speculations in the dark.

happy mid-winter holidays, everyone.

it's back to being dark and cold, as it is every winter, hemispheres notwithstanding. i've never heard what the earliest british settlers in australia thought of christmas in high summer. i wonder if there was a movement to celebrate it in june. considering the original birth it celebrates probably originally happened in march or april, it wouldn't have been any less accurate.

i am rambling, yes.

i don't normally make new year's resolutions, eschewing the practise as a feel-good activity with little meaning behind it. january first is an artificial date anyway, and our western european numbering of years is equally meaningless. i mean, we all saw what attention the cosmos paid to the misnumbered anno domini 2000.

however, the solar-calendar year does provide benchmarks, however artificial, for janus-like hindsight and forward-looking speculation. this past year was a tumultuous one, and the upcoming year looks equally eventful. most prominently, i am dangling in painful indecision, having applied to graduate school just before the holidays, therefore delaying the acceptance decision while everyone uses their time for much more amusing activities.

also this year, i discovered the amazing cost economy of cooking an entire chicken. i must do this more often. when divided on a meal for meal basis, it is cheap. we like cheap.

oh yeah, and we had an election. i did vote. i've become distressingly civic-minded. i'll be running for office next. or not. maybe after i've graduated. assuming i'm even accepted. see how this is consuming my mind? i don't like uncertainty.

i'm ok with change, however. school, government, job (oh yeah, my job changed), provided it's not drastically abrupt, i can deal. what remains to be seen, of course, is whether there will be any change at the government level. i'm not engaging in much speculation about that, preferring my jaded, cynical, gen x stance. the man is an excellent speaker and a consummate politician. but government has been made into an industry and has a fair amount of self-preservation tendencies.

speaking of government, i mostly got money for christmas/hannukah gifts. i think i will buy clothes and books.

what's for dinner?

you know how they say it's a bad idea to go grocery shopping when you're hungry? apparently, it's also a bad idea to cook when you're bored. i've been home sick from work all day, and had to scrounge up something for dinner while he is taking his philosophy final. not having the energy to cook something intensive, i started winnowing through my cupboards.

i think i'll call this "christmas nachos." hey, why not?

canned tuna
tortilla chips
mayonnaise or miracle whip
tabasco chipotle hot sauce
ground cumin
black pepper
salsa
cheese (grated or thinly sliced)
canned or cooked black beans
baby spinach

1. combine the tuna, mayonnaise, hot sauce, cumin, and black pepper in a bowl. mash with a fork until uniform.

2. arrange the tortilla chips on a microwave-safe plate in a single layer.

3. top the chips in the following order: tuna, black beans, salsa, spinach, cheese.

4. microwave on high for about 1 1/2 minutes, or until the spinach is wilted and the cheese is melty.

mmm... melty.

this is a little protein-heavy, but otherwise surprisingly balanced meal. the only problem is that you end up with a lot of leftover ingredients, so it doesn't do much for the using-up-the-leftovers thing.

upgrading.

on black friday, we joined the ranks of the HDTV set.

our tv had been fucked up for ... at least a year and a half, i guess. maybe even longer. we turn it on about once a month. sometimes, it was fine, like around the end of october when we watched casino royale without a glitch. other times, it was not so happy, like when we were trying to play mario kart with friends, and it decided we wanted to watch a dvd instead. and then maybe cable. and then mario kart again. and then cable. and then a dvd. and then cable. and then it needed all its channels re-programmed. and then there were the times when it turned itself on randomly. and then off. and then on. and then off. in quick succession. eventually, we took to just leaving it unplugged and plugging it in whenever we wanted to watch anything.

so, with the digital broadcast switch coming up, and a possessed television, we decided to take advantage of victims of the poor economy and buy an HDTV at a ridiculous discount (we missed the even deeper newegg.com discount because we were doing research).

also, we bought a PS3 to go with it using another black friday bundle discount.

surprisingly, there isn't much buyer's remorse. it was sort of more than we can really afford (a savings withdrawal is forthcoming), but we both agreed that if we were going to do it, we were going to do it right, and buy a nice tv now instead of a cheap, shitty one now and then a nice one down the line. the PS3 has a surprisingly effective upscaler for both games and DVDs, and the tv itself has a pretty nice scaler, making standard def broadcast TV and wii games also look pretty good (the only disappointment is okami, which is apparently too detailed and pretty to upscale well). yay for playing 4-player mario kart and actually being able to see what you're doing.

it even fits on our old ikea tv stand.

next bit of research: what do you do with an old CRT TV that you are unable to donate because it's got a fucked up logic board?