Whinealicious

I'm going to a pity party tonight--would you like to attend? No? Well, that's okay; I'm not going to stay long either. But.

We had a five-hour meeting today, and it was actually useful: we needed to sort through how we're going to spend some pots of money we have, and, in particular, what types of positions we need to expand our service provision. In general, it went pretty well. Everyone stayed on task, and we plowed through it and got to a place where we can move forward, so that was good. But the reason for the pity party is that I've finally identified what kind of help I need (and I'm reaching the point where I really, really need that help). That position was one of the few--in the 10 or so we discussed--that we ended up just not finding a place to put on a budget.

On one hand, I understand why not; for one thing, it's an administrative position, and we have other types of managerial staff we also need, so it kind of took a back seat. And I didn't jump up and down and wave my arms around; in retrospect, I was kind of hoping that someone else would kind of go to bat for me on this position, acknowledge what I need, and that didn't happen. At all.

So that's disappointing.

But then, I have this big proposal due on the 15th, and my new overlord, and others, keep asking how they can help, and I say, oh, I'll have to do it. Their response to that is to act as though I'm somehow at fault for not letting go or asking for help or whatthefuckever, i.e., that it's All My Own Fault that I'm doing it alone. I finally realized today why I'm doing that: if I do hand it off to someone and he or she fucks it up, then it's going to be up to ME to fix it, which will completely fuck my schedule. And today's meeting fed into that feeling: if no one recognizes what I need when I actually say it, out loud, in words, and then tries to facilitate that happening, why should I trust that people will do what they say on these other fronts? I would be a fool to do so, in my opinion. And, realisitically, I know my coworkers: who, exactly, is going to "help"? Most of them do not write very well to begin with--which is not a criticism, mind you, just an accurate statement--and other people whom overlord supervises can write but do not know our programs. So who, exactly, is going to do this "helping"? And, as noted, what if they fuck it up? Or suppose someone writes something and I do a lot of editing? And s/he is the kind of person whose panties bunch up when that happens? I do not fucking have time for drama.

If we had more time, I'd be willing to risk it, and to use others, and be able to provide the guidance and support they'd need to be successful and to maybe actually provide some assistance to me, but I do not have very much time, so, no. I think I'm going to have to share this with Overlord--in a slightly more polite way, of course--so it doesn't look like I'm being a martyr. Trust me, I'd love to share this, but realistically, I know what would be involved, and what would be involved is actually more goddamned work for me.

But!

A new season of Top Chef! It was interesting for me, because I did not see very much of the early seasons and don't remember any episodes that I might have seen. I've gone back and read recaps on Television Without Pity, and I have one of the seasons on my Netflix queue, but I hadn't gone through a whole season with many of them. And? Richard Blais may be talented, but his comment that the thing his season is known for is that he lost when he "should have" won? Fuck off, dude. What a narcissistic remark. Some people may remember that season for the person who ACTUALLY won; just a thought. Marcel, the guy who was physically assaulted in S2, already has me hating him (which is absolutely no justification for the assault, period end of sentence). Stephen seems like a complete ass. And so on. It should be quite interesting, because every one of them has been around this block, and many of them made it to the final three or four, so there are some serious cooking chops in the room.

The best thing about last night's challenge is that it called on one of the things that I've been saying forfuckingever: each chef had to remake the dish for which s/he was eliminated. They could change it a little, but not a lot. First off, anything that gets served in a fine dining restaurant is likely NOT the first version of that dish that someone tried to make; the higher up the price/quality range you go, the more likely that probably is. Point being, if you're trying out a new dish, you get to REmake it, to fix whatever seemed broken--you get to learn from your experience. Second, another thing that made it interesting is that anyone who was eliminated in the finals or the final four probably had a good dish but had one flaw in it--too much salt in Jen's dish, for example--such that the dish wasn't bad, in and of itself, it's just that someone else made something better. But people who were eliminated in earlier rounds had a higher likelihood that the dish that sent them packing just sucked ass from the conception. Making THAT a better dish is going to be a bigger challenge than merely not oversalting something.

So, really, I liked the concept of the elimination challenge quite a bit. And the person who lost--Elia?--served fish that was raw (but was supposed to be cooked), and apparently didn't really change the dish at all. No learning going on there. I also didn't like her personally.

Anyway. Tomorrow I'm going to dump a bunch of text into my outline for this fucking proposal--chunks of stuff that I can steal from elsewhere, coupled with notes on where to get other stuff--and see where that gets me. And then I'm going to another hockey game. I was supposed to make chocolate ganache tonight, but I didn't get to it; maybe tomorrow morning before work, because it won't take long. (Saturday is the condo association holiday gathering, and I'm bringing the mini hazelnut smores--maybe I'll actually get it right this time--and the ganache really has to sit for a day. If Brazen Tart is reading this, I'm using the Palet d'Or formula from school, because it ends up being firm enough.)

Our Friend the Turnip, Part II

This month's big decision is whether to do the CSA farm share next year; I want to decide by the end of the month because there's a discount for signing up and paying them now. And I really don't know whether I want to renew with them. On one hand, the delivery to my doorstep really can't be beat--no hauling bags of vegetables on buses, and no trying to carve out a couple of hours on a Saturday morning to get to the farmers' market, and the vegetables aren't beat up by being hauled on the bus.

The two down sides, though, are non-trivial: for one thing, I don't think the quantity really has been where it could be, and I mean that in two ways. There isn't a whole lot of product on a given delivery--no way could two people eat from one share--and often there is too little of a given item.

The other problem is that the variety has been lacking, in my opinion. I have had more fucking turnips this summer than EVER in my life--all of the turnips I've had in the previous 52 years wouldn't make a dent in the pile I've received. And, oh joy oh rapture, I'm getting more of them this week and next week! Also way too many radishes and way too much lettuce. I've received lettuce at least half of the weeks of the season, it seems--it's more like a salad share than a farm share.

This week I got two acorn squash (one of which has a mold spot on it), another huge bag of spinach (probably some kale in there too), 8 or so turnips, and a bunch of beets (very small beets) with the greens attached. So, not so bad, but fucking turnips. Again.

This week's cooking challenges are to figure out what to do with all the spinach (which won't be that difficult, because it's my second-favorite vegetable) and what to make for the condo association party on Saturday night. (Friend also wants to make some venison tenderloin for me . . . mmmmm, tenderloin.) I'll probably do a dessert; I'd love to make the poached pear tart that convinced me to go to pastry school, but ti takes a lot of fiddling around, so the more likely production is mini smores again. I've almost perfected the recipe, and it's not that difficult, and it's a nice bite-size thing to make, and I have all the ingredients, so, score.

Tomorrow I have to lead another half-day strategic planning and budgeting meeting, and I have to redo several budgets in the next couple of weeks, but after that, I'm going to put a "go away" sign on my office door and just do what I need to do. Should be nothing but fun.

Back Here

At first, I continued with my usual pattern of writing two thirds of a blog post and then trailing off, or thinking it was too long and rambly and wtf was the point, or I got tired and went to bed, thinking I'd finish it the next day, but no. Then, in early November, I thought, oh, I can do that blog post-a-day thing that all the Kids These Days are doing. Then I thought, wait, better idea, given how busy November is going to be, how about if I NOT blog in November, not even start posts, and then get back to it later, maybe in December. Which seemed like a way to take a break from this without giving it up entirely. So, even though it's not December, here I am, finally, again.

The Busy isn't over yet, either; two of the proposals are done, but the really huge big one that's due on the 15th isn't done yet--fuck, it's not even started yet--and everything is made more difficult by the necessity of bringing three people up to speed (new overlord, new over-overlord, and new finance overlord). Whatevs; yes, I miss my boss, and yes, there's a lot to do, but the new overlords don't appear to be evil, so it could be a whole lot worse.

One of the things that has been sort of interesting for me is that the Top Overlord kept asking what Made Me Happy, what kind of job would excite me, etc., and the Overlord has asked similar questions. What they both appear to be getting at is that the current work I'm doing, while important and they're happy I'm doing it, doesn't appear to . . . fully utilize my talents. And, on some level, I suppose that's true, but it doesn't seem very important to me.

For one thing, I don't particularly look for capital-H-happiness from my job. I took a stab at that--twice in my life, actually--and neither worked out, so I'm content to be working on the side of good rather than evil, doing work that's useful to the organization, and generally working with people I like. And that'll get you pretty far. Yes, I know, it flies in the face of the "do what you love" mantra that professional advice-givers like to chant, but I really don't think that many people get to do what they love AND get paid a living wage for it AND have a balanced life. So, really, I'm getting two out of three, and I at least like what I do, so it's a win.

For another thing, though, the "comma in every paycheck/no sacks of flour" aspect has continued to be absolutely crucial, even nearly three years after I hoisted my last sack of flour. (Yes, my last day was December 29, I think, 2007, and I started this job in February 08.) I would not have predicted it, but that episode in my life seems to have permanently rearranged the way I think about the world. Even though I've been insanely busy, and am going to be even more insanely busy for the next two weeks, still no sacks of flour and still a comma. Some of it is probably age, and some of it is a kind of resignation--as I've said to a few people, if you go by the evidence, then it appears that I do not get to Do What I Love in this lifetime--but it's been quite persistent. So be it.

Meanwhile, I spent all day yesterday baking cookies for beer school. We were going to be tasting holiday beers, which usually have a lot of spices added to them, so I decided to make cookies that focused on the simple ingredients in beer. One was a ginger cookie, mostly because I love ginger and look for excuses to use it. A second was a cookie that used barley flour, malted milk, and malted barley syrup, so you could get the barley flavor that grounds most beers; a third cookie used the same dough but added chocolate chunks, so it tasted like malted milk balls. The last one was a simple whole wheat cookie, which I glazed with orange; reminiscent of the fruit that often gets added to wheat beers. King Arthur adds orange juice to a lot of the whole wheat recipes, including this cookie one (apparently the flavor helps cut the tannins in the wheat), so I figured this would work. They were all pretty good (the ginger ones and the malted milk ball ones were pretty awesome), and I think people were entertained by the effort, so it was all good.

