Five Minutes

I've written here before about how having worked in the bakery has improved my time management, and I continue to be struck by the truth of that. I ended up not being able to take off today, after all, but Friend and I didn't go out tonight, so I came home a little early, took the butter out of the fridge to soften, then called a friend to discuss the latest complete fucking insanity at work (yes, a whole new thing, and I can't discuss this one even more). I finally got down to work by 5:30 or so, and in about four hours I was able to make about 90 peanut butter/chocolate chip cookies, about 100 mini carrot cakes, and 48 graham cracker crusts for the mini smores. At the moment, the dishwasher is running and the rest of the dishes are clean and in the rack. Plus, I had three phone conversations while I was working, with Friend, GirlFriend, and Bossman.

I think what it comes down to is that production work gives one more of a sense of what can be accomplished in 5 minutes, or 12 minutes, or 22 minutes. Brazen Tart has a much (much much) better sense of this than I do, because she has to produce things for people who are sitting at tables waiting for their elaborately plated desserts to appear, but the point remains the same.

The other thing that school and the bakery provided was an introduction to techniques and tools that speed the work in an assortment of ways. Remember those pastry bags I snagged from OldBoss on Friday? I used one to splooge the carrot cake batter into the tins, which turned a 10- or 15-minute job into a 2-minute job. Once the first two tins were in the oven, I refilled the bag and had it ready for the next batch, then washed up some dishes. When I put the cream cheese frosting on? And the chocolate ganache in the smores, and the italian meringue for the topping? Same type of bag. I'd certainly heard of them before, but the ones that you can get in the grocery store, say, are these teeny little things that aren't good for a damned thing. My piping skills are still pretty rudimentary--it's not like it's something I use daily--and I can't decorate for shit, but even the basic skills I have make things go so much more quickly.

The other thing that two years of production did was hone the ability to think a couple of steps ahead: as I'm doing this (relatively mindless) task, I'm planning the next two or three. Of course, I do that in all of the jobs I do, but this kind of production is a different environment, and type of task is different. I think what I'm trying to say is that in a bakery production environment, there are many sequential tasks, but they tend to be short, and not all of them have time requirements attached.

For example, Artie could make a couple of racks of muffins, but Phil didn't have to bake them immediately (Phil mostly ran the ovens on the day shift), i.e., they could sit for a while if something else was in the ovens. Once they were baked, they had to cool a bit, and eventually be taken out of the tins and put on trays, but they didn't have to get into the freezer immediately. Yeast doughs have to proof, but that can be slowed down by refrigeration or speeded up a bit by putting it in the proof box (basically a big steel box that holds two huge oven-size racks--two full sheet pans per shelf--and that can have steam added), at least up to a point. Once you've got fermentation or baking going, or laminated croissant dough in the reach-in freezers, for that matter, you've got a timer involved, and you have to stay on top of it, but part of the dance of the bakery was balancing all those bits, the thinking ahead that I was noting above.

Again, I'm a relative amateur at this (compared to the Tart or OldBoss, the latter of whom has been doing it for, oh, 35 years or more), but even two years made a difference. And it has carried over somewhat into my office job, in that I can hold a lot more in my head than many people seem to be able to do. Seriously--and I'm trying to not be immodest here--I can probably do the work of two people, not because I'm Ms. Superperson, but because of that type of multitasking.

The frustrating thing, though, is that it sets new, and very high, expectations, except they're expectations that pretty much only apply to me. Which means when Bossman comes into my office and wants yet another thing, because his boss is sending snippy emails about it, I end up asking which of the other 15 things on my list he wants me to move aside to do that thing. And he gets pissy when I ask that question, but the question remains, and, more to the current point, it's me that he continues to ask for these things, in part because they've morphed into My Job, but in part because he knows I'm the one who will actually manage to get things done.

I'm about to devolve into whining, and I'm not particularly in a whining mood (despite the drama of this week). I will also note that the U2 concerts were extremely fun and good, though they took a toll on my sleep. So do I go to bed early tonight to help make up for it? Apparently not . . .

Shiny Buttons, Plus Baking Chatter

So I'm slogging along (after a trip to the bakery for pastry bags and a chat with Bossman, and a trip to Whole Paycheck for some more stock for the upcoming bakeathon (more on that in a minute), so I'm fully laden). I reach a patch of sidewalk where someone is, yes, watering the sidewalk (and the grass on the far side, of course, but nevertheless). This is a Big Shiny Button. Worse, s/he has strung yellow caution tape around the grass, presumably to keep people from walking on it. I step over the tape, onto the grass--because I do not feel like dodging the sprinkler while lugging aforementioned groceries--and this guy standing there behind the gate in front of the building, talking on his cellphone, says, excuse me ma'am, can you not walk on the grass?

"Well," I say, "then don't water the sidewalk!"

He responds, "I didn't do it! And there's $2,000 worth of new grass there!!"

And I say, "I really don't give a shit; don't water the sidewalk!" and keep going, much to his foot-stamping annoyance ("Did you hear that??" he says to the phone.)

Dude: if you're standing there, behind the fence, telling people not to walk on your precious expensive grass, then you can't deny all knowledge of or responsibility for the water that is watering said grass, and the sidewalk as well, and you really should NOT WATER THE SIDEWALK. It was an inconvenience for me, but how about for someone who's elderly, or using a mobility device, or blind? Are they supposed to make a mad dash to avoid the sprinkler? Go all the way back down the block to cross to the other side? What? And, hey, if your grass is so damned precious, then shouldn't you be bringing bottles of distilled water and sprinkling it drop by drop on those individual blades?

Anyway, the bakeathon is for a bake sale at work. Yeah, I know, sounds a bit like the PTA, don't it? I'd managed to negotiate a day to work at home to actually do the baking, because I'm going to make several things, but if things go as they usually do, then I'll end up going in for at least part of the day. The plan regarding what I'm going to bake keeps changing (I realize that is hardly a surprise to anyone who knows me even a little), but is likely to include peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, mini s'mores tarts (graham cracker crust, chocolate ganache, italian meringue), and either mini carrot cakes or carrot cupcakes, with cream cheese frosting. I'd originally thought minis for the carrot cakes, but now I'm thinking it might be a better idea to do cupcakes. Two additional possibilities are cookies that utilize the malted barley syrup in the fridge (I'm thinking of replacing the sugar in a basic sugar cookie or a honey cookie with that, and possibly adding either some malted milk or some Ovaltine to enhance the maltiness), possibly with a milk chocolate glaze of some kind, and molasses crumb muffins (my mom has a great shoo-fly pie recipe, and I'm thinking I could just use the filling for that as a start).

My Ambitious plan involved working out tonight (something I have not done for 2+ weeks) AND beginning the baking, perhaps making the cookies, even!, because they will keep until Thursday. Not surprisingly, I went for the Not-Ambitious-At-All plan, which involved opening a bottle of wine, wiping off the counter, and moving all of the dry ingredients to that spot, then drinking some wine and eating some cheese and crackers. I did develop another plan--for tomorrow morning, so no wine will be involved--that is limited to going to the farmers' market, doing a load or two of laundry, and scaling all the dry ingredients for my various recipes. If there's still time, baking could occur, but having everything scaled and organized will already speed things along. After that, though, it's U2: for Saturday AND for Sunday. I did not used to like them much, but they've grown on me over the years, so I'm looking forward to it.

So today, while chatting with CurrentBoss about the latest clusterfuck situation (oh yes, something ELSE has happened, and, again, no details will come forth; at least this doesn't involve me) and snagging some chocolate from his office stash (peanut butter cups, if you must know; the mini Snickers and Baby Ruth and Butterfinger don't do anything for me), I realized something, which I shared with him.

His boss holds this set of meetings each month: first, BB has all of his/her senior managers come meet, and they Discuss Important Things. After an hour, s/he has the next level down join the meeting (with the senior managers remaining for this second meeting); this level includes me. The meeting is tedious and boring and I find it to be a waste of time--and, it turns out, about 80% of the meeting content is a repeat of the first hour. Yes, BB has the senior managers sit through the same stuff twice.

This would blow me away with the waste (let's do the math on the salaries in the room, shall we?) all on its own, I suspect, but, as noted to CurrentBoss--and, later, to Bossman--today, it's particularly jarring for me after coming out of the bakery environment as my most recent previous job. The notion that one would take one's senior staff and take them away from getting things done to tell them the same stuff twice in two hours, for no discernible reason (why not start w/ the big group, and then dismiss us lower people, and finish with the stuff for the senior level only?), is just mind-boggling. As I said to CurrentBoss, around bites of Reese's, in the bakery, a conversation with the boss took place across the work table, as I was cutting croissant dough, or making tarts, or whatthefuckever, and he was scaling dough for something, and Phil was loading the oven, and Artie was doing mixing cookies in the background. (Or, as Bossman put it, when a baker says I'll do it now, s/he does it now; in an office, "now" means "I'll get around to it by Tuesday next week, maybe.")

I might have some Deep Thoughts on that, but they'll have to wait. I won't even manage the Saturday Plan if i don't go to bed.

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme; Want, Want, Want

I was able to relax over the weekend, and I even took off on Friday, but I was fooling myself thinking that the Big Pain Crunch was over; alas, September is going to be full of crap, too. It becomes more complicated, and more work, because it turns out that a coworker is a sneaking snake who likes to make shit up and tell these tales at higher levels. it also turns out that someone in this array (I'm being purposefully vague) apparently has difficulty distinguishing between a pile of dogshit and a pile of yummy chocolate truffles, and we are going to have to spend some time educating this person about the goodness of the truffles (and hope that the criteria one might use to distinguish truffles from dogshit might rub off on this person, but that is likely a vain hope).

