It started when D’s parents brought a giant orange pumpkin with them when they came to visit.  CS traditionally brings a shite-ton of pumpkins every year after fall break to give away to people because his family grows far too many of them (at least that’s what he claims), and D had scooped him.  It was hilarious.  After fall break (which I spent with D and his family), no pumpkins emerged when CS returned.  It was eerie.  D and I had brought back a white pumpkin for D’s gf.  Again, scooped, or so we thought.

CS had brought back pumpkins, but he was storing them at his girlfriend’s room in another dorm (she has a single).  20 or so went to her sorority, and the rest appeared in the hallway yesterday.  CS chose the largest one because it was all gnarled and “no one else would want it”.  BS.  He just wanted to compete with D’s pumpkin.  I jokingly told D that CS had “pumpkin envy”.  We laughed, partially because it was possibly true, but also because the pumpkin D brought was one of the SMALL ones from his family, and CS’s largest was barely larger.

In my own way, I think I’ve felt a bit of pumpkin envy.  There’s one member of the senior class who isn’t in my major but takes enough of the classes that he’s probably got a minor.  I’ll call him 1-up, since that’s what he always seems to do when I talk with him.  I hate 1-up, but whenever I see him he’s always talking about the offers he’s received or the interviews he’s being flown out for.  And I get jealous–I’ve heard back from Microsoft and Epic, with both saying they’re going to pursue other candidates, and I’m trying to find other places to apply now that my first  choices aren’t really an option.  I know I shouldn’t let his talk hurt me, but it makes me feel just as inadequate as a SE as the pumpkins D brought made CS feel.

I guess if there’s anything to pull from this, it’s that I shouldn’t do what CS did last night.  He carved about 4 or 5 pumpkins which are outside our room.  He’s showing off, and it’s not making him look any better.

That changed after lunch today.

A few of my good friends are part of the Jewish Culture club on campus, which had a table in the lobby because today was Rosh Hashanah (hereafter abbreviated as RH), the Jewish New Year.  He caught D and I on our way out of lunch, asking us to take  RH with him, and that it would only take a minute.  I had wanted to ask him why, for a second week in a row, there wasn’t a music column in the paper (I’ve written one, as has another DJ, and we figured at least one would be in the paper this week), but decided to wait until after what he had to say.

One of the symbolic foods of RH is an apple slice dipped in honey, representing the sweet things in the year to come.  As we had our apple, he talked about how it was sweet, perhaps too sweet, but just right.  He then told us to think about the good things, the things that drive us to do better, for at least the rest of the day, if not the rest of the year.  And that resonated with me, enough so that I no longer cared that my music review wasn’t in the paper for two weeks in a row.  And the message also made me feel at peace.  And I think it did that for D too, who’s been dealing with even more shit than I have recently.

Will the bad stuff continue to happen?  I’m sure it will, especially with my current suitemates and their various hangers-on.  But I think I’m going to try and keep the RH message in mind–focus on the good that happens and the things that drive me–to get through it.

CS has the tendency to leave a door open when he leaves, whether it’s his roommate’s door when his roommate is in the process of going to bed or the front door of the apartment when he leaves in the morning (I’m all for an open door policy, but I’d rather not be the only one in the apartment with the door right open if I’m still asleep).  When I woke up this morning, D and his girlfriend (or so I thought) were already well awake and playing on the Wii.  The door was ajar, so I said “Did CS do this?  Did he?”

The response?  “CS is right here.”  Oh. Shit.  I quietly went back to my room and shut the door and just sat there for 10 minutes.  Then took a shower.  Then went back to the room, sat down, and just sort of avoided talking to Colin until classtime.  It still hasn’t come up.  If it does, I’ll be honest, but I seem to be lucky so far.  I need to be careful, double-check, and think before I speak poorly about someone.  Also, not being half-asleep would help.  Good to know that CS isn’t the only one who can be taken down a notch.

I’ve needed to go to Walmart since I moved in.  While I brought plenty for the kitchen, as did others, there’s some stuff that we all just forgot and needed to purchase at Walmart.  D and I had planned to go after we both woke up.  When I got up at 11:30 and left the room to use the restroom before planning my part of the list, CS cornered me, wanting to know if I needed anything from Walmart, as he was going.  Half-asleep, I told him I was planning on going, as I needed to get some supplies for dinner that night, since I was cooking.  It was agreed that D, CS, myself, and CS’ girlfriend would go together rather than separately so as to not get items twice.  CS offered to pay with his credit card, and here is where things began to get a bit frustrating.  Actual conversation:

“I get 2% back when I buy groceries.  So if we have $100 worth of groceries, I get $2 back”
“I know how percentages work, CS”

I don’t like shopping with CS.  D and I are aiming to fix it so it’s only the two of us because of this last time.  I make lists for what we need, and adhere as closely to that as possible.  CS makes a list as well, but then buys a bunch of stuff besides, raising the total of our communal total (items are separated into “individual” and “communal”–everyone pays for their individual plus their portion of the communal).  Of course, despite whether we will be using it/eating something made with it or not, it seems like most of CS’ stuff counts as “communal”.  He tried to claim the beer was communal.  D and I both informed him that if we weren’t going to be drinking it, we weren’t going to be paying for it.  These became part of his individual total along with word from me that if I wanted one (and I probably won’t), that I would gladly pay him for the one I took.