There are multiple other subjects I could mention--the new Bruce box set; other cooking or baking adventures; the CSA share--but I think we're going to stick with a training-wheels post for today.

Foodstuffs

I am reaching the point--or possibly have already reached the point--such that I don't need to do very much grocery shopping for the next six months. This morning I got up and made a vat of chicken stock, plus cooked up the odds and ends of greens in the fridge (onion, garlic, two turnips, radish greens, broccoli greens, and a little broccoli), washed the lettuce for tomorrow's salad, and grated the carrots for the week's salads. I even managed to work out today, for the first time in what feels like a year.

In the freezers I have 20 pounds of blueberries as well as roasted beets, beet greens, wheat rolls, a few things of squash soup, pesto, and . . . some other stuff, too; I'd have to go look to figure it out. I don't know that I can fit anything else in there. The farm share runs through the first day of winter, so there's more food coming. And I'll need the occasional bag of pasta or grains or something, and dairy products of various sorts, but otherwise, good to go. I still have not hung a single picture, and i still have crappy furniture, but I have a freezer full of food.

What I have not done today is speak a word to another human being. That used to happen more frequently, but not so much lately, so it was kind of interesting. I've had some social engagements this weekend--dinner with Chuck and CK on Friday; breakfast with a pastry school chum yesterday; beer school with other friends last night--but I didn't have anything planned for today, and it ended up being a great opportunity to get some things done and just hang out.

The stock, especially, because that takes some time to cook and to cool--and may I say how wonderful it was to put the stock pot on a burner that actually was big enough for it? I am loving having a full-size stove and oven more than I can possibly say.

At work, some things do seem to be improving. The new Middlelord (i.e., the person to whom we all now report, and the Middlelord reports to the Overlord) has been putting in tremendous effort to learn about what we do, and where, and how, and all the details, and MidLord has been reining in Overlord, trying to keep OL from mucking about, so it could be going much worse. I've also been quite busy personally, because I'm the one who knows a lot of the details (and, actually, right now, I'm the ONLY one who knows a lot of the details). The next two months are going to be somewhat hellish--several major deadlines, for millions of dollars worth of funding.

The one thing that is making me roll my eyes is that OL keeps going on about wanting me to be "happy" at work, and "excited," and that kind of shit. I have said, multiple times, that I do not look for happiness with my job--after all, they have to pay me to show up. Of course I would like to have, and do have, a job that feels like it's on the side of good rather than evil, and of course I want to make a decent wage, and of course it's nice if I can enjoy at least some of what I do, but, when push comes to shove, it's still work.. So, it goes, and all of us appear to be pulling in approximately the same directions, so it's not intolerable. And? Still no sacks of flour.

Evil Asshole and the New Overlords

It's difficult to determine just how many posts I have started and abandoned--some of them quite lengthy. But I get half way through a story, or some more-or-less-connected thoughts on something, and I just don't finish it. Tonight, though, I am determined to finish, and the yeast in the kitchen will make sure I have the time. I tested a recipe for Cooks Illustrated, for wheat bread, and I really rather liked it. I only made a couple of changes--all butter, instead of some butter and some oil; wheat bran instead of wheat germ; and I made rolls instead of a loaf of bread, because rolls are easier to freeze and grab from the freezer for lunch--and I rather liked it, so I'm making it again. One of the good things about it is that you start part of it 8 to 24 hours before the rest of it: a biga and a soaker. It says 24 hours, but I left this one for more like 30, and I'm sure it'll be fine. The down side is that it raises three times after you mix everything together, but you don't have to do much, so it's not too bad.

Anyway, it's on its final rising, and obviously hasn't baked yet, so maybe I'll actually finish this.

Work continues its stressful march. I think what was happening was that several people, including the finance person (not the one w/ whom I continue to work, and my opinion of that person has improved some), but the higher-up person, who is an evil asshole rat bastard. I didn't trust that person to begin with, but I have since discovered that Evil Asshole was one of the major promulgators of the various canards that contributed to my boss's departure. Luckily, I don't have to work much with EA; s/he has been kicked upstairs, is going on to Even Greater Things Within The Organization, blahblahfuckingblah.

In any case, EA (and others) basically told the New Overlord that we were all a bunch of incompetent boobs, with my ex-boss being the least competent of the bunch. So NewO and others had the idea, I think, that they'd get rid of my boss, and maybe a few other people, and so on and so forth. Except, oh wait, we're actually NOT incompetent! So maybe it might not be a good idea to shuffle us around like a pack of playing cards. The other crimp in the plans is that they keep adding administrative salaries to our budget. Well, fine, but where the fuck does everything think those dollars are coming from?

So I just try to do my job, and quietly point out that yes, the emperor is still without any fucking clothes. It's very tiring, though.

Luckily, I've been reading some really great books. In particular, I have finally discovered Eliot Pattison and Michael Gruber, and they are both completly riveting me.

I've also been doing my usual use-up-the-vegetables cooking: yesterday's side dish involved turnips, onions, garlic, potatos (which were, unbeknownst to me before I cut them, a lovely pinkish-purple inside), kale, and spinach, all of which came from the farm share except the kale, which came from friend's garden, and some gruyere. Didn't suck. And one night last week I used kale, turnip greens, and some other stuff. So, all in all, the farm share has improved somewhat, though I have had more damn lettuce this summer than ever in my life. At least it's not iceberg, and is a mix of various greens, but I am getting very sick of salad, even though I'll be eating it this week and likely next week and possibly the week after. I throw in some carrots and radishes (also from the farm share) and some cheese, and it's pretty tasty, but still. Enough with the salad, please.

Okay, the bread is not just baked but now cool enough to eat, so I'm going to go test some.

Gone, Baby, Gone

My boss, that is. Yesterday they eliminated his position. Hard to say what happens next.

Stress? What stress?

The Bitter Greens of Petra von Kant* Narya

I don't have the energy or motivation to detail all the shit at work; let's say that it continues to be tense and nervous, and leave it at that.

This weekend's cooking, however, deserves some energy! The past few weeks I got a bunch of turnips in the CSA shares, and I hadn't gotten around to doing anything with them. I also had a trombone squash, or part of one, to finish off. (Someone at work who also has a CSA share had this big beautiful trombone squash for me, and last weekend I used about half of it in the Sunday dinner adventure, but there was a bunch sitting in my fridge.) So: one morning last week, I peeled the turnips and cut them up a bit, and then browned them in a little butter and added some parsley (the only herb I've gotten from the CSA), water, salt, pepper, and a little honey. I cooked them until tender. They're in the fridge now, but I've had a little of them and they're fine--for turnips.

Saturday we went to Farm Aid and got back to my place at about 2:10 am. I rarely sleep really late, but Friend needs his sleep, so I got up around 7:30 or so, when I woke up. I shaved the sqaush--or some of it--and put the rest through the food processor (slicing blade, not shredding). I took it out and sliced an onion in there, too, while I was at it. The onions have been REALLY strong, as in tear-inducing, so this was a great way to avoid that. I sauteed the onions for awhile, added some garlic, sauteed some more, then added the squash from the food processor (but not the shaved squash) and a hunk of pesto from the freezer and let it cook awhile. When it was cooked through, I stuck the immersion blender in it to puree it a bit, then added the shaved squash until that was cooked. I put some water in there somewhere; would have used broth if I'd had any. I ended up with three portions of soup for lunch, which, since I was using scraps from other meals, was kinda like free food.

Yesterday I cleaned out leftovers. I chopped up some venison that we had seared on the grill a week ago, and I threw it into Friend's slow cooker (I don't have one, so if I'd been at home I would have used a stew pot of some kind) with a cup or so of red wine that was sitting around, a can of chopped tomatos, and a couple of cloves. The venison already had salt, pepper, and garlic on it, and, IIRC, had been marinated a bit, too. That cooked for about three hours, most of it on high.

About an hour before dinner time, I put some barley on to cook. Then I pulled out the turnip greens and a few leaves of Russian kale I'd brought over from my house, plus some kale from his garden. We'd had some fabulous glazed brussels sprouts Friday for dinner, so we nibbled the leftovers, but I saved the chunks of bacon or pancetta or whatever. In the frying pan went a little butter, a little olive oil, and said chunks. I added about three big cloves of garlic, a can of drained cannellini beans, and all of the greens (which were still damp, so I knew they'd steam a bit, too), and let it all cook a bit. I rescued some tomatos from the garden, some leftover fresh mozzarella, and some basil from the garden as well--we harvested nearly all the basil a few weeks ago and made a whole bunch of basic pesto, but left some leaves on the plants and they've grown back some. I splashed some balsamic vinegar in with that salad and in with the bitter greens.

The barley went into a pasta bowl, with the stew on top; I kinda wish I'd done it in a pot so it would have reduced some, but it was fine. The greens could have gone in there, too--I had leftovers that way for lunch today--but keeping it separate allowed construction of various bites of food.

All in all, some pretty fabulous food. I basically managed to make five or six meals from those leftovers, plus another three from the squash, and some more from the turnips. I still have beets in the fridge that I'd meant to do up tonight, but I didn't feel like it, so I'll have those to do later in the week; we'll see what's in this week's share and go from there. The share runs through December, so I'll be interested to see what comes in the next two months.

*I have some vague memory that I saw that movie when I was in college, but I guarantee you that I don't remember a single scene from it, if I did, in fact, see it.

It's Not Death, It's Only Cake

Which is one of the most awesome things a judge on Top Chef (or, in this case, Top Chef Just Desserts) has ever said. Sylvia Weinstock, who is a wedding cake maven, apparently, was a guest judge last night, and one of the contestants was getting sniffly (as opposed to last week's full-out breakdown by a different contestant--a breakdown that involved weeping and sobbing, "The red hots were for my mommy") because her wedding cake kept getting worse and worse. It was difficult to watch, because I've had that sensation, where every single thing you do doesn't just not help or not work, it actively makes things a whole quantum level worse. In her case, the cake basically started to fall off the cake stand as she stood there. And Sylvia was tactful, and gracious, and very nice to her, and she also reminded the contestant that hey, it's only cake.