Larry suggested, in a private comment, that he thought my heart wasn't really in my work, and that turns out to be complicated. Oddly enough, I actually enjoy many of these tasks, and, in some ways, I appreciate the tasks involved with dealing with people who are Difficult, because it challenges me to become better--more patient, more understanding, less quick to snap. These are not easy challenges for me, as you might imagine, but I'm finding that I like them nevertheless. Which is not to say that the challenges are easy-peasy, or that I particularly enjoy realizing that I'm saying something dumb/snappish/wrong, for which I will need to apologize or that I will need to fix, but still can't seem to make my mouth shut up, but still.

And, again, here're two of the things I still miss about teaching, which perhaps gets at the heart of what Larry is observing: first, I cannot actually teach. That is, I do, in fact, have to educate people, but some of it must be done sort of surreptitiously; I can't simply put together a syllabus, and have discussions, and assign papers, and grade them, and so on. And if the people do not want to learn? Well, they are in positions such that I cannot fail them, or stop dealing with them, or whatever; I must continue to slog along. Sometimes, their failure to learn creates an obstacle for me, which sucks. Second, I very much miss the opportunity to do work that interests me deeply. Yes, I'm getting to do some analyses, and I get to apply a kind of intellectual and analytic rigor to subjects that have not heretofore undergone such analyses, and I get to try to explain things in ways that make sense to other people (who have varying abilities and inclinations to understand) . . . but that's not nearly the same as doing research on and writing about topics that are of interest to me.

That last point gets at a crucial difference between my fantasy job(s) and my actual job. I recognize that everyone, or nearly everyone, has to answer to someone, some group, some hierarchy, and that many managers, including those in academia, can be better or worse. It's not as though tenured faculty are freeeee! and can do as they please, or even, at least at all but a handful of schools, teach whatever they please. It may even be the case that one is required to teach courses that aren't particularly interesting or are loathsome in some way.

But, and it's a crucial but, the hierarchy isn't going to tell you what problems you much solve in your research work. If your work is on 19th-century British novels, you will not be instructed to, or ordered to, or need to, write and publish a paper on econometrics. You may conceivably become interested in econometrics and decide to learn about it and, eventually, write on it, but that will be driven by your interests and choices. I, on the other hand, cannot spend my working hours on problems that truly interest me or, on bad days, even engage me all that much. I enjoy the challenge of making a complicated financial and service-provision picture clear; I can sometimes enjoy the writing, if it's not too dull; I even enjoy simplifying and codifying processes in ways that make things run more smoothly or efficiently. The fact that I do get enjoyment is no small thing--but the problems I solve are not the problems that truly interest me.

I feel a bit bad for saying that, because so many people are unemployed, or stuck in jobs that are tedious beyond belief, or doing work that is boring and dull and likely low paying. But feeling grateful that my situation is better than many people's situations does not make mine an interesting job. Overall, I get to solve problems, in more or less interesting ways; I get to apply my talents to help other people who are in much worse shape; and I get (relatively speaking) well-compensated for these tasks, so it could be oh-so-much worse. (I could be lugging 50-pound sacks of flour, for $10/hour, for example.) And some days I feel like I'm actually doing something worthwhile, insofar as anything we do has any worth.

So there you have it: yes, better, or even good, in many, many ways. And still not enough. Having a bowl of ice cream, and being extremely grateful one has ice cream, does not eliminate the desire for hot fudge sauce.

Yeah--One of THOSE Weeks

Okay, so, the work crap continues. I have two major major major deadlines next week, including the basic grant that funds our center, and I have been able to do almost no work on it (no, seriously, I didn't even get to read the RFP until a week ago or so, even though I've had it for a month). Why? Because it's whack-a-mole month. Every time I turn around someone or some agency needs something and it absolutely cannot possibly wait. The person who was being a pain at work is being an even bigger pain, and I am so unbelievably tired of the time-and-energy suck that this person is. We have a meeting tomorrow a.m., called by this person--when what I should be doing is writing the fucking proposal, already--and I really want no part of it.

Sunday morning I got an email from Chuck: his 81-year-old mom died Sunday morning (on CK's birthday, no less). Apparently she had walked into the hospital a week ago Sunday, seemed to be getting better, then took a bad turn Wednesday. All the choices involved massive, risky intervention, and the best possible (and not terribly likely) outcome involved dialysis and a nursing home for the rest of her life, along with other undesirable aspects, and she opted out of that. Chuck and his sister called her friends and relatives, and everyone got to come and say goodbye to her over the next two days, and she slipped into death Sunday morning with her kids by her bed.

Chuck called me Monday to tell me about the services--a funeral mass in the city in which she lived, but a smaller one here, too, at the cemetery--and told me I was not obligated but was welcome to come. (He told me the details in the previous paragraph as part of that call, too.) Of course I decided to see if there was any way I could make it to the thing here, and, in fact, I could, so I went--fortuitously with a ride from a coworker who lives near there and who had to be off this morning for a meeting at her son's school. She dropped me off and then came back and picked me up, which was a huge, huge help.

When I got there, one of the first people I saw was Chuck's sister, who gave me a big, long hug--she told me, several times, that she was so glad I'd come. And, really, so was I. I liked their mom a lot, and I got along well with her, and I'm glad her death was relatively painless, relatively quick, and in such a manner that enabled her to say goodbye to the people who loved her (and vice versa). Chuck was a bit more restrained, but I realized, much later, that one of the people there (it was a small crowd, maybe 25 people, and nearly all family) was, I think, his current girlfriend. He and I did have an amusing conversation about the fact that the picture on the casket was taken at our wedding (and, apparently, they buried her in the suit she wore, too)--it was a great picture of her, so I'm glad.

The other entertaining moment was when Sis introduced me to a long-time friend of hers, someone about whom I'd been hearing for 10 years but whom I'd never actually met. Sis said, oh, this is my friend Mary, and then turned to me and said this is Narya who is, um, and I said "Chuck's third ex-wife." Which was kind of amusing, and to the point, but also completely explanatory. (Another side note: later, the friend said, I've heard so much about you, I expected you to be very tall. Which made me laugh, because I've realized that i act as though I am much taller than I really am.) I said to Sis afterwards, well, if you're ever in the city, you should come by, we could have dinner, and she jumped all over that, yes she'd like that, etc. etc., which was nice. And Sis's husband's sister, whom I'd met multiple times over the years, was friendly, too, and said in passing that she'd missed seeing me.

Ex-wife number two--CK's mother--came over and we air-kissed (which was fine), but I kind of stayed away from Chuck's cousins. I didn't quite know what to say or not say, so I just stayed the hell out of the way and tried not to be intrusive. I didn't go to the luncheon afterwards--I hadn't planned on it, and I had to get to work, but once I realized the new girlfriend was going to be there, I wouldn't have gone anyway. No need to make Chuck more uncomfortable on an occasion like this. I was just so glad that he invited me to come (and, simultaneously, didn't put pressure on me to come, because he knows that getting to a cemetery in the burbs isn't exactly an easy feat for someone w/o a vehicle) and that I was able to go. She was a good person, and a kind person, and, personally, I always appreciated it that her devout Catholicism was a way for her to be a force for good in the world rather than a dogma that she used to divide people. She looked for the good in people, and didn't care if it came with a communion wafer in hand.

Meanwhile, today was the 26th anniversary of my sister's death, so I had that going for me, too.

I've just been so stressed out lately. Work is fraying me, because it's all deadline-related and the federal government is not interested in whatever excuses I may have. Simply not interested. And I had an editing job to finish over the weekend, too, so Friend and I ended up bailing on Pearl Jam (much as I wanted to go) AND bailing on Elvis Costello last night--a concert I had looked forward to all summer, actually. We didn't have tickets for either one, so we weren't out the money (and we did manage to see Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal on Friday, which was fabulous), but still, bummer.

Tomorrow I'm going to work as long a day as I can possibly stand, and maybe get some stuff out of the way. I've already decided that I am not going to let the morning meeting get to me. My boss and coworker and I hashed it all out for 2+ hours this afternoon, and I think we reached a place where we're on the same page, and I instructed coworker that we need to let Boss take the lead tomorrow. So, we'll see what happens; I have too much real work to do to allow myself to get sidetracked into pointless bullshit.

Sortofa Recipe

If you embiggen the pics in the last post, you can see the lusciousness of the fruit all the better . . . It was REALLY easy to make, too. The cake, such as it is, is a pavlova, i.e., whipped egg whites and sugar (with a little salt, some brown sugar, and some vanilla and vinegar), baked in a very slow oven for an hour, then the oven turned off and everything's left inside for another hour with the door propped open. The original recipe called for three 8-inch pans (buttered, dusted w/ powdered sugar, and then parchment circles on the bottom), which you were then (after baking) supposed to layer with berries and a mixture of heavy cream and sour cream. Okay, so how did I change it?

First, I only did two cake pans, not three (and they may have been 9-inch; whatever I have), and with the rest of it, I buttered and sugared three rings that I set up on silpats. I thought individual-sized desserts might be a nice option, and the rings would make that possible. Second, a few reviewers (the recipe was from Gourmet, but posted on epicurious) noted that it was difficult to cut the assembled dessert without tearing it apart, so I decided not to layer it--which was also useful given that there were only going to be two of us eating it. Third, I have some mascarpone that I wanted to use, and the heavy cream/sour cream mix didn't do much for me, so I beat the mascarpone with a little milk to thin it and some good maple syrup (no brown-colored HFCS for me, thank you).

