Today I was officially rescued by firemen, I guess

You've heard about the fire alarms.  You've heard about my cooking going awry.  Prepare yourselves: today's post will COMBINE these awesome themes in the Emily+Matt narrative.

So, tonight was supposed to be dinner with the freshmen night.  Most of the freshmen in our entry (9 total) were even rsvped to show up.  I decided to hazard some homestyle macaroni and cheese (mom's famous and beloved recipe) from the Kitchen Master's Guide--maybe third time's a charm?  Um, turns out, no.


Matt came home early while I was still making the roux.  I don't know how many of you have made roux, but the roux for the mac and cheese takes FOREVER and requires constant stirring, heat, and patience.  So I've been stirring and stirring and slooooooooowly adding milk for like half an hour, I'm *so close* to the end of making this sauce, when suddenly...

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. Attention please.  The sound you have just heard indicates and emergency in this complex.

Well, rats.  If I leave for this stupid fire alarm my sauce will be ruined and I'll have to start ALL OVER and get more butter from somewhere and God knows what else.  We've had SO MANY fire alarms.  Argh.  So Matt and I decide screw it, I'll just stay here and finish this sauce.  He closes all our curtains so no one will bust me skipping out on the alarm (which a lot of people do, fyi--we had 3 students admit to not getting out of bed during the alarms between 2 and 5 am).

So there I am, stirring and stirring and stirring and stirring and the alarm is blaring for a while.  The sauce finally has all the milk and is starting to thicken up again when I hear pounding on my door.  I freeze, hoping no one will sense my presence, figuring the firemen must knock on all the doors to make sure everybody's out.  A few moments later, they pound again.  Well, shoot, they must know I'm in here.  But hey, my sauce is done now!  So I turn off the oven and the stove and sheepishly open the door.

There are four firemen standing in our lounge.  I look right past them at the HUGE billowing white cloud in the front of the building I can see through the lounge windows.  Oh, crap.

The firemen were super nice about me not evacuating when I was supposed to (God knows THEY know about our dozens of false alarms these last few weeks) and reminded me not to forget my shoes on my way out.

So it turns out that the afternoon's flash storm had let a lot of cold rain into a large construction hole right outside our building, which had somehow caused a pipe full of hot water to burst in the basement.  So there was an actual legit emergency, nothing immediately dire but definitely evacuation-worthy.  When I got outside I made sure to berate my husband for not calling me, but to be fair he was caught in a conversation with one of our housemasters (our bosses) and so didn't want to get us both in trouble--plus there was no immediate danger (as evidenced by the firemen calmly knocking on my door and remembering my shoes).

This is what it looked like outside:

 

A Steamy Situation

We wound up being exiled from the building for over 2 hours.  The Dean of Students decreed that all MacGregor residents could get a free dinner at one of the nearby dining courts, so we got to experience MIT dining (okay, but not nearly as good as Earhart).  We went with a random group of our students, so that was fun.

But I know you're in breathless suspense--Emily, what happened to your roux and the mac and cheese??!  Well, the roux turned out just fine (thank goodness I stayed those extra 10 minutes during the alarm!).  I mixed up the mac and cheese and put it in the fridge.  It is awaiting the inevitable baking.  I went ahead and fried up the chicken I was going to make for dinner tonight and refrigerated that too.  We rescheduled the dinner for tomorrow evening, which seems to work for most of our freshmen--we're doing it early enough that they will still have plenty of time to get to whatever fun things they had planned for their friday nights.

But is the mac and cheese really saved?  I guess we won't know until we try to eat it tomorrow....

Moral of the story: the ONE TIME you don't leave during a fire alarm, there's definitely actually going to be an emergency.  At least if you're me.

Stay cool,
Emily

Study Breaks are Kool

One of the cool, fun things we get to do as GRTs in the dorm is host study breaks. Basically we pester our students to quit doing their freaking homework (it's not like it's hard or there's lots of it, this is only MIT, sheesh) and take a break with friends and food. Tonight we're hosting just such an event, featuring....


This is what college is all about.

We're basically going to mix up a couple of pitchers of different flavors and then let the students mix them. We figure it's a positive outlet for the mad scientists within.

In other news, true to the title of this blog sometimes I am totally clueless. I have so far failed twice (TWICE!) at making recipes from our Kitchen Master's Guide cookbook. The first time I was making potato soup and put powdered sugar in instead of flour (it's a white powder in an unmarked container!!). I didn't even notice until I tried the soup and it was super sweet. The bread I bought to go with it was good though >.< Last night I attempted wild rice casserole, but even after letting the rice cook for almost an hour it wasn't really done, so I just moved on and made the casserole anyway. Thaaaaaat was a mistake. Fortunately for me, Matt is clueless about how things are supposed to taste, so he ate BOTH these disasters. Or maybe he's just being sweet.

Tonight Matt's making spaghetti while I prepare vegan cake and bean dip for tonight's kool-aid enhanced festivities. So theoretically everything will be edible and delicious.

BONUS BLOG RECIPE -- vegan cake edition:



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None of this eggs, oil, and water business. Just the mix and the entire can of diet coke and then bake according to the regular directions. You just have to make sure your cake mix and your can of frosting are vegan (and most of them actually are--they use soy waaaaaay more often than milk). For variation, try yellow cake mix with diet ginger ale! Totally delicious! And since it's vegan, it must be healthy, right??!

Now I'm hungry, and you probably are too. We should both go get a snack.

Bon appetit!
-Emily

Fried Everything

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*
Alert there has been a fire emergency detected in this complex.  Please remain on hold while we blast loud alarm noises to deafen you and allow the fire to spread through out the building.  If in fact there is a fire emergency the alarm will sound after this message repeats ad nauseum.

