Lettuce Toss

I finally gave up on the lettuce soup. Much as it pains me to do so, I decided to toss it. It doesn't taste very good, is the main reason. I mean, it's edible, and it's probably even reasonably nutritious, so I feel a certain amount of guilt about throwing it out, but it is just . . . Not Good. It was a valiant effort to use up the vegetation in the fridge, but ultimately it's just taking up space in the freezer.

Everything else is tasty, though: I've been eating the curried carrot turnip soup quite happily. I've also been throwing in bits of other stuff--some leftover rice, for example, works very nicely, as would any kind of greens--and of course I add cheese. The next cooking project will need to use some beets, as I have the most of that. And the turnips, of course. I basically have until April or May to get through it all, i.e., until the 2012 crop starts up. I'll probably make some stuff this weekend, so I have lunches for work. (Oh yes, it's so very nice to be able to say that.)

In fact, I'm starting work today. My new boss called yesterday and asked if there's any way I could come in before next Thursday, and I said sure, so long as we work around a few lunch dates I have. So I'll go in this afternoon, most of Friday (Orange--I'll email you to see if you can pick me up after all), most of Monday, and all day Tuesday. I reserved Wednesday for seeing a friend and doing any last-minute chores. One of the things that I think will help is that NewOrg is funded by many of the same funding sources as OldOrg, so the contracts will be familiar, even if the specifics differ somewhat. NewBoss is overwhelmed, so wants me on board right now. Yes, it is nice to be wanted and, presumably soon enough, appreciated.

I keep fibrillating about commenting on the various political firestorms of the day, but I keep staying out of it. For one thing,Charles Pierce does it so much better than I could. For another, the forced-birth nuts are making me insane. Their insanity would be mindboggling if I hadn't spent the past 40 years having my mind boggled by them--though they do seem to get worse.

And Willard? The stripper of assets? The disgustingly rich do-nothing, who inherited most of his money, and then used that pile to make another pile, all without working a day in his life, and whose positions change with the weather? Or Santorum (whom Pierce consistently reminds us is a dick), the hypocritical creep? Or N. Leroy Gingrich, staff-banger supreme and pompous windbag? What can I possibly say? The notion that these assholes are serious contenders for the nomination for one of our two major parties shows just how much we have become beholden to corporate interests and far-right nutcases. The fact that so many of them are campaigning on shredding what remains of a safety net, and the fact that they get votes from people who would be negatively affected by said shredding, causes me to turn away and read whatever novels come to hand. I cannot fathom it, and I cannot stand it.

Also, this blog will be moving soon, to wordpress. I haven't figured out the details of it yet, but I"ll let you know.

On the Right Side of the Glass

I"m having lunch with my new boss and coworkers next week--yes, before I officially start--and I'm looking forward to it. One of the coolest things about this whole process is that there is clearly a group of people who are eager and enthusiastic about what I bring to the table--rather than, say, shoving me out the door because they just don't think I have anything useful to add. Even though I'm not going to bother with the interview with the third organization, and I'm not sure I'm the best person for the job for which I interviewed last Friday, the fact that three organizations were interested enough to want to talk to me is very nice. On top of that, of course, one of the organizations did handstands and cartwheels to get me on board as quickly as possible. The second person with whom I met briefly on Wednesday asked NewBoss how s/he found me, the implication being that it was a great find.

Seriously? I feel like I'm back on the right side of the looking glass, where up is up and people want to use what I know and what I know how to do, where people consider me a valuable find rather than a thorn in the side. I had lunch yesterday with someone from the old place--someone who is also outside the bubble team--and s/he confirmed again what I was experiencing (and is experiencing his/her own version of it). So, oddly enough, my ex-boss's original statement, that s/he thought I would be a better fit and would be happier elsewhere, is accurate. The problem, though--for the old organization and for ex-boss, not for me--is that the reason that is true isn't because of some deficiency on my part.

But I don't want to spend any more energy on the old place. I have an opportunity here to continue building on what I've learned, and I'm excited to get to do that. The things I ended up doing at the old place because there wasn't anyone else to do them gave me the knowledge I needed to be able to step into this new role, and my new boss knows all kinds of stuff, and can teach me all kinds of stuff, that will expand my capabilities even more.

It's all a little surreal, because of the speed and intensity with which it happened. I'm trying to be calm about the success, too, just as I tried (and sometimes succeeded) to be calm about the challenge of being unemployed. So I'm making some bread right now, because that's my default activity these days, and later we're heading off to cheeseland for the night (fab dinner plus college hockey game), and the bread will be something of an experiment, because the final rising will be done in the back of the vehicle (where it will be cool) or in my fridge, i.e., will be a very slow rise. No idea if that will work, but no big deal if it doesn't.

Do a Happy Dance

To answer Larry's question below, I'm basically saying that there were a lot of changes at the senior management level, which is true, and that we were having difficulty figuring out how best to connect my skills with the organization's needs, which is true-ish. I've had a fair amount of practice saying this in the past week, what with two in-person interviews (to which I will return momentarily) and a phone interview, and I'm suspecting that it's asked mostly to make sure I don't launch into a screed of some kind. And, frankly, though I've kept the severance details private, the fact that I can line up people with whom I worked and who are still there is probably helpful, and I can line up ex-bosses back to the early 1990s probably says something,

So I had a phone screen on Monday, and the woman with whom I spoke called me back later that afternoon and asked me to come in for an interview on Wednesday (yes, yesterday), which I did. Just about 24 hours later, the interviewer/prospective boss called and officially offered me a job. The salary is very decent--it's about what I was making before my last promotion at the old place--and the commute is about the same as the old place (it's two stops more on the train, and maybe two more blocks of walking at the other end), so that's all good. Even better, though, the NewBoss is very very excited to have me on board--obviously, given that s/he turned cartwheels to get the references and everything else done in less than a day.

