I know all about the manipulation inherent in the Obama will.i.am videos, but, gosh darn it, it's hard not to feel like hope is still alive in this world after watching them. Here's the latest video.
Maybe we need to abandon some of the pessimism and just go with the idea of hope.
I saw an ad for a gun and knife show that's coming soon to the area. I didn't pay enough attention to know if it is this weekend or next. Whatever. All you crazies come to Virginia and scoop up all the weaponry and ammo you want. Virginia doesn't care if you buy guns here. Because, seriously, what mentally unstable person would buy weapons and then use them to shoot up schools/malls/other places of business?
On the way into work I saw a car at a stoplight. There were no fewer than 5 references to the World Trade Center collapse and subsequent conspiracy that the towers fell too easily. You know, not because airplanes were flown into them and then exploded. The other theory. I am positive the guy was flossing his teeth. Even wingnuts need healthy gums.
On Friday I had a tetanus shot (with the whooping cough booster) and Sunday afternoon I started having stomach pain. I searched on those words and discovered that some adults have nausea, vomiting and stomach pain as a reaction to the shot. Great. I'm sure this feeling will pass soon.
This afternoon the better-half and I walked around the yard to see what bulbs are coming up and what plants are sprouting leaves. We normally have these walks with a beer. I debated the idea of drinking a beer and decided if this stomach pain was going to kill me that I'd prefer to go out happy.
To top it off, you should see my arm where the shot went in. At least now I can step on a rusty nail.
We have an electronic file system we use for recipes. Nothing fancy but it is shared so both of us can save recipes. Sometimes the recipes come straight out of magazines/newspapers/online journals and the attribution is saved as well. We prepared Steak and Kidney pie last night and I don't know the source of the article that contained the recipe, but I can tell you the recipe is in Gina Mallet's book, Last Chance to Eat.
I actually started the recipe on Friday afternoon by chopping mushrooms (button and reconstituted shiitake), an onion, and, of course the kidney and steak. We bought a large bag of dried shiitake for Chinese New Year so I've been trying to use those mushrooms. The recipe didn't call for anything so exotic.
The meats were dusted in a flour/salt/pepper mixture and then browned. I worked in batches and, admittedly, towards the end I got a little lazy about making sure each bit was as browned as the first batch. All pieces had color, those at the end were a little less crisp on the outside.
I transferred the meat to our big pot and then cooked the mushrooms. I tend to like larger pieces of food, but next time I make this I'll chop the kidney and mushrooms into smaller bits. The kidney needed to be more dispersed and the mushrooms were a bit large even for me.
The mushrooms, onions, meats, a bouquet garni and beef stock went into the oven for 90 minutes. By this time the house smelled so amazing. After the 90 minutes, the pot chilled out in the garage and then sat in the refrigerator overnight.
The better-half rolled out some packaged puff pastry and made an edge around the pie plate and then I scooped the stew into the plate. If you look closely, you can see oysters in them thar hills.
He used the remaining circle of pastry to create a lid, brushing it with an egg wash. It leaked a bit but was beautiful and tasty.
I made a carrot, garlic and thyme side dish and the better-half boiled some fingerling potatoes. Dinner was heaven.
The sky spit out ice last night. Not a lot but enough to slow down the morons who normally double the speed limit in our neighborhood. County schools are on a two-hour delay. I'm taking a half day today so I can go to the doctor, and so when faced with ice, I decided to stay at home today. For the record, I don't work somewhere that it's okay to just not show up for work. I'd already alerted my supervisor that if there was ice, I'd be working from home.
The only task I had planned for work today was to sit in on an all day webinar. I can just as easily connect to that from home. It's interesting, though, that I'll have to find a really long phone cord to drag the phone to my computer. There's no way I'm not using the speaker phone.
Update: The new doctor is awesome. I've never laughed so hard at a doctor's appointment in my life.
Years ago I was participating in a pilot of a training course and watched one of our trainers tell a room full of social workers that teenagers should be locked in closets until they turn into adults. Whatever his intent, the "joke" fell flat and he didn't last long. That's one of those jokes that cuts a little too close to what the audience had actually seen.
Today I received a training plan that the nitwit wrote back in November. The person who sent it to me used to work at my organization and now she's part-time at the client site. She's trying to put together a training plan for the project we're working on and that the nitwit used to head up. She wanted me to give her an opinion on the document.
