CALIFORNIA'S Largest Budget Mistake

To Whom It May Concern:
As a future MBA graduate from an already impacted State University, I find the budget cuts in higher education institutions reprehensible. While working on the Student Fee Advisory Committee at UC Santa Cruz, I gained first-hand experience and knowledge of the damage that cuts, such as the those agreed upon for the California budget, cause.
The California legislature and the Office of the Governor has effectively signed a death sentence for higher education. These cuts will cause the UC and State system to deteriorate even further. The services, especially non-academic units, have not recovered from the last set of state cuts. Left in the wake of California's last round of massive budget cuts to higher education, students have taken it upon themselves to pay for educational necessities. Thus when the Office of the Governor says " a Budget forged on no new taxes", they are in fact deceiving themselves and the public. It seems that the taxed will become already indebted students, and the University system, which, with a lack of funding will progressively deteriorate and will no longer be able to draw talent to California.
Higher Education is an integral part of the growth and innovation that has shaped California. Cuts in Education do not provide returns and are a short-sighted bandage to a problem that will later become a systemic infection.
As a taxpayer, I look at myself and my peers as the future of California and I hope the Legislature, and the Office of the Governor will consider the long-term impact of cutting Higher Education in the State of California.

Pie Hole

This blog is in honor of the soon to be deceased show, one of my favorites, Pushing Daises.
I made a delicious pie! Berry Ginger Lime pie with oatmeal cookie flaky crust.



















Here are the dirrrrty details:
Flaky Piecrust
Makes Enough for an 8- to 10-inch single-crust pie

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into about 8 pieces
3 tablespoons ice water, plus more if necessary
3 oatmeal cookies crushed as finely as possible

1. Combine the flour, salt, and sugar and the Cookies in a food processor ( I did mine manually with a fork and pasty cutter) and pulse once or twice. Add the butter and turn on the machine; process until the butter and flour are blended and the mixture looks like cornmeal, about 10 seconds.

2. Put the mixture in a bowl and add the ice water; mix with your hands until you can form the dough into a ball, adding another tablespoon or two of ice water if necessary (if you overdo it and the mixture becomes sodden, add a little more flour). Form into a ball, wrap in plastic, and freeze for 10 minutes or refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. (You can refrigerate the dough for up to a couple of days or freeze, tightly wrapped, for up to a couple of weeks.)

3. Sprinkle a clean counter top with flour, put the dough on it, and sprinkle the top with flour. Use a rolling pin to roll with light pressure from the center out. If the dough is hard, let it rest for a few minutes. If the dough is sticky, add a little flour (if it continues to become sticky, and it's taking you more than a few minutes to roll it out, refrigerate or freeze again). Roll, adding flour and rotating and turning the dough as needed; use ragged edges of dough to repair any tears, adding a drop of water while you press the patch into place.

4. When the diameter of the dough is about 2 inches greater than that of your pie plate, drape the dough over the rolling pin to transfer it into the pie plate. Press the dough firmly into the plate all over. Refrigerate for about an hour before filling (if you're in a hurry, freeze for a half hour or so).

5. Trim the excess dough to about 1/2 inch all around, then tuck it under itself around the edge of the plate. Decorate the edges with a fork or your fingers. Freeze the dough for 10 minutes (or refrigerate it for 30 minutes).

6. When you're ready to bake, either fill it or prick it all over with a fork for pre-baking ( don't forget beans or pie weights!) Bake at 425 for 20 minutes

This dough/crust shrinks quite a bit, so just be warned. It is super good!!

So now the filling...

3 tablespoons of instant tapioca
5 cups of fresh berries ( I used fresh raspberries, and blueberries and 1/2 cup frozen blueberries)
Zest of one lime and half of a lime's worth of juice
1/2 cup to 1 cup of sugar ( it depends how sweet you like it) I did 2/3cup. ( I used cane sugar, I think it gives it a better flavor)
a pinch of salt
a dash of nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground ginger
Put the filling in your pre-baked crust and decorate the top as you see fit, I like to do either a basket weave or geometric open top because the berries are so pretty.
Bake for 40minutes.

I really loved this pie! I usually think pie, even if you use fresh fruit tastes old or stale or too gelatinized. The fresh lime and the ginger really gave it a fresh citrus hint and a little kick. It's worth a try- I think it is the best berry pie I have had in a really long time.
Well that was fun to toot my own horn, unfortunately I am spent and better get back to procrastinating!

That's all for now folks!!

When advertising gets desperate!

I would love to begin by kindly asking you to view this video:

In case you didn't get it or the link goes down and you want to Google it, the title of the video by Gillette ( yes the razor company) is "How to shave your groin- Shaving tips from Gillette".

It is interesting to see how desperate advertising has become. This statement is not only supported by the Gillette video but an advertisement I saw today in the Wall Street Journal. It was an advertisement begging for advertising from ABC. It said " the channel where the viewers buy brands". I don't know about you, but this is a pretty desperate attempt from a HUGE network to arrange for some big name brands to buy their advertising space. Not only is television suffering. While I was in New Jersey and New York last week, I was reading in the New York Times ( I think?), about how the Public Transit systems on the East Coast are suffering from reduced Ad purchases, which unbeknown to many subsidize the costs.