I start in two weeks, so the vacation is nearly over. I have had time to do some nothing, and I'll have some more time to do that--basically, I will have spent what is usually the worst part of the winter hanging out in my apartment with Loaner Cat, and I have ended up in a job where people are enthusiastic about what I bring to the table. It's a bit of a whirlwind--I really didn't think it would work out this well or this quickly, and especially not well and quickly together. Go figure.

And, hey, I still have a freezer full of veggies, and an active sourdough starter, and a cleaner apartment (well, that one needs some revisiting). I'm going to try to get a new faucet next week, and I might be able to get the fabric to make a curtain for the kitchen window, and then I'll be set for a bit. I'm trying to not get too excited, much as I tried not to get to anxious, but I'm permitting myself a day or two of happy-dancing, for sure.

Reasons to Be Enjoying Unenjoyment

I spent the early part of last week cleaning and doing laundry and cleaning some more--plus going out to dinner with my furniture guy and with friends--and then . . . then I spent some time staring vacantly into space. I managed to get various small tasks accomplished, but I felt like I was doing them in a fog. Not surprising, I suppose. I even got a taste of schadenfreude on Friday, when I had lunch w/ an ex-coworker, who informed me that a proposal on which I did not work did not get re-funded (it's money the organization had been getting for multiple years). Yes, I know it's a little evil of me, but there it is. One of the advantages of the timing of my leaving is that there isn't anything due any time soon (except a big data report, about which I warned everyone), so it will be difficult--though, of course, not impossible--to blame me if there are issues with upcoming items.

As I vegetated last week, I realized a couple of things. First, this is the first time I've had two weeks off in a row since approximately 1994. Yes, seriously. I'm sure it will get old if it goes on too long (much the way it got old by the end of 1993, much less well into 1994), but a part of me was enjoying just being able to hang out. I will never be accused of being assiduous about housekeeping chores, but it was nice to be able to make a very long list of things to do and actually get them done, even while building in some baking and some slacking. There are still projects to be done--get more paint off of the sunroom brick; make curtains for the kitchen; clean up the desk in the back bedroom--but I accomplished a lot of crap.

Second, in case I have only mentioned this 472 times, sourdough is magic. It just kind of blows me away that I can use this goo to bake bread, with no added yeast. I've already gone through 10 pounds of flour, and I have resorted to giving away wads of stuff just to make room for more wads. Today, though, I made a batch of rolls that has extra fiber (in the form of barley flakes) and various fruity bits (cranberries, candied orange peel, date nuggets, dried apricots, and dried pears), and I glazed the rolls with a combination of ginger syrup and maple syrup. I'm thinking that these will become breakfast food; I haven't been eating well (or exercising, despite my resolutions to do so), and the Week of Slack has led to concrete strategies.

Third, the more I'm away from that job, and the more I think about the info I got on Friday, the more happy I am that I'm out of there. Yes, there is still a lot of fear and anxiety about finding a job, and yes, I realize this could be post hoc rationalization at its finest, but I think my gut is right about this one. The fundamental problem--and the problem at the core of my "separation" from the organization, I believe--is that the Head Honcho (my ex-boss) and his/her team don't know that they need to know things that they don't know. They think that they have it covered, and they cannot see beyond the bubble they've built. Personally, I think it's going to bite them, and the organization as a whole, in the ass, and I do not want to be around for that. When shit hits the fan, it splatters everyone in the vicinity, and there are people on that team who will do their level best to duck behind others when that happens. The thing is, if they manage to eliminate everyone outside the bubble, then they won't have anywhere to hide, or anyone to blame.

Don't get me wrong--I don't really wish for this to happen. For one thing, the bad karma generated by that kind of wish is not something I want to invoke. For another (much more important) thing, the people who are likely to suffer most, either in terms of reduced services or reduced staff, will be people who are way lower on the food chain. Even if the bubble team members lost their jobs (which I would be hard-pressed to predict), they will be better fixed, in terms of income and savings, for example, than line staff or program beneficiaries. And I think there's a very real risk here, because there are enormous changes in the works; many or most of those changes are systemic, i.e., outside of any given organization; and the changes will be centered around the part of the business that I was in but that the bubble team is not.

They could pull it off, of course; they are not stupid people, and they have at least a modest recognition that Things Must Change. But they are also systematically ignoring (or "separating" or reagarding as Negative Nellies) the people who know the most about the side of the business that will be changing the most and that will be the core of all the other changes. Bubble team members are doing a mediocre job transferring my knowledge and tasks to other people. And they are putting into moderately key positions people who do not know enough about the side of the business that will be the core of the new arrangements--but they are people who are subordinate to the bubble team, and are therefore Good & Knowledgable. There will be hiccups--as there always are--but the size and strength of those hiccups will be related, at least in part, to how much of the world outside the bubble they truly comprehend.