So Saturday I mixed raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries with a little honey just before we sat down to dinner (grilled vegetables, grilled wild turkey, fresh corn on the cob, and a tomato salad with fresh mozzarella), which enabled everything to macerate without falling apart. I put the fruit on top of one layer, dolloped on the mascarpone/maple mix, and we each took a fork and had at it. Sunday (steak--yes, beef, if you can believe it--grilled sweet potatos (peeled, thick slices, in a buttered foil packet, and sprinkled with some brown sugar), and a morel/wine reduction/onion sauce for the meat, along with more corn and more tomato salad, this time with fresh basil as well) I used raspberries, blackberries, and peaches, and it was even better. I froze the three smaller ones, so we'll see how they do (theoretically freezing them is okay). The only thing I'm not sure about is whether I used the correct amount of egg whites. I scaled out a double recipe of the whites and then the sugar, looked at it, and thought, hmmm, no way is that going to fit in my 5-quart mixer. I distinctly remember removing the sugar, but I don't remember if I took out the extra whites. Guess I'll have to make it again and see!

It's a really incredible summer dessert, while everything is ripe and fresh, but I bet it would work just fine with high-quality frozen fruit as well.

So today I stumbled across Rick Bayless' blog, and the post that was up described the last show (or, rather, the behind-the-scenes part of it); I also found his post about the previous show, and it was kind of amusing how much he echoed some of what I'd said, though with fewer fucks. (Incidentally, until today the site name was root4rick; someone was thinking ahead.) Here's his comment on that show and Spike: "Hubert seemed genuinely excited to work with them, Michael sprouted a side none of us had ever seen in the competition, Anita seemed to hunker down and just want to get through the competition and I was worried about building a team that could do my food (guessing that none of them had experience with traditional Mexican cuisine). There was one thing we all agreed on, though: none of us wanted Spike. He just seemed so cocky, not a team player."

And I've been thinking more about the whole dust-up between Chiarello and the TC cheftestant in the next-to-last ep, and I still think the latter was wrong. Yes, I know the cheftestants are good chefs in their own right, in at least some cases--a few even own restaurants--and I even think that Chiarello was being a dickhead in a number of places in that ep, but that's not the point. Your job is to help your chef win, and you don't accomplish that if you're mouthing off to the chef from another team; no way is that going to work out for you.

We're having a kind of go-round like that at work now. Someone is being a dick, basically, and trying to go after my boss, which is just a very, very bad idea. For one thing, he and another team member and I have each other's backs, and this guy is just plain making a mistake. But I also think he just loses sight of what the ultimate goal really is: i.e., providing services to the people who need them. Everything we do should be with the aim of enabling us to do a better job of that; everything else is a waste of time. Including the endless fucking pointless meetings, but that's unavoidable, I guess.

Weekend Dessert

More Posting About TV and Food

Yes, I know, I should be editing. But I miss writing for my (and, hopefully, your at least occasional) pleasure, rather than writing a grant proposal, or an email, or comment in something I'm editing. This extremely stressful patch has another three weeks to it, but it will be followed by the Month of Concerts (yeah, I know; what else is new). So far, I have tickets for six concerts, and a seventh may be in the works as well. That's not counting last week's Phish concert or the three concerts I'm hoping to see in the next week or so, or the beer festival of last week, or various other activities planned for the next six weeks or so.

But that's not what I wanted to write about.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for background noise while I edited, and I ended up flipping on Top Chef: Masters. Rick Bayless, of local fame, was among the contestants, so I left it on . . . and got sucked in. Of course. Overall, I'd say that the thing that stands out, from the three or four episodes that I've seen, is that there is WAY less drama, and a lot more emphasis on the food, and it is so much more enjoyable. The "cheftestants" do this for a living, they're playing for a donation to their favorite charity rather than for their Big Break, and they're really not going to get their knickers in a bunch or sabotage each other (as least, if any of that is happening, it's all being edited out); on the contrary, they seem to lend each other a hand pretty reliably.

Another thing: there's not a lot of working together, at least on the shows I saw, so more of the individual chef, rather than the working-with-and-against-each-other-simultaneously thing goes on. One of the things that becomes more obvious, in this format, is how stupid a lot of the challenges are (they're using various challenges from regular seasons of TC). The most interesting challenge was that each chef made his/her favorite/signature dish, and then one of the other chefs ended up having to "reinterpret" it.

So Wednesday night they were down to Rick Bayless, Anita Lo, Michael Chiarello, and Hubert Keller. The chefs do a quickfire challenge (identify, while blindfolded, these 20 substances; Chiarello got one more than Bayless & Keller, so got to choose first), then they bring in 12 people who were cheftestants from previous seasons of TC. Given that I have not watched the show all that much except for last year, I didn't know anyone except Jamie and Fabio from last year, and this guy Spike, who showed up in a couple of episodes last year and who always wears a fucking fedora. (Spike wears on my last goddamned fucking nerve, in case you couldn't tell.) The master chefs have two minutes with each candidate, to interview them all and, presumably, make a ranking.

Now is when it got interesting. Keller is shown asking several people whether they know how to do pastry. (Only one says yes; the other two are like, eh, no, not really.) Bayless is asking questions about what they like, what flavors, yadda yadda. I don't remember what they showed Lo asking, but she picks Jamie from last season, because apparently Jamie used to work for/with her. Chiarello is being Mr. Big Man Chef: go find a knife and carrot and show me how you dice a carrot. (Someone--Spike, maybe?--actually refused to do it) What's my name? (to see who can pronounce the last name correctly). What do you call me in the kitchen? ("Chef" is the only correct answer to that question.) Kinda maybe being a dick, hard to tell; it would have been more interesting if there had been more cheftestants than slots, number one, and, number two, Spike was the last one picked; Keller got stuck with him.

So the chefs get together with their teams to plan the meal (buffet for 200 "Hollywood insiders," whoever the fuck they are), go to Whole Paycheck (whose CEO has pissed me off with his health care bullshit enough so that I am going to boycott his fucking stores) to buy shit, and do some prep. The next day, they're in the middle of cooking, and they're told they need to pack up and move everything to the venue (or a different venue?). Which is kinda bullshit usual TC stuff, but it does fuck with the chefs, some of whom are making things that require a certain kind/amount of cooking to develop flavor profiles. There's also a shot of one of the team members (Dale somebody?) screaming at Chiarello, saying, "What are you going to do about it???" and then Chiarello interviews that he's been doing this for 20 years and he has a Dale for lunch regularly. Looked like a lot of dick-waving on both sides, if you ask me, but still: Chiarello is the chef, AND Dale isn't on his team, so WTF? Dude, get the fuck over yourself, go back to your room, do your tasks.

So they pack up and move, and, when they get there, they discover that (a) it's going to be served outside, in the sun, and (b) they each have to cut a team member. The former condition completely fucks Anita, and not in a good way, because she had been planning a raw bar, which is totally not something you do in the hot sun, but also not something you can change two hours before serving time. It's also interesting that the team member she cuts is Jamie, with some not-completely-coherent interviewing about how Jamie isn't that good after all (too slow, I think was the problem). And when Hubert cuts Spike, Spike's comments--that he thinks it's a compliment to be chosen last, because it means the chefs are afraid of him totally RULING with his mad chef skillz--provide further evidence that he is delusional; it's a good thing I didn't watch that season, or I would have reached through the TV to drag him off the set by his balls. Or stopped watching, more likely.

Blah, blah, blah.

The crowd shows up, eats, whatevs. Everyone lurves Hubert's and Rick's food: Keller serves 18 (yes, 18) different food items. Bayless isn't far behind, and, apparently, it's all quite tasty. Anita is totally hosed: no way that raw fish in the sun is a good idea, but she can't do anything about that two hours before service. That is actually the thing that pissed me off most about the episode. Yes, one must always be able to work on the fly, but that's a changeup that's really out of the question, because any chef would tailor the menu to fit the venue, and Anita interviews that she knows it's a bad idea, and she knows she's hosed, but there's not a lot she can do about it--make fish soup? In short, I don't think she would have lost if they hadn't thrown that particular twist, and it highlights the aspect of the whole show that I think does a poor job of representing the fix-it-on-the-fly aspect of any kind of food service work.

Michael's meal doesn't really seem to come together; the swordfish looks like an unholy mess; hard to say what else is there. The judges don't have anything good to say about it, really--but it's not raw fish in the sun, so, hey, he's safe for another week.

The thing that really stood out, though, is that both Keller and Bayless were portrayed as incredible team leaders, people who were, on one hand, completely in charge, but, on the other hand, were completely open to contributions from other people and who expected their team members to perform, i.e., didn't think they were likely to be useless idiots. Bayless openly credits mr. molecular gastronomy (ew) with the avocado ice cream being created tableside. And both of them were just (portrayed as) very calm; no histrionics, no drama, no ego-for-the-sake-of-ego.

It's hard to say whether there's a relationship between their calm demeanor and team leadership and the excellence of their product. I know one of the big chefs in this city--has cookbooks and such, too--has a rep as a dick, but the product there is excellent, I'm told (I've never been, and his politics annoy me sufficiently that I don't feel compelled to go). OTOH, people like Bossman are pretty calm, pretty supportive of the team, etc., and also produce excellent product. What it comes down to, for me, is whether I would have wanted to work with the person, and, personally, I made an effort to avoid places that had bad reps that way. Some of it is just that I'm old and cranky, and I am seriously not up for some guy, no matter how marvelous a chef he's supposed to be (or actually is), being an asshole. Clearly, as Bayless and Keller show, it is not necessary for someone to be an asshole, so why would someone put up with it? But I also recognize that my calculus on these things is different, in large part because of my personality and in smaller part because of my age. (Seriously: I'm going to seek out some 35-year-old superstar to berate me just because he has a famous restaurant? It's just food, people.)

Anyway. I'd meant to describe the two incredible meals that Friend and I made over the weekend, but that will have to wait for another post. However long it takes me to put that together.