Our Pleasant, but Alarm plagued home

Emily and I have been enjoying our stay at our new home in MacGregor for a couple months now.  The GRT suite is cozy, the people are great, and the cost cannot be beat.  However, our pleasant home has recently become plagued with an omnipresent alarm system.

Recently a group of students deep fried everything in sight while maintaining a regulated environment which avoided any alarms from triggering.  Only hours later however, the sound of alarms filled the building around 4am seemingly caused by nothing more that temperature fluctuations outside.  This has been repeated frequently since including at 3am this morning and no less than 8 times the past few weeks.  It's unclear what the problem is but rumor has it that there is a water pressure sensor gone awry in the basement.  Frustrated students have begun the construction of a digital clock to count the hours since the last alarm which is an upgrade from last year's duct tape day tally.

*BEEP*,
Matt

Time Warp: The Move

Whoa what just happened?  Did we just fall through a time hole?  Where are we?

Oh I see we're back at the move!  I guess its my fault for trying to escape the past - apparently you eventually fall through a time hole.  That must be where those words of wisdom came from.  Well on to business.  Check out that mess.

Well at least that room back there doesn't look too full of stuff.  This must be right after we got 97% of our things INTO the GRT rooms.  As you can see.  There's a lot to be unpacked.

First things first.  I walked from Ashdown with a pirate ship perched on my shoulder while everyone else carried heavy but inconsequential goods around me.  The ship quickly found a comfy home one the mantle.

Fortunately for our unpacking needs, we neatly organized the initial placement of all the bags of clothes, boxes of electronics and other randomness so we could get through everything as efficiently as possible.  HA.  The photo is a lie.  Despite our clothes being near the closet we spent a large amount of time moving our boxes and bags back and forth between rooms to make space for whatever-it-was that we were unpacking at the current moment in time.

...

Aeons pass and eventually the essentials begin to be finished..  Almost all the boxes are gone and the most important furniture is set up.  

...

No it's not the shelving that Emily made with all of our appliances, kitchenware and food on it. 

 It's the TV setup in the back!

(I turn to the right.) Oh right... Did I say the boxes were gone?  I actually meant we threw them into the bathroom for temporary storage.  Not too bad though.  They're below the doorknob so it's fine.

Well I guess we still have a long ways to go.  Looks like the bedroom hasn't even started yet!  Anyways by this point we were getting hungry so back to the kitchen...

After getting all the plates, bowls, and cups unloaded the difference between girly shot glasses and manly ones became quite apparent.  Regardless after some quick refreshments we were back to hard work.  Soon however I felt the distinct need to use the restroom.

Hmm... That looks distinctly like the middle hinge there and it is quite buried.  Perhaps I can climb over?

Nope that isn't going to work. Be right back...

...

Well the boxes have been dealt with accordingly for their attempt to conquer the restroom.  And even better we've successfully moved in!  

Time to begin our job of living in as the GRTs of E-Entry @ Macgregor!

That wraps up today's adventure!  So now do I find another time hole back to the present or just wait until it arrives?

See you some time,

Matt

Urban archaeology

Matt and I had an adventure Saturday afternoon. We were walking through some shortcuts to get to Whole Foods in a different part of Cambridge, when suddenly we encountered a Sign...

Pika?? What was this? Does Pikachu live in Boston? Do they sell Pika-stew on the streets here??? For a while the arrows continued in the direction of Whole Foods, but eventually we had to choose a path: groceries, or pokemon. Of course you know which on we chose. The signs continued....

We continued to follow the trail, finding more and more clues along the streets of Cambridge.

And just when we thought there were no pokemon involved...

Finally, we discovered where all these signs were actually leading us:



You can't really see it in this picture, but under the street address sign (where it says 69) is the word "Pika." Later research (an ethnographic survey of native MITers) determined this "Pika" to be, not a pokemon, but rather a wacky and fun MIT independent living group, pronounced pike-uh, rather than peek-uh.

But random not-pokemon houses were not the only things we found on our journey, also of note were a really cool house with a spiral stair outside leading down into the garden, and also what is obviously the coolest street sign in Cambridge.

All this traipsing around the city and finding cool things was pretty tiring work, and, more to the point, we were pretty hungry by the time we were in the actual grocery store. On our way home, I was complaining to Matt about the food I was craving from back home that they just don't have here in Boston. Mostly moe's. Mmmmmm a Moe's burrito sounded really delicious right then--and frankly, it does right now! Then, all of a sudden, we spotted another relic that seemed to have appeared only to mock us....

Moe's cup! Where did you come from? How did you appear, battered and abandoned, so close to our home and yet so far from yours? More to the point, can you lead me back to where you and your delicious burrito kin live?

And so our next quest will be to see if we can find out from whence this wayward cup came. Also, Matt promised to post soon about our crazy move in experience, complete with awesome pictures. Stay tuned!

--Emily

A Post Modern Lounge

Today Emily hijacked a number of unsuspecting undergrads and lured them all into her lair of post-modern philosophizing. The unsuspecting students sat happily in the lounge chatting of broken bikes and Munchkins. The topic slowly turned to film which sunk the conversation deeper and deeper into the dark depths of theory.

Memento has been added to the viewing queue. Inception had to follow from that. Matrix locked them in with its robotic intricacies. A finally Fight Club in its theoretical perfection knocked the conversation deep in to the abstract ocean of abstractness.

Once they began to drown there was discussion of trees in all their forms. Perhaps they were trying to grow a ladder with which to climb out. The goal if it ever existed was doomed. Emily continued to direct them like marionettes towards EnglishMajorLand.

As the conversation grew on though even Emily could not predict its course as once quantum theory enters the picture, it all comes down to dice rolls. Probably d20s.

See you in the Multiverse,

Matt