The way that training plan made me feel was the way I imagine those social workers felt about that joke all those years ago. I was ticked off and insulted. Everything I know about training, the design of instruction and the planning of programs/events was shat upon in that document. It was an insult to the profession and as I was using my red pen to jot down notes, I said aloud that I knew why the nitwit was fired. She's a hack.
The other day while I was laying on the couch recuperating, I watched Everyday Italian. Even though I couldn't really imagine eating anything, I got up and retrieved this recipe. I also grabbed the farro salad recipe. We have another recipe that calls for farro but we've always substituted barley. Now we have a bag of farro and it is a coin toss, in my mind, which recipe will get the farro. Perhaps there's enough for both. I can't remember where we got the bag, even though, it was somewhat recently. Farro is hard to find, at least around here.
Yesterday we thawed two bone-in pork chops from the Butchery. The recipe calls for boneless, but we went with what we had. The results were amazingly good and tasted just like what I had imagined it tasting like after watching the show.
Finished, on our new plates:
We had a good amount of baby spinach but not enough for me to make my usual soy sauce, garlic, spinach extravaganza so we made a salad instead.
The white shapeless blob is goat cheese. Pignoli, pickled carrots, celery and spring onions rounded out the salad.
Crusty bread with butter and an Italian Montepulciano completed the meal.
I was checking my RSS feed reader today and came across this timely drawing by Local Girl's Day in Pictures.
I giggled out loud. Her sarcastic remark about vomiting up raspberry drink had me snicker. Raspberry vs. pork. She wins for finding a better way to vomit.
Yesterday I received a short email from the woman I routinely refer to as the nitwit. Usually these emails make me cringe, but this one made me sing. She's off the project. No explanation, just off the project, nice working with you, bye. Heh.
I think our Chinese New Year celebration went pretty well except the utter ickiness of the Neen Gow. We ended up eating ice cream instead.
Sunday afternoon I spent massive amounts of time creating a training segment in Captivate only to find that my video card just couldn't keep up with the action and so I didn't get to include a training module in Captivate for my portfolio. Bummer.
As Sunday night developed, my disappointment in that failure didn't really matter as I suddenly, by suddenly, I mean SUDDENLY developed the funk. We were eating dinner and all of a sudden I had stomach pains. I believe the actual term for the pain was stabbed-with-a-knife pain. I finished dinner, though, because the better-half took the leftover pork from Chinese New Year and made BBQ. BBQ is manna. And, I really didn't know the horror was about to start.
The severity of the situation can be adequately summed up by one simple piece of evidence. I did not finish drinking my Chimay. I was seriously sick. And sick. And sick. And, then sick some more.
Around 11:30 or so I went to bed and set my alarm like everything was going to be OK and that the evening had just been a fluke. At 2ish I woke up, turned off the alarm, did some foul and gross things in the bathroom and then emailed my boss. No way was I going to work. At about 4am the vomiting stopped. Being sick is really quite gross.
Yesterday I slept most of the day. This morning I woke up before my alarm went off and decided there was no way that I could go to work, leave for a chunk of time in the middle of the day for my interview, and then go back to work. So, I got up, called in sick again and went back to sleep. When I got home from the interview, I knew not going to work was the right idea. I was spent.
I think my interview went rather well. It was more like a conversation only with me doing a lot of the talking. I don't know that I was the most brilliant person they've seen but I was genuine and completely me. My philosophy on training and adult education seemed to mesh very well with theirs. I should know in about a month.
On the way back from the interview, I stopped by our voting place. The sour pusses running the show there were even more sour and devoid of personality than usual. It's probably because I told them I wanted the democratic ticket because when else am I going to get to vote for a woman. They just sat there like toads on a log. I think one of them actually flicked a fly out of the air with her tongue. Sisters, you need to get out of the 'ville occasionally.
Monday night I heard from my friend that I had an interview. I talked to the HR person this morning and we set up an interview for Thursday, the day I've been calling my hell day. I told the HR person that I had a meeting several blocks down from their location at 10am but I could be there for the 8:30 interview start time if they thought I could dash several blocks to be on time for the hell meeting, not that I called it the hell meeting.