Here's another thing: there's no guarantee that, if I had been involved, the organization would have kept the contract that was lost--but I would have been Blamed, even if what was submitted was something that I did not fully support or something I did not think was what should be submitted. That's going to happen going forward, too. Contracts will be lost, or poorly managed, or whatever--it's a fact of life, particularly in an organization that now has no managers on my old side of the business (the other side is rife with them, but many are foot soldiers more than anything else, and no one has seen any urgency to get managers involved in my old side). It was one of the things that had become a serious challenge over the past year--not enough managers (and how often do you hear THAT said) to, well, manage.

My friend pointed out that I was doing three different jobs, with three different skill sets--not because I'm so spectacular, but because those tasks needed to be done. As we tried to mix our staffs and managers and directors and tasks together, I was increasingly being expected to follow a new set of rules (though finding out just what the relevant rule was remained an exercise in futility), hand off my tasks, and create a new job description/job for myself. No way is that going to work out well, unless the head person can communicate what s/he wants and the other members in the bubble are willing to break the bubble and build a new structure.

Yeah, as I said, failure of one kind or another was really the only thing that was going to come out of that, and I'm just as glad to be out of the way of the shrapnel. I'll figure out something, some way, somehow. I hope.

Brassica Family Fun

Because you know how I love my cruciferous vegetables.

I started off by roasting the beets and slicing and freezing them; the greens became part of dinner.

Then it was on to the kohlrabi. Start with a couple of onions; sliced thin, cooked in a little olive oil and butter until slightly caramelized, then a few cloves of garlic. (I use about 1.5 to 2 tablespoons of fat, and I usually do about half olive oil and half butter. That way I get the flavor of butter but also the benefit of the olive oil.) I added some raspberry honey mustard and a wad of preserved ginger (is there anything that isn't improved by ginger? I didn't think so), and then I added the very thinly sliced kohlrabi (I got out the food processor for that operation, because it's so much faster and doesn't leave me with hunks the way the mandoline does) and a little water. While that cooked for a few minutes, I cored some apples and threw them into the food processor to slice them (skins on). After the apples went in, I washed the leaves from the last batch of kohlrabi and cut that up, too, and added a little salt and pepper. I ended up having to put it into a bigger pot so I could stir it better. When it was done, I ended up draining the juices back into the pot and added another little bit of butter and deglazed the pan, and mixed that back in.

Oh, my, is this concoction tasty. It occured to me that, for a crowd, I could take that mix and layer it with sliced potatos and make a gratin out of it, maybe adding some good cheese at the end. As it is, I'll haul it to work with some cheese and be happy. I would have liked to have some bread with it, but I didn't get around to doing any baking this weekend.

For dinner, onions again, with a lot of different greens: the beet greens, a little chard, some tatsoi greens, and something else--spicy mustard, maybe? That cooked while the whole wheat fusilli cooked, and, at the last minute, I put a tablespoon of heavy cream into the pan and stirred it around. Mascarpone would probably work well, too. Some grated parmesan on top, and, voila, dinner--and two lunches.

I always feel a little virtuous when I use things like beet greens or kohlrabi greens. I shouldn't I know--it's food, and I shouldn't feel virtuous for using food rather than wasting it. But there you have it.

Meanwhile, spending a lot of time in my own head this weekend has allowed some of the anger to start to surface, not surprisingly. I'm trying to acknowledge it and let go of it, because, while understandable, it's not useful in this situation. On one hand, I can see how Boss wants to put together his/her own team (and, seriously, that is the only fucking explanation I can even begin to find); that makes sense. But then why go to the trouble of "wooing" me? Why spend so much time convincing me how wonderful you are, and how wonderful you think I am? Why promote me and give me a big raise and create a job just for me, only to fire me six months later? Did you really think I could magically figure out what you wanted?

It's kind of demented, really.

The challenge is going to be to continue to stick to the script about my leaving and to answer the questions about the things that need to be handed over. So: deep breaths, practiced smiles, and as much good cheer as I can manage.

Prepare for Change

I keep thinking I'm going to panic eventually, but I haven't so far. I am noticing an uptick in anxiety, but really, that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, me included.

A few days after the last post, I met with the HR Person, which was helpful, and then HRP and Boss and I met this week (I requested that HRP join us, because I thought it would be helpful, and it was). We negotiated the quit date (2 December will be my last day, which means I have health insurance completely paid through December, and will start paying the COBRA in January, when our rates drop significantly because the company is switching insurance companies) and severance and such. Thursday, we (mostly Boss) told the other senior managers, while I was there, and there was major shock on the faces around the room--which was interesting not least because the other people around the table have worked with Boss for at least 10 years, and it seems to have caught them completely by surprise, too. Friday everyone else found out (and I told a few people privately before that announcement), and there was a lot more gnashing of teeth and tears from others than I would have predicted.

The announcements are all being couched in code that everyone will understand. We talk about it being a "mutual" or "joint" decision, but, given that I don't have another job at the moment, it's pretty obvious that it wasn't my first choice. I'm steadfastly not saying that to people, because there's no percentage in it for me to do that, but people aren't stupid, either.

All that aside, I still don't have any better idea why this happened than I did three weeks ago. On one hand, I'm not all that surprised, but, frankly, Boss would have been better off waiting six months. People haven't absorbed enough of what I know to even know all of the questions they should be asking--and while I am continuing to be professional, and I will answer the questions that people ask to the best of my ability, the reality is, a lot of shit is just not my problem any longer.