So I think I need to embroider that on a sampler or something, especially as things at work continue to get weird. The new person is apparently going to be making Large Changes, though not all of them have been revealed yet, and s/he's doing a number of things that I suspect are likely to fail, and s/he is definitely listening to some of the wrong people. But you know what? It's another thing about which I can do nothing, so I'm trying to keep my head down, stay calm, do my work and find another job. What the fuck else can I do?

Yes, it's very disappointing, because I like the organization, in large part, and I like the work well enough, and I feel like I'm doing something useful. It's not my life's work or anything, though, and I'm waiting to see how a few things play out (e.g., will my boss lose his/her job? betting says yes), and I'm absolutely not jumping (will I be pushed? hard to say for sure) into just anything. But.

And, of course, it has been unpleasant since I returned from vacation. It's clear that we've been maligned--in some cases, by people with whom we work closely--and it's looking like, if the boss goes, some of the people who have been doing the maligning will be my/our new overlords. But unless the lottery comes through for me, or a new job does, they'll be my overlords and I will need to obey them.

In any case, Sylvia's comments made me think of a running conversation that K. and I have been having (for nearly 25 years . . .). She, like me, buried a sibling (though she was much younger than I was when it occurred). We have realized that, even all these years later, we have a tendency, when things are really shitty, to say, well, nobody died. Both of us being relatively strong people (and I do not pretend to know the direction of the causal arrows on that), that realization is a shorthand for put your grownup pants on and deal with it. And, really, that is a useful bit of perspective.

On the other hand, we have decided recently that we probably need a spectrum of good and bad that is more than binary: somebody died = bad; nobody died = not bad. There really are more gradations than that. For example, when Chuck was basically having a breakdown? That completely sucked, for both of us, and especially for him, in oh-so-many ways. There wasn't a single fucking thing about that whole hot mess that was good at the time. (Yes, sure, in retrospect, he has gotten the help he needs--and is doing quite well; I had lunch with him and CK on Saturday--and so on, but at the time? Awful. As I'm sure you all remember, and you didn't read about more than about 25% of it.)

So, now, at work, I find myself being the calm one. Well, more or less. But in general, I've been the Voice of Reason and Calm, or one of them, anyway, and I find myself thinking, yeah, this sucks, but not only did nobody die, this isn't nearly as terrible as about six other times in my life. Possibly it's age at work, too; when you get to be an old broad like me, especially when you've done the kind of shit I've done, you kinda figure something shitty will happen, and you'll have to do something about it, or get through it, or . . . something. But there's no point in worrying too much about it, because what good will worrying do? Oh; right; none.

So, dinner tomorrow night, then off to Farm Aid on Saturday (back Saturday night), and possibly some cooking over the weekend. At the moment I have two batches of graham crackers in the kitchen--for one thing, I'm trying to find a version of the recipe that I really like. It tastes fine, but is missing something. One of the original recipes called for molasses, and that was fine, but very strong molasses flavor, which I like but not everyone does. So I swapped out some of the molasses for honey, and that works well enough, too, but it's still not quite right. The next attempt will include some malted barley sugar, I think; see what that does for the flavor. The reality is, I have a huge wad of leftover ganache from last week's bake sale, so I'm going to be making graham crackers until I run out of ganache. Yeah, I know, another tragedy. But nobody died.

Currying Favor Eggplant

This particular recipe is from Moosewood's New Classics cookbook, and I've (of course) made changes, as noted.

2 cups of chopped onions (I probably used closer to 4, because I have a bunch of onions)
2 tblp vegetable oil (no idea how much I used)
2 large garlic cloves (okay, more like five or six)
1 fresh chile, minced and seeded (left it out because I don't have any)
1 tblsp grated fresh ginger (probably more than that, maybe double)
the spices (I used approximately these amounts)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cardomom
1 tsp salt
generous pinch saffron

1 cup orange juice (didn't have any, so used the juice of a lemon in the fridge, plus a splash of orange extract, plus some honey; didn't measure anything)

5 cups cubed eggplant (I had roasted the eggplant already, several days ago: cut in half lengthwise, put face down on parchment, oiled lightly, and baked for awhile; I might have had a little more or less than 5 cups of the cooked stuff)
4 cups zucchini (didn't have any)
1.5 cups bell peppers (I never include these)
3 cups diced fresh or canned tomatos (I used a can of Muir Glen tomatos)
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil (I used some pesto I had in the freezer)

I also added a handful of beet greens that was too small an amount to freeze on its own, plus about a cup of frozen spinach sitting in the freezer.

I did the onions, then added the garlic and ginger, then the spices, then the eggplant. What mostly appealed to me was the spices, plus making use of the eggplant. I like to roast or bake eggplant before adding it to a recipe--and, when I'm feeling really ambitious, I salt it first and then rinse it, to draw out some of the water. Zucchini would have been nice, or more eggplant, but the whole thing is quite tasty. I've been eating it with one of the wheat rolls I made last weekend when testing the Cooks Illustrated recipe.

This week's cooking adventure will include turnips, plus maybe their greens, and, separately, a big summer squash (I don't remember what type) that one of my coworkers is going to share with me. (We have been trading tales of our CSA shares over the summer, and, in general, discuss cooking and baking quite a lot.)

Meanwhile, speaking of work, lots of shit going down; as John Fogerty noted, there's a bad moon on the rise. No, really; seriously unpleasant shit. And, for once, I'm one of the calmer ones. The reality is, I can't afford not to be (and I don't think I'm in immediate danger). I have some suspicions about how the new powers that be are going to rearrnage my job, because of what they think I should be doing. Of course, if my suspicions are correct, they're going to take away the things I like most and do best and I'll keep the really boring parts and add some more of that. I can't afford to have an opinion about that, though. Remember that part where I gave all my savings to a bank? Yeah. That. Which means I'll do what I can and what I have to do, and I still won't be lugging 50-pound sacks of flour.

I'm reminded of John LeCarre's "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy." The beauty of the whole plot was how the spy basically managed to turn the whole place inside out. The people who were right were shoved out the door, or made to seem wrong or discredited. In my case, if stuff happens the way I expect it will, the powers that be will be taking exactly the steps needed to fail, and fail big. Fun times.

So, really, I think I need to move up that "win the lottery" plan and implement that immediately.

Produce

I keep thinking that I didn't do anything today, by which I apparently mean that I didn't work out, because I surely did a bunch of crap. Friend headed off to Cheeseland early this morning for a football game. There had been talk of me going along, but a ticket for me never showed up, and it looked like it was going to be cold and rainy, and I have a lot of crap to get done, so we went to breakfast and then he dropped me at an el station and went on his way. I went to the farmers market and got another 10 pounds of blueberries, five bunches of beets, some cippolini onions, and some garlic, and I swung by my old grocery store to get freezer bags, butter, eggs, and cream.

There's a bake sale on Wednesday, and I'm expected to contribute a bunch of stuff, which is fine. But I'm having a Procedure done on Tuesday (a LEEP), so, even though I'll be home afterwards, I didn't want to leave everything until then. I made the dough for the lemon tarts and the dough for the graham crackers; tomorrow I'll bake them off and make the ganache for the smores. That will leave me to make lemon curd, meringue, and some molasses muffins on Tuesday, which I should be able to bang out quickly.

In addition to freezing the blueberries today, I roasted the beets, then sliced and portioned and froze them; washed the beet greens and then chopped and portioned and froze those; and made an Indian ratatouille from a Moosewood cookbook that enabled me to use up the eggplant I roasted earlier in the week, as well as some onions, a handful of beet greens, a chunk of pesto, and a small chunk of frozen spinach sitting around in the freezer. It came out really well--it's very tasty, though, as it sat, it became more brownish; it had some nice bright color when it was first done. That will get portioned into lunch-size bits tomorrow; I just ran out of steam on that one.

Things at work are getting unpleasant. The new person (my boss's new boss) seems like s/he might be okay, maybe, but maybe not. Basically, there are people who seem to be trying to get rid of my boss, and I can't tell the origin of the actions or even what all of them are. This is not an ideal situation. And, of course, if there's unsettledness, everyone's job could be up for grabs, too. So, filling my freezer with food is a way to deal with that particular anxiety.

Meanwhile, last night Friend and I went to Wrigley Field to see Dave Matthews Band. As always, DMB was fun to listen to, but, even more than usual, the crowd was fratalicious. And sororitastic, for that matter. The constant chatter is annoying, but even more strange, at least to me, is the number of people who spend the whole night interacting with electronic devices rather than with the musical performance in front of them. I suppose i shouldn't be surprised, given the general vapidity of that particular audience.

So, in short: not much sleep; lots of hauling of produce and then cooking and/or freezing said produce; not a workout, per se, but not exactly the sitting on my ass plan, either.

In Which I Do Stuff

none of which is terribly interesting.

Although my neighborhood has its contingent of old crunchy-granola types like myself, there hasn’t been a city farmers’ market in the neighborhood until this year. (The city has markets in a whole lot of neighborhoods, and many accept food stamps.) The local market is on Sunday, and I’m not always around, so I didn’t get to it until today. It’s pretty modest--only a block long, on one side of the street--but the bakery is doing this market, as is the cheesemonger who also works the market near where I lived downtown. After putting a starter for some wheat bread on the counter and watching the Formula 1 race, I wandered over; I wanted to freeze a whole bunch of blueberries for use in my morning oatmeal. Did I limit myself to said blueberries? Take a guess.