For my first shared meal in the apartment, I wanted to do something that I was familiar with that I knew would go over well, so I made Chicken Tikka Masala with the Masala sauce I brought down with me from Trader Joe’s.  The recipe is right on the jar–cook some (preferably Basmati) rice in another pot according to its directions.  While that cooks, take about 1 pound of chicken (I used pre-cooked fajita-seasoned strips) and cut it into 1-inch cubes.  Place in a pan with the jar of sauce and about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of water and let simmer, covered, for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally.  When done, serve on top of the cooked rice.  It’s simple, unpretentious, and really really good (particularly if you add some red pepper flake to the sauce for just a little bit of heat).  It went over really well with the group, but CS’ behavior while I was cooking, and while everyone was eating, seemed really rude.  Rather than talking about what we were having and talking about the smell coming from the simmering sauce, as most others were, CS was taling instead about what he was doing the next night–steak and a vegetable.  He talked about what cut of meat he got (a crappy one, to be honest), how he was going to season it, how his dad could make a cheap cut of meat better than most steakhouses, isn’t it going to be just great.  This continues all through dinner, and felt like a slap in the face.

I had a little reason to be concerned.  CS and his girlfriend had made cookies that afternoon.  Peanut butter blossoms (basically a standard PB cookie with hershey’s kisses in the middle after they’ve baked) are a fairly simple cookie to make, but somehow they screwed up.  After 10 minutes in the oven, CS wondered why they hadn’t flattened out.  This was blamed on the oven not being the proper temp, but when I asked, they hadn’t pressed down the cookies with a fork beforehand–something I’ve seen in every PB cookie recipe I’ve seen, even for the ones with hershey’s kisses.  I suggested this, but apparently I know nothing about baking PB cookies.  When the cookies were done, they were okay, but nothing overly special–there wasn’t enough of a peanut butter flavor to them and they seemed a little bland, like more sugar was needed.  This was enough to make me wary when CS said he’d be doing breakfast as well, but I agreed to wake up when he said he’d be making them to give him a fair chance.

When I woke up at 9 that morning, I didn’t hear anything going on in the kitchen.  I walked out into the dark living room to find that CS was just coming out of his room as well!  CS said that breakfast wasn’t going to be made for at least another half hour to an hour since no one was up.  This ticked me off, since I usually don’t set my alarm on the weekends and was a bit tired.  I crawled back into bed for 30 minutes and joined everyone in the main room of the apartment.  Once made, CS’ breakfast sandwiches were good–the eggs were nicely scrambled and the italian sausage was a nice counterpoint that added a little heat/flavor to it.  Maybe I had been wrong to judge CS’ cooking skills based on just the cookies.  Maybe he was more than just talk.

While D and I played on the Wii that afternoon, CS began to prep the steaks, tenderizing them and coating them with a rub that included meat tenderizer and lemon pepper.  I wasn’t really paying attention to how he was doing it or how much rub was going on the flatiron steaks he had bought, as I couldn’t see from where I was sitting.  He began to grill them, and the first batch (of two) was soon ready.  As they were cooking, I could smell pepper in the air–I was worried, but knew that a peppery flavor is sometimes good on a steak.  D’s girlfriend got the first steak since we still had our hands full with the game.  After she took a bite, a look came over her.  This could not be good.

After finishing the level at hand, I went to grab a steak, which CS was patting with a paper towel to remove excess rub.  It didn’t seem like a good sign that, post-cooking, the steaks looked like hamburger patties rather than steaks (although that could have just been the cut he got–a quick wiki search reveals flatiron steaks are cut from the chuck region of the cow).  I cut a bite off and put it in my mouth.  I nearly spit it out.  It was too salty, too peppery, and too lemony–alltogether awful.  D’s girlfriend realized this about the same time, and we asked how heavily the steaks had been seasoned.  These clearly didn’t need a heavy dry rub like they had been given, and no amount of scraping rub off would help the flavor–the great job of tenderizing CS did made sure the meat was permeated with the flavor.  It was all I could do to choke down the steak and veg (which got saturated with the juice from the meat and tasted salty) with a glass of water.  CS chose to do something he couldn’t quite remember in an attempt to impress us all and had fallen flat on his face.  While it seemed a bit mean to feel this way, the schadenfreude of this after all the disrespect I had been given the night before made up for this.

D, his girlfriend, and I went for a walk that turned into a drive down to Sonic to cleanse our palates with some cherry limeades (note to Sonic: have your free limeade coupons distributed to mailboxes.  Leaving a pile outside the ARA leads to students (self included) taking stacks of them to create a never-ending limeade source.)  It ended up not helping with the gastrointestinal woes we were suffering as a result of the salty steaks, but at the time, it tasted good, as did the feeling of retribution.