The best answer I can find is that this is Boss's opportunity: Boss has wanted this job for awhile and had to wait to get it, and now wants to put together his/her own team, which is understandable. I think it's also a mistake--my absence isn't going to wreck the place, and I am by no means irreplaceable, but I provide a set of skills and a body of information and knowledge that no one on his/her team possesses at this point. For example, in several meetings I've attended in the past month, meetings about the future direction the organization will be taking, I have asked questions (e.g., of consultants) that are based on my knowledge and that the other people around the table, including outsiders, clearly hadn't thought about but clearly regarded as important. There isn't anyone left who can ask those questions, and some of them are pretty crucial.

But did I mention that it's not my problem?

That part has been nothing but a joy to me these past weeks. Something comes along that I know is fucked up, and I try to do what I can--via email, if possible, so the record shows I tried to do the right thing--but others want it their way. Really? No problem, then! And when your actions fuck things up six months from now? Oh, wait: Not. My. Problem. And then I let go of it and move on to the next thing. I have the occasional twinge, because I have put so much time, energy, and effort into solving problems, but it's out of my control at this point.

So I'm planning my December. I'm applying to things that look like a good fit, and, now that it's public, I"ll start calling people I know; too soon to tell whether any of that will be successful. I can't look for jobs all the damn time, and, seriously, this is a crappy time of year for job hunting, so I'm going to refocus. The current plan is to reclaim my yoga practice; get regular exercise (possibly even lose some weight); do some general cleanup around the apartment; maybe take care of a few things (e.g., make curtains for the kitchen window); do some baking; read a lot of library books; and do some (volunteer) work for a local hippy-dippy restaurant that probably has less money in the bank than I do. (I have gotten to know the owners, and I offered my services and the offer was joyfully accepted, so that'll be fun, and will get me out of the house and won't threaten my unemployment.) I wouldn't be surprised if this plan carries into January or longer, but it's a pretty good plan, I think.

I'm looking forward to it, if you want to know the truth. If I haven't had a nibble of any kind by February, then perhaps my tune will change, but right now, it sounds like a fine plan to just have some time to sit in the sunroom and read. It also sounds like a fine idea to not have to worry that every thing I say is going to be misunderstood or will get me fired.

Partly in preparation for all of this, and partly because I had a 20%-off email from King Arthur, I bought a bunch of flour and other ingredients this week. Today I also did an inventory of what I have on hand, and, amazingly enough, I managed to not duplicate too much with my order, but I have an unbelievable amount of flour and grain products. Which, hey, for someone who likes to bake and who is about to have a bunch of time on her hands? Not so terrible.

My refrigerator was starting to look like a wall of produce, because, what with losing my job and all, I hadn't had time to get to very much of it. Today I focused on the broccoli (chop; steam the stems, florets, and leaves separately; chill, weigh and package; and freeze) and two of the three butternut squash (cube and roast, then package and freeze). Tomorrow I'll do something with the kohlrabi and beets (with greens), and maybe the (wait for it!) bok choi and turnips. And I need to bake some bread.

That will leave me with onions, garlic, greens of various sorts (spinach, a little chard, and some tatsoi greens), an acorn squash, and lettuce. Oh, and potatos--three bags of potatos, with which I have no idea what I'm going to do--and apples purchased last week, and, um, radishes. Monday I'll get even more lettuce, and more greens and turnips, and cabbage, so I might save the turnips and do them all at once.

I'm trying put up what I can--the freezer is my friend--which means I should be eating a whole lot of lettuce for the next two weeks, because that's the item that won't really keep. (Lettuce. Feh. There just isn't that much you can do with lettuce other than salads, which also means you need other crap--carrots, cheese, dried cranberries, whatever--to make it taste like food.) The farm share includes five more weeks after Monday, so even more produce will be coming my way. But that will have to wait for another post.

Unenjoyment

Remember that scene in Bull Durham where the manager calls a player into the office and says, "This is the hardest part of a manager's job . . . but the organization has decided to make some changes"? Yeah, that speech. Kinda like the one I heard this past Monday. I have a little more time than the player did--I'm still working, and we're going to start working out the details, probably Tuesday--but I don't expect to be there much longer. A couple of days? A week? Two? No way to know.

During the week, I went to several meetings the boss was in, and went out of my way to be professional (eloquent and brilliant and incisive, even), not least to demonstrate that I'm not going to be an asshole. It's tempting at times, of course, but I don't see the percentage in it, and, more important, it's not how I want to be. I can't control anyone else's behavior, but I can control mine, and I have no desire for this to devolve into anything that's more unpleasant.

At one point, I asked whether there was anything I could do or say to change his/her mind and was told no. So, there you have it. I haven't been let go before, but I have been wooed and then dumped, and it sure seems a lot like that, given the amount of effort this person put into getting me on his/her side over the first six months of working with this person.

So Monday night kinda sucked, as did Tuesday; Tuesday night Friend and I went to the hockey game as planned. By Wednesday I started getting better, and by the weekend I had applied for a bunch of jobs (like a zillion other people out there). As long as I can keep the fear at bay, I'm okay. It's a non-trivial task, of course, but there's only so much worrying I can do at this point. Depending on the terms of the leaving, depending on the cost of health insurance, depending on about 3 million things outside my control, it could work out fabulously well, it could be the worst fucking thing that ever happened, or it could be whatevs. No way to predict, and not much I can do to control the outcome.

