Lemon Chicken

Before I get around to the meat (haha) of the post, I just want to vent that Google changed their layout a few weeks back and it is very frustrating.  I don't really know why it's so difficult to get from the sign in screen to the new post screen.  There should just be a button saying 投稿 as soon as you sign in, but instead I have to dig through a couple pages to get here.  It really makes no sense, because writing new posts is pretty much the most important thing.  I don't really care about some page view statistics or all this other integrated crap that Google thinks I will want to see on the front page, and I don't really know why anyone would.  And while I'm ranting about Google, I'll also mention that I wish they would stop asking me for my phone number.  I didn't want to give it to them before and I still don't.  Why is there no option to make that annoying message go away?  There should definitely be a "I will never give you this information" button.

So I made lemon chicken the other day, using a recipe from an actual cookbook.  That's the result.  Pretty delicious looking, right?  The lighting is bad in the kitchen; it always looks much more yellow than it really is.  Coloration aside, it was pretty good, but if I make it again I will probably double the lemon juice that goes in the sauce.  I made orange chicken the night before and it was even better, but I don't have a picture of that, unfortunately.

And in other, possibly more exciting, news, I won an award for being an excellent teaching assistant recently.  It's sort of funny because I'm currently not teaching anything, just "grading" for a linear algebra class.  I actually just write solutions to homework problems for the students to use as a guide, and what's even funnier about it is that the guy actually teaching the class is a first year grad student who should really be studying for his qualifying exam.  He's a nice guy and doesn't ask me to do much, so I don't resent it or anything, but it seems like kind of a waste of "teaching excellence."

There were something like five winners of this award, but I'm the only one from the college of arts and sciences, I think.  The CoAS is kind of the low man on the totem pole here because engineering is what built the school and what it's most famous for and the business school brings in the big bucks.  It seems like the main job of the math department is teaching future engineers how to take limits without knowing what a limit is and trying to get business students to add fractions.  Probably needless to say, a lot of people don't seem to hold other schools/departments in high regard and don't really like having to teach baby math because the more important schools/departments don't want their students to learn, you know, actual math, but just how to do whatever they will need.  Sigh...

Anyway, it's nice to win an award, and there's some money that comes with it, which is even nicer.  I probably won mostly because some people in the department were pulling for me because I had to fill in for a couple sections of the class I was assisting with in the fall because the professor got seriously ill all of a sudden.  It's kind of weird because even if I were a terrible teacher, I probably would have done it anyway because nobody else has the experience in that subject and the department didn't really have any other options.  Also, aside from the actual teaching time, it was not really much additional preparation other than making more copies.  But, whatever, a win is a win and I'm happy about it.  Alright, that's enough bragging.

Pork Chop Blues

I was messing around on the keyboard the other day, doing one of my favorite tricks for playing the twelve bar blues, which is sort of mashing the flatted third and then the non-flatted third in rapid succession, and I noticed it sort of sounds like an oinking in the lower register, so I sort of threw these lyrics together (it's actually a slightly modified twelve bar blues):

This little piggie went to market
And this little piggie stayed home
This little piggie had pork chops
And this little piggie had none
And this little piggie went
Wee wee wee wee wee
Stick to your bones

Oh, this little piggie likes sausage
Oh, this little piggie likes ham
This little piggie get some bacon
Gonna fry it up in the pan
Gonna make a pig of myself
Gonna eat up all I can

Don't gimme no chicken
That stuff's no good to eat
Don't gimme no turkey
Can't even compete
Just gimme some of that
Other white meat

If little pigs had wings
Away they'd fly
Up to that big old
Mud hole in the sky
But if you wanna get to hog heaven
First you gotta fry

Better not build your house of straw
I'll blow it down on you
Better not build your house of sticks
You know I'll wreck it, too
Ain't no more bricks for houses
I used 'em for my barbecue

So hopefully that's a mildly entertaining post.