Nothing to see here

Feeling a little unmotivated. I blame the stairmaster. I was running late this morning so I ended up cramming what's usually an hour's worth of gym-time into 30 minutes on the stairmaster. Ouch.

And then it was a Tuesday. For those of you in the know, Tuesdays and Thursdays are absolutely tedious for me. Classes straight from 12:45 to 7 pm (and I get there just before 12 in order to get a parking spot). Last year, we had the three-classes a day thing, but at least they were mildly interesting. Unfortunately, very little makes my Tuesday/Thursday classes interesting. By the time 3:35 pm rolls around, I'm actively thinking about the snack in my backpack and then, in forward-thinking, what dinner will be.

To give you an example, in market research today, about 15 minutes of the class was spent on the professor fast-forwarding a tape. We then watched the tape for about 10 minutes (which consisted of four women talking about they wanted to see in a hotel). We then discussed the tape for 15. And then she proceeded to spend the rest of the class on one PowerPoint slide. Next to me, one of the first year Masters students was playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon - I'd given him an assignment while we were waiting for class to star to match Gregory Peck and Marilyn Monroe to Kevin Bacon. Before the professor had finished fast-forwarding the tape, he'd gotten it.

I'm in awe. This is also a kid who somehow managed to link Michael Jordan to Kevin Bacon last week. Impressive. I'm going to have to come up with someone else to stump him.

I'm thinking about adding a recipe section to my site (stop laughing, Mom!). The theme being quick and easy and in bulk. Back when I was the editor of the Arts & Living section, I had a columnist who called himself the "Dormroom Gourmet." I kid you not. His forte was easy-to -make, inexpensive meals that you could make in a dorm, including interesting things to do with Ramen, quick Thanksgiving meal, what to do with leftovers and the recipe that won him the column in the first place: Coca-Cola Steak. (Bjorn, does this ring a bell with you?).

While I poking around the archives, I found the April Fool's Issue from 1998, to which I contributed two stories under the oh-so mysterious moniker of - you really think I'm going to tell you? Tell you what - I'll actually bake something (and not burn it) for anyone who can figure out which two articles belong to me in that issue.

That is all.