My haul for today:
*about 10 pounds of blueberries
*two jars of Sun-Gold tomato jam
*one jar of strawberry-raspberry jam (both jams from the CSA that delivers my produce)
*two kinds of cheese--a parmesan-type cheese that had been soaked in raspberry ale, and a sheep and cow’s milk cheese that’s pretty wonderful--to bring the total to about 10 kinds in my fridge right now
*two loaves of pretzel bread from the bakery, most of which was cut into serving-size pieces and frozen

The bread dough is rising (this recipe, back to which I’ll return in a second, requires three risings) and I’m nearly done freezing the blueberries (I’m IQFing them). I have some others in the freezer that I need to use, but I have been less than pleased with their quality; they’re from Whole Paycheck, and I think they’re imported from China.

Which brings me to my next rant.

I had a 20%-off-everything coupon from Bed, Bath, and Beyond and decided to stock up on some things that I need, plus a few things that Friend is missing from his kitchen. (In my opinion they’re missing--he can fibrillate for, oh, years, over a simple $7 kitchen implement, which, when I’m cooking there, drives me batshit. In a good-humored way, I might add, but I took the cheese grater into my own hands.) When I got home and unpackaged the stuff, I confirmed what I suspected when I was shopping: Every. Single. Thing. was made in China. And last night, when I was making some frozen broccoli for dinner? Also from China (the Whole Paycheck store brand organic, IIRC).

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t have anything against China as a nation or against people who live in China. But we have millions of people in this country out of work, and family farms are struggling. Yeah, sure, I know that people will stock up on stuff at the place that makes the Waltons wealthy, and, more important, I know that there are quite a few people who can’t afford to be shopping at Whole Paycheck--or anywhere that isn’t a resale shop or a food bank. But at some point, people who can afford to do so have to put at least some of their money where their livelihoods are. (I insist on the afford to do so part, and I am not going to decide who falls into that category for other people; I’m admonishing myself, and myself only.)

And there IS stuff out there--I just asked the Google. Yes, it’s not from my usual online retailers (I do nearly all of my clothes shopping online, because I loathe brick-and-mortar stores). But it’s time to suck it up and commit to buying at least a percentage of my clothing from retailers who make their stuff in this country. Food is a little easier, especially w/ the farm share this year (though I have not received produce in quantities that enable me to freeze anything).

Anyway, the bread recipe. I’m on the Cooks Illustrated mailing list to test recipes, and I glanced at this one, saw it had a biga and a soaker, and thought it might be good to test. Of COURSE I made a couple of changes--I replaced some of the wheat flour with wheat bran, I used 2% milk instead of whole, I ended up adding a splash more milk (probably because of the wheat bran), and I’m going to make rolls rather than a loaf, because rolls are more useful for me. It’s a pretty simple recipe, though the 8-24 hours during which the biga and the soaker sit, plus three risings, require a time commitment and some organization. We’ll see if I like it; I can’t imagine why not.

The other thing I noticed again today is just how cluttered my apartment is. Some of it is because I am . . . not the neatest person in the world. That’s hard-wired; it’s not going to change a whole lot. But part of it is that I am still (!!) settling into this place. I need to buy some more furniture; hang pictures; figure out where stuff goes; get containers for various types of stuff (hello, recycling pile; you need to be in a bin please); and just arrange things in a pleasing and convenient fashion. Obviously these tasks are interconnected: I can’t dismantle the recycling pile until I have a container in which to put it.

Overall, though, I think I need a MasterList, because what I find myself doing is making multiple mental lists, together with ruminating on how to solve this or that storage or furniture issue, but I’m not actually prioritizing, pricing, etc. So, really, nothing much is getting done. On the other hand, by waiting, I’m able to move things around some, reorganize what I have, and better determine what I really want. Still, the MasterList needs to become a priority.

The other priority is getting into some kind of half-assed shape. The sample weight-training classes were useful, but the place itself is wildly inconvenient and the prices are pretty high, so that’s not going to be the solution. But eating whatever crosses my path, coupled with no workout program at all, turns out not to be a useful strategy either, if the goal is to fit into the clothes I own.

ETA: Just stumbled across this tonight. Says it better than I did.

Back Now

Well, yes, and so.

I got back yesterday from a whirlwind vacation: I left here a week ago Thursday, and, in the intervening days, managed to spend two in Cincinnati, four with my parents (more or less), an afternoon of that time in Philadelphia, seeing various historical-type stuff, and a night in Cleveland. The things seen include:
*downtown Cincinnati (the riverfront, where the ballpark is, though we didn’t actually see a game)
*my older nephew’s first football game of the year (he played every down except the kickoffs and kickoff returns)
*the Martin Guitar factory
*in Philadelphia, Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, the Maxfield Parrish mural (done by the Tiffany studios) in the lobby of the Curtis Building, Elfreth’s Alley, Jim’s Steaks, Famous 4th Street Deli, and a cool little bar/restaurant in Northern Liberties
*the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, including, most importantly, the Springsteen exhibit
the Great Lakes Brewing Company’s brewpub, and
*a bit of Oberlin (yes, my alma mater)
All in all, quite fun.

My parents are doing pretty well--they’re about to try another round of some other kind of chemo on my dad, but he’s nearly tapered off the steroids. One of the more amusing moments was watching my mom decide that, oh, okay, she’ll go ahead a buy a new iMac (she has never used the Apple OS before). Her 4-year-old (windowsbox) computer had apparently gotten appallingly slow and creaky, and various people over the years have recommended Macs, but she was on a cruise once with a bunch of Apple devotees, and she vowed never to join the club.

So we all wandered over to the Apple store on Monday, and she poked around, and she looked, and we talked to the salesguy, and she finally said, okay, and walked out with a new computer. She set it up, with some direction and guidance, but one of the beauties of the OS really is its simplicity; after being shown a few things--and saying, oh, I’ll never be able to do this--she promptly started messing around with it. By the time we left three days later, she had figured out how to use three additional applications on her own. She also signed up for a year’s worth of one-on-one training, plus they’ll transfer all her files from the windowsbox, all for about a hundred dollars. I think that will be well worth the money.

But it’s nice to be back home today, even if apparently things at work were mostly big piles of shit hitting industrial-strength fans. (My boss actually emailed and called me, in a panic, and with many apologies about interrupting my vacation; Boss is generally quite good about respecting that boundary, so you know it had to be serious.) I went to a condo board meeting this morning, mostly to educate myself; I started moving winter and summer clothes between the closets; I think I attached my DVD recorder properly; and I caught up with some financial stuff, but otherwise I’ve been sitting around doing a lot of nothing. Which feels mighty fine, I might add. There are a handful of things I probably should do, and I may get to a few of them, but it feels good to just sit here.

Road Trip

It's possible I could be more useless tonight, but I'm not entirely sure how.

I'm starting to get my crap together for the Large Trip to the Coast of My Birth, With Multiple Stops in the State Where I Colleged. Friend and I are grabbing his sister and heading to, in order, his brother's place, a rendezvous in Pennsylvania somewhere, at a location yet to be determined, my parents' house, a possible day of touring Philadelphia historical bits, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, because they have a Bruce exhibit I've been wanting to see, plus it's the R&R HoF and probably has some Cool Stuff. I would like to stop in the actual town where I went to college, but I think that's unlikely to be part of the adventure. All in all, though, it will involve about eight days of stuff, at least four of which will include driving.

I've been monumentally tired lately, and I've been trying to piece together why that is so, because it's not lack of sleep--I'm not sleepy, exactly. In discussion with Friend last night I decided that it's partly, or mostly, stress from work. (And not working out probably doesn't help, either.) It's not that I hate my job--actually, despite the multitude of frustrations lately, I actually like a lot of what I do, on some level. Yeah, it's boring and tedious in a lot of ways, and it doesn't engage my intellect, for lack of a better word, in any way whatsoever, but it's Good Work, and for a good cause, so if I don't get to use my smarts in ways that make me happy & fulfilled, well, at least other people get to benefit from it. There is some measure of satisfaction from that, and I make a living that allows me to do stuff and enjoy myself and even save some money, so it's pretty damn good, as these things go.

The thing that's causing me stress is that I don't have any help. There isn't another person in the whole organization who knows as much about what I'm doing as I do, and, in particular, doesn't know nearly as much about the budget as I do, and that makes me nervous. Our downtown financial folks don't concern themselves with the actual program activities or rules governing same, and they don't make any effort to learn what we're doing, and they don't particularly provide us with tools that would help; they mostly add layers of hoops through which we must jump, and communicate poorly about same, which just adds to the strain. Sometimes, when I'm really lucky, they lecture me on what fabulous tools they're providing and how we should really use them. But really, they don't know our programs nearly as well as they ought. (For example, today our controller called and asked MY opinion about a thing that the head of the whole organization wants to do that would affect one of the satellite programs in our corner of the organization, and I got the strong sense that my feedback was what made the decision, even if it doesn't go out with my name on it, plus I sent the controller to an additional person whom I knew would have a relevant opinion about another aspect of the whole thing.)

On top of that, there really isn't anyone else who knows our data needs and reporting requirements. (One of our funding agencies requires 40 reports a year. Yes. Forty. And that's just one bit of the reporting.) Some of the stuff I pull myself. Some of it I get from our IS person (who's a level above me on the food chain, so she isn't exactly support for me, though she does, in fact, do her best to get me what I need). It gets reported in multiple formats, and multiple arenas, and to multiple internal and external ends, and very little of it gets reviewed or even examined by anyone else before I submit it, and mostly people don't even know about it.

Yes, I know I need to write all of this down somewhere. I'll do that as soon as I put out whatever's on fire right now, and I can think of a half a dozen things that are smoldering or actually in flames.

My boss and I both recognize the need for some infrastructure, and I have occasionally given some thought to what it would resemble, were any of it to come my way. At the same time, I know our programs in the detail of the matter--i.e., both in terms of budgets and in terms of performance--better than anyone, and I know the huge unmet need, so I have a very difficult time taking money that could be used to provide direct services to people who's lives are much, much, much worse than my Stress At Work problems. On the other hand, I know that infrastructure is vital, so I'm willing to make an argument to hire someone when we have the dollars to do so and I have enough work to keep that person busy. It's a balancing act.

Add to it that I absolutely do not want to cheap out on the eventual position: either hire someone good, at a reasonable salary, or don't, but don't hire a warm body at 2/3 the necessary salary, and expect that person to do what I know needs to happen. To me, that's a complete waste of money, and, likely, a waste of my time.

So, really, it's the sole-responsibility part that is making me a bit anxious. I would like to have someone around whom I can trust and past whom I can run things, with some expectation that s/he will actually be able to look at what I've done and find my mistakes. Right now, I work alone, and the things I send downtown get put through some weird translation device that fucks up everything and puts it into a spreadsheet in ways that make it impossible to actually follow, but no one actually reviews things in a way that is likely to find any relevant mistakes. Irrelevant bullshit, yes, but not actual mistakes. Not the desired result.

Anyway.

All that aside, I'm still taking time off. As of February of this year I get three weeks of vacation a year, so even with this trip I'm going to have more than two weeks of vacation days left. And I'm taking this time. I want to see my dad near his 80th birthday, while all of his organs are still on the inside of him. I want to see my nephews, if I can. I want Friend to see a part of the country that is beautiful to me, but that he has never seen. (I find that I don't much care about seeing my brother, which kind of bothers me to realize but I don't know that I want to, or can, do anything about it. But that's another whole story.) And you know what? I'm not indispensible; the place will manage without me for another week. The other thing that helps is that I have worked hard to develop relationships with our various funding agencies and project officers, so if something does blow up, they'll be on our side. Who knew that someone as fundamentally grouchy as I am would have the patience for that . . .

And then . . .

It was, in fact, very nice. It was also funny, because the guy who waited on me earlier in the week--and whom I'd told that I'd gotten married there (but was now divorced)--saw me and came over and said, glad you made it back again, and I said, and here's my ex-husband. He was a little taken aback, I think, but amused as well. It was also bittersweet, of course, but it is what it is. We know each other's lives so well, and much of the fundamental liking for each other remains, so we can have a good time talking to each other. Apparently I don't know how to be divorced any better than I knew how to be married, given that most people don't seem to manage amicability. Then again, we've both worked hard at that, and struggled through a lot of difficulty, so it's not as though it happened by magic, and it certainly hasn't happened easily. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, if I use the generally available narratives about relationships and divorce and marriage and whatever, but if I throw them out and accept it, it works a lot better.

Meanwhile, my dad is going through some changes of his own. The bladder cancer keeps reappearing, and he's reaching the point where they're going to want to take it out completely and replace it w/ a bag. At first, he was absolutely opposed to that idea, but my mom was telling me today about a conversation she overheard. Some friends of theirs were visiting, and the other guy also has bladder cancer--more advanced than my dad's so they're pretty much stuck with removal--and my dad was telling this guy that it would be okay, that you have to do what you have to do, that he golfed with someone in Florida (my parents used to spend a few months each winter down there) who had a bag and it was okay, and so on. My mom was kind of (okay, totally) eavesdropping, because this was a rather significant change of position on my dad's part.

My dad's a pretty sensible person, and I think he's capable of evaluating quality of life and figuring out what it's worth to him. The thing for him is that he'll be 80 in a couple of weeks, so his balancing act has different constraints than someone who's younger, for example (or older, for that matter). As my mom and I were discussing, chances are pretty good that he'd have a pretty good quality of life with a bag--he'd still be able to do all of the things he likes to do, he'd get to hang with his grandkids a while longer, so . . . there it is. I suspect he'll go for it.

Of course I'd like to have him around awhile longer--I like my dad! But I also know he'd rather die sooner and happier than later and more incapacitated, either mentally (especially mentally) or physically. One of the great advantages to having spent so much time working on my relationship with my parents is that I don't feel like we've left a lot unsaid. We don't have unhealed wounds in our relationships. To be fair, we haven't had many to begin with; my mom and I have always had the most difficult relationship--remember when she didn't speak to me for more than a year?--but even that is bounded by the knowledge both of us have of the love we have for each other. The other contributing factor is that we talk nearly weekly, and have done so for the 24 years I've lived out here. Some weeks there's not a lot of conversation, other times we talk for awhile, but it means we have a dense fabric of interaction to sustain us.

The difficult part of our relationship is, and always has been, that I haven't lived my life in a way that she completely understands. It is so different from what she would choose for me, and, in some ways (more ways than she knows, actually), so different from what she considers a proper life, that she can't always get her head around it. I've known this for 40 years, and, when I'm not having difficulties of my own, I can deal with it. We have problems when my life is going to shit in some way--she tries to help, but her suggestions are so contrary to what makes sense to me, for me, that I get defensive and upset and she gets more entrenched. In my heart of hearts, I know that she just wants me to be happy--what all parents want for their children--but she cannot for the life of her figure out how I could be happy doing the things I do.

The other thing for her is that, all things considered, the patriarchy has been very good to her. She married someone she loved, they've been happily married for 54 years, he's more of a feminist than she is in some ways. This makes it difficult for her to identify and recognize the subtle (or not-so-subtle) incursions of patriarchy into people's lives. She played by the rules and she hit the jackpot, so she sees a causal conneciton there, where I would argue those things are really not causally connected at all.

No matter. At heart, I know she loves me, despite the many challenges I pose for her, and that's the important part.

Say What?

i cannot seem to finish a post and then actually post it. I have several that were probably minutes away from readiness and . . . I just didn't.

Because whatever.

It's been a full couple of weeks. Lots of beer last weekend, and tasty food, and lounging about. Four days of work and annoyance, and now I'm off again--until next Wednesday, actually. The original plan had been because Friend and I were considering another trip this weekend, but then he had to tuckpoint his house and I have a special assessment and we decided to stay the hell home. Even if we go out and do some stuff, it'll be cheaper than going away. I ended up with several appointments to keep, including my gynecologist (I have to see him every six months, and I'm already two months overdue); I called today, expecting the usual two-month wait, and they have a cancellation for Monday. Oh well; not exactly what I want to do on my day off, but whatevs. I can still get up in the morning and make tea and sit around for awhile.

I've also started going back to the acupuncturist, because the SI pain is back, along with heel pain that I think is possibly completely unrelated. It's quite tedious; some days or activities that you think would stress it out and make it hurt have no effect at all, and other days, blammo. So I'm going back to the needles, and I'm trying to go back to the yoga mat; that project is less successful, for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me. I like the practice, I really liked it when I practiced regularly, I know that I feel better in so many ways when I do it, but actually getting my ass on the mat? Not so much. At least I've been better about exercising--including when we were out of town last week! I looked it up and saw that the hotel had workout facilities, so I threw some gear in the vehicle, and I actually worked out Friday before we went out to dinner and Saturday morning, so I felt very virtuous. Didn't stop me from ordering dessert at breakfast on Sunday, however.

Tomorrow is going to be another chapter in the weirdness that is my life. The restaurant where Chuck and I got married is closing next week. They're going to reconceptualize it (cue the eyeroll) so it's for hipper people than I am. Whatever, the point is that I love the place; it was one of my favorites before I met him, and we enjoyed it together, and I've made it a point to kind of "reclaim" it since we split up, because I liked it so much. (I went by myself on Tuesday night, and had a fabulous meal and even talked to the chef.)

Anyway, I told Chuck about the closing, and he asked if I wanted to have dinner with him there tomorrow. Yes, I know it's a bit odd, at least for most people, but it feels like the right thing to do in many ways. I realize I'm taking a chance that it's going to upset him or freak him out, and I will check in to make sure before we meet, but it feels like a way to honor the parts of our relationship that were good. I've begun to truly believe that we had the best possible relationship we were capable of having (and still are, for that matter). I have never doubted his feelings for me, or mine for him, for that matter, but so many things, including our own habits and behaviors and wishes, made it nearly impossible for it to work as a marriage.

I realize that's a mighty convenient conclusion, but I have been thinking about this for nearly five years, in one way or another--more, in some ways--and I think the odds were really against us. The fact that we managed to create as much good stuff as we did is a testament to both of us, I think. And, here's another oddity for you, sometimes what I would like most is to find a good companion for him. He's a good person, in so many ways, and I'd like him to have that, even as I recognize that I'm not that person.

One of my biggest realizations, when we had been separate for awhile but were still waffling around, was that getting back together would be poisonous for both of us. I know myself, and I know that I would never have really trusted him; I would have wanted to look over his shoulder all the time. And the thing is, if he changed the behaviors related to my lack of trust, then he would deserve to be trusted. There is absolutely no way for that to work out well. I don't say this to point fingers at either of us, but, as I hope I'm making clear, it's a combination of the behaviors of both of us. Perhaps you could say that, after a certain amount of time, or some kind of evidence, I should have been able to let go of my own needs for Proof of Trustworthiness; I don't know. My point is that it's an interaction, and both people contribute to it, and not necessarily in ways that are good for either of them.

And here's the other thing: people get into patterns of behavior. As they say in the substance abuse treatment world, practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent. The same is true of friends, lovers, whomever; we have habits in our relationships with people, and we fall into them, and that isn't all bad. It's the foundation of intimacy, probably. My point is, even if Chuck and I had the best intentions, even if we could have gotten past the trust issues, our own habits may well have led us back down the paths that would be harmful to us, individually and together. I don't know if that part is true, of course, but I also believe that it would have been much more corrosive, to both of us, than the first time around, if that happened.

So, yeah, dinner with my ex at the place where we got married.

Please Read, Damnit!

There's a guy across the street who likes to play the piano, with his windows open; sometimes he sings, too. And he's absolutely wretched. No; really; he's just terrible. There are some nights when, after he's been flailing away for a couple of hours, I just want to go over and shut the piano on his hands. Or at least close his fucking windows. Dude, have whatever hobby you please; I don't care. But don't subject the rest of us to it.

