Per Luna's request:
Dry ingredients:
400 g flour
125 g wheat bran (toasted 15 min. or so in oven)
120 g. flax meal
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking power (maybe 2.5?)
1 tsp salt
60 g dried buttermilk powder
Mix these thoroughly with a fork and set aside.
Dried fruit:
100 g blueberries
50 g cranberries
130 g dates
40 g apricots
250 g boiling water
Soak the fruit in the water; when it cools enough, cut the apricots and dates into small pieces. If the fruit isn't too dry when you start, you can cut the fruit up before adding the boiling water.
Wet ingredients:
350 g water
3 oz. butter
2 bananas or approx. 60 grams of applesauce (room temp, esp. if the bananas were frozen)
250 g honey (can sub some malted barley syrup, or even a little molasses, but probably no more than 25-50 g or it will change the flavor dramatically and will need more baking soda)
2 eggs, room temp
Set the oven to 350. Toast the wheat bran and let it cool. Soak the fruit and let it cool; cut it up as necessary. Grease two muffin tins with a little butter, plus you will need some aluminum muffin cups; you could probably make this as a quick bread as well.
Cream the butter with the paddle on your mixer; you'll want a large bowl. Add the honey and barley syrup. (To eliminate the sticky measuring cup, cream the butter, then take the bowl off the mixer and put it on the scale, adding the sugars directly.) Cream the sugars and butter together. Add the eggs one at a time. Add the bananas or applesauce. (It may break/curdle if some of your ingredients are cold.)
Add the dry ingredients and the 350 g. water, alternating (3-4 shots). Stir in the dried fruit.
Portion into muffin cups (about 2/3 full) and bake about 20 minutes. (That's an approximation--I haven't settled on exactly the right amount of time. Poke a muffin with a toothpick to test doneness.) Makes about 28 or so. (Yeah, I know, an inconvenient number.)
Obviously you can substitute in several locations, most notably in the the dried-fruit arena. I discovered the dried buttermilk a couple of months ago, and it's so much more convenient than wet, but you could do the math to use wet instead of dry and sub liquid buttermilk for the water.
As you can see, these are pretty healthy, so they make a nice breakfast, especially with a piece of fruit added. They freeze well, too. Let me know how they work for you, if you try them.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Playoff Baking
If you watch the Stanley Cup playoffs--and I doubt that you do--you will hear the announcers refer (in their Canadian accents) to "playoff hockey," by which they mean that the intensity is ratcheted up in a couple of dimensions that you may not see in other sports. In particular, the hits are harder and more frequent. Given the speed the players reach on their skates, this is non-trivial. For the first two games, I had very close seats--on Saturday, I was five rows from the ice. (It turns out this was NOT a good seat, in that one cannot see the whole ice and ends up watching on the jumbotron, but when the action was right in front of me, yes, it was an excellent seat.) Thus, the playoffness of the hockey was obvious. It's also extremely entertaining because the team is pretty good, though young, and, at least as important, there is a lot of energy from the fans.
The family that owns the team basically told fans to go scratch for many years--including refusing to allow the games to be televised. When Friend and I went in previous years, the place was by no means full. As soon as the owner died and his son took over, there were changes, including televising all games. (If they show the owner on the jumbotron, the crowd cheers--which I really don't see very much in pro sports.) As a result, the place is completely full--sold out for every game. There is a tradition of cheering during the national anthem, such that, by the final bars, the place is insanely loud. On Thursday and Saturday, you couldn't hear the singing over the cheering--which, given the level of amplification of the singing, is saying something. So that part is kind of fun. I am not particularly attached to the team, mind you, but it is completely fun. The speed is amazing, and there are very few breaks in the action, and the fact that my seat is in a different section for every game of the playoffs means that I'll get a bunch of views of the game. Many of them are single seats, too--we were only able to get seats together for some of the games--so that part is interesting as well.