Well this video is a prime example of using Social Media to hit a target audience. Young people and increasingly people my parents age are browsing YouTube and other online media sites daily. While Gillette's ad may be shocking, referring to raunchy and indelicate topics, it allows them to penetrate and reach a market that is most likely diminishing, while spending minimal advertising dollars. It will interesting to see how the shift of Google AdWords, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. ultimately change the landscape of advertising in the United States and Globally. It certainly has already begun, and has brought out bold and interesting campaigns. Just something to contemplate and observe as our economy bounces turbulently through 2009.
That's all folks!
xoxo
The Dame

Freak Nasty

Rant of the Day

Have you ever been to a bar, you are dancing and you have that solo creeper who moves from girl to girl in your group...never seeming to read the very apparent "get the f**k away from me" body language you are throwing their way?

That in short, was a summary of my last night, but instead of 1 creepy fellow there was a gaggle of them... like 6. We were totally outnumbered. It felt like we were being surrounded and cornered by a group of lions, and hey, at least lions are cute. Ultimately I have a really hard time balancing my idea that people are generally out to have a good time, not sinisterly prey on others, and that it is part of a dance floor scene for people to intrude on personal space etc. But, I also think that people, perhaps due to alcohol, purposefully ignore the blatant, and I do mean blatant, signs that someone is uncomfortable, not having a good time and wants them to back off.

I think, in total out of the approximately 45 minutes that I danced last night 40 of them were spent dancing away from the "creeper" or physically pushing them away. It eventually came down to whether we wanted to leave the dance floor or blatantly tell them to get the heck away. We chose to leave the dance floor. It is gross to me, that a group of girls needs to dance with each other in order to fend off unwelcome dance partners.

It would be nice to dance in comfort and free of worry.

XOXO
the Dame

Lazy crafter=busy student

Hello Again!
It has been a while since my last post and frankly that is because I have not done much crafting or cooking, but I have done plenty of procrastinating. It is interesting that procrastination really seems to get me in the areas of homework and excercise. When I have a job I am much better at excercise and doing my tasks, often ahead of time. I think it is a student mentality.

As far as crafting goes, I bought some shrinky-dinks and I am currently looking for the right size and good enough quality silver charm bracelet chain so I can make custom charm bracelets for my friends. I love crafting but I don't really stay on one craft at a time. Lately I have put down my knitting and embroidery, and been perusing the internet for craft ideas. I have found some really cute ideas on etsy.com. All of my ideas I find I save into a folder on my desktop called "crafts". In some cases I label the picture or file with the name of the person for which I intend to make the craft. I am hoping this comes in handy, most likely around Christmas time, when I need to start giving gifts.

Another favorite thing that I started is saving the funniest online comics and articles in a separate folder so I can 'remix' them into craft projects and personal cards later. I am also starting an 'art' folder to store photos of beautiful art, especially those that I found were personally touching. I am hoping this will help me decorate when I get my own place. I hate when I know exactly the look or the idea of art that I want and I cannot seem to find, despite my endless and relentless google searches. So this should help me avoid that problem.

It is nice to feel organized even in these small ways because, while school is really busy now, I know eventually and hopefully after graduation in August I will be able to craft after work. Now if I can just get an excercise regimen that I don't dread :).
Sorry that there aren't any amazing pictures this time, but I wanted to share my ideas!
Sincerely,
The Dame

OH YA I DID

First Off
I loved Michelle Obama's dresses for the inauguration. People are disgusting how they look to criticize every little thing. It was appropriate, it looked warm and she looked happy. More importantly, the content of Obama's speech was amazing, accurate and insightful.

On another totally separate note I made it on the customer gallery for sublime stitching! The founder only puts up her favorites so it is pretty cool that i made it up there!
GO look
http://www.sublimestitching.com/node/2593
Love ya!
the dame

New Crafts for a New Year!

So I have been waiting on posting pictures of some of my crafts because they were Christmas presents and I always have a bad feeling about someone accidentally discovering what they may be receiving for Christmas. Overall though, the Holidays went off without a hitch ( Read: No giant family fight). I made a TON of things, mostly due to my lack of money. So I will be posting and talking about them over the next couple of weeks.
To start, lets look at the Our Lady of Guadalupe embroidery that I did on some aprons.

Here, you can see the differences in the color palate. The one on the left is the first Mary that I made. You can tell, because I did it the hard way. It took forever to make her look so smooth and finished. I filled in all the parts, whereas on the second Mary I went for stitching that showed movement in the fabric and some more vibrant colors. I made a third Mary, but I must have forgotten to take pictures of it! Besides the time that this project took, it was very inexpensive. I think I paid $3.00 each for the white canvas aprons, from a chef supply company that I found online, and then my mom had the embroidery floss already. It was fun to choose the colors, and mix it up a little bit. Of course my Aunt's and Mom love the aprons. As good Catholics, we love to strong female figures such as Mary and we also love to make fun of our religion so this is a beautiful, crafty, and Dainty mixture of the two!

That's all for now!
xoxo
The Dame