Meanwhile, as the dearth of posting might suggest, I'm a bit fried. Work has been extremely stressful lately, though of course I can't help but be grateful I have a job. Some of it is just me being whiny, but a big chunk of it is that the people who are supposed to be assisting us . . . aren't. Two weeks ago, one of the other department heads and I sorted through a bill for a particular service. It's a quarterly bill, and s/he and I each had our own way of budgeting for it--which is fine, as the cost is split between our departments, and it's spread across our department in a way, and using a methodology, that I developed. So I created a little spreadsheet, passed it along to downtown, and wrote a cover email that said, you'll be getting this purchase order, here's how the costs are being allocated, please note that it's by dollar amount not by percentage.

Fine. Except the Very. First. Response. from the person who's supposed to assist us, says, "Okay, I'll adjust the percentages." Did you READ the fucking email? Apparently not. There were then a half a dozen clarifying emails. Okay, finally everyone signs off on it, the invoice and purchase order go downtown for payment.

A week later, it comes back to me. Why? Well, the other department head budgeted the dollars for this cost under the pencils account number, while I budgeted the dollars under the erasers account number. No matter; we each have our own funds. Or, rather, it shouldn't matter, but someone downtown apparently couldn't follow along, and said, oh, the other department doesn't have the dollars in his/her budget for this, because the person downtown was looking in the erasers line in both departments, despite having been instructed otherwise. So there is yet another round of clarifying.

And today, one of my fellow directors informs me that the grand plan of downtown is to have all bills sent to them, "because you already budgeted it, and you have to follow your budget." I about blew a gasket. They fuck up everything they touch, but they want to take the bill-paying out of our hands? It will be a fucking nightmare if that comes to pass. They simply do not realize that we must obey our funding agencies: as my old boss used to say, in this world you have to follow the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules.

More seriously, there simply isn't any way to align three major contracts (each of which has a different contract year), and three more minor contracts--none of which has the same contract year, and none of which has the same year as our fiscal year--so everything lines up perfectly. It cannot be done, at least not with human beings involved in the system.

On a similar note, in the middle of yet another dispute on Thursday, our controller says, surely not very much has changed in the month since the fiscal year budget went into effect. Well, actually, I pointed out, it has been THREE months since the FY budget was submitted, and since then there have been several changes, and here, again, is what they are. In other words, things change, and part of my job is to manage the contracts in ways that make sure we spend the dollars and spend them appropriately, and instead of assisting in that project, the people downtown create their own agendas that have nothing to do with this and don't bother to learn what the grants are. I do all of the budgeting and make the budgets available to them, but it's like reading poetry to fish.

One of the major sticking points is that the person who is supposed to be helping us most closely really isn't up to the job. S/he was hired to do Job A, and the (now-not-so-)new boss thinks s/he should be able to do Job A+++. And s/he simply cannot do that job. Thus, we are not getting the service we need, and we have someone who is actually getting in our way--this is the person who wanted to change the percentages, after being explicitly and specifically told we'd be using dollars rather than percentages. All of which adds yet another layer of crap on top of the processes. Everything thinks helperperson needs to go, and apparently s/he is on some kind of performance evaluation, but meanwhile, we're getting crap. And also also, helperperson dumps stuff in my lap without actually doing his/her homework first, in a frantic effort to show that s/he is doing the work and is getting stuff off his/her desk.

Can you tell it's getting on my last fucking frayed nerve?

Anyway.

This weekend will feature a lot of beer-drinking, preceded by maragaritas and great tex-mex food the night before, and succeeded by french bistro food for breakfast, and then possibly a cat will make its way back into Friend's house. We contemplated going away next weekend, too, and I took off several days to facilitate that, but Friend just had to dump a whole bunch of money into his (17-year-old) vehicle, which has nearly 260,000 miles on it. And he still needs new tires for it. But after that, he mostly needs to get through this next winter with it, and start shopping for a replacement in earnest. In any case, the other trip next weekend now looks less likely, which is okay with me, too--not least because I just got a substantial special assessment.

I apologize that my first post in awhile features a lot of complaints--back to food blogging soon, I promise! And furniture blogging, too, when my shelves get here.

Whole Grain

This is the whole thing, finished, with the mail rack on top (it's still in Arizona; it's being crated and sent on Monday).
And here's a close-up that shows the grain of the wood.


As always, click to embiggen.

Scrappy

Well, I ended up doing a version of Iron Chef at my house tonight. The great thing about it was that I was able to make something for tomorrow's potluck at work and I was able to use up a whole bunch of scraps from around the kitchen. The two major things I had hanging around were three-quarters of a loaf of whole-grain bread that had gotten pretty stale and a fuckton of zucchini. I had originally thought to make a sweet bread pudding, maybe with some fruit thrown in, but then I thought doing it as a savory would be a better idea, one that would enable me to use up some of the zucchini. I sliced the zukes in the food processor. I chopped an onion and what I thought was another onion but that was a huge fucking shallot from my CSA share, and put those to saute in the big pan with some olive oil and a chunk of pesto from the freezer. I threw in four cloves of crushed garlic, too--also from my farm share--and then the zukes. I tried not to cook it too much. The bread--more than a pound of it--I cut into very small cubes. I used three cups of milk, six eggs, about three quarters of a cup of cream (basically, I used up some old milk and some old cream; I would have left out the cream if it were just for me, and I would not go out and buy it, but I happened to have a bunch of that around, too).

I mixed the cooked veggies into the bread cubes, then poured the milk and egg mix over it. I stirred it, a lot, and threw in some grated parmesan that was sitting in the fridge, and some grated carrots that I had intended to use for salads this week. I let it sit, stirred it again, and it's in the fridge now. Tomorrow I"m going to bake it in muffin tins, so there will be individual nibbles. I'm going to add some cheese curds (again, in the fridge, otherwise I'd grate some gruyere), and I took some slow-roasted herbed tomatos out of the freezer, which I'll chop and put on top tomorrow before I bake it. (I was a bit concerned about mixing the tomatos in, because of the milk, but I might do that anyway.) I was tempted to make it in a big pan, but I realized that it wouldn't bake all that evenly, or quickly, and would be harder to transport as well, so I think the little things will work better. We'll see how it comes out.

Finally, on tonight's Top Chef, more annoyance. This season has yet to really interest me, in many ways, and a lot of the people commenting at Television Without Pity seem to feel the same way. It may be that the lesser chefs have just taken up too much time and space and it'll improve, but . . .

The people who continue to annoy the fuck out of me: Amanda, oh lordy, she's insane. Not to mention, for someone who said, a few weeks ago, that she was an addict when she was younger, she cooks with an awful lot of alcohol. Having spent a fair amount of time around recovering people--and having been married to one--that just strikes me as odd. I know that alcohol is useful for flavors and sauces and such, but EVERY dish? And Angelo continues to provide adjectives with his dish, which is completely annoying; you provide the food, I'll pick my own fucking adjectives, 'kay? I find it disturbing how much he's treating the whole thing like Survivor: Kitchen. I know there is always a certain amount of strategery, but he really seems to take it to a whole 'nother level, and that turns me off. If you can cook, then your need for that kind of strategizing is really limited.

Finally, I ordered a table from a place I found online, a guy in Arizona who does custom furniture in the Arts & Crafts and Mission styles. It's nearly done--just needs a mail box on top (I asked him to create some kind of box to put on it for me to throw my mail into, but let him decide whatever he wanted to do) and finishing. Here's what it looks like in his workshop:

I'll post another picture when I get it and it's in its proper place.

Lazy Hazy

Tonight: No hockey, no Tour, no friends in the house. Ergo, it feels kinda strange. I had a fabulous time on my vacation; I must do that again sometime! Perhaps, soon! Given that I have more than three weeks' worth of time, I will in fact go ahead and do that.

M and I did a whole big bunch of nothing. We talked endlessly (and wonderfully); given that we have known each other for more than three decades and know each other's families and life stories, it wasn't as if we were going to run out of things to say. And we got to spend a bunch of time on the back porch and the sun porch, helping confirm just how wonderful those spaces are.

Saturday Friend and I took a friend to Madison so she (and we) could get a brewery tour, talk to a brewmaster, and drink beer. That was pretty good, too. We got back yesterday afternoon, and I couldn't help but think that a vacation from my vacation would have been a good thing. As it was, I had things in flames on my desk already, so that would have been a bad idea.

So, really, I don't have any profound thoughts tonight; I barely have any thoughts at all. Which is also fine. I'll put out a few more fires tomorrow, perhaps, and take it from there. This week is also full of social events, so I'm not sure where sleeping is going to fit in. Dinner tomorrow, possibly drinks with an old friend on Wednesday, and then concerts on Thursday through Saturday. Sunday will involve a great deal of nothing, I suspect.

Get Your Ass in the Kitchen and Make Me a Pie

I've been sleeping for shit lately--waking up early more than having trouble getting to sleep--but I've decided to ignore it. I don't actually feel tired during the day, so I"m going to assume that my brain just is a little wired at the moment. It's true that there's a lot going on, mostly at work, some of it very stressful, but I don't think that's it. I tend to regard these things as random and transient, so whatevs.

Meanwhile, on Top Chef this week: Pie Fail! Partly as a way to introduce the upcoming latest in the Top Chef line of programming, they had a rock star pastry chef to judge the quickfire, which was: make a pie. Seriously--that was it. And the Pie Fail? Was all over the kitchen. The absolute best comment, however, was the person who complained, "I'm not a pastry chef," to which RockStar Pastry Chef said, "My grandmother's not a pastry chef, either, and she can make a pie." Total pwnage.