My boss has been sick since Thursday, and likely won't be in this week, I'm guessing, which doesn't sound like a lot until you realize that there are several major things due in the next couple of weeks (budgets, strategic plans, etc.). In other words, the crunch continues. One small good thing: I got a new computer, which has more than the one hamster in it that the other computer apparently used for power. It's still a Windows box, which continues to suck--I always forget just how much tweaking Windows and Office require to set things up the way I want them. There are all these fiddly bits, hidden in various locations, that turn on supposedly helpful automatic shit that mostly gets in my way and annoys the fuck out of me. (I'm reading a book sort of about this--"Broken Windows" by David Bank--and it's quite interesting. Friend contends that the fiddly parts are built that way on purpose, to make the application seem difficult and out of reach, thus building a market for their "training" courses, and I wouldn't be surprised.)
Anyway, I spent most of Saturday before the game doing some baking: a batch of nougat, flavored with orange peel, roasted hazelnuts, and dried cherries, as well as two kinds of honey; another round of peanut butter cookies; and a batch of breakfast muffins.
The nougat is even softer than it usually is, for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me. I know I brought the sugars to the right temperature, so I'm guessing that it's the orange peel. The flavor is VERY nice, though, and I made this completely for me, so I don't much care.
The cookies I made with chopped peanuts this time, as the recipe required . . . but I reduced the butter by half (one stick instead of two) and did NOT miss it, and I replaced nearly all of the white and brown sugars with honey and malted barley syrup (which helped with the moisture lost from the butter), and I again added chopped semisweet chocolate. They were much better than last time--quite good, in fact. I'd make them nearly the same way again, though I'd maybe add a little sea salt on top. I can't imagine what they'd be like with all of that butter; it sounds like they'd just be greasy.
The muffins may well be my best batch ever, which means I may settle on this particular variation. I'll grab one from the freezer this week and resample them, but I think I've found it. They have dried fruit, bananas, very little fat (3 oz. butter), toasted wheat bran, and ground flax meal, so they're actually pretty damned healthy. I put some malted barley syrup in these, too, and I liked the way it made the sweetness even more complex. I also ended up putting a little orange juice in them, because I had used the peel in the nougat, but I don't know that that would have affected the flavor or texture all that much. I could always use the peel as well as the juice in the muffins, though.
As you can tell, I'm experimenting with different sugars, particularly the barley syrup. (I should point out that it's the same thing that gives the malty flavor to beer.) The other thing I want to make with the malted barley syrup is something that takes advantages of the malted flavor in a bigger way. I'm thinking of taking a basic sugar cookie (or chocolate chip cookie) recipe and subbing the barley syrup for the sugar and maybe adding some chocolate chips to get that malted-milk-balls flavor. That will give me a start, anyway, and it likely won't suck, even if I end up tweaking it for fucking ever the way I usually do.
The family that owns the team basically told fans to go scratch for many years--including refusing to allow the games to be televised. When Friend and I went in previous years, the place was by no means full. As soon as the owner died and his son took over, there were changes, including televising all games. (If they show the owner on the jumbotron, the crowd cheers--which I really don't see very much in pro sports.) As a result, the place is completely full--sold out for every game. There is a tradition of cheering during the national anthem, such that, by the final bars, the place is insanely loud. On Thursday and Saturday, you couldn't hear the singing over the cheering--which, given the level of amplification of the singing, is saying something. So that part is kind of fun. I am not particularly attached to the team, mind you, but it is completely fun. The speed is amazing, and there are very few breaks in the action, and the fact that my seat is in a different section for every game of the playoffs means that I'll get a bunch of views of the game. Many of them are single seats, too--we were only able to get seats together for some of the games--so that part is interesting as well.
My boss has been sick since Thursday, and likely won't be in this week, I'm guessing, which doesn't sound like a lot until you realize that there are several major things due in the next couple of weeks (budgets, strategic plans, etc.). In other words, the crunch continues. One small good thing: I got a new computer, which has more than the one hamster in it that the other computer apparently used for power. It's still a Windows box, which continues to suck--I always forget just how much tweaking Windows and Office require to set things up the way I want them. There are all these fiddly bits, hidden in various locations, that turn on supposedly helpful automatic shit that mostly gets in my way and annoys the fuck out of me. (I'm reading a book sort of about this--"Broken Windows" by David Bank--and it's quite interesting. Friend contends that the fiddly parts are built that way on purpose, to make the application seem difficult and out of reach, thus building a market for their "training" courses, and I wouldn't be surprised.)
Anyway, I spent most of Saturday before the game doing some baking: a batch of nougat, flavored with orange peel, roasted hazelnuts, and dried cherries, as well as two kinds of honey; another round of peanut butter cookies; and a batch of breakfast muffins.
