiber is hard to come by. I just bought some wheat bran, which I plan to start adding to the milkshakes I’m drinking. Don’t forget about applesauce and other purees.
3. This is a basic recipe for cream of anything soup:
   • Finely chop an onion (and a leek, if you want :D). This is very quick in a blender. Anyway, you’ll want to cook those in some fat of your choice over medium heat until soft.
   • Finely chop whatever other vegetables you want to add. (I’ve only made cream of carrot and broccoli.) Add those to the onions/leeks, and cook for 5 minutes or so.
   • Add enough chicken/vegetable stock to cover the veggies, more if you need a thinner soup.
   • Bring to a boil, and simmer for a good 10 minutes.
   • Remove from heat, let cool slightly, and ladle into your blender in small batches. Have a second pot handy to collect the blended soup. Blend to desired consistency.
   • Add some milk to blended soup. Re-heat as necessary. Add whatever spices you like.
   • Ladle and serve! 😀

   I didn’t add any spices, since I cooked my onions and leeks in butter. 😀 Also, I don’t have any spices.

4. Spices may become your best friend. Nothing tastes like anything on a liquid diet. I just added salt and pepper to everything.
5. Milkshakes can also be made from soy milk 😀
6. Even a little jar of baby food holds more than it looks O_O I can’t say it really tastes like much, though.
7. If you thin foods, thin them with broth, milk, or juice, as opposed to water, which will only dilute the taste further.
8. A lot of things can be pressed through a strainer: I usually have a mashed potato through a strainer as part of my dinner.
9. Remember to drink a lot of water to keep hydrated. It sounds ridiculous, since everything is liquid, but water is still important.

One week to go before I start eating overcooked mac and cheese!

I miss work, a little bit. But not that much. In any case, I was sent for extra training today, which I think sucks, since I’m on a leave of absence. On the other hand, I will get paid four hours for sitting there three hours (heh, they screwed up booking th room) and doing nothing, so that’s also good.

Anyway, I figure I’d dedicate this post to my shoes, since I work in a shoe store, after all.
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Note to self: Next time, phone before you get all worked up about something.

I’m due to be arriving at the hospital in um, exactly nine hours. That means I have three hours left to eat my last meal (for a month-ish), and six hours left to drink clear fluids. I dropped by a supermarket today to pick up some of those meal replacement shakes (chocolate and strawberry :biggrin:), a sippy cup, and a water bottle.

I still don’t think the severity of this has quite sunk in yet. Well, I suppose it will afterwards, when I have tubes coming out of me and stuff :biggrin:

If anybody is curious about what a human chipmunk looks like, or is merely bored, I’ll be at the campus hospital, and I hope I’ll be awake by afternoon-ish.

I’ll be back soon :happy:

We’re all sufficiently removed from exams that it’s okay to point out the funny parts, eh?

French Lit: Nothing that funny, or weird. We were waiting for exam time to roll around, when two prof-looking guys approach the glass doors. “Oh, there’s our prof,” says one of the girls. “Which one is he?” “The bald one,” I say bluntly. For some reason, this causes them to dissolve in giggles. I don’t get it. :confused:

Nothing else of note happened in exams until we hit organic chem. Well, people’s cell phones kept going off during the French exam, and one girl had a very obnoxious ringtune. Her half-hearted attempts to stifle it were met by a “Could you turn that thing off?” from the invigilator and a brusque “use both hands” from the course coordinator.

Prof: “We haven’t put out enough exams yet. If you can’t find a paper, come to the front and we’ll make this row into an exam row.”
[shuffling ensues]
Prof: “There should be one extra paper somewhere. I know how many we put out, and I know how to count. [nervous twittering from students] Unless we’ve got an extra person in here.”
[pause, students file into the extra row]
Prof: “This is CHEM 204, not CHEM 123, that’s on the other side of the building.”
[The sound of a chair being pushed back. Some hapless first-year has stumbled into the wrong exam. We all applaud him for… I’m not sure what we applaud him for, but we do it anyway.]

Oh man, those crazy first-year students. XD You have to wonder: Didn’t he realize everyone else was studying something different? Didn’t he realize something was weird when he didn’t recognize a single person there?

I love this “free time” concept.

I spent today reading Speaker for the Dead, the sequel to Ender’s Game, and I like this one a lot better. A lot. I hadn’t realized a sci-fi novel could get so emotional; I must have cried five or six times reading that book.

See, Game left me feeling like I didn’t really want to read the next one, but Speaker really invites me to go on. Fun stuff. :biggrin:

I have to point out, though, that I really, really, really don’t think Card is a scientist. His explanation for the piggies’ life cycle makes no sense, unless he’s purporting that their genetic material behaves differently from ours. That implication doesn’t seem to be present, though, as it’s referred to as DNA. And DNA, as I know it, can’t do the things that he suggests it does.

A last-minute-uni-student style note to Sarah, who has officially hit the two-decade mark today. 😀 Zhu ni sheng ri kuai le! :star: (And psst, lemme know if you want a redesign on your blog (I’m thinking Vienna Teng. Or is that too fangirly?) I have TIME now.)

I haven’t looked at my marks since yesterday, which only reported my French marks. I’m really scared to look at my chem marks. Really, really scared.

I finished reading Ender’s Game a little bit ago, and while it’s quite good, I was a bit disappointed–I suppose I’d expected something different. Maybe I’d like it more if I were actually into military strategy and stuff… I’m also reading random chunks from Ender’s Shadow, which I like better, because Bean is a more interesting character overall.

(Rest of post contains spoilers for Ender’s Game.)
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MY CDs ARE HERE!!!

My fully legal, copy-protected CDs are HERE!

With liner notes!

And photos!

And thank-yous!

And lyrics!

(And an extra little toy car which I’ve lost.)

And the limited edition BEST CD with a bonus disc!

SQUEE! :kawaii:

I’ve got one exam–organic chem left. Knowing me and my history with that course, and given the fact I’ve not really been studying for it, I need to cram the entire course in eight hours. Can you say, OW?!

At least I’ll be doing it to my CORE OF SOUL CDs. 😀

I am having second, third, fourth, and possibly fifth thoughts about accepting that Explore bursary.

I’m really good at talking myself out of things. I’m not so good at talking myself into them.

And in the meantime, I’ve really got to … study for something.

//edit @ 6pm, the next day: Got the medical all-clear (“you just might want to let your orthodontist know you won’t know be in town for a month, though”). I’m heading to Chicoutimi! Now, budgeting! This means the rest of my CDs will have to wait even longer. >_>;;

My CDs still haven’t come yet. How long could they possibly be held at Customs (which is where I assume the wait is)? They’re just CDs! Nothing even remotely contraband! :devil:

I decided to kill a little time by taking a Harry Potter quiz; I have to say, this is extremely difficult. It doesn’t help that I’ve not read the first and sixth ones for quite a few months now (I’d hazard to say that I haven’t read the first in English for years.)

Still, a rank of “Harry” isn’t bad 😛 He did get seven OWLs, after all.

I hear a “Noooo!” from the other room–my brother’s watching the Canucks game–and I wander in to see what’s the matter, confidently predicting that the score is 7-0 for Avalanche, with Joe Sakic and Patrick Roy scoring hat tricks.

“Um, Roy’s not even playing.”

“He’s NOT?! Where’s he playing now?”

“He retired. Go look it up.”

Yep. It’s a sad world, really.

Although not quite as sad as the Canucks on Thursday. I hadn’t sat down and watched a hockey game from (near-) beginning to end in quite some time, but for this one, I had to. A loss like that kinda ruins the rest of your day. :depressed: