Florence, Italy: Appli-

Applications. Graduate school applications all have essays that are tedious to write. I understand their utility, but how effective are they for the committees needing to select which applicants are selected. Does seeing how well one person writes a four page essay show a posteriori how well that person will do in graduate school? Are students expected to spend as much time for grad. school papers as they do the applications to get in? I know that’s the utopian ideal; but come on — who does that?!?

Appliances. Appliances are meant to do at least one thing; literally, appliances do tasks that help a person. Appliances that do many things are good. Appliances that do many things well are better. Italian appliances … let’s just say they’re good if they can do one thing. More than anything else, I’m looking forward to getting back to the States just for having an oven that works.

Tonight I was working on my graduate school essays and I needed a distraction. I’m pretty sure that my habitual pacing around the apartment just to think was driving Brett crazy. I had to do something that would let my brain concentrate on something else; that way my subconscious could work on how to construct one of my essays. That something: cooking.

I’m now 0-2 on successfully making cookies abroad. They shouldn’t be that hard. In fact, the dough is great; the oven just can’t do it. Our oven is in the off position when the dial says “250” (remember, Celsius). I turned it to “200”. My cookies burned after 6 minutes. It’s supposed to take 9 to 12 minutes to cook. I turned it to the right to “150”. After 30 minutes I found out the oven wasn’t producing any additional heat. I turned it back to “200”. Within 2 minutes they were starting to burn on the top. There’s no winning with this infernal contraption. I say infernal as a prayer of hope. It’s probably not a good idea to use prayer and a word the relates to Hell in the same sentence. I don’t care: at this point if it made the oven work and produce the right amount of heat, I’d take it!

Appli-, the Latin prefix that means “to join, to fix, or to attach to”. It is my curse. Neither the applications or the appliances are fixing anything!