long time...

Yeah, I know, it's been a while.  I was going to a vlog about all the good reasons I haven't been around, but it's too late and I'll have an angry Elle on my hands if I start talking in my loud, booming voice and wake her up.  Okay, maybe not booming, but my voice carries and I talk loud.  There's a reason for that, maybe I'll blog about THAT someday (ooohhh, ideas).  

Anyways, here's a couple of reasons I've been gone:

1) I haven't been cooking as much - Since the blog is the epicurious alchemist, I don't want to inundate you with my normal life stuff.  My normal life stuff is pretty boring, so there's not much to talk about.  Why is my life not interesting, and why haven't I been cooking?  Funny you ask...

2) School/work is sucking bigtime - Long story short I get an email from my boss telling me I need to be more dedicated in my work in order to get things done.  Now, there's two things that could be going on here: 

a) I'm actually falling  behind and he's noticing

b) I'm not falling behind, just working a little less (maybe because I just got married and had to move a month after my honeymoon), and my boss knows if he writes me a three sentence email I'm going to go off the deep end and work really really hard.  

Guess which one I think it is.  Good news is I have been getting a lot done at work, bad news is it hasn't left time for really much else.  Thanksgiving was a welcome break, but I still read a bunch while at home.

3) Major mid-graduate school crisis - It's year three of my second go round at the Ph.D. in chemistry, and I'm starting to realize that I really don't think I want to do this for the rest of my life, or really at all.  Problem is, if I quit school AGAIN, I become a two time graduate school dropout.  I may as well poop on my resume and hand it in.  Talk about an ENORMOUS red flag (wow, this kid can't commit to shit).  Another little roadblock has been my burgeoning interest in all things economics.  Like so burgeoning I want to get an undergrad degree in econ and go work as a peon at The Fed burgeoning.   This is totally unrealistic; I'm 26 years old, married, and have to do something with my life.  Now, elle has been enormously supportive, but I'm not going to let her support me for the rest of my life while I go and get eight different degrees.

What does this all mean?  I have to eat shit for the next 2 to 3 years, get this Ph.D., and figure out how to use it to get a job not related to chemistry.   It's not all that hard, but I just want out now.  I have that horrible fear that I'm going to leave a bitter, angry person that has no faith in people or himself.  Grad school is just a bunch of discovering that you know absolutely nothing about what you're doing.  You just get torn down over and over and over.  I think I've just been torn down one too many times.  

I hate you and all your friends.

4) The Move - See here.  That basically took up most of October.  You know,  finding the place, packing, buying new couches, changing addresses (I get like 10 magazines a month, so that actually takes a while), renting the truck, finding help, etc etc etc.  What a waste of a month. More specifically, the month after getting married and traveling halfway across the world for two weeks.  All I wanted to do was sit on my ass for six months, gain like 20 pounds, cook a lot (blog just as much).  You know, typical post wedding stuff.  Nope.  

I'll leave it at that.  I think I had 5 earlier today, but I worked out tonight so I'm tired and can't remember what the 5th thing was...

Anyways, I have plans to do big things over the next 20 days, so hopefully some more blogging will be a part of that.  What I do know, for sure, is that I'm making holiday cookies this weekend, cookie press and all.  Something should be sure to follow from that....