How I Got Here

Jonquil asked about Heinlein, which, in my slightly wine-besotted state, unleashed a flood of memory. Many of the people at Jonquil's place, including her, are science fiction/fantasy (SFF) fans, and quite a bit more knowledgeable and well-read in the genres than I am, I hasten to add.

As I was getting ready to go off to college, a local friend who was 7 years older than I and whom I knew from my theater stuff (and from our backgammon and herb and vodka-and-lemonade evenings with two gay friends) gave me "Stranger in a Strange Land," which I remember slogging through but not particularly liking. I liked the concept of "grokking," but I could not tell you a single other thing from the book, and it certainly did not inspire me to go find more Heinlein. I've since found out--from reading others' conversations--that Heinlein is a rank misogynist, so I'm just as glad I didn't bother.

And, as I've probably bored you with told you before, the guy who sat behind me in Algebra 3/Trigonometry (Jeff Innes, where are you . . .) insisted that I read Lord of the Rings, which I promptly did, thus capturing me for life. But I really didn't stumble across SFF other than that, somehow, despite my love of Kurt Vonnegut and despite my voracious appetite for the written word.

My college had (and has) something called Winter Term, wherein students are required to go do something for a month. Some people take a month-long course; some do an internship; some go volunteer someplace; when I was there, a group of black students retraced part of the route of the Underground Railroad (my college is notable for being the first racially integrated college in the country as well as the first college to educate men and women together, and the town was, in fact, a stop on the UR). Both professors and students teach the courses on campus, and, in retrospect, I suspect that professors use the winter term format to work out new courses as well as to teach or lead a month-long symposium on a subject into which they're delving, out of personal and/or professional interest. Anyway. One of my two favorite college professors taught a winter term course that I took on the subject of Work and the Meaning of Life. (is it any surprise that the meaning of work has been central to my thoughts throughout my sentient life? It's certainly been there for at least 30+ years.) I can still picture--as though it were yesterday--my professor reading a passage from a book a student had given him (I think), Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed:

"Here you think that the incentive to work is finances, need for money or desire for profit, but where there's no money, the motives are clearer, maybe. People like to do things. They like to do them well. People take the hard, dangerous jobs because they take pride in doing them, they can--egoize, we call it--show off?--to the weaker ones. Hey, look little boys, see how strong I am! You know? A person likes to do what he is good at doing. . . . But really, it is the question of ends and means. After all, work is done for the work's sake. It is the lasting pleasure of life."

And that single passage made me go to the bookstore, find that book, and then find other of LeGuin's books. Keeping an eye out for her name led me to other names, occasionally, and years later a friend suggested Sherri Tepper. I read The Gate to Women's Country and got drawn in again. Occasionally I'd read something that turned into a space western, and I still don't have much patience for those, and occasionally I stumble across something--possibly a recommendation from someone from Jonquil's flist,--that draws me in. Point being (in so far as I actually have one, which is debatable) that, despite my love for a number of SFF writers, in general my knowledge of and reading in the genres is limited. But when it's done well, I love the freedom to explore an idea. The Dispossessed, for example, asks the question, what would it be like to live in a society that did not have private property? How would that work? What problems would arise? What would happen if someone from that world went to a world where there was still private property? Frankly, it's one of the best explorations of anarcho-syndicalism I've ever seen, and one of my great regrets about leaving academia is not having the opportunity to teach that book in a political theory class.

Carry Me Home

I put on my sherpani hat and went off to the farmers' markets this morning. My haul:

*10 pounds of honey
*3 bars of beeswax soap
*10 pounds of blueberries (on sale for $28)
*some maple syrup
*two bunches of organic beets (greens attached)
*9 pounds of dried fruit (strawberries, pears, cherries, and apricots; the latter were supposed to be peaches)
*a loaf of semolina sesame bread
*a loaf of flaxseed bread

And when I say "haul," I mean that I got everything except the bread, syrup, and dried fruit at one market, then took a bus to the second market, then took two more buses to get home. My back was less than delighted at this, but whatever. The only thing that concerns me is that I really have to freeze those blueberries--and 10 pounds is a fuckload of blueberries. I'll probably IQF them tomorrow, or possibly today if I get ambitious, but meanwhile I must start editing.

Listalicious

I had intended to meet friends tonight--one friend has a son who was playing in a jazz trio at a photography center opening of some kind--and then . . . I bailed. I cranked away at work today (including five hours putting together the monthly report for BB, not least because my coworkers are unfamiliar with outlines, no matter how much I create them and hold their hands and practically write their fucking pieces for them), because I don't see how else I'm going to get through the next few weeks. And then I thought about the very long list of chores I'd set for myself (work out each day; go to two different farmers' markets, for honey, dried fruit, fresh fruit, and perhaps some vegetables and bread; clean the disgusting pit of a bathroom; do the laundry; do some baking; clean up the mess and clutter; and crank through as much of the second editing job as possible (the other editing job still isn't quite ready)), and I realized that I would be much happier if I came home and did a couple of things on the list.

So: DMB. When we bought the tickets, we each ended up choosing seats with "obstructed views." The first night, that turned out to mean "sitting in the second row on the side-ish of the stage," which isn't exactly my idea of obstructed. We wandered down, checked out the seats, and, as the opening band finished up, trudged up the hill for a beer. We came back down as DMB came out, and discovered that the seat directly in front of me was occupied by a young man who was--no lie--at least 6'7" tall. And he was standing. And he showed no inclination to sit down. And I am short. I could see absolutely nothing except his back. I was bumming--it was like having been given a wonderful treat and then having it ripped out of my hands.

I sat down--because seeing his ass wasn't so different from seeing his back--and tried to figure out how to somehow enjoy myself. Friend then made me switch seats with him--it turned out that the row in front of us was angled and shorter, such that Friend's seat was actually a front-row seat (I could have reached out and touched the stage). And he could see around very-tall guy, so it all worked out. We were so close that we were effectively behind the speakers, which meant the sound was kind of muddy (especially for those of us who are not huge fans who know the words to every song), but it was very fun. It was especially interesting to turn around and see 40,000 people behind us. The second night, our seats were near the back, not far from the sound board. Sightlines were pretty good, too, so it was a fun contrast with the previous night, and the sound was much better.

The first night, as we walked through the parking field, someone yelled out, from a van, "Hey! It's an old guy! Hi old guy!" The second night, as we walked to our seats, someone yelled out, "Hey! It's a silver fox!" (meaning me; Friend's hair isn't very grey, but mine definitely is). We were amused that we were both identified as Old--which, compared to this crowd, we certainly were; we could have been the parents of about 95% of the crowd. But, hey, we've been doing this for more years than many in the crowd have been alive, we know how to pace ourselves, and I'd say we get a few points for the effort.

We had a hotel room Saturday and Sunday night, and we had lunch on Sunday with friends of his who live not too far away. We originally planned to take a day off and wander back slowly on Monday during the day, but then ended up making a mad dash early in the morning to get to work, which meant we both had fewer than the requisite number of brain cells to rub together at work. But it was nice to get out of town. Part of why I want to crank for the next two weeks is that we're going out of town in two weeks--again only for the weekend, though we both plan to take off on Friday--and I want to get several things out of the way before that.

And, really, I just have a ton of deadlines. The challenging part--or one of them, anyway--is that it involves a number of detailed, complicated things all piled on top of each other, the kind of things where I like to make outlines, and plans, and get other people involved with plenty of advance notice, and so on, and that's basically just not possible. Take two of the things that are due soon, and that I have had on my desk for at least a couple of weeks--i.e., I've had some lead time on them--but that I have not been able to get to because too many other things have been in the way. But there's no point in fussing about it; I'll just do what I can and power through. I suppose I should have turned down this weekend's editing job and, say, just relaxed, or possibly even gone in to the office, but whatthefuck.

I'm half-watching "Pride & Prejudice," which is on Oxygen tonight, and I could write a fucking dissertation about the ads, but I think sleep would be the wiser choice. I did manage to get about 2/3 of the clutter put away, and the bathroom is clean (!!!!), so I was, indeed, able to cross off a few things from the list. Long day tomorrow, though, even if I only do some of the things on the list.

Second Opinion

So every time my dad's doc went poking around in my dad's bladder, he was finding cancerous cells; the doc reassured my parents that it wasn't invasive or anything, but lately the doc had decided to go to chemo, because the spots kept recurring. My parents--partly at my urging--decided to head to Sloan Kettering for a second opinion. That doc had his pathologist read the results/slides, and, when he got that reading (in the middle of telling my parents that it was no big deal), changed horses immediately. Seems like the small-city pathologist was seeing nothing seriously problematic where the expert saw something possibly problematic. So there will be two more trips to MSK (MRI, blood work, the doc there wants to do his own scope of dad's bladder), and then, who knows. (I asked the google about this cancer, today, and found that a new chemo has been fast-tracked by the FDA--as of yesterday.)

This could get . . . interesting, as my dad previously has said that he'd just as soon not do without his bladder, thanks so much. (Not least because my mom's brother doesn't have his any more, and my dad saw that whole process going on.) Which, if the cancer is invasive, basically means dad would be choosing to die of cancer sooner rather than either later or of something else. I don't particularly want to say goodbye to him just yet, but it's his decision. The other question, though, is what happens with mom, and not just in the they've-been-married-for-53-years kind of way: my mom getting a kidney becomes a whole other proposition if my dad isn't around to help out.

Let's hope I'm getting ahead of myself, and also let's wait until all the tests are done.