That's the thing that kind of blows me away. This is Season SEVEN, people! Once you know you're going to be on the show (or hey, live dangerously, when you're still fucking trying out to get on), there are a half a dozen formulas you need to commit to memory:
1. A basic pie crust--this can be used in both sweet and savory concoctions, so it will increase your options for your all kinds of dishes (e.g., a breakfast quiche, anyone?)
2. A basic cake formula (ratio of flour, fat, liquid, leavening), which can be adapted in a number of ways; old Domestic Science cookbooks are full of this shit, because it dates to when women were trying to get into places like MIT by demonstrating the scientific aspects of their household work; if you make it look more like a chemistry task, then it looks all sciency and it "elevates" it, which of course is a whole nother patriarchy-induced cringe moment, but we'll ignore that for the moment. The point is? Cake.
3. Pastry cream. Really not difficult, and it can be used in so many ways it's not even funny.
4. A basic cookie recipe. Sugar cookies cab be flavored with all kinds of herbs and spices, and you've suddenly expanded those possibilities as well.
5. A basic yeasted dough. You can turn this into a whole-grain bread, or a baguette, or sweet rolls. This may be the least important one, but it may give you an opportunity to put an extra something on a plate at some point (restaurant wars, anyone?), and a lot of yeasted doughs don't require much work on your part--the yeast does all the work!
6. A basic ganache. You can go crazy and add a buttercream and/or an italian meringue to this (the latter would be very useful, as the meringue principle could probably be used in savory concoctions somehow as well).

This will get you enough information for just about any dessert challenge, I'd say. BT, whaddya say? What am I missing? What would your list have?

Point being, however, even if you're going to be hiring a pastry chef at Your Famous Restaurant, you should know some basic things to make (not least because you want to have a potential pastry cook know how to do these things, I'd say), and you really want to be able to evaluate the work that your pastry kitchen is putting out the door.

Little of This, Little of That

Okay, let's see.

First and foremost, one of my best friends ever is coming to visit next week. You may remember her; she sang at the wedding. I met her my very first day of college, back in 1977, so I have known her for 33 years. Yes, well more than half of my life. I cannot wait to see her. I'm taking off the whole week (really only four days, because we get off on Monday for the holiday), which will give me time to clean on Tuesday, and then we have most of three days to hang out and sit on the sun porch and drink tea and just talk and talk and talk.

Second, Chuck and I had some intense email exchanges last week, which I hope cleared the air between us a bit and cleared the way for me to see CK again. I have to give him his props: he continues to try to do the right thing, which is all we can ever ask of anyone. I'm still not going to go into detail about any of it here, except to say that I'm glad.

Third, the Crossroads festival was, as expected, quite excellent. The day was very damn long (oh MY how long . . .) and I was about to tip over by the time it was over, but the music was really great. We also managed to stay out of the sun for most of the day, which, given that Friend and I are two of the palest people around, is helpful. Yes, we slather on the sunscreen, but still. We also managed to scam good seats over the course of the day; of the three places we sat, only one was the actual seats on the ticket. The last place--where we sat for the last three hours or so, when the music was even more fab--featured a lot of people with VIP tags as well as a lot of empty seats. The only sour note all day, really, was the fact that this venue had exactly one water fountain. Yes; one. You could BUY water, of course, for $5 a bottle, but can I say no fucking way? At first there was a very long line, but then I think people either gave up and started buying it or started filling their containers in the bathroom sinks (which I kinda doubt, because the water in there was hot--not warm, hot). We, however, being cheap in some ways, saved some plastic beer cups and just refilled those along with the one water bottle we'd snuck in.

Okay, on to the food.

This week's farm share had more garlic scapes, more kohlrabi (to bring the total to three), two beets with greens, a head of lettuce, three mini squash, a little russian kale (those last two, plus some scapes, went into Saturday morning's breakfast scramble), and . . . that might have been it. So yesterday I used up everything: sauteed a chopped onion, then added the garlic scapes (should have waited on those), then the peeled and sliced kohlrabi and a little water, then the sliced mini carrots that needed to be used up, then the sliced beets, and finally the beet greens and some frozen collards (a little bit left in a package). I tossed it with some whole wheat (mostly) pasta and some grated cheese, and we had some grilled wild turkey with it, and it was all good. I threw in a splash of balsamic vinegar, too, and salt and pepper, but that was it for the seasoning. I liked the way the flavors balanced and melded, and it was useful to basically use up all the scraps of vegetables sitting around. In principle I like fresh herbs, but, in practice, I find that it's really, really easy to overwhelm whatever you're cooking with them, so I tend to try to balance the flavors of the other ingredients.

So now I've eaten kohlrabi, and, eh. I mean, it was good and all, but it isn't so good or so distinctive that I would necessarily seek it out, and it doesn't have any special healthy properties, at least not any of which I am aware, and at least not any that, say, broccoli, cauliflower, or cabbage have. (I like the brassica/cruciferous stuff, quite a bit, but I didn't think the kohlrabi was better than any of those three.) I'd eat it again, and I'll likely get the chance with this week's share.

And this season's Top Chef has begun, and, even after two weeks, one person has emerged as a total gaming asshole. Why yes, Angelo, I'm talking about you. Basically, this guy is seriously cocky. He and Tracey won the Quickfire, which meant (a) they had immunity and (b) they could choose the other two people who were going to be on their team for the Elimination Challenge. (Which was that each four-person team had a budget of about $2.60 per kid and had to make a "healthy" lunch for 50 kids--the dollar amount is what most schools have to work with. Some viewers apparently thought it was too preachy, but I was glad to see that theme--and I was completely entertained that Tom's mom was a lunch lady.) Okay, so Angelo and Tracey pick Kenny and Somebody--Kenny being the strongest apparent competition for Angelo at this early stage of the game--to be on their team. This could have been Angelo's way of ensuring that his team won the challenge, but of course Angelo is trying to game the whole system: because he and his partner have immunity, that means if their team loses, the other two people have a greater chance of going home.

So what did Angelo make for his dish? Celery sticks with peanut butter mousse and some kind of tuile. Yes. Celery sticks with peanut butter and a cookie. As a vegetable. The thing is, I think the judges even figured this out, and I do hope this comes back to bite Angelo in the ass. On the Television Without Pity forums, a couple of people who hated various other contestants over the years pointed out that none of those guys would have pulled such a dick move. Seriously, dude; if you think you're all that and a bag of chips, then you should be able to beat anyone else on the show with your actual cooking rather than bullshit games like that.

The other thing that was sort of train-wrecky to watch was the team that had Amanda--the Leah clone--on it. One of the interstitials showed her saying something to the effect that being a team player or taking one for the team wasn't in her vocabulary. Honey, that shit will come back to haunt you at some point. But, more important, (1) one of her teammates was the one who went home, because she made a nasty-ass banana pudding with way too much sugar in it, which she did because there wasn't enough cash in the budget for her original recipe, which included chocolate, and (2) Amanda made chicken thighs with sherry jus. Yes. Alcohol for school children. And a food item that likely broke their fucking budget. (Why did she get to keep her sherry when they were over budget, but Banana Woman had to put back some of her ingredients?) That kind of blew me away. And if I were Amanda, I'd be sending a thank-you note to banana pudding person, because the nastiness of that dish saved Amanda's ass.

I was a little surprised that she went with the banana pudding after she had to change the original conception. And someone on a forum suggested that maybe the bananas weren't quite ripe, which would have explained the trouble she was having with taste and texture. But why stick with that? K and I thought that rice pudding, for example, could have been subbed: brown rice pudding with a swirl of blueberry compote, for example, would have worked just fine, probably been healthier, and surely would have tasted better.

The other thing that that whole thing raised was how the teams split up the budget. Seems to me that you divide the dollar amount in four and negotiate from there. ("Hey, my thing is only going to cost X dollars, leaving me with some extra; who needs it?") It also seems that, if you're going to do something that depends on the condition of the fruit or vegetable, you should have a backup plan. But, hey, it's easy to think these things from my couch, probably harder to do it at Restaurant Depot, when one of the people on your team insists on buying sherry. Still, look at the plate of the team that won: lots more food, and it looks lots more appetizing. I think I want them to make the lunches at my school.

Public Service Announcement

Mobile Me sucks and blows.

That is all.

Cooking, Baking

Sometime back in March, kstyle positied that bakers and cooks have fundamentally different temperaments, and she later called on commentary from a friend of hers positing that bakers are more likely to make stews and pots of stuff that you put on the stove to cook for awhile (I'm assuming because of a similar aspect in the form of lots of prep/assembly, and then you let it bake for awhile).

And I've been thinking about that, off and on, and I still don't have a good response to it. There are a few things that I make that are timed, but it's also true that (a) a lot of stuff can cook a little bit longer, or sit a little while, without doing serious damage to it, but (b) I've gotten much better, over the years, of timing my cookihg. For example, Sunday's vegetable medley required that the spinach not go into the pan until just before serving. Baby spinach doesn't need much more than wilting, especially if you want to keep some brightness to the green, so you throw it into whatever you're cooking at the very last second. If I'm throwing it over pasta, for example, I throw it into the strainer, so the boiling pasta water basically cooks it as I strain the pasta.

And--and Brazen Tart, who came over bearing a wonderful poundcake a couple of weeks ago, might be able to testify to this--line cooks have a whole lot of stuff prepared as well. So, for example, I reduced the sauce for the meat, and then it just sat on the stove, heat off, until we were ready to eat. I might have rewarmed it just a touch if it needed it, or I might even have saved a tiny bit of butter to put into it as I reheated it (neither of which I did this time, but have done in the past), but it was done. If the grill took more or less time, no matter.

I think what really makes a big difference is that sense of timing. I used to be moderately good at it, purely from throwing a lot of dinner parties as well as cooking at home a lot; I'd have the leisure to plan things out ahead of time, or I would make enough stuff by myself so that I'd just sort of know how long something was going to take. But working at the bakery kicked it up several levels, not surprisingly, and I don't even think about it as I do it.

For example, when Friend makes banana bread, it takes him quite a while to do so. He hasn't done all that much baking (though he HAS made a lot of stews), which I think makes a difference. When I make it--and we use different recipes, I might add--I zip through it. We each have found a recipe we like, and we have each made our own recipe (in our own respective kitchens) multiple times, so it's not even a difference in familiarity with a particular recipe or tools. It's just . . . I've done something LIKE this hundreds or maybe even thousands of times in my life, and I had a job for two years that honed whatever skills I brought to the table. Of course I'm going to be faster at it--I'd better be.