The one thing I did do, though, was wait until the end of the week to apply for the jobs I identified. For one thing, it just felt like bad karma to apply when I was in a panic and such, even if all I was doing was sending a resume. Yeah, I know, kinda dumb and superstitious, but the prospect of being unemployed in this economy would make anyoe superstitious. Speaking of which, light a candle, say a prayer, cross your fingers, whatever it is you do, on my behalf, and I will be grateful.

On a better note, I called a halt to the paint-stripping project. It is by no means complete (but, hey, looks like I'm going to have some time on my hands soon!), but it is complete enough for now, and I moved the chairs into the sunroom yesterday and was pleased. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

Change

Well.

The Big Transition continues at work, and it's taking its toll on everyone. While I can rant with the best of them, there are days when I think that I am least . . . deeply bothered? freaked out? of all of my coworkers. It's really kind of fascinating to watch (and to have a hand in, for that matter). Some of it is definitely age, but most of it, as I think I've said before, is that I have changed "careers" multiple times in my life, sometimes by choice and other times not so much, and each time I've done so, I've had to learn a whole new field. On one hand, of course, this is a bit stressful, but, on the other, it gives me something new to learn, and it has given me experience being discomfited, if you will. The people within whom I'm now working have (a) worked with the organization for at least 10 years, and (b) worked with each other for at least 10 years; at this point, they have worked out all of their miscommunication and their routines and their divvying up of the world.

Suddenly, the world has gotten much larger, and it has new stuff in it, and they must work with people who do not have any clue how they Do Things, and there are many more Things to Do, and some of those things are Very New Things. This all makes for much discomfort and dislocation, and, as we all know, people deal with that in different ways. (I actually think my boss created the position for me that s/he did precisely because of my experience with such dislocations.) As I have been saying, despite the multiple frustrations we experience with each other, no one is lazy, malicious, or stupid, and that is huge. No one else seems to think it's as huge as I think it is, but I think it's absolutely vital. It doesn't mean that we're going to be able to work everything out with no bumps or irritaitons or rashes, it just means that the people involved are capable of working it out, are unlikely to sabotage working it out, and will likely work hard to work it out.

It's also true that I have lost a couple of battles--that makes it sounds too dire. It's true that, in several arenas that I think are important, the person who is making the decision doesn't see/agree with the things I've observed and pointed out. I do think it will backfire, in a big way, but some mistakes have to be made for people to understand the flaws in their systems.

What's also interesting and sort of amusing to me is that the people who are, at least theoretically, taking over chunks of what I have been doing, are both multitudinous and freaking out. Seriously--and not to pat myself on the back--but it's taking three or four of them to even begin to do what I have been doing single-handedly, and they haven't really taken over yet. It's more like they look over my shoulder as I keep doing big chunks of it. And criticizing, of course, when they're not freaking out.

The other thing around which I have not yet wrapped my head is that they don't seem to forego vacation time when there's something big due. The last two Big Things--including the one where we/I fucked up--included vacation time by people who are supposed to be taking over big chunks of what I do, and the vacation time was within a week or 10 days of the due date. Which makes no sense to me, and probably explains why I have nearly maxed out the amount of vacation time one can accrue. One of them included airplane tickets to a foreign country, so that's understandable, but that person also arrived back in town and started fucking with my Plan, because That's The Way WE Have Always Done Things (even though I could only have discerned the Way YOU Do Things through psychic abilities, and was therefore taken aback and peevish).

And, truly, I'm not being critical there. Having a Way to Do Things that actually includes people other than oneself does probably mean that one can take vacations, and there was no way to know that this particular adventure really didn't allow for vacations for the people in charge of getting it done. Lessons have been learned, i believe, but there's still a lot of freaking out to do.

Not by me, though, if I can help it. Loaner Cat does what she can to refocus my attentions, which is always good. I've also been reading again. There for awhile I was rereading a bunch of stuff, but suddenly I'm back in New Book land. And my latest somewhat guilty pleasure has been the George Martin books, or the first one, anyway. People whose opinion I trust (all online) seemed to like it a lot, so I figured I'd get the first one and see whether I like it, and, so far, it's entertaining, A potboiler, for sure, in the manner of Dorothy Dunnett, I'd say, but I admit to liking her stuff, too, way more than I probably should.

I'm always a bit annoyed at comparisons to Tolkien, though. While I freely admit that Tolkien isn't for everyone, and while i have registered my various objections to the film versions here, and while I recognize that Tolkien's inclusion/treatment of women leaves much to be desired in many ways, I fell under the spell 35 years ago, and it's not going to change. More to the point: the issues notwithstanding, Tolkien's fiction was an outgrowth of his philology and linguistics, of his invention of new languages and the creation of backstories around the beings who spoke those languages. While others have certainly created whole worlds out of whole cloth--Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea, for example, which I love--that world creation takes a different form. It's neither good nor bad (except for the occasional author who apparently consciously tries to emulate Tolkien in some way, which is a project doomed to failure), but it has a different origin than Tolkien's world creation.