At work, well, everything is due at once: the two big grants that fund the whole place are due in the next six weeks, along with several crucial interim reports of various sorts for those grants. Plus? I had to move my office today, while the construction is going on, and I'm sharing a smaller office with someone (whom I like--and I offered to share, even though I probably could have gotten away with having the space to myself) for the next three weeks. One of the editing jobs that I took a few weeks ago but which has been delayed is finally going to show up, and a second one has come available as well. I think I'm only going to take the second one if it's available for this weekend; otherwise, I don't think I can fit in everything and still sleep.

So, no stress there.

Friend and I spent the weekend in cheeseland, listening to Dave Matthews (I have a few stories about that expedition), and, two weeks from now, we'll be heading back to cheeseland for a beer-tasting festival. This weekend will feature chores for me, and maybe some editing, plus a day of racing on Sunday (Tour de France finale; Formula 1 in Hungary; Indy in Edmonton) pretty much back to back all day. Which is good for editing days, actually, as chunks of all of that racing can take place while I am listening but not watching, or watching while rowing.

So now you're sort of up to date; I've been missing the blogging thing lately, and I want to say more, but it's after 11 and I need sleep. Maybe this weekend . . .

Back to the Keyboard

In preparation for the 3-day weekend, I went to a meeting with my boss on Thursday (wherein I earned the big promotion & raise I got last week), and then I went across the street to the main library, where I snagged eight books. I promptly read three of them over the weekend, along with having some great food (including homemade elk burgers and some homemade pulled pork) and doing a whole big pile of nothing. Watched the Tour. Watched the Indy car race. Did my laundry Friday morning. Had a brief hour of excitement on Sunday while we all waited to see if my mom was going to be a match for a kidney (she wasn't, but we're hoping this means she's near the top of the list).

I am basically doing all of the financial bits for my organization: developing grant budgets, developing program budgets, working with the funding agencies, etc. I'm not really monitoring expenditures, but I'm doing all of the rest of it. It's an interesting challenge, and I rather enjoy it, but it amuses me that my lack of experience doing these very tasks is why the people who interviewed me five times in the fall of 2007 decided I wasn't a good fit. I had the sense then that I could do these things, but also knew that the person who hired me also had to believe I could do them. And, in this position, I have that, so it has worked out.

Remember that big site visit that occurred two weeks ago? It went pretty well--except the part where my boss's boss (BB) completely pissed off the site review team. THAT part sucked, not least because the fallout is mostly going to hit my head. On some level, it was almost funny: we (site review team and our people) were sitting around the room, in two different locations, and BB was calling in from another city, so was not in visual contact with anyone else. At our end, and, apparently, at the other location, everyone from the organization was basically listening and wincing. I contemplated throwing myself across the room on top of the phone, disconnecting BB and preventing any further damage, but just let it go on. The one thing that helped is that one of our coworkers--someone who had been at odds with me a couple of weeks ago--had the good sense to bring into the room/conversation someone at the executive level of the organization, i.e., someone who can report on and possibly mitigate some of the damage that BB was doing. That will help tremendously; otherwise, someone at a lower level would have had to basically tell tales--true tales, yes, but still; better that that not be necessary.

One of the things I've been enjoying lately is the sense of . . . mastery is too strong, but competence, maybe, that comes with having the details of our finances at my fingertips. It's a puzzle, basically, and I've been enjoying figuring out the pieces. Another enjoyable piece is that I think we actually have a very strong team right now--a group of people with complementary talents, and plenty of them.

Anyway.

I don't have much more at the moment, but I did want to get back to this.

So!

Seems like everyone is on a blog holiday this month. Personally, it has been completely insane. Every time I turn around, there's another damn fire, and I have to drive the truck and unroll the hose and go rescue the kitty up on the second floor. And we have not one but two visits from federal funders next week. And then there's the personal dramas. So, yeah, even though this is often my favorite time of year, in part because of the solstice, I've had little opportunity to enjoy it, and I'm finding that other bits are interfering with that, anyway.

Eventually I'll write it all down for you, but not this morning.

Look! Over there!

. . . where something interesting is happening.

Sooner or later, I'll probably get a break, but it won't be any time soon, by the look of it. There's a proposal due on Tuesday; it has turned out to be relatively simple, but I'll be much happier when it is done. Then there's the big site visit at the end of the month. And the regular reporting, on which I am always behind, because I never have time to put systems in place. And the local funding agency that is extremely peeved with us (and with good reason, I may add)--today I was channeling my old boss at the substance abuse treatment agency, as I scribbled phrases and hints for my boss as he spoke to the agency rep, even though I could hear only his side of the conversation. (My old boss was a master at dealing with funding agencies, and I learned so much from him.) Anyway, it chugs along. I make bits of progress on things, and my boss is coming to rely greatly on me, not just to get things done but as a sounding board, a way to think or talk through things, and also because I am making his boss happy, too.

I am almost completely ignoring whatever is going on around Sotomayor's nomination. The little bits I've read make me want to smack someone, and I simply do not have the energy for yet another round of racism and misogyny. Same with the latest round of torture crap. Same with Cheney the Dick mouthing off. I am completely sick and tired of these huge wads of fuck blathering on and on and on, and I am even more sick and tired of the media giving them any attention whatsoever. They. Fucking. Lost. If we thought you were right, we would have voted for you. But the media continue to run to them, letting them shape the narrative. You know what? I do not care what some 65-year-old privileged bag of fuck thinks about Ms. Sotomayor's empathy, demeanor, or any other goddamned fucking thing. Here's a nice big hot steaming mug of shutthefuckup; drink it. And here's a cramitupyourass scone to go with it. Now go away.

As you may know by now, the Hawks finally lost to Detroit (or, as they're known around here, the Scum). I really didn't think they'd get past Detroit, and it was a valiant effort. Much as I would have enjoyed going to the games--and hopefully seeing the Cup--the reality is that, as the first graf above makes clear, I am insanely busy at work, so I'm short on time, and the tickets are not exactly cheap. No more games = more time and more money for me, so it's not a complete fail. Plus, Pittsburgh is on a tear, and I don't think the Hawks had the guns to go up against that; not this year, anyway.

Indy was fun, too, despite Friend passing out briefly from dehydration/heat. (Yeah, THAT was not fun.) Sunday is Milwaukee, which is also fun. At Indy, they can get some speed, because the whole track is 2.5 miles; in Milwaukee, the track is only a mile, and if you're seated high enough (which isn't difficult or expensive), you can see the whole track, and they sometimes go two or three cars wide--at nearly 200 mph. That is, the two races provide different views, even though they're both ovals.

The thing that continues to fascinate me is trying to figure out the nexus between human and machine, plus the money that accompanies the machine. For example, handball is a supremely simple sport, which was one of the reasons it appealed to me: gloves, eye guards, a ball, four walls (you can play with fewer but I never did). That's it. There really isn't much you can do, equipment-wise, that is going to give you an advantage of any kind. You can practice, you can get coaching, you can practice some more, but that's all on you; there isn't a thing you can buy that is going to win games for you.

In open-wheel racing, though, there's this finely tuned machine in the mix, and it's much more difficult to see how much effect the driver has on the thing. In Formula 1, for example, in part because of the way one team interpreted some of the design rules, a driver who hadn't won much (at all?) before this year has won all but one race so far, and the two drivers for that team are at the top of the driver standings. That is, their vehicle has a design/engineering advantage such that the two teams that won everything last year and the year before--Ferrari and MacLaren Mercedes--are barely in the pack.

But those two teams have wads of cash, so they can change things during the season, and their drivers are good (several championships among them), so it will be interesting to see how much they can improve their vehicles' performance by the end of the season (they've already improved somewhat). I think what I'm trying to say is that the best driver in the world cannot win the races if his/her vehicle isn't fast enough. Can a mediocre driver take a great vehicle to a win? Maybe once, but steadily? Not likely. Even competent drivers don't win all the time, even with great vehicles. The other thing that's sort of amusing is the notion of "fast enough" in this context, in that, during qualifying (i.e., in Indy, just one car on the track), the vehicles were within a hair's breadth of each other in terms of speed, i.e., it's not as though one vehicle/driver is just blisteringly faster than another.

I know; I know; not that interesting to y'all. But it's either this, or rant about something, and I don't feel like ranting today.

Bread Instead

Is it weird to include a loaf of bread in the price one charges for a pair of tickets?

Turns out the second home game of the next series is on Sunday . . . which is also Indy. Which would even have worked out if they'd played the game at, say, 8:00; we could have made a mad dash back and probably made it in time. But nooooooo; game's at 2:00. Flip side, though, Bossman is more than happy to buy the tickets: I asked for face value plus a loaf of miche, which is one of the best breads from the best bakery in the city. Friend tried (albeit not very hard) to convince me to try to sell them for big bucks, but I suck at that kind of thing. I'd much rather get my money back, get an incredible loaf of bread, and enable someone who will be VERY happy to go to the game actually go to the game. (Bossman had season tickets for years and got them again this year for the first time in a very long while, but the bill for playoff tickets showed up when some other major expense showed up, plus he probably didn't figure they'd go this far. Or something.)

I probably could get a ton of money for the tickets, I should note. For example, someone is selling two tickets to each of the first two games, in a similar section, for a total of $1000--but face for these tickets is about $100 apiece, or what would be $400 for the four. I guess I have this notion that even ticket resales operate on the what-goes-around-comes-around principle. People have helped me out multiple times, and I can turn around and help out someone else--plus I get a fabulous loaf of bread out of it as my "surcharge."