The nougat is even softer than it usually is, for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me. I know I brought the sugars to the right temperature, so I'm guessing that it's the orange peel. The flavor is VERY nice, though, and I made this completely for me, so I don't much care.
The cookies I made with chopped peanuts this time, as the recipe required . . . but I reduced the butter by half (one stick instead of two) and did NOT miss it, and I replaced nearly all of the white and brown sugars with honey and malted barley syrup (which helped with the moisture lost from the butter), and I again added chopped semisweet chocolate. They were much better than last time--quite good, in fact. I'd make them nearly the same way again, though I'd maybe add a little sea salt on top. I can't imagine what they'd be like with all of that butter; it sounds like they'd just be greasy.
The muffins may well be my best batch ever, which means I may settle on this particular variation. I'll grab one from the freezer this week and resample them, but I think I've found it. They have dried fruit, bananas, very little fat (3 oz. butter), toasted wheat bran, and ground flax meal, so they're actually pretty damned healthy. I put some malted barley syrup in these, too, and I liked the way it made the sweetness even more complex. I also ended up putting a little orange juice in them, because I had used the peel in the nougat, but I don't know that that would have affected the flavor or texture all that much. I could always use the peel as well as the juice in the muffins, though.
As you can tell, I'm experimenting with different sugars, particularly the barley syrup. (I should point out that it's the same thing that gives the malty flavor to beer.) The other thing I want to make with the malted barley syrup is something that takes advantages of the malted flavor in a bigger way. I'm thinking of taking a basic sugar cookie (or chocolate chip cookie) recipe and subbing the barley syrup for the sugar and maybe adding some chocolate chips to get that malted-milk-balls flavor. That will give me a start, anyway, and it likely won't suck, even if I end up tweaking it for fucking ever the way I usually do.
Friday, April 10, 2009
The Snorefest That Is My Life
Want: wine.
Am having: dried plums (doncha love how prunes have been rebranded?), some cheese and crackers, and Ginger-Os.
Am boring.
I continue to chip away at the pile of crap, and I even continue to make some progress, most notably with the two current major tasks: resolving a budget issue with the federal government, and setting up a database for one of our programs. (I don't actually have to build the thing--it's very very large and complex--but I do have to figure out how to tailor it for our use, which is turning out to be kind of insane. I enjoy it, in some ways, because I see its potential for making our lives much much easier, but the setup is nontrivial and I have to get information from the users about how we want to use it. Part of the reason I have to do it is that there isn't anyone else in the whole part of my organization who could even begin to know how to do it, plus we don't have the IS help/people we need. Remember the person who felt unqualified back in December? S/he quit, a couple of days before the probationary period was up in February.) There are three other major tasks that I'm ignoring at the moment (the strategic plan for the organization; our budget for next year; and preparation for a major two-day visit from our federal funding agency), all of which will come due in the next 10 weeks.
I was supposed to--at least theoretically--go to a conference downstate the week after next, but I just said I couldn't go. They're going to try to stamp their feet and tell me it's mandatory, and I am going to refuse to go. I have playoff tickets, and there's at least some chance the trip would conflict, number one, and, number two, I am too fucking busy with this other shit to take two days sitting in a conference room hearing a consultant blather on.
I have yet to find a conference of any kind to be a worthwhile experience, in any of the fields in which I have practiced. I probably would have loved Camp Bread, if I had been able to go, so that would have been an exception, but otherwise? A lot of wasted time.
Even when I was a would-be professor: the one major conference I attended was tedious, and I realized then that the whole event had little or nothing to do with actual presentations. Most panels were held in front of very few people; not much of interest got said; and reading the papers would have given you about 85% or more of what you needed to know about the panelists' work. Some people were able to network effectively, with colleagues with whom they were working or wanted to work, for example; there was also some job interviewing, IIRC, though I don't think I had any. The best part about the whole thing was that I drove out to California and back with a friend who had a car, and we visited about 6 or 8 national parks during the course of the trip; we turned it into a two-week expedition so we could saunter back. I saw parts of the country I'd never seen before, I got to wade in the Pacific Ocean, and I had a wonderful time in the parks and with my friend (despite hitting a deer), but the actual conference? Sucked.
