Wow

I'm two days into my new semester and it's already 1000x better than the last. My one required class is Systems Neuroscience, which is actually better than I anticipated, and the other is fMRI Data Analysis *swoon*. I had to submit a paper today about my rotation from last semester. This would have been easy except for the fact that I couldn't talk about anything I had done on my rotation. It was more like a review paper of the field, I guess, and the pertinent questions that I worked on during the last semester. I had a difficult time starting it, actually getting words on the page. Unfortunately, the perfectionist in me comes out when I try to write papers and I have an exceedingly difficult time moving onto the next sentence until I've perfectly crafted the one before. This is a terrible way to write. I tried my best to sequester these feelings and just write ad nauseam, but I still had issues. I ended up giving up last night, about halfway done, and came back to it this morning. Once I finally got all my words out, it was a breeze rearranging and finely tuning what I had written. I am a much better revisionist than I am a creationist (ha!).

Today I made a Rachael Ray recipe. Let me be the first to say that I find her to be possibly one of the most irritating chef personalities on TV. Paula Dean is a close second, mostly because I can't handle that much Southern twang or calories. Anyway, I love to watch the Food Network and she happened to be doing a rare vegetarian episode, so I suffered through. Tonight, I recreated her pesto pasta dish with asparagus and haricot verts. It was YUMMO. Just kidding. It was actually really good. I did make some changes out of laziness/necessity (didn't feel like buying a bushel of tarragon and parsley, the zucchini at Wegmans were surprisingly disappointing), but it was still great. Home made pesto is awesome. It has reignited my desire to create my own copycat version of the pesto spread from the Creeese Cafe that they put on Rittenhouse Sandwiches . Unfortunately, Brian came home and announced that I am not allowed to make it again because "the house smells like salad." Womp womp.