tacos are not that complicated

Dear dining "services," AGAIN,

i am not a chef. however, i do know a couple of things that are not that hard to figure out.

first, pico de gallo is definitely not straight-up chopped tomato. i don't claim to know what it is, but i'm sure it isn't this.

(side note: i looked it up, and according to The Internet, you can find out the etymology of the name and also that it generally involves onion and sometimes chilis, lemon or lime juice, cilantro, cucumber, radishes, and other firm fruits. the end)

also, please do not look at me like i've got three heads when i ask for sour cream. or for crunchy corn tortillas. they may not be authentic to actual Mexican cuisine, but you've been serving them since september, and i could have found them in the grocery store at the age of six. And i am not all that good at directions. why are you confused about whether you serve them today?

part three, if you wanted to not block the entire utensil slash condiment area during the dinner rush, there wouldn't be the pedestrian equivalent of a traffic jam. if you really wanted to improve life, you wouldn't keep the forks six feet off the ground--they are literally above my head and therefore very hard to reach--but that's another story.

and since when do you make rice with hot sauce?

(the reason i care so much and am so damn annoyed about this: hard-shell black bean tacos are the only gluten-free and vegetarian option in the student union/on the weekends. besides salad, but i drop weight as easily as i drop F-bombs.)

LGBTQIAlphabetSoup

i'm having a really intense physical reaction to something I just read, and I'm not entirely sure why. my heart started racing and i got that lovely twisty nervous feeling in my abdomen, and after a couple minutes' reflection I'm thinking it's that I might be about to discover something about myself that I might not like.

The blog is http://starfishwithwings.wordpress.com/ by a guy I know named Tristan (are we friends? I'd like to be friends. He's possibly too cool to be my friend, and I think I'm bad at making friends because I'm horribly shy at inconvenient times and my brain shuts down when I should be thinking of appropriate and inspiring conversation topics, but that's not relevant at present.) The section of the post titled Psuedofriends in Psyberspace that piqued my interest slash semifreakout was about the probability that sex with a man as a man is different than sex with a man as a woman. He used the words "power dynamics" and it hit a nerve.

First, because oh! lightbulb moment! I'm not alone in thinking this! yay!

Second, because I tried explaining this once to a friend (late at night while I was drinking, which probably didn't help) and she was totally confused. I was mostly thinking aloud about how my relationships with women are different than my relationships with trans men and how that would be different than being with a nontrans guy. This explanation really didn't go well for me, partially because I'm bad at talking but largely because I couldn't get across why exactly being with a trans guy made me not 100% homosexual.

Being with a man = not gold star lesbian. But that's not exactly a clear explanation--it's because of the difference in power dynamics, as well as a lot of other factors emotionally.

What upset me is that...I thought I was cool with that. This wasn't my first relationship of this variety, and I'm not clueless about what it means when you agree to this sort of tie with a person of a particular gender. But...I was bad at it. The power differential freaked me the hell out and I didn't like it. I'm just not sure where I went wrong--the person, the expectations, the situation? The place I was in at the time? My feelings about (the lack of) control in my own life? Something else?

So I thought I was bi with a couple of "types," or maybe pansexual; I didn't have a label and I wasn't too concerned with finding one. Now I'm not so sure. Is it always like this? Do I even want to find out? For sure, I'm not especially in a place to test the waters again.

On the other hand, I sort of actually do think I'm...not just into girls. And part of me desperately wants to see that that's okay. That it won't be self-destructive.

I'm whiny when I'm hungry

Dear Dining Services,

1. mozzarella cheese is inappropriate on a taco. it is also inappropriate on burritos, burrito bowls, and probably fajitas as well. Therefore, when i go to the taco station at 11:30 am, which is only half an hour after it opens, you should try to have appropriate cheese. you can't possibly have run out of...whatever normal taco cheese is...by 11:30 am.

2. you also seem to have run out of rice chex again, which is what i really wanted when i went to the dining hall at 11:30 in the morning, because I consider before noon to be breakfast time. I know that you get cases and cases of cereal from Sysco, who gets them from the Official Cereal People, who I am sure are not completely out of rice chex. so for the love of all that is holy, please stop hiding the rice chex. it's the only breakfast object i can eat on this whole campus. awesome.

3. please stop hiding from me when i look for you to ask politely to find me some more rice chex. i only cry and/or scowl when i'm really hungry, so the less you hide, the nicer i will be.

4. please stop telling me you'll get the gluten-free cupcakes again, unless you're actually going to get the gluten-free cupcakes. please don't tell me you're going to get the other guy to do it, because he told me you would do it. this is not supposed to work like siblings blaming each other for making the mess.

5. remember three months ago, when i was so hungry I sent you an email that i wrote while I was practically crying about how there wasn't any food i could eat on campus? and we talked about how we could get gluten-free food in the corner store, and you were sort of consoling and nice and assured me that i wouldn't have to starve? i do. THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN STOP CARRYING THE FOOD all of a sudden.

"never quite as simple as ordering from a restaurant menu"

I graduate in like ten months. so this is a list of career wants (and do-not-wants) based largely off the examples in Now What? by Nicholas Lore...since i have very little idea about what i want...

Positives:

i want to make a contribution that personally matters to me. i want to feel i am doing something that makes a difference.

i want to be successful. to me, being successful means...thinking creatively to be the "best" at solving problems. being very good at what i am doing. being an indispensable part of a team.

i want to feel satisfied and fulfilled in my career.

i want to be an expert in some specialty.

i want my work to be a natural expression of my talents and personality.

i want a balance between working very hard and potentially burning out, and not feeling that my job is important enough to try at.

i want to be self-employed or an entrepreneur...or run a non-profit.

i want a career where i am doing things that come easily to me and that i enjoy.

i want to be extremely successful, one of the top people in my chosen career./i want to be highly respected at work because i'm so good at what i do.

i want to work somewhere where people are friends, but not so close as family. it usually ends badly when things get very personal.

And the negatives:

i do not want to spend the majority of my time working for myself.

i don't need to make much money, i don't need to be wealthy. i need enough to live on and be independent from anyone else.

i'm not too entranced by adventure and danger at work.

i do really want to work. i'll get bored otherwise.

i want to work with people that are as motivated as i am.