Bloomington: A direct result of living in a culture that ingests too much sodium is that my sugar tolerance is not so high

oh sweet mother of Baldr what have we done

Bloomington: Suckas.png

I am never going outside again because everything is awful.

It's 41 degrees outside (5 degrees if you're a Celsius type) and has been raining for two days, and I'm starting to feel like a Californian.

I've never liked identifying as a Californian before, because California is a big place, and San Francisco is a weird, tiny place, and I can only ride buses and therefore can't really do much in the southern half of the state.

Perhaps I have been hasty.

Yesterday, I went outside. It was cold and wet and dry and horrid, and I shivered from inside my sweater/sweatshirt/gloves/boots until I overheated completely over the course of about fifteen minutes. By the time I got to a bus, I was sweating. I let my fingers freeze in a desperate attempt to cool the rest of me down, but two stinging hands later, I was still simmering and trying to avoid any extra movement.

The way home was much more action-packed, and after a successful run for my return bus, I found myself not only out of breath, but coughing for a good fifteen minutes from the cold air. I didn't start yelling about how it was consumption, and that was another struggle.

The diagnosis: I'm a Californian. I can run from it all I want, but my lungs know what my heart will not admit. Cough cough.

The file name for this is "suckas.png." Sometimes my plans backfire.

Not pictured: "Thomas Kinkade was here" graffiti.

I think everyone has pretty much picked up on this fact; we went with a faculty member to a state park in scenic Lawrence County, home of some astronauts or something, and comparisons to Muir Woods may have made the husband and I seem like snobs. Fine. So mote it be. Frankly, I don't know if I care much about what the staff of Spring Mill State Park think about me, because they sell boxes with the Confederate flag on them, and I will not be supporting them at any point in the future.

But some things are consistent from state to state; food exists in Indiana very similarly, if not identically, to how it exists in California, and I still want it. All of it. Now.

And so, with the help of my husband, the alter ego of We-Can-Just-Improvise Man, exciting things have happened on the edibility front.

1. Round foods have been attempted.

We tried to take down doughnuts and bagels in one day, and in doing so created rapidly expanding, deep-fried things that were delicious and tasted vaguely like doughnuts after we rolled them in sugar. There was much rejoicing. I needed them pretty badly, too, since I finished StarCraft II that day and emotional support in the form of sugar was extremely necessary.

(On that note, I wish they had kept Glynnis Talken as Kerrigan's voice, because I have no problem with Tricia Helfer and all, but I do have problems with Change, and I don't know. I didn't think she did the job EXACTLY THE SAME as Glynnis Talken, and it made me sad because I waited twelve years for this thing yo.)

But the bagels were disintegrated.

After the doughnuts, we had exciting bagel times, and managed to actually make bagels that looked like bagels. And tasted like bagels. And were amazing... like bagels.

They lasted about a day. And then they were gone.

What was my point? Oh, yes. Bagels are delicious and if you put a little canola oil in oatmeal with cinnamon and apples, it tastes a little doughnut-y anyway, so yeah, it's delicious.

2. Pizza and dessert are not mutually exclusive.

It's pretty easy. You just roll out enough crust dough to cover a baking sheet, grab a little extra to create a barrier between the pizza part and the dessert part, throw pizza stuff on one part, and break up a candy bar on the other part. When you take it out of the oven, you throw peanut butter on the candy and stick it back in the oven and take it out again five minutes later.

Then, you take a moment to smell the pizza. And it is a beautiful thing.

End food section. Begin TV section. Why were Downton Abbey, Doc Martin, and America's Next Top Model so depressing this week? And why did this have to be the week where all the NBC shows were on break? Aiya.