Tonight I'm mostly enjoying the knowledge that I don't have to work for two whole days; I managed to finish the editing job last weekend. I was very glad to have the work--basically, it will pay for the tickets mentioned in the previous post--but it's nice to have the weekend off, too. Even if I am boring.
Am having: dried plums (doncha love how prunes have been rebranded?), some cheese and crackers, and Ginger-Os.
Am boring.
I continue to chip away at the pile of crap, and I even continue to make some progress, most notably with the two current major tasks: resolving a budget issue with the federal government, and setting up a database for one of our programs. (I don't actually have to build the thing--it's very very large and complex--but I do have to figure out how to tailor it for our use, which is turning out to be kind of insane. I enjoy it, in some ways, because I see its potential for making our lives much much easier, but the setup is nontrivial and I have to get information from the users about how we want to use it. Part of the reason I have to do it is that there isn't anyone else in the whole part of my organization who could even begin to know how to do it, plus we don't have the IS help/people we need. Remember the person who felt unqualified back in December? S/he quit, a couple of days before the probationary period was up in February.) There are three other major tasks that I'm ignoring at the moment (the strategic plan for the organization; our budget for next year; and preparation for a major two-day visit from our federal funding agency), all of which will come due in the next 10 weeks.
I was supposed to--at least theoretically--go to a conference downstate the week after next, but I just said I couldn't go. They're going to try to stamp their feet and tell me it's mandatory, and I am going to refuse to go. I have playoff tickets, and there's at least some chance the trip would conflict, number one, and, number two, I am too fucking busy with this other shit to take two days sitting in a conference room hearing a consultant blather on.
I have yet to find a conference of any kind to be a worthwhile experience, in any of the fields in which I have practiced. I probably would have loved Camp Bread, if I had been able to go, so that would have been an exception, but otherwise? A lot of wasted time.
Even when I was a would-be professor: the one major conference I attended was tedious, and I realized then that the whole event had little or nothing to do with actual presentations. Most panels were held in front of very few people; not much of interest got said; and reading the papers would have given you about 85% or more of what you needed to know about the panelists' work. Some people were able to network effectively, with colleagues with whom they were working or wanted to work, for example; there was also some job interviewing, IIRC, though I don't think I had any. The best part about the whole thing was that I drove out to California and back with a friend who had a car, and we visited about 6 or 8 national parks during the course of the trip; we turned it into a two-week expedition so we could saunter back. I saw parts of the country I'd never seen before, I got to wade in the Pacific Ocean, and I had a wonderful time in the parks and with my friend (despite hitting a deer), but the actual conference? Sucked.
Tonight I'm mostly enjoying the knowledge that I don't have to work for two whole days; I managed to finish the editing job last weekend. I was very glad to have the work--basically, it will pay for the tickets mentioned in the previous post--but it's nice to have the weekend off, too. Even if I am boring.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Keeping the Economy Moving, Singlehandedly
Work is a pain and stressful and so on and and and.
There; got that out of the way.
Meanwhile, my iPod appears to have died, finally. It's been coughing some lately, when I use it, which isn't all that often. But that will change soon, because it's warm enough to walk to or from work, thus varying my exercise. (Do you think I had enough clauses strung together there?) Anyway, I could probably get the battery replaced, but I've decided what I really covet is a Touch: I get all the music bits, plus WiFi, plus various game and apps were I to want them (which I may not; I'll have to rummage around and see if anything appeals). I do not want an iPhone, because (a) I am content with the cellphone system and service I have now (but not the phone so much, which kinda sucks--Sanyo Katana I'm talking to you) and (b) I loathe ATT.
And, pretty though the iPhone is, I'm really not that interested in it. I want a cellphone for pretty limited reasons--I don't come close to using the minutes I pay for--and having a prettier phone wouldn't change that. I DO want the music, and maybe occasionally the (free!) WiFi, but the websurfing on my phone that probably costs money? not really at all. And the apps and such I can have on the Touch. The nice thing about the Touch is that I get the functionality I want for a one-time purchase price. So, yeah, I think I'm going to get one, even though it means I also have to upgrade my operating system on my iMac, because I'm a couple of versions behind. That, however--and arguably the Touch as well, given some of its capabilities--is a business expense.