Thus, while I am only part of the way into the first volume, I would liken the Martin books more to Dunnett, or, I suppose, LeGuin, than to Tolkien. But Tolkien got a big boost with the movies, and nobody knows Dunnett, mostly, so, to sell the books, Tolkien gets thrown around, which does a disservice to both him and to whomever is supposed to be the "new" Tolkien.

Look, people, Tolkien is sui generis. Unique. Singular. Stop using him to sell things that Aren't Like His Works At All.

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.)

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.

Gone, Baby, Gone

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

Stress? What stress?

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.

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.

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 . . .

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.

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 . . .

Vegetables, Now with More Stress

So this summer's adventure is going to be . . . vegetables!

Yeah, I know, I'm the last person in the universe to sign up for a CSA share (a small share, actually, because I'm not trying to feed a family of four). I found one that had a long list of stuff I like (or even love), and, even cooler, they deliver to your door. Yes, there's a charge for that, but it also means I don't have to haul a half a bushel of produce on a bus or el. Total cost is going to be less than $25/week. Okay, still not exactly cheap, but a half a bushel of fresh organic produce, delivered to my door, every week, plus I get to support a local farmer? Sounds good to me.

And, really, it will keep me from wandering through the farmers markets, overloading myself with stuff that then must be hauled and that proceeds to get mauled by bumping around in my bags for the duration of the travel. I'm still going to need to buy fruit and honey, but I'm okay with that. I'm also going to do what I did last year with the blueberries: buy a big wad and then freeze them into small bags for dumping into oatmeal.

I will probably freeze a lot of stuff from this effort, and I"m okay with that, too. I already buy frozen vegetables a lot of the time, precisely to avoid things turning into a science project in the fridge. In short, I wouldn't be surprised if my 30 weeks of produce ends up lasting for a lot of the year. Some of it--winter squash, anyone?--already lends itself to keeping; I still have two butternut squashes from last fall sitting on my counter. Other bits, like herbs, I'll probably chop and freeze as herb pestos; easy enough to hack off a little, and I have found, from my basil pesto operations, that, if you squish the pesto to the bottom of the baggie and squeeze out the air, the pesto log will last for years. Once you start hacking bits off--and break the seal, basically--it can get a little freezer burned, but I've also learned to make the logs relatively small.

I am so tired.

This week has been full of more stress--yesterday I discovered that I had forgotten two providers in our budgets. (All people currently on staff were supposed to already be preloaded in the system, but these two were not, possibly because they started relatively recently; I half-noticed they weren't there last week, but then must have gotten distracted by something else, or figured I couldn't find them, or whatthefuckever, and . . . just forgot to deal with it. Luckily I found it yesterday, and then there was a great flurry of finding $150k in an already very very tight budget, not to mention the fun part of saying to my boss, and his/her boss, and the finance person, "Ummm, people? I fucked up."

It was sort of interesting. The finance person--with whom I have had go-rounds, and whom I still do not entirely trust--was dismayed, but was also very pleased that I HAD found it, and, more important, had called everyone's attention to it now, (a day) before it all goes to the finance committee of the board for approval--insisted that I should not be the one to call it to the attention of my boss's boss. And my boss was fine with it--other than the stress of the steps we have to take to find the money--and my boss's boss was concerned that I not be upset, commenting that it was just a mistake, and finally I have made one (??has s/he not paid attention to my multiple other errors??), and yay on me for catching it now. S/he insisted my boss come find me and tell me not to stress about it.

Wha??

It's especially interesting because, earlier in the day, s/he had sent this completely snotty email complaining that we hadn't sent something s/he requested, and what I sent was still not what s/he wanted, and, as the Muckety-Muck, s/he thought s/he could ask for that. (Actually s/he HAD received what was requested, but apparently failed to understand that, which really made us roll our eyes.) As a result of that exchange, though, I said to my boss that the thing I hate most about that attitude is that it fosters an atmosphere where people are afraid to make mistakes and, when they do, are more likely to cover them up rather than own up to them. So, yes, this person managed to display both sides of the coin in the same eight hours.

I really, really hate when I fuck up like that. Yes, not every day can be a good day. Yes, we all make mistakes. And so on. That doesn't make the finding-and-owning-up process any more pleasant. But the alternative makes me even more queasy. The thought of knowing that we had that big a hole in the budget but not saying anything about it makes my stomach clench even tighter. I mean, seriously; what was I going to do?

And, of course, there's always the temptation to find someone else to blame--why weren't they already in the budget? why didn't anyone else catch it? why are we paying administrative fees if we don't get the help we need?--and I just swallowed it. It was my responsibility; no one else's. And I can also see the systemic changes we need to reduce the chance of it happening again, which is even more important.

The good parts--and there are a few--are that I did catch it in time, and that I've identified a couple of gaps in the system, and, finally, everyone really was very supportive, rather than critical or finger-pointing. But I would really rather not go in today and find more issues like that, thanks so much.

Outta the Way

Although I have eaten in the new space (albeit mostly things like bagels with peanut butter and cups of tea), and even cooked one meal, tonight was the first time I cooked a meal and ate it at the dining room table. So yes, I do continue to make incremental progress, as noted this morning. This weekend I need to clean, and finish the sorting process, and probably do some laundry as well. And some cooking; part of the reason for the massive shopping expedition was to make some food, but I'll have to go back through my cookbooks to remember which recipes I'd picked to make. It'll be good, though, and now that the freezer is plugged in and working, I can fill it up with portions of lunches and make my way back to healthier eating.