As it turns out they think they may need two hours or more of my time so the early Thursday meeting wasn't going to work. How about Wednesday at 1pm? Damn, how many excuses can I formulate for getting out of work? I had already arranged not to come to work on Thursday until after the hell meeting and I'm taking off Friday. So, I called the better-half in a panic looking for ideas on how to fabricate a way out of the office minutes after I'd already told my boss that I'd be sick on Friday. He was out running errands--specifically buying exotic ingredients for the Lunar New Year's party we're having on Saturday. So, I chilled out at my desk and thought up another excuse for being gone. I went in and talked to my boss and told her there was a possibility that I'd need to meet with my group to discuss the film we'd watched last night. And, the meeting was tentatively tomorrow. I figured if I asked my friend one question about the film at the end of the interview then I wouldn't be lying about meeting a group member to discuss the film. I'm not so good at the lying.
I stopped at the drug store on the way home to buy a three-ringed binder to put my portfolio in--they want to see samples of my work. And, while driving there and home, I started with the monkey mind shitola. How could I possibly dress up twice in quick succession at work? I could wear the black suit on Thursday because I could use the hell meeting as an excuse for a suit, but if the interview were on Wednesday I'd have to figure out something that only resembles a suit and how I'd have to hide the jacket in the car as well as my portfoilo, fancier briefcase and superman suit...seriously. I clearly need to chill. And, I really need to start slipping skirts or suits into the mix on occasion to avoid the inevitable questions that would follow if I showed up in something other than khakis or jeans.
I got home, checked voice mail and it looks like we're moving the interview to early next week. While I'd rather go ahead and interview--they've actually interviewed a strong candidate in between the time my friend talked to me last week and I applied, I do need to do a little more research on the organization so I don't sound like a total n00b.
At least I've impressed the better-half with my work samples. He's working on a way to get the online classes I've designed on one CD so I can hand that over too.
I really want this job.
Last night in class we watched 12 Angry Men. We were watching it for examples of group dynamics and how teams form to complete tasks.
That's all well and good but the man who played Juror 2 bugged me all through the movie. There's a reason for that. He was the voice of Piglet.
On August 16th of last year, the better-half and I were supposed to go see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in the theater. We didn't go because some shizz happened with the MIL (what's new, nothing, that's what's new). Then for whatever reason we didn't get to the theater before the movie moved on to greener pastures.
As soon as we could, we put the movie on our Netflix list. Then as soon as we could we moved it up to the tippy-top of our list. There it sat in the number one position for months. It really seemed like the distribution center for our area had one copy of the DVD and we never drew the lucky number.
We got the DVD and it sat waiting for us to watch it. Why did it wait so long? MMMM, good question. I'll give you one guess and it had to do with spending hours and hours making lasagna instead of watching a movie (no, not bitter). Anyway, we finally got around to watching the movie this afternoon and damnshitandhell if the DVD wasn't good and fuxored. Seriously, so bad that I took it out of the player, marveled at the scratches and then washed it off, gently. It didn't help the stuttering.
We gave up not quite halfway through because even though we're well acquainted with the story, there's nothing quite like watching magic happen on screen. Early on in the story when Harry and Mr. Weasley go to the Ministry for Harry's hearing, the scene is just brilliant in the way it captures the hustle and bustle of the wizard world. Exactly what I imagined while reading the book.
Yesterday afternoon we went to hear Ira Glass tell stories. He started the presentation with the lights off and just talked. If you've listened to This American Life before that's exactly the best way to start the presentation. The lights eventually came up and we spent the next two hours delightfully entertained.
As we were walking back to the car, I told the better-half that I had a weird moment where it seemed like his voice was bigger than he was and I wasn't quite sure if he was actually there-like he didn't seem real. I guess that's the power of only ever hearing someone and then suddenly seeing them.
We stopped at The Fresh Market on the way home and we weren't sure what we wanted from the combination meat/seafood counter but the better-half's number was at least 20 customers away. I wasn't that interested in hanging around that long, even though the people behind the counter hustle. We decided to give fried oysters a try. We love oysters but had never actually fried them before.
We used this recipe as a basis for our own concoction. The better-half added cayenne pepper to the corn meal.
We used the wok for frying. It helped contain the molten peanut oil:
Fresh from the fry:
We balanced out the dinner with brussels sprouts. I chopped up a clove of garlic and a shallot and sauteed them in a combination of our own habanero chili oil and olive oil.
We made a couple of dipping sauces. The chipotle mayo recipe is in the link with the oyster recipe. The horseradish sour cream was a way to use up the last bit of horseradish and sour cream. I also dumped in a little hot sauce.
Last night someone in my class lamented to me that she just finished the third round of interviews for an elearning instructional designer but no one fits. She also told me she keeps telling her boss that she knows someone but that person won't apply. That person is me.
I applied this afternoon after taking several deep breaths.