I have also been going a little crazy with the ticketing for various events. So far the schedule includes (between now and September): Blackhawks playoff games (first two rounds); the Dead (2 nights); Springsteen; Phish; Widespread Panic and Allman Bros.(2 nights); U2; Dave Matthews (2 nights); a beer-tasting festival; Indianapolis 500; Milwaukee Mile; and the Indy car race at Chicagoland. It'll be interesting to see U2, because I used to not like them very much at all. Over the past 10 years or so I've enjoyed the occasional song, and the snippets I've seen on television or whatever have been pretty good, so I doubt I'll hate it. I also doubt I'll become a devout fan, but I don't know that that's a necessary outcome for it to be worthwhile.
And!! My walls no longer look leprous! Yes, they did, in fact, paint the place (and put a weird switchplate-with-no-outlets-thingy in the middle of one wall, for reasons that are completely unclear to me), and I got the lease extension and they did not raise the rent, so yay. I don't think I could have put moving into the juggling mix without dropping several other things that would have shattered into sharp little pieces and embedded themselves in my feet. Or something.
There; got that out of the way.
Meanwhile, my iPod appears to have died, finally. It's been coughing some lately, when I use it, which isn't all that often. But that will change soon, because it's warm enough to walk to or from work, thus varying my exercise. (Do you think I had enough clauses strung together there?) Anyway, I could probably get the battery replaced, but I've decided what I really covet is a Touch: I get all the music bits, plus WiFi, plus various game and apps were I to want them (which I may not; I'll have to rummage around and see if anything appeals). I do not want an iPhone, because (a) I am content with the cellphone system and service I have now (but not the phone so much, which kinda sucks--Sanyo Katana I'm talking to you) and (b) I loathe ATT.
And, pretty though the iPhone is, I'm really not that interested in it. I want a cellphone for pretty limited reasons--I don't come close to using the minutes I pay for--and having a prettier phone wouldn't change that. I DO want the music, and maybe occasionally the (free!) WiFi, but the websurfing on my phone that probably costs money? not really at all. And the apps and such I can have on the Touch. The nice thing about the Touch is that I get the functionality I want for a one-time purchase price. So, yeah, I think I'm going to get one, even though it means I also have to upgrade my operating system on my iMac, because I'm a couple of versions behind. That, however--and arguably the Touch as well, given some of its capabilities--is a business expense.
I have also been going a little crazy with the ticketing for various events. So far the schedule includes (between now and September): Blackhawks playoff games (first two rounds); the Dead (2 nights); Springsteen; Phish; Widespread Panic and Allman Bros.(2 nights); U2; Dave Matthews (2 nights); a beer-tasting festival; Indianapolis 500; Milwaukee Mile; and the Indy car race at Chicagoland. It'll be interesting to see U2, because I used to not like them very much at all. Over the past 10 years or so I've enjoyed the occasional song, and the snippets I've seen on television or whatever have been pretty good, so I doubt I'll hate it. I also doubt I'll become a devout fan, but I don't know that that's a necessary outcome for it to be worthwhile.
And!! My walls no longer look leprous! Yes, they did, in fact, paint the place (and put a weird switchplate-with-no-outlets-thingy in the middle of one wall, for reasons that are completely unclear to me), and I got the lease extension and they did not raise the rent, so yay. I don't think I could have put moving into the juggling mix without dropping several other things that would have shattered into sharp little pieces and embedded themselves in my feet. Or something.
Friday, April 3, 2009
No Flour
Every time I start to write a post, I end up finding myself four paragraphs later having done nothing except bitch; sometimes I throw in some moaning or whining, for good measure. Then I reread it and I get annoyed with myself and I delete it and go to bed the end.
I had a friend in college--we still exchange the occasional email, every couple of years--who tried to teach me to juggle. I learned the basic principles and did it a little, but I didn't have the patience or enthusiasm to practice it the way it would have required to actually become even the least bit proficient. Nevertheless, that's what I feel like I've been doing lately at work. I'm juggling too many things, and I drop something every so often because I cannot keep them all in the air; or I manage to toss a thing away, but then three more things get tossed into the mix, and something else tumbles to the ground.