I don't have all that much to offer up here, though. There was an article in last Sunday's NYT about female bullies that annoyed the shit out of me, but I've been neglecting to write about it because it was the same old tired patriarchal bullshit. The article started off saying that 60% of the bullying done in the workplace was done by men . . . and then proceeded to say no more about male bullies. And, here's a surprise: men bully both men and women, but women bully mostly women. How fucking dense can this person be? Bullies pick on the weaker/subordinate people. Who's more likely to be subordinate(d)? Oh, wait, that would be . . . women. The comments were a whole other festival of woman-bashing--it made it sound as though no man ever bullied anyone ever, it was just all those mean ol' women. Jesus christ on a cracker. Of COURSE some women are bullies--being female does not mean one cannot be an asshole. But did you see the part where the vast majority of the bullying is done by men? (And that's provided that the measure of bullying is accurate, which, good luck with that; d'ya think there's any chance than any woman who is strong will be regarded as a bully by some people, simply because she isn't being all subordinate and shit?)

Did anyone even consider that women get points with patriarchal men if said women bash other women? Has anyone noticed how the patriarchy encourages women to police other women's behavior, thus making it look, to the untrained eye, as though it couldn't possibly be a sexist thing? Did anyone point out that many (patriarchal) structures reward bullies and assholes, so anyone who wants to succeed (or has to survive) within those structures has to engage in or at least tolerate that behavior? And who among us has the wherewithal to go up against a bully, especially if there's any kind of piling on? I am of an age, and education level, and income level, and I have a boss such that the consequences of calling out bullying are way less likely to be problematic for me, but most people don't have that privilege. (We also don't have any bullies, quite, where I am now, that I know of.)

The more interesting question for me is why people don't join together to fight a bully. Haven't you noticed the people who see the bullying going on but don't say anything, just sit around hoping the bully doesn't focus on them? Of course, someone above the bully in the hierarchy has to give at least tacit approval to the resistance, and someone has to be willing to point out that the emperor/empress is, in fact, unclothed, and that's difficult to do, and sometimes it's difficult to see it. And some situations cannot be changed: I have been extremely lucky in terms of my immediate supervisors. Seriously; despite the occasional irritations that are part of all human relationships, I have had very good bosses, with the occasional extraordinary one thrown in for good measure; that makes a huge difference, too.

The other thing I've discovered is that a strong personality can alter behavior for the good. I think most people would agree that I have a strong personality (though it took me decades--really--to figure that out, for an assortment of reasons), and one of the things that enables me to do is to set a tone in some settings. For example, I try very hard to compliment and acknowledge people publicly. Not in a blowing-smoke or sucking-up kind of way (because no one ever trusts that, nor should anyone trust that), but just acknowledging people's good works. It encourages others to do it, it feels good when someone does it, and it doesn't cost a damned thing. I know some people think everything is an all-or-nothing game--i.e., in order for you to do well, someone else has to do badly--but I really fight against that mindset, because I hate it. And that kind of positive influence can snowball--I may be able to start it, but others have to carry on with it.

I do wonder what would have happened if the one very difficult person hadn't left about a year ago. She and I would not have been a happy team, by any stretch of the imagination, and I am certain she would have done her best to sabotage me. Given the information imbalance that she would have had and would have fought to maintain, she would have succeeded, too, which means I would have left (or my boss would have had to choose). I'm just glad I don't have to deal with it. It's not that there are no frustration with my job now, and it's not as though there aren't always politics when two or more humans are around each other, it's that there's a whole other level of disfunction through which we don't have to fight.

Anyway, the stress continues: big site visit at the end of June, and at least one proposal between now and then, which will require a bunch of coordination with others, plus I need to get some data together, plus one of my coworkers will be gone for three weeks (don't ask), plus some hockey, and Indy, and Milwaukee . . . so, yeah. Might be a little busy around here.

HAWKS WIN!!

. . . as nearly 27,000 people, including me, cheered them on. It was v. v. v. loud, and a tense game, and omigod what a lot of fun. And tonight it's back to the same venue, for the fourth time in eight days, albeit for Bruce this time. I shoulda just rented out space in the pressbox or something and moved in over there.

Pole Day with Hockey

Whew.

This week was, in fact, rather insane, in a very good way, what with two hockey games, a concert, and, last night, a few beers with the medical director, whom I like tremendously, not to mention going full-throttle all week on the budget stuff, with very little help from anyone else. There are housekeeping chores this weekend and a lot of hockey and racing on television (Formula 1 qualifying was this morning at 7 and the race is tomorrow morning, and today was Pole Day at Indianapolis, when the drivers fill the first 11 spots on the grid for the 500, including the pole). So I watched F1 qualifying as I puttered around, then my mom called as I was getting ready to leave. We talked for awhile, and then I headed out for the shopping.

Which was interesting, in an unexpected way. I wandered over to the bakery to get some bread--I have yet to find a place in this city that makes bread that even comes close--and ended up chatting with Bossman for a few minutes about hockey (he had season tickets but didn't get playoff tickets). I stopped at an Argo that I walked past, because I realized I had a card in my wallet with some money on it, so that tea was sort of free. Stopped at the bank, then to Peet's for more tea (I had been running low both at work and at home). Because I bought tea in bulk, I had a free cup coming to me, so I settled in with my book. After awhile, I realized that I was in no rush to get anywhere, for the first time in what felt like ages. I had no plans for tonight, other than to watch hockey, and no plans for the afternoon, for that matter, other than watching some of Pole Day and working out, which could be done simultaneously. I could read, drink my tea, and just relax, for as long as I wanted, before I headed to Whole Paycheck. It felt very nice, I have to say.

I even managed to stock up on some produce for the week, so I won't have to live on the oatmeal stashed in my desk drawer--strawberries were on sale, and I got some broccolini, too, which I'll steam and take to work cold, perhaps with some of the lemon tarragon dressing I got. (Okay, this has devolved into a what-I-will-have-for-lunch blog, which is pretty pathetic.) Some pistachios, so I can make another batch of nougat with the egg whites and dried cherries I still have around; I still have an orange that isn't moldy, so I'll use the peel of that, too, except this time I'll remember to boil it to open the pores and soften it, and then perhaps put it right into the boiling sugars. And maybe I'll make another batch of cookies and take some to work.

As you may be able to tell, Friend is out of town--hunting wild turkeys, this week and next week, with a brief foray back into town from tomorrow sometime until Tuesday. If he doesn't get a ticket for Monday's game and doesn't get back early enough tomorrow, I won't see him until next weekend or after, but, with my schedule, I'll barely notice. (Okay, that's only partly true.) This week includes at least one hockey game, a concert, and at least one dinner with a friend; I want to see a couple of other friends, too. I had intended to do a weekend yoga workshop next weekend, but realized that if the Hawks keep winning, it would conflict. I could still sign up, and might do so, but another weekend like this one--i.e., with sports on the TV and not a lot else to do--could be a good thing, especially because the following two weekends will involve going to races and, possibly, hockey games.

One of the downsides to watching all this television, though, is the re-immersion in the patriarchy. Yeah, I know, it's not like I don't run into it in the rest of my life--I do not have a Rancho Deluxe--but I watch relatively little television at my house, and, at Friend's, often as not it's on tape and we zip past the commercials. And, of course, commercials are the biggest source of the crap. Frex, the Pl@yb0y channel is advertising heavily on the channel on which the hockey games are playing, and the ad is getting on my last fucking nerve. I won't bore you with a recounting of it, but it scores on every last patriarchal trope. Then there's a Bridgestone tire commercial that features Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head--she's nagging him in this shrill voice about his driving, he has to stop short, or swerve, or something, and her lips go tumbling down the hill, shutting her up--and guaranteeing I'll never buy Bridgestone tires. Not that I have any intention of buying a car or tires, but it is a wildly offensive ad. And so on.

Plus there are the endless beer ads--did you know that Mi!!er is "triple-hops brewed"? And it still tastes like piss! (Yes, I know, I have become a total beer snob, and I don't care; I do not want to waste time, calories, or buzz potential on crappy beer.) And the new pasta thingies from, um, Pizza Hut, maybe? I love how they make up names that sound like they should mean something in the language of the cuisine they're supposedly producing--Italian, in this case, so they come up with "Tuscani" (pronounced "tuss-CAHN-ee") or something. Sort of like Tuscany, but with that "i" at the end to signify that it's Italian. No, really! Just like you get at restaurants! Restaurants like Pizza Hut, anyway; not so much at places where the food is good. Or the pasta in a bread bowl from Domino's: I figure you have to cut it in half, so you can slap a half on each ass cheek. Okay, fine, so I'm a food snob, too; sue me. It's not like cooking good food has to be expensive.

Anyway, I have to stop carping so I can devote my full attention to hockey.

Still Not That Exciting

Between hockey games and concerts and work, I barely have time to rest these days. Of course, if the Blackhawks play two more games like last night, I'll be watching the hockey from my couch, which is less exciting, for sure, but also more comfortable and way less expensive, and involves more sleep, because the couch is only steps away from the bed; I don't need to take a bus or train (or get a ride from Friend) to get some sleep.

Monday night was the Dead, and it was quite enjoyable. I inhaled more second-hand potsmoke and patchouli than I have in many years, and I saw way too many white people with dreadlocks. The other thing that is really interesting (as an amateur student of human behavior and amateur philosopher) is the different vibes you can get in such a space. On one side were two women who were enjoying some mushroomic effects. They were dancing and grooving and just generally having a good time--and were fun to be around. They were bouncing around, but also respecting everyone else's space and making sure they weren't being annoying (quite the contrary; they were good-humored and amusing). On the other side were, originally, two guys, but then eventually two women; don't know if tickets were being exchanged or what. The two women were just assholes. One, the one closest to me, was dancing, but she was flailing around and screaming (Woo!) really loud, and whacking into me, repeatedly, and getting annoyed because I wasn't giving her my seat/space as well as her own. (At one point I sat down, in part because that forced her to move the fuck out of my space.)