So the two factors that are relevant, IMHO, are timing (and one's ability to work within timing constraints) and where the prep work and/or tweaking come in.

Or something.

I'm actually quite tired, and making an active (though obviousy not entirely successful) effort to write about something other than work. Tomorrow will feature another heinous financial meeting, and I am tired of it before it even begins. But, whatevs. I had a fabulous dinner last night, I'm going to get some work done around the house this weekend (including laundry, damnit), and summer is just about here. And I'm sitting on my sun porch, with the windows open (though it's dark, so I can't see anything), listening to summer and cars pass by. Pretty damned good.

Our Friend the Turnip

I have apparently lost the will to exercise. I find this rather disturbing, and the rational brain lectures me that I Will Feel Better If I Just Exercise Already, and harrumphs and rolls its eyes, but it makes no progress in getting the rest of me to put on the workout clothes and get on the rowing machine, even if for only a little while. I imagine it has something to do with the huge stress machine that work has become, and I most assuredly wish I could Do Something About It, but whatevs. Sooner or later I'll figure it out, I suppose. I rather wish it would be sooner rather than later, so I could fit back into some of my clothes.

Meanwhile, the farm share adventure is underway. I've had turnips the past two weeks (along with a buttload of lettuce, some kale the week before last, some strawberries, a teensy bit of broccoli, and more lettuce), which I had never cooked before. This week's experiment turned out somewhat better: I chopped an onion, cooked it in some olive oil and butter, then threw in the three sliced turnips and also added a sliced/chopped up apple. I sauteed that for awhile, then had to turn it off so I could run to the store for some fresh garlic. I added a couple of pressed cloves of garlic when I returned, along with some chopped up chicken/tomato/basil sausages. Meanwhile, there was kamut cooking on a back burner (only soaked for an hour or so, rather than the recommended six), onions caramelized on another burner, and some red wine and leftover berries (blue and straw) and their juices reducing in the onion pan. When the venison went on the grill, I threw in the spinach I'd gotten at the store with the garlic (I'd originally intended to use some frozen collards in there, in addition to the turnip greens, but decided that might be more bitter greens than I really wanted) so it had just enough time to wilt. The sauce ended up taking about a teaspoon of honey, because it was just slightly too sour/bitter, and the sauce, though good, still ended up slightly overwhelming the venison. The venison ring bologna--which is way too salty for my tastes--could stand up to the sauce, however.

The turnip thing was served over the kamut. The verdict? The turnip thing was quite tasty; better than last week's attempt, likely because I let the turnips cook a little longer. The sweetness of the apples and the spice of the sausage really went well with the turnips and greens. The kamut? Eh. It was okay, but nothing special. I like farro and barley much better, because both have more flavor to them.

I've also been eating a whole lot of salads; I grate a carrot in there, and throw in a handful of dried cherries, nuts, pine nuts, and/or grated cheese. Tonight I got some more carrots and salad dressing, so I grabbed some little tomatos for this week's eating. I try not to make it the 4,000-calorie salad, but a bowl of lettuce with nothing else in it is really not going to work for me.

This week's farm batch, arriving tomorrow morning, includes lettuce, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, and garlic scapes; I've never eaten either of the last two, so more adventures to be had there. I found a recipe for roasted butternut squash and kohlrabi, and I have one more squash left over from last fall, so I think I'll try that. Garlic scapes I'll probably either throw in the salads or throw in the kohlrabi thing or cook with the cabbage somehow. Clearly I've been eating extensively from the brassica/cruciferous food groups.

All in all, I think the boxes are a little bit small, but it's early in the season. It is forcing me to live on a lot of vegetation, however, which is probably a good thing, particularly with the exercise aversion I'm currently experiencing.

As noted above, work is wildly stressful lately. Yeah, I know that I say that all the time; it just keeps feeling like it ratchets up without every ratcheting down. At the moment, for example, one of our major funding agencies is completely peevish at us, because we haven't turned in a bunch of data reports. On one hand, their data requests are never-ending, and excessive, and a complete pain--but they're they funders, so they get to request whatever the fuck they want. On a second hand, however, our data person can be a bit of a challenge to work with, and I'm getting rather tired of that. So I end up caught between, with both the source of data and the requester of data pissed off at me.

What's starting to happen, though, is that I have so many things on fire on my desk I just don't give a shit any more. Each day I try to focus on getting a couple of things done, and I do them, and the rest of the stuff will just have to fucking wait. You're pissed off at me too? Get the fuck in line. I know what your request is, and it's on my list, but I cannot get to it just yet.

And our budget this year is going to be a huge fucking challenge. Is our financial person helping us at all? No; no s/he is not. S/he sends finger-waving emails, and expressions of concern, but no actual helpful advice or analysis, and I am really fucking tired of that, too. The latest suggestion, today, was another useless bit of twaddle that does not seem to encompass any understanding at all of how our program works or the financial constraints we face. If I can carve out some time before yet another Big Meeting on Friday, I am going to do a line-by-line analysis of our budget, taking care to point out just how many expenses are out of our control and/or determined by Downtown.

I wish I had more time to enjoy my condo, too; even that ends up being stressful sometimes, largely because of my own craziness. I really don't have very much furniture, but I am absolutely determined to get it a little at a time, rather than blow all of my savings. And there's a whole room--the second bedroom, and the closet in there--that has a whole lot of crap in it, stuff that I have jammed in the closet, or not sorted, or whatever, and I do not, not, not have the energy to do that. Remember the tile-making class? Well, I did make one tile--and then never got my ass over to the school to pick it up, meaning it has probably been destroyed by now. Again, completely my own fault; I'd finish a long day at work and just not feel like taking an extra hour and a half to get home (taking into account the trip to the school and then home).

Whine, whine, whine.

Mostly, despite all of this whining, I'm hanging in there. Someday I want to find the energy for blog posts about something other than what I made for dinner and the sucky things that are happening somewhere in my life. My mood is much better than all of this complaining would lead you to believe. Maybe I'll just stick to food blogging for awhile . . .

Salad Days

The first share included three bunches/kinds of lettuce (was supposed to be four, I think), a wad of Russian kale, a wad of spinach, a teensy little bit of broccoli, and four or five hakurei turnips with greens attached (the only thing in the box I haven't had, I think). Although I'm paying to have the stuff delivered to my door, it didn't work out for yesterday (long boring story), so I picked the box up from a local natural foods store that serves as a drop-off for other people (i.e., it wasn't really out of the way for the delivery person), and got some salad dressing and two boxes of strawberries that look pretty spectacular. (I would have gotten a flat of them, except I had to haul everything on the bus, number one, and, number two, I think I'm going to be getting strawberries in my share next week.)

Normally I am not a Salad Person. I like salad well enough, but I find it to be a pain to buy, wash, prepare, etc., so I tend to avoid making my own. But, hey, three kinds of lettuce, and I have some carrots and dried fruit, and even some raw onion if I feel really adventurous, and there's lunch. And then some strawberries and pineapple for breakfast--there's health breaking out all over the damn place. Except for the part where I could not, not, not get myself to work out tonight. I wanted to, I meant to, but the flesh was completely unwilling, despite the ever-increasing amounts of said flesh.

The six days off in a row were pretty fabulous; they could have been more fabulous only if (a) there were more of them and (b) I didn't have several shitstorms on my desk and in my email when I got back today. I managed to stem the tide on one and repair the levee on another, but I basically have a huge wad of things to do in about two weeks. The new fiscal year starts July 1, and I get a little urpy thinking about the things that really, truly must be done before that time.

Then I turn on a hockey game (go hawks!) and have a beer and forget about it, at least until I get to my desk again.

Speaking of hockey, I've been keeping half an eye on the ticket possibilities, on the off chance that something turns up on Ticketbastard at the last moment. That shows no signs of happening of course. So occasionally I wander over to the resale sites--there's one that Ticketbastard runs, plus craigslist, plus a couple of the other big ones--and it's kind of laughable. At this point, the cheapest ticket for the next Hawks home game, if it occurs, is about $800. Others are going for $4000 or more (lots more) per ticket, and seats on the glass are going for more than $11,000 per ticket.

Which guarantees that I will not be purchasing a ticket for the game. And, if you want to know, it kinda grosses me out. If you had those seats, wouldn't you want to use them? And if you couldn't use them, okay, I can see getting a little more than your money back, but do you have any friends who might enjoy and appreciate them and would even pay face value? I guess, for really good seats, I can see doubling the face value. But the prices listed are just greedy and nuts, and, if I were the kind of person who really believed in karma, I'd think that that kind of markup is a good way to gin up some seriously bad karma. I'm sure there are all kinds of extenuating circumstances--you just happened to find a ticket laying in the gutter, and your house is being foreclosed, so you're going to use the money to put a roof over the heads of your kids--but short of that? No.

And I have to wonder who's willing to pay that money. I mean seriously: it surely isn't the everyday fans who sit in the 300 level, and it isn't the guys who have been following the team for years and years. It's the people who have to see and be seen, I suppose. But WTF do I know? I don't travel in those circles and never will.

It reminds me of what I was thinking about shoes today. (Huh??) No; stick with me for a minute. There are three rough levels of shoes: the completely cheap shoes that are going to fall apart and/or hurt your feet (but may be all that many people can afford); the somewhat-better-made shoes that are going to last awhile but may not be "fashion forward," as they say; and then the really expensive shoes. There are some that are really expensive because they are handmade or something, I suppose, but mostly it seems that people are buying the brand name and the fashionability; they're no longer buying something to wear on their feet to protect themselves from having to walk barefoot, they're using their feet for display purposes. And that's the part that always seems bizarre to me. Don't get me wrong, I like Nice Stuff, up to a point, and I've learned that, with many things, you do, indeed, get what you pay for, so I'll pay, and get, a little (or a lot) more when I can afford to do so, but what I'm buying isn't someone's name on my feet and, as everyone I know can testify, I am not exactly a fashionable person.

Anyway, I could babble on for longer, but I'm also, increasingly, not exactly an awake person, so it's off to bed with me.