On the menu tonight

In honor of PhD applications (of which two have been submitted!!), I decided to cook myself up a little feast this evening. I had minestrone to start out with - organic, from a can, added parmesan cheese and a few slices of seasoned focaccia. Then I made enough pasta to serve a large family (leftovers for me!), which contained:

Orechiette Rigate (it means "little ears")
Four cheese tomato sauce
1 Eggplant
1 Zucchini
a small onion
a clove of garlic
basil
and a yellow Beefsteak Tomato (grown locally)

Delicious. And as an accompaniment, I made a little chopped salad of baby spinach, basil, yellow beefsteak tomato, cucumber, and fresh mozzarella with a ton of balsamic vinegar. So good. The salad was bigger than the plate of pasta.

But the most important thing, of course, is that I have submitted two of my six applications. One is six days before the deadline, the other 16! My supplementary materials are all on their way (except one, which is waiting for letters of recommendation to get back to me - why those can't also be online, I have no idea). I've been crazy stressed out the last month, and right now I'm wound tighter than a spring, as they say, but it's not actually that bad. It all comes together when you set your mind to it. This kind of pressure really makes me think. There have been some elements of my life that have been adding stress, perhaps unnecessarily so, if only in the sense that I certainly didn't need them, and there have been these great unexpected inspirational moments that I will never forget.

A few months ago, I went to dinner at Tao, and it was expensive and delicious - decadent! (not the service) - and with dessert (a giant fortune cookie filled with white and dark chocolate mousse and rimmed with sprinkles - highly recommended) they gave us giant fortunes. Mine reads "If you do not know where you are going, any road will do." I still have it hanging on my wall, sprawled across Russia on a small map of the world. At the time I thought it was kind of comforting, and of course it's supposed to be. But what's funny is that I've long had this theory that if you hold on to a fortune for too long, it's reverse becomes apparent. And I'd forgotten my childhood theory until just now, but the fortune had long since - the last few weeks at least - inspired the opposite feeling in me:

If you know where you're going, not any road will do.

That doesn't mean that only one road will do, I would never think that. But it does mean that, especially given as much as I travel, if you know where you're going, you probably know how to get there, or at least can find your way. Maybe that's more to the point: I am absolutely capable of finding my way. I've been on the journey the whole time. Maybe I just forget periodically where I'm going. No, I don't forget. I just get wrapped up in the journey sometimes. I can still enjoy it and stay focused. It's all about balance. Getting this accomplished tonight (this and other things), I haven't felt this balanced in a long time. Just one thing missing.

Update: five of six applications have been submitted. Awesome.