The big dilemma at work lately is that I'm kind of being forced to disparage someone else's work, which I really really really prefer not to do. But I've reached a point where I can either get the work done or spend a bunch of time explaining stuff to someone with the work remaining undone (and it's stuff this person should already know), and the work really must get done. It's so frustrating, because I like this person personally, and also because I really do not like being in the position of having to point a finger. My first priority is to get the job done, in a way that works for our programs; if someone cannot help with that process, then just get out of the way and don't waste my time.

It's difficult, though, because I also know this person's job is in jeopardy, precisely because this person's boss expects this person to provide more assistance to our program. I feel like I'm caught between covering up for this person--which puts a lot more pressure on me--or basically being relatively realistic about this person's lack of assistance. I hate it. There isn't any solution here that is going to make me feel good, but, at some point, I have a choice between saying that this person provides the assistance we need--which is not true at all--or not, even as I know that saying "not" puts the person's job in jeopardy.

If it didn't cause extra work for me, I probably wouldn't say much one way or the other, but the reality is that the lack of assistance puts an additional burden on all of us. Especially me, but I'm not the only one. So, in short, I'll keep my mouth shut to the upper levels, as long as it doesn't burden me or others in the program, and I won't go out of my way to complain in any case, except behind closed doors with, say, my boss, when I'm just letting off steam, but it's reaching the point where I can't cover it up any longer without making myself look incompetent--or, at least, more incompetent than I can make myself look.

I find that I work best in an environment where, and, as much as I can, I try to foster an environment where it is expected that mistakes will occur, and that people try to put systems or procedures in place to catch those mistakes at early stages of any given process, where the effects are less likely to be dire. Catch my mistakes in the budget now, before anything's finalized, rather than eight months from now when a whole bunch of other assumptions have been hung on that budget. Analyze my formulae now, find the weak spots; let's figure out which numbers we need to monitor most closely to make sure we don't get into trouble. Taste the dough now, while it's still in the mixer and the salt I forgot can be added.

Anyway. Time to go to bed, so I can put in twelve hours tomorrow if necessary. It's taken me way too long to write this, because I had to delete so much detail, but also because I've been watching hockey as I go. Go Hawks!

Eureka

Yes, indeed, I have found the place I want. When I saw it yesterday, it was nearly everything that I had suspected from the pics I'd found online. Entertainingly enough, the one thing it does not have? A laundry room that can be reached from inside the building. But we ended up running into two women in the laundry room and chatted with them for a few minutes, and they said that people go down in their pajamas to do laundry; it's down a set of back stairs, and, except for the going-outside part, and the steps-rather-than-elevator part, probably not terribly different from my current arrangement. It's not across a courtyard, for example. One of the women has lived in the building for 17 years and the other for more than 10, i.e., it's clear that people like living there. So, the agent will be submitting a bid for me tomorrow; we're meeting late afternoon and I'll start the process of initialing and signing things, including pieces of paper that transfer dollars to other people. (When you start thinking about it that way, it becomes ridiculous very quickly.)

While on one hand I very much would like this place, it has not become the least bit real to me yet. There are way, way too many things that have to happen, and, especially given the difficulties that other people I know have been having, I'm not celebrating until I have keys in my hand--or, more likely, until I am moved in. The reality is, if it doesn't work out for any of a number of reasons, I'll need to keep looking.

On the other hand, I've also started thinking about how I'd go about using the various spaces. I wouldn't have nearly enough furniture for the place, but I'm not worried about that; I'd prefer to live there (or somewhere else) for awhile before buying furniture. The backsplash in the kitchen is wood, so I'd start thinking about designing and painting some tiles so I could eventually replace that--that's the kind of thing that I can do over time (and, for that matter, might well be something I could no matter where I move). One of the bedrooms is a little oddly shaped and carpeted, so it would be useful as an office space, because I could put my desk and chair in there and not worry about scraping up a hardwood floor, and I could get a futon couch (one that's a little smaller than my current one), and, voila, office AND guest bedroom. Both bathrooms are nice--one has a big shower and no tub (which I like), and the other has a window in the shower/tub (which I love) and wonderful bright blue accent tiles. Both bathrooms are directly connected to the bedrooms. I would definitely need a nice comfy chair for the sunroom, so I can sit there and read or do needlepoint.

Etcetera.

I really cannot think about it too much--even as it's rather consuming--because there are just too many things that have to happen first.

Meanwhile, I'm going back to the beginning of two series of books: the Spenser novels, by Robert Parker, and the Parker novels by Donald Westlake (writing as Richard Stark). They're interesting on their own, but also juxtaposed. Parker, at least in the early novels, is a little bit outlandish so far, but it's such an interesting contrast to Dortmunder and Kelp, the two main guys in the comic crime novels by Westlake. Dortmunder and Kelp never killed anyone--occasionally someone got hurt or even died, but never at the hands of the main guys; Parker shoots people all over the place, at least in the first novel. (I read a later one as the first, and there was less of the shooting, so I'll see how the series plays out.) But Parker is also an interesting contrast to Spenser. They're similar types, just working on opposite sides of a line--and the line really isn't one about legality. I want to read a few more of each series before i develop that thought, though.