There are no 50-pound sacks of flour, and that still counts for quite a bit. I've had a few tantrums with my boss this week, though, because I'm getting quite tired of having him tell me that I Have To Do This Thing! Because It's Late! Or His Boss Wants It! That does not solve any of my problems. I know these things are late, and I even know what it will take to fix them, but I keep getting dragged into something that takes four times longer than it should, or I discover that the previous director of business operations--who is a friend of his--fucked us in yet another way. Next week's blowup will be because a final report for some bullshit little research project about which I know nothing but am still supposed to write was due this week, and I simply did not get around to (a) fedexing the data to the person who's supposed to analyze it (not least because I don't know what our fedex procedures are) or (b) calling the foundation and asking for an extension. I have no clue to whom I'd need to speak, and, guess what, i do not fucking care. It will have to get in line behind the various projects that bring in sums of money with two commas in them, because I deem them to be more important, and if anyone has a problem with my priorities, then I will point this out. I cannot do everything, and I refuse to try.
I hate the conflict, and I hate the timesuck of trying to be nice and polite and full of kumbayahity. I hate that people come barging into my office, no matter whether the door is closed, and then just stand there, even if I'm on the phone. I hate being underpaid, relative both to my coworkers and to the work that I'm doing, even as I hate caring about that. I hate the stupidity of several of the people who are making substantially more than I am and whose stupidity costs me even more of a timesuck. The meetings drive me batshit, especially when people are wandering in and out, answering cell or blackberry calls/messages, which I find incredibly rude. (Look, people, you are not transplant surgeons, so I do not see what could be so fucking important.)
We had a full-day strategic planning meeting this week, and it exemplified nearly everything that's good and everything that's frustrating about the whole situation.
I asked my boss if he wanted me to facilitate the meeting, and he said, sure, if I wanted to. Which I did--not because I actually wanted to do that, but because I knew that no one else would, I knew that he hadn't even thought about it (or put together any kind of agenda--for a full-day meeting!), and I did not want to waste all that damned time. It actually went reasonably well in many ways, in part precisely because I did facilitate it, with an agenda, and a vision of what we needed to do and how to get there.
One person wandered away not once but twice, and then started whining at the end of the day because she was tired of the whole thing and wanted to leave, and a couple of others wandered away briefly, but in general people stayed reasonably focused. We managed to identify what we need to do, and we started thinking about how to do those things--except then we got sidetracked because we had to come up with bullshit goals that the bigger organization thinks should be our focus. These goals by and large ARE bullshit, and they will not result in anything real or meaningful, in terms of goals, objectives, or our actual challenges in the coming year. (And, you know, if I got asked by higher-ups about the whole thing, I'd probably say something close to that--that the goals are bullshit and do not relate to the actual things we need to do.) On the other hand, we have a good team, with a lot of strengths, even if there are some glaring weaknesses as well, and we are doing good work, and we are well-funded, so it could be worse.
In addition, I have no difficulties just leaving at the end of the day, or occasionally leaving a bit early if I have something I want to do; I'm even refusing to go to the capitol city for a one-day (bullshit) conference/training session, because (people don't know this is the reason) I have tickets for the NHL playoff games and I will likely have a game one of those nights. There are very few jobs that would entice me, one way or another, to put in 70-hour weeks on a regular basis--or even 55-hour weeks; I did it at the bakery because I didn't have much choice at the time. The job could easily become a time- and energy-suck, and I won't do that. I don't have the desire or energy for it; no one else around me--either above or below me on the org chart--is doing it; and there's nothing to be gained from doing it. If I thought that, say, two or three weeks of intense effort would get me all caught up, and then it would be relatively smooth sailing, I'd maybe be convinced to do it, but it's not at all clear to me that that's true, so screw it. I may need to reevaluate that conclusion.
Meanwhile, I need to finish an editing job this weekend, and I'm hoping to do that Saturday so I can spend Sunday doing a whole big bunch of nothing much. Okay, that's not entirely true: there's an F1 race to watch, and the season's first Indy car race, and a bunch of hockey, so the only question is how long I can remain on the couch.
I had a friend in college--we still exchange the occasional email, every couple of years--who tried to teach me to juggle. I learned the basic principles and did it a little, but I didn't have the patience or enthusiasm to practice it the way it would have required to actually become even the least bit proficient. Nevertheless, that's what I feel like I've been doing lately at work. I'm juggling too many things, and I drop something every so often because I cannot keep them all in the air; or I manage to toss a thing away, but then three more things get tossed into the mix, and something else tumbles to the ground.