Eventually, Friend went to find some water; when he came back, I put him between me and her, with no explanation, and he immediately figured out why. Apparently she also tried to yack about it being her seat and he just showed her his ticket, which shut her up some. She continued with the flailing, but he's a lot bigger than I am, and an ex-hockey player, so she wasn't going to get anywhere with him on that score. There was also this guy who took off his shirt and was dancing in the aisle and trying to worm into our row. The ushers tried to get him to move, which he did for awhile, but eventually came back. They eventually had to chase him down and we didn't see him the rest of the night, but I couldn't help but muse on the ultimate selfishness of his behavior, especially in contrast with the mushroomic women.

I understand that some people want to dance; some want to sway; some want to sit or stand or whateverthehell; but when the only way you can enjoy a concert involves physically whacking into someone you don't know (I'm excepting mosh pits and the like, which I assume are voluntary as well), or encroaching on other people's space without their consent, or blocking aisles that really do need to be kept clear, then you're being a jerk. I don't even necessarily care about people standing the whole time (like they did the other night); I'd kind of prefer that people not do that, because I'm short and, depending on the venue and the location of my spot, there's a good chance I won't be able to see even if I stand, too. OTOH, I'm there for the music, which I can hear whether or not I can see it being made, so whatever on that score.

Yeah, I know, I sound all getoffmylawn, but, really, I enjoyed the concert a lot. And next Tuesday? Bruce!

Before that, I probably should get some sleep--but there's a hockey game tomorrow night, and, if they win tomorrow and/or Saturday (in Vancouver), then Monday night, too. I should do laundry one of these days, too, and there's still that work thing every damn day. And grocery shopping! I need that, too. And some tea. Maybe some snacky bits for the desk drawer. In between, I'm reading Neal Stephenson's Anathem, which I am enjoying tremendously. The review I'd read suggested it was boring or tedious or something, but I've been loving it, probably partly because I read the philosophers he's obliquely (or not so much) throwing out there, even it if was 20+ years ago. He's even brought a tear to my eye a couple of times, but mostly because of the way a few bits have resonated with my own life rather than because of some inherently tear-inducing aspect of the narrative. And as soon as I finish it, I'll head to the Wiki and see what I've missed, so I can go buy my own copy and read it again eventually.

The Advantage of Cranky

As the scarcity of posts might suggest, I have been occupied with extrablogular activities. Work, mostly, which has been time-consuming and difficult, but also some hockey (with more in the offing); okay, lots of hockey, because I'm watching on television what I'm not watching in person. Friend has been in a frenzy, as well, because he's going turkey-hunting two weeks in a row, and the preparations are extensive. (He fusses more than anyone I've ever met, except myself--his systems have systems. Of course, many of mine do, as well, so I understand. But back to that in a moment.)

Next week, for example, I have two hockey games and a concert, as well as major deadlines at work. The following week I have a concert and possibly a hockey game, depending on how the series is playing out, and dinner with a friend. I have promised to (and want to) hook up with at least one pastry school friend in the next two weeks--if we can figure out how to include the Brazen Tart (so i can hear more about this farm thing she's mentioning!), then we'll do that, too. Then there's Indy at the end of the month, and June will be consumed with preparing for a visit from our federal funders at the end of the month.

The last two weeks at work have been difficult--we're supposed to be using this new financial software to do our budget for the year, which, okay, whatever. Except, of course, it doesn't necessarily accommodate all of the quirks of federal funding and the program income (in the form of Medicaid and/or Medicare reimbursement) that is sometimes included in the federal budget and sometimes is not. And I've never done this before. And the person who was doing the budgets before me was an ass, in multiple dimensions, primarily in the form of not telling anyone what she was doing and making things unnecessarily complicated. On top of that, the controller for our organization keeps changing the bits we need to pay for and is less than clear about where, exactly, they're supposed to go in the context of this software.

So, of course, yesterday I had to spend the whole day at a management retreat with the management team, doing team things. The person who facilitated it was good at it, and it wasn't as completely heinous as it could have been, but the timing made it less worthwhile. I'm being pressured to have the budget done by close of business on Monday, so being forced to spend a whole day away from it was rather problematic. As a result, I'll do what I can on Monday, but that's it. And I have a concert to attend Monday night, and a hockey game Tuesday night. My feeling about the whole thing is that I'll do what I can do, but if the organization sees fit to drag me away from the budget for a "retreat," then I have no problem going to a concert on my own time, rather than, say, working through the weekend or something.

One of the interesting dynamics yesterday is that our manager self-identifies (according to one of the exercises) as a "feelings" person (or "informal" and "easygoing," to use the metric of the day)--he's the only one in that quadrant. Which means to me that he'd damn well better have some people who are "formal" (in the sense of write things down, have meetings with a purpose, be task-oriented) and "dominant." At first, I was the only one in that quadrant, and I was kind of pissy about being forced to put myself there, because I have adapted to so many different environments. Reasonably quickly, the new medical director--whom I like tremendously and with whom I really enjoy working--realized she belonged with me, and a third person (whom I actually don't think belongs with us) joined us. I pointed out to the medical director that she and I had more education than anyone else in the room, and that we had obtained it in male-dominated environments, which I think affects how one operates. it's also worth mentioning that, except for our boss, who is gaygaygay, everyone on the team is female. It's the most female environment in which I have ever worked in my whole life.

The funny thing about this, to me, is that you can only have these discussions in office world. Of course there are different personalities in other environments, but in a place like the bakery, we have to get a product out the damned door. Everyone had best be task-oriented. And, more to the point I'm trying to make, in many ways, in that environment, I was, by comparison, more "analytical" (i.e., formal and easygoing), when I was working with Bossman on a new product, and also the person who did a lot of smoothing things like a feeling person would do (e.g., the pizza on Saturdays). Yes, I was also organized and task-oriented and so on, but so was everyone else, so that became an irrelevant evaluative criterion. In office world, you can lose sight of this. Of course, one could argue that this is a typical task-oriented-person's assessment, and you might even be right.

The other thing that was interesting is that we nearly left without discussing the biggest challenge we all face: the boss's boss is demanding, doesn't respect boundaries, wants what she wants when she wants it, etc. (which sounds like addict behavior, if you ask me, though I have no reason to think that's true). But as we were discussing challenges and how we were going to meet them, etc., I finally said, "Are we going to discuss the elephant in the room?" And our boss said yes, we should, and the facilitator said, good, let's finish this other thing first and come back to it. What was amusing was that everyone knew what i was talking about; it was also amusing, to me, that I was the one who mentioned it. If I hadn't, it wouldn't have gotten said, and all of the fine suggestions the facilitator was throwing around would have been useless for 70% of the problems we face. (What happens is she decides something is a crisis, she fires off urgent emails to our boss, and he comes barging in to whatever we were doing and flails around about it. The underlying issue is that she does not realize that we cannot do the grand expansions she has in mind without getting the operational infrastructure in place--the infrastructure that either never existed or that crumbled under her watch.) So we actually talked about it, but what I've been saying to my boss for months is still true: he's going to have to suck it up and confront her on these things. At least other people thanked me for bringing it out in the open, and I could sense the relief everyone felt to be discussing it; as I said yesterday, I'm nothing if not blunt. Actually, the whole group became more animated during that discussion, despite it being the end of the day, than they had all the rest of the day, which means everyone wanted to talk about it, even if they were afraid to bring it up.

And I think that is yet another advantage of being a cranky old broad: it's clear to me that this is one of the main underlying issues, and we can do nothing if it isn't discussed. No one else was willing to bring that up, however, even though nothing would get solved if we don't discuss this and do something about it. But, really, I don't care: what's she going to do to me? And, frankly, I'd tell her to her face--diplomatically, of course, and acknowledging her needs and her position, but seriously. So, for once, my what-the-fuckityness came in handy for actually addressing an issue. We'll see what happens.

Muffin Madness

Per Luna's request:

Dry ingredients:
400 g flour
125 g wheat bran (toasted 15 min. or so in oven)
120 g. flax meal
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking power (maybe 2.5?)
1 tsp salt
60 g dried buttermilk powder
Mix these thoroughly with a fork and set aside.

Dried fruit:
100 g blueberries
50 g cranberries
130 g dates
40 g apricots
250 g boiling water
Soak the fruit in the water; when it cools enough, cut the apricots and dates into small pieces. If the fruit isn't too dry when you start, you can cut the fruit up before adding the boiling water.

Wet ingredients:
350 g water
3 oz. butter
2 bananas or approx. 60 grams of applesauce (room temp, esp. if the bananas were frozen)
250 g honey (can sub some malted barley syrup, or even a little molasses, but probably no more than 25-50 g or it will change the flavor dramatically and will need more baking soda)
2 eggs, room temp

Set the oven to 350. Toast the wheat bran and let it cool. Soak the fruit and let it cool; cut it up as necessary. Grease two muffin tins with a little butter, plus you will need some aluminum muffin cups; you could probably make this as a quick bread as well.

Cream the butter with the paddle on your mixer; you'll want a large bowl. Add the honey and barley syrup. (To eliminate the sticky measuring cup, cream the butter, then take the bowl off the mixer and put it on the scale, adding the sugars directly.) Cream the sugars and butter together. Add the eggs one at a time. Add the bananas or applesauce. (It may break/curdle if some of your ingredients are cold.)

Add the dry ingredients and the 350 g. water, alternating (3-4 shots). Stir in the dried fruit.

Portion into muffin cups (about 2/3 full) and bake about 20 minutes. (That's an approximation--I haven't settled on exactly the right amount of time. Poke a muffin with a toothpick to test doneness.) Makes about 28 or so. (Yeah, I know, an inconvenient number.)

