How About Pistachios?

"Here, you're going to be on the shelling subcommittee," I said to Ninja Queen as I handed her the bag.  "One of two things will happen here: either this curry will be reasonably tasty, or it will be terrible and we learn a valuable lesson. Either outcome is excellent," I mused aloud. She continued to separate the nuts from the shells in silence.

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In high school, my Calculus teacher Mr. J always wore a latex glove in class. Not gloves; glove, singular. He claimed that writing with chalk for extended periods of time would cause his hand to dry out. He seemed to be of the opinion that the discomfort of having dried out skin was worse than the awkwardness of bringing one latex glove to school every day.

Last week I was hired to record a series of instructional math videos for eHow.com. Sadly, the topics that I was asked to record were so nonsensical and boneheaded that I actually got worse at math just by doing it. Topic names like "How to Divide a Trig Function" suggest that not only are the administrators completely inept when it comes to math, but they may in fact be chimps. There are only two reasons why I am grateful for submitting myself to the whim of the chimps: one is that I get paid to do it, and the other is that I gained an appreciation for why Mr. J loved that glove. By the end of the long day of recording, during which I almost always had a piece of chalk in my hand, my hand had gotten so dried out that the skin on my index finger cracked and started bleeding.

This is why most of last week's practice hours had to be completed with a band-aid around my picking finger. This, of course, severely limited the number of things that I could work on. At some point I got so bored that I thought to myself, "Here, make music out of this," and began tapping two ugly, dissonant chords using my non-lacerated fingers. After a few minutes, I started to hear something that resembled a melody. By the end of the week, it had evolved into a complex, funky tapping piece with a splash of Spanish flavor. I have a feeling that it will stick with me for a while, as I find myself thinking about it even after I've stopped playing.

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"You know," I continued, "I think having that attitude is the key factor in being able to teach oneself how to cook: the willingness to create and eat things that might be terrible. Last year I cooked some meals that were just awful." She looked over at me and smiled. "I would keep making this beef with peperoncini thing, always saying 'How can I improve this? How can I improve this?', until eventually I realized that it was just nasty, plain and simple... but I'm glad I tried to make it work. I learned a lot doing that."

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Week 30 total: 18.5 hours
Grand total: 694 hours
Required pace: 577 hours (+117)