Finally, remember that Big Financial Crisis at my job? It has all but disappeared. The upshot, in many ways, is that the person who was waving hir arms around and setting hair on fire down--and up--the food chain has ended up discrediting hirself more than anything else. Which, really, is the best thing that could have happened. Or the second-best, anyway; the best thing would have been if s/he had bothered to include the rest of us in the process in real ways (rather than merely hand-waving, here-look-at-this-roll-up-never-mind-the-details ways). As with nearly everything else, the thing about budgets is that the devil really is in the details.

Bakery Rules

It turns out that a number of things I learned at the bakery apply in other realms, including the office where I now work. Feel free to use them if they're useful to you.

1. Not every day can be a good day.

Bossman says this when something fucks up (or someone fucks something up). I particularly appreciated this when I was the person who fucked things up, but, in general, it's a useful thing to keep in mind. People make mistakes; it's just one of the things we do. Ergo, any plan that requires that everything go absolutely perfectly is a shaky plan. It's a much better idea to have some backup systems in place, though even they are going to fail you sometimes.

2. Blame won't laminate the dough or bake the bread.

It's kind of a corollary to the above. Bossman didn't say this, but the "not every day can be a good day" thing is, I always thought, a way to deflect that blaming. On one hand, if someone consistently fucks up a product, or consistently fucks up, then s/he isn't going to be a great fit--perhaps they should be packing cookies instead of mixing dough. But the kind of blaming and finger-pointing that has been going around in my office is really a waste of time and energy.

3. The person you think of as "that asshole" may still be the person you need to mix your dough.

In the bakery, despite the various tidbits I narrated for the amusement of you guys, people were pretty much expected to just deal with each other. The kind of backbiting and throwing people under the bus that we've been seeing in my office job weren't as prevalent. Everyone had their buttons, of course, but mostly everyone got along, especially once Brad was gone.

Part of this was structural, in at least two ways: For one thing, the "hierarchy" was nearly non-existent. Bossman was working right there alongside everyone else, not sitting in an office "downtown." He might be down in the office doing the books or something, and he was much more able to take off a day or a few days, but, in general, he worked hours that were almost as grueling as anyone else's. Thus, jockeying for "position" was kind of pointless; there weren't positions for which to jockey. (That's also why Brad was a problem: he imposed pointless hierarchy, and it just annoyed everyone.)

The other structural reason for this was that there were just enough tasks that required others' cooperation to complete that it wasn't a good idea to completely piss off someone else. This guy may do all the cookies or all the cakes, but he needs that guy to do at least some of the baking for him. The other person may need help making this product. Everyone may need to gather around the line to make bear claws, which means the person in charge of the bear claws better have his ducks in a row before taking everyone away from their work. I tacitly referred to this when I gave Phil credit for baking the croissants (and I could always tell when it was him and not one of the night guys who had done the baking, because Phil did it better)--I knew that, while my lamination was crucial, baking was a huge part of their beauty, and giving him credit for it acknowledged that. You can take the most beautiful product in the world, and if you bake it wrong, it's going to suck. Same thing is true in office-world, but not everyone seems to realize that.

Finally, though, it was a really good crew of guys, who had known each other and worked together for more than ten years--more than 15 years in some cases. It wasn't terribly difficult to get along with them, at least in my case. If you work hard, do your job, lend a hand, and don't be an asshole, you'll get along just fine. This is more a personality thing than a structural thing, but it does speak, a little, to Bossman's selection of people to work there. He was tolerant of people's personality quirks--basically, he ignored them or, when necessary, worked around them--which definitely set a tone.

4. It takes four times to get it right.

Bossman always says it takes making a new recipe four times to get it right, and that proved itself to be true so many times. Even if you get really close the first time, you're still going to want to do some tweaking--fill the mold a little less, bake it a little longer, use a different shape or size, whatever. You can't change everything at once--especially if you don't know exactly which thing will get you closer to where you're trying to get--so you're going to have to do it more than once or twice. Sometimes, of course, you just have to take a shot and go with it; you don't have time to tweak. But if you take notes, then next time you're going to get a little closer. And, on the flip side of this, expecting perfection from someone else the first time out of the gate is a pretty sure road to disappointment.

5. Meetings are generally fucking useless.

A few months ago, when I stopped in the bakery, we were laughing about how a "meeting" at the bakery was when Phil was loading the oven and I was cutting croissants and Bossman was making galettes and we talked about when we were going to make the rolls, because I was needed to be part of that operation. I'm completely making up the example, but the reality is, the real work didn't stop for "meetings." In my current job, managers--especially at my boss's level--go to so many fucking meetings that it's not even funny. Every time I turn around he has to meet with someone else in the organization, often at another location; what meetings mostly do is take him away from his actual work. As a result, the actual work takes even longer, because the people who need to do it are stuck in stupid meetings. It kind of blows me away sometimes.

The other part about it is the amount of hand-holding that seems to be needed. Some of that is structural: we need some systemic solutions to many of the issues we've been facing, and there are no systems in place, so everyone's kind of struggling a bit, but there's still a notion that when person A has a question, person B--and sometimes person C and person D--need to drop everything to solve person A's problem or question. I try not to fall into that myself, and I recognize that sometimes you really do need an answer before you can go on with your work, but it can make it difficult.

Anyway. I need to get some sleep. I should be packing and watering my plants--Friend and I are heading out of town tomorrow for part of the weekend--but I don't feel like it. There will be time tomorrow.