There are no 50-pound sacks of flour, and that still counts for quite a bit. I've had a few tantrums with my boss this week, though, because I'm getting quite tired of having him tell me that I Have To Do This Thing! Because It's Late! Or His Boss Wants It! That does not solve any of my problems. I know these things are late, and I even know what it will take to fix them, but I keep getting dragged into something that takes four times longer than it should, or I discover that the previous director of business operations--who is a friend of his--fucked us in yet another way. Next week's blowup will be because a final report for some bullshit little research project about which I know nothing but am still supposed to write was due this week, and I simply did not get around to (a) fedexing the data to the person who's supposed to analyze it (not least because I don't know what our fedex procedures are) or (b) calling the foundation and asking for an extension. I have no clue to whom I'd need to speak, and, guess what, i do not fucking care. It will have to get in line behind the various projects that bring in sums of money with two commas in them, because I deem them to be more important, and if anyone has a problem with my priorities, then I will point this out. I cannot do everything, and I refuse to try.
I hate the conflict, and I hate the timesuck of trying to be nice and polite and full of kumbayahity. I hate that people come barging into my office, no matter whether the door is closed, and then just stand there, even if I'm on the phone. I hate being underpaid, relative both to my coworkers and to the work that I'm doing, even as I hate caring about that. I hate the stupidity of several of the people who are making substantially more than I am and whose stupidity costs me even more of a timesuck. The meetings drive me batshit, especially when people are wandering in and out, answering cell or blackberry calls/messages, which I find incredibly rude. (Look, people, you are not transplant surgeons, so I do not see what could be so fucking important.)
We had a full-day strategic planning meeting this week, and it exemplified nearly everything that's good and everything that's frustrating about the whole situation.
I asked my boss if he wanted me to facilitate the meeting, and he said, sure, if I wanted to. Which I did--not because I actually wanted to do that, but because I knew that no one else would, I knew that he hadn't even thought about it (or put together any kind of agenda--for a full-day meeting!), and I did not want to waste all that damned time. It actually went reasonably well in many ways, in part precisely because I did facilitate it, with an agenda, and a vision of what we needed to do and how to get there.
One person wandered away not once but twice, and then started whining at the end of the day because she was tired of the whole thing and wanted to leave, and a couple of others wandered away briefly, but in general people stayed reasonably focused. We managed to identify what we need to do, and we started thinking about how to do those things--except then we got sidetracked because we had to come up with bullshit goals that the bigger organization thinks should be our focus. These goals by and large ARE bullshit, and they will not result in anything real or meaningful, in terms of goals, objectives, or our actual challenges in the coming year. (And, you know, if I got asked by higher-ups about the whole thing, I'd probably say something close to that--that the goals are bullshit and do not relate to the actual things we need to do.) On the other hand, we have a good team, with a lot of strengths, even if there are some glaring weaknesses as well, and we are doing good work, and we are well-funded, so it could be worse.
In addition, I have no difficulties just leaving at the end of the day, or occasionally leaving a bit early if I have something I want to do; I'm even refusing to go to the capitol city for a one-day (bullshit) conference/training session, because (people don't know this is the reason) I have tickets for the NHL playoff games and I will likely have a game one of those nights. There are very few jobs that would entice me, one way or another, to put in 70-hour weeks on a regular basis--or even 55-hour weeks; I did it at the bakery because I didn't have much choice at the time. The job could easily become a time- and energy-suck, and I won't do that. I don't have the desire or energy for it; no one else around me--either above or below me on the org chart--is doing it; and there's nothing to be gained from doing it. If I thought that, say, two or three weeks of intense effort would get me all caught up, and then it would be relatively smooth sailing, I'd maybe be convinced to do it, but it's not at all clear to me that that's true, so screw it. I may need to reevaluate that conclusion.
Meanwhile, I need to finish an editing job this weekend, and I'm hoping to do that Saturday so I can spend Sunday doing a whole big bunch of nothing much. Okay, that's not entirely true: there's an F1 race to watch, and the season's first Indy car race, and a bunch of hockey, so the only question is how long I can remain on the couch.
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