marc and I admitted to each other that we don't really like Vietnamese food. there are several vietnamese restaurants in Wichita, and we like going to them because it's something different, and they're family owned, and for some reason both of us acted like when we drove by one we hadn't seen we actually wanted to go in but in truth we don't. i'm tired of that minty parsley taste in my vermicelli. hell, i'm tired of vermicelli.

I am getting okay at using chopsticks, and it was nice to have a slew of non-chain restaurants we could go to any time. If there's one thing I (and technically "we", but I don't want to be one of those married people who can't talk about "I" anymore) hate more than anything it's chain restaurants. There are so many people in this world who, when they imagine going out to eat, can only imagine going to chili's, applebee's, benegans, olive garden, or whatever else just sprung up in the mall parking lot. it kills me. when I eat their food, they eat my soul. Dad and I went to california some years ago, and asked the girl at our hotel what was good to eat, and just just smiled and said "There's a Carlos O'Kellys across the street, and Cheddars is down past that!" or something to that effect. We'd flown 500 miles, only to eat at the same places we avoid at home? What's the point?

I used to live over on the west side by this place called Byblos, it was good Mediterranean. They had a small market with a few shelves and a fridge to sell imported groceries, a dining room with ten tables or so, and hummus with flatbread was like $3 or something. There was also a huge family room off to the side, so you'd go in and there'd be 15 similar-looking people eating in there, and when that was going on the service we got was usually horrible but we still felt good being there. maybe I can't even taste food anymore without thinking about some political statement... I go to the grocery store and buy processed crap and feel bad, I buy organic and think I'm buying into the fad, I go to family restaurants and occasionally support bad food and service, I go to chili's and want to kill myself. Isn't food supposed to be one of those easy things in America? I don't feel like other people think so much about it. I'm at the top of the food chain, for God's sake.

the grocery store I've shopped at since moving downtown is in an area where a lot of hispanic people live, and while I was there the other night I noticed it has two totally separate mexican food sections. One is near the produce section. It's a whole row of foods with labels in spanish, various sweet flavored sodas, spices, dried chiles, sauces to make mole, cinnamon cookies, salsa, black beans, etc. Then there's another aisle, about four rows into the center near the italian food, where there's more salsa and black beans, but next to taco bell dinner kits, pace picante sauce, and tostido's cheese dip.

you know that part in The Matrix where they're sitting around the table, asking why everything tastes like chicken, theorizing that it's because the systems that put taste into their brains couldn't distinguish anything?

I think about that when I walk from one mexican food aisle to the other. I wonder how there's such a huge system for mexican food, and how it got to be obviously different from what hispanic people actually eat. Our mexican food is some completely different genre, it's not mexican, it's... system. pace picante sauce tastes like the system.

I have to drag my ass to campus four more times this semester and then it's OVER. until next semester. but whatever, no reason to think about that, all I'm thinking about how is how fabulous my life will be without college in less than two weeks.

Classes are stressful for two reasons: first, they're hard and make me feel stupid. second, they invade every second of every day, you can never relax, and if you do you feel guilty about it. when you're making a conscious effort to not study, there's still that nagging feeling in the back of your head that you should be studying. it's constant. it's like driving towards the mountains, even if you're hundreds of miles away, they're always there.

in other news, the grocery store actually had good looking lettuce yesterday! so I bought some, and have been eating it for two days with my favorite dressing and, um, that's pretty much all I need in life.

Sometimes I think about going vegan. Maybe at least trying it, for like a week. It'd be hard though. I'm not a big fan of tofu. I can, however, live off romain lettuce. Throw carrots, peanut butter, and hummus onto the list and I'm golden.

I'd go vegetarian but I like cheese too much. I'm afraid I'd live on cheese.

Really I think I want to do it so I'm forced to think about food for a while. I eat so much crap without giving it a thought. Hamburgers are just... always there, always cheap, always calling me, and I don't feel good about myself after I polish one off. I don't think I could really go vegan forever. It's impossible for me to sit here and be like, "I'm never having ice cream AGAIN" and not want to jump off a bridge. I just feel like moving that way.

I got to the grocery store really late (because, well, that's how my life is these days) and lettuce was on sale. Unfortunately, that meant that the lettuce had been pillaged. There were like three heads of really awful looking red-leaf. I passed. Then I looked down the row and saw the bag salads, and thought, "Well, the rest of America buys it. Not everyone has a lettuce spinner, I guess this is what they do."

It was more expensive than just plain romain lettuce, and I got less salad out of it, and it was gross. Big crunchy near-core parts. I ate it, but I've been upset about it because I really live on salad. I'm not sure people understand how much of it I eat. And since I discovered cowgirl ranch dressing, I eat even more.

In good news though, I got my electric bill for last month and it was $27. I love spring!

Also got my 10K time... just under 63 minutes. Not bad! I've got the rest of the summer to work on shaving down those three minutes to break an hour and, um, just be really cool.