Obviously you can substitute in several locations, most notably in the the dried-fruit arena. I discovered the dried buttermilk a couple of months ago, and it's so much more convenient than wet, but you could do the math to use wet instead of dry and sub liquid buttermilk for the water.

As you can see, these are pretty healthy, so they make a nice breakfast, especially with a piece of fruit added. They freeze well, too. Let me know how they work for you, if you try them.

Playoff Baking

If you watch the Stanley Cup playoffs--and I doubt that you do--you will hear the announcers refer (in their Canadian accents) to "playoff hockey," by which they mean that the intensity is ratcheted up in a couple of dimensions that you may not see in other sports. In particular, the hits are harder and more frequent. Given the speed the players reach on their skates, this is non-trivial. For the first two games, I had very close seats--on Saturday, I was five rows from the ice. (It turns out this was NOT a good seat, in that one cannot see the whole ice and ends up watching on the jumbotron, but when the action was right in front of me, yes, it was an excellent seat.) Thus, the playoffness of the hockey was obvious. It's also extremely entertaining because the team is pretty good, though young, and, at least as important, there is a lot of energy from the fans.

The family that owns the team basically told fans to go scratch for many years--including refusing to allow the games to be televised. When Friend and I went in previous years, the place was by no means full. As soon as the owner died and his son took over, there were changes, including televising all games. (If they show the owner on the jumbotron, the crowd cheers--which I really don't see very much in pro sports.) As a result, the place is completely full--sold out for every game. There is a tradition of cheering during the national anthem, such that, by the final bars, the place is insanely loud. On Thursday and Saturday, you couldn't hear the singing over the cheering--which, given the level of amplification of the singing, is saying something. So that part is kind of fun. I am not particularly attached to the team, mind you, but it is completely fun. The speed is amazing, and there are very few breaks in the action, and the fact that my seat is in a different section for every game of the playoffs means that I'll get a bunch of views of the game. Many of them are single seats, too--we were only able to get seats together for some of the games--so that part is interesting as well.

My boss has been sick since Thursday, and likely won't be in this week, I'm guessing, which doesn't sound like a lot until you realize that there are several major things due in the next couple of weeks (budgets, strategic plans, etc.). In other words, the crunch continues. One small good thing: I got a new computer, which has more than the one hamster in it that the other computer apparently used for power. It's still a Windows box, which continues to suck--I always forget just how much tweaking Windows and Office require to set things up the way I want them. There are all these fiddly bits, hidden in various locations, that turn on supposedly helpful automatic shit that mostly gets in my way and annoys the fuck out of me. (I'm reading a book sort of about this--"Broken Windows" by David Bank--and it's quite interesting. Friend contends that the fiddly parts are built that way on purpose, to make the application seem difficult and out of reach, thus building a market for their "training" courses, and I wouldn't be surprised.)

Anyway, I spent most of Saturday before the game doing some baking: a batch of nougat, flavored with orange peel, roasted hazelnuts, and dried cherries, as well as two kinds of honey; another round of peanut butter cookies; and a batch of breakfast muffins.

The nougat is even softer than it usually is, for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me. I know I brought the sugars to the right temperature, so I'm guessing that it's the orange peel. The flavor is VERY nice, though, and I made this completely for me, so I don't much care.

The cookies I made with chopped peanuts this time, as the recipe required . . . but I reduced the butter by half (one stick instead of two) and did NOT miss it, and I replaced nearly all of the white and brown sugars with honey and malted barley syrup (which helped with the moisture lost from the butter), and I again added chopped semisweet chocolate. They were much better than last time--quite good, in fact. I'd make them nearly the same way again, though I'd maybe add a little sea salt on top. I can't imagine what they'd be like with all of that butter; it sounds like they'd just be greasy.

The muffins may well be my best batch ever, which means I may settle on this particular variation. I'll grab one from the freezer this week and resample them, but I think I've found it. They have dried fruit, bananas, very little fat (3 oz. butter), toasted wheat bran, and ground flax meal, so they're actually pretty damned healthy. I put some malted barley syrup in these, too, and I liked the way it made the sweetness even more complex. I also ended up putting a little orange juice in them, because I had used the peel in the nougat, but I don't know that that would have affected the flavor or texture all that much. I could always use the peel as well as the juice in the muffins, though.

As you can tell, I'm experimenting with different sugars, particularly the barley syrup. (I should point out that it's the same thing that gives the malty flavor to beer.) The other thing I want to make with the malted barley syrup is something that takes advantages of the malted flavor in a bigger way. I'm thinking of taking a basic sugar cookie (or chocolate chip cookie) recipe and subbing the barley syrup for the sugar and maybe adding some chocolate chips to get that malted-milk-balls flavor. That will give me a start, anyway, and it likely won't suck, even if I end up tweaking it for fucking ever the way I usually do.

The Snorefest That Is My Life

Want: wine.

Am having: dried plums (doncha love how prunes have been rebranded?), some cheese and crackers, and Ginger-Os.

Am boring.

I continue to chip away at the pile of crap, and I even continue to make some progress, most notably with the two current major tasks: resolving a budget issue with the federal government, and setting up a database for one of our programs. (I don't actually have to build the thing--it's very very large and complex--but I do have to figure out how to tailor it for our use, which is turning out to be kind of insane. I enjoy it, in some ways, because I see its potential for making our lives much much easier, but the setup is nontrivial and I have to get information from the users about how we want to use it. Part of the reason I have to do it is that there isn't anyone else in the whole part of my organization who could even begin to know how to do it, plus we don't have the IS help/people we need. Remember the person who felt unqualified back in December? S/he quit, a couple of days before the probationary period was up in February.) There are three other major tasks that I'm ignoring at the moment (the strategic plan for the organization; our budget for next year; and preparation for a major two-day visit from our federal funding agency), all of which will come due in the next 10 weeks.

I was supposed to--at least theoretically--go to a conference downstate the week after next, but I just said I couldn't go. They're going to try to stamp their feet and tell me it's mandatory, and I am going to refuse to go. I have playoff tickets, and there's at least some chance the trip would conflict, number one, and, number two, I am too fucking busy with this other shit to take two days sitting in a conference room hearing a consultant blather on.

I have yet to find a conference of any kind to be a worthwhile experience, in any of the fields in which I have practiced. I probably would have loved Camp Bread, if I had been able to go, so that would have been an exception, but otherwise? A lot of wasted time.

Even when I was a would-be professor: the one major conference I attended was tedious, and I realized then that the whole event had little or nothing to do with actual presentations. Most panels were held in front of very few people; not much of interest got said; and reading the papers would have given you about 85% or more of what you needed to know about the panelists' work. Some people were able to network effectively, with colleagues with whom they were working or wanted to work, for example; there was also some job interviewing, IIRC, though I don't think I had any. The best part about the whole thing was that I drove out to California and back with a friend who had a car, and we visited about 6 or 8 national parks during the course of the trip; we turned it into a two-week expedition so we could saunter back. I saw parts of the country I'd never seen before, I got to wade in the Pacific Ocean, and I had a wonderful time in the parks and with my friend (despite hitting a deer), but the actual conference? Sucked.

Tonight I'm mostly enjoying the knowledge that I don't have to work for two whole days; I managed to finish the editing job last weekend. I was very glad to have the work--basically, it will pay for the tickets mentioned in the previous post--but it's nice to have the weekend off, too. Even if I am boring.

Keeping the Economy Moving, Singlehandedly

Work is a pain and stressful and so on and and and.

There; got that out of the way.

Meanwhile, my iPod appears to have died, finally. It's been coughing some lately, when I use it, which isn't all that often. But that will change soon, because it's warm enough to walk to or from work, thus varying my exercise. (Do you think I had enough clauses strung together there?) Anyway, I could probably get the battery replaced, but I've decided what I really covet is a Touch: I get all the music bits, plus WiFi, plus various game and apps were I to want them (which I may not; I'll have to rummage around and see if anything appeals). I do not want an iPhone, because (a) I am content with the cellphone system and service I have now (but not the phone so much, which kinda sucks--Sanyo Katana I'm talking to you) and (b) I loathe ATT.

And, pretty though the iPhone is, I'm really not that interested in it. I want a cellphone for pretty limited reasons--I don't come close to using the minutes I pay for--and having a prettier phone wouldn't change that. I DO want the music, and maybe occasionally the (free!) WiFi, but the websurfing on my phone that probably costs money? not really at all. And the apps and such I can have on the Touch. The nice thing about the Touch is that I get the functionality I want for a one-time purchase price. So, yeah, I think I'm going to get one, even though it means I also have to upgrade my operating system on my iMac, because I'm a couple of versions behind. That, however--and arguably the Touch as well, given some of its capabilities--is a business expense.

I have also been going a little crazy with the ticketing for various events. So far the schedule includes (between now and September): Blackhawks playoff games (first two rounds); the Dead (2 nights); Springsteen; Phish; Widespread Panic and Allman Bros.(2 nights); U2; Dave Matthews (2 nights); a beer-tasting festival; Indianapolis 500; Milwaukee Mile; and the Indy car race at Chicagoland. It'll be interesting to see U2, because I used to not like them very much at all. Over the past 10 years or so I've enjoyed the occasional song, and the snippets I've seen on television or whatever have been pretty good, so I doubt I'll hate it. I also doubt I'll become a devout fan, but I don't know that that's a necessary outcome for it to be worthwhile.

And!! My walls no longer look leprous! Yes, they did, in fact, paint the place (and put a weird switchplate-with-no-outlets-thingy in the middle of one wall, for reasons that are completely unclear to me), and I got the lease extension and they did not raise the rent, so yay. I don't think I could have put moving into the juggling mix without dropping several other things that would have shattered into sharp little pieces and embedded themselves in my feet. Or something.