I graduated this past June, and with that (in about 2 weeks), comes the loss of my student job I’ve had for the past 2-3 years. During that time, I’ve dealt with many headaches, grown admire and respect many of the people I work with.
The major I’ve been working on for so long was in Digital Arts, and I found out about 3/4 of the way in that I probably should have been a Journalism major. It was too late to change, so I made the best out of things, took many diverse classes— from photography, to digital music, writing for media (a journalism class), to advanced video effects & compositing, I even took a class on programming circuitboards!
Now that I’m out of school, looking for jobs, I’m having to re-learn some things I’ve taken for granted, and teach myself new things that I wish my education would have covered. Things like personal marketing / branding, professional networking, and more recently this week, logo design. While I have a lot more flexibility doing these things for myself currently (as opposed to a class assignment, or in a professional context for a client), I’ve also come to appreciate the semi-structured nature of the classroom. I also look forward to the opportunities to work in a professional realm working with clients in real-world scenarios.
I keep thinking about my blog and it keeps sitting on the back burner. It’s not for lack of things I could be talking about, shit in the past 9 months, I’ve…
- competed in a city league ski racing league, and our team won the whole season
- had the worst Christmas ever #christmasfail08
- been [positively] excited about a presidential inauguration
- played a UO officially sanctioned flip cup tournament with the club sports olympics, and we WON
- broke a slalom ski
- went from 5 down to 2 e-mail accounts, and one of those may be going a way soon
- met a girl, her name is Angela, many of you have even met her by now
- graduated from college!!!!!!!!!
- successfully survived a road trip with Angela through 9 states
- Yellowstone, Ren Faire, Badlands, Wall Drug, SLC, etc…
- partaken in a few dancing lessons (ssssh! don’t tell anyone!)
- somehow convinced Angela to buy a Mac
- dealt with 2 flat tires in 2 different states I don’t live in, and neither one on my personal vehicle
- turned 27
- competed in 9 waterski tournaments in 6 different states, and waterskied in a 7th state
- including Collegiate National All-Stars for slalom+trick, and AWSA Western Regionals for 3-event (and qualified for but didn’t go to AWSA Nationals)!
- upgraded my wordpress blog, twice, without posting anything
- volunteered with a church group on a construction project
- bought a Playstation 2 from a thrift store for $12.50 and repaired it myself
- sold my old DSLR and bought a spiffy new one, and taken thousands of photos with it
- attended a number of concerts
- given up on my football team, due to some unFavreable circumstances
- finally started getting my online portfolio and résumé up-to-date
…and some other stuff too, I assure you. But now that you’re updated on my life, maybe now I can get this site fully back on track again?
In what seemed like destined failure once again, I finally had a successful batch of General Tso’s Chicken. I believe this was my third or fourth attempt from scratch (+1 attempt using sauce from a bottle). The first hint I was in trouble was when I realized I had no corn starch (used as a breadding), so I used pancake powder. Then when mixing up the sauce, I realized I didn’t have any red wine/cooking sherry. Instead I used a little bit of white wine vinegar with some water, and a little bit of Berry Splash Crystal Light powder (weird, definitely. but it came out just fine), and a little extra soy sauce. No onions? No big deal, though it is a key part of this dish, I was mainly concerned about the sauce coming out ok.
Tiny bit of back-story. General Tso’s Chicken is one of my favorite Chinese dishes, especially at Maple Garden near campus. I’ve never seen any other resteraunt make it anywhere near close to the way they do, and I have no idea what it’s supposed to be like, but it’s damn good. So it’s been a goal of mine for the past 3 years or so to figure out how to make a decent batch of it. I’m getting closer… I’m guessing another 2 attempts and I’ll have a recipe worthy of sharing.
