It’s over. In one way I’m glad because it has been more than 6 months of exhausting emotional and mental crap and in another I’m sad because good work was just tossed in the trash. I kind of want to sleep for a week.
To quote Miss Scarlett, “Tomorrow’s another day.”
It occurs to me that in a week my complaining is going to take a real hit. Without work to grouse about, what am I going to do with my time?
I’ve been kicked off the network 3 times today. Makes it really hard to do the first real task I’ve had in 2 weeks. My task? You’d like to know about my task? I’m so glad you asked.
My task is to go through all of the video that my diva co-worker left in her office. Some of them actually belong in archive boxes and others are either old or who knows what. But I need the network to compare video titles to what’s on her bookshelf.
I was in the office for a couple of hours on Wednesday to move electronic files out of reach so that folks wouldn’t steal as they packed their offices. I heard our Director telling people they could only take with them what they brought in the door.
I’m not sure if I was able to thwart my diva co-worker or not when it came to the electronic files, but she took every single office supply out of her office except a few gimme pens. And, as far as I can tell she took every file off her machine (yes, it’s possible that she deleted and didn’t take the files). I’m not going to miss her.
As you may remember we have stray cats who congregate at our house. We are eventually going to have them fixed–which should be sooner rather than later because the cat population is insane. Thanks for nothing lame-o dude down the road with all your horny barn cats.
Anyway, there are favorites in the group and one of them is Fuzzy. He and his siblings have decided it is super cool to hang out on the pool cover. I just looked out the window and Fuzzy was out there by himself which is unusual because that little guy loves company.
Seeing him on the pool reminded me of pictures I took over the weekend.
Jim and Fuzzy on the cover. Look at how happy Fuzzy is to have his brother (same mother/different litters) kick him and then lick him and then kick him and then lick him:
Interrupting the fun was the pool pump. It checks for water every few minutes.
Very interesting:
So there are eight working days left at my place of employment. Nearly everyone has been hired by our client except for a few of us that they’ve either actively screwed or are like me and said hell no.
I worked yesterday and actually did some work-related tasks. I also got quite a bit of reading out of the way and wrote a short paper for school. Today I’m off and then for the most of the rest of the week. There’s a quick meeting at work tomorrow that I need to be present for–can’t really blow off meetings when there are so few days left to reschedule.
Next week I’m bringing in a couple of camp chairs because we’re not really sure how long the furniture is going to be around. We have some mischief planned for the furniture that stays. Nothing too dangerous or illegal, but definitely a pain the ass for the client organization. It’s the least we can do to pay them back for being such asshats. Ever wonder how long a piece of baloney will stick to melamine cabinets?
We had taco truck carnitas tacos while on vacation. The idea of making our own has been lingering (or shouting, whichever) in the back of our minds since that beautiful day in July.
We found a simple recipe and decided to go for it this weekend.
We started by slamming pork shoulder, the juice and sections of an orange, a cinnamon stick, bay leaves and some garlic into a casserole dish:
The meat cooked for 3 1/2 hours. I found myself going outside just so I could come back in to smell that porky goodness:
Don’t worry all that liquid is removed from the meat and separated into juice and fat. Some of the liquid went into a pot to make salsa verde. Some of the fat was added back to the shredded meat:
Then the meat spent some time under the broiler while we finished making the corn tortillas (yes, from scratch). Tortillas are pretty easy to make because it is basically water, salt and masa. Hard to mess up and a brilliant payoff of corny goodness.
Look at that crisp, yet still tender pork:
And, the final product with salsa verde, onions and cilantro, cheese and avocado:
Our fig bush is producing right now and we’ve had this idea to create a savory tart out of figs and a puff pastry sheet that’s been languishing in the freezer.
Today we took some garlic and rosemary and heated them in olive oil and added about a dozen sliced figs. We stirred that around until it turned into what looked like pie filling, adding a bit of water to help things out.
Then we spooned that mixture over half of the rolled out puff pastry and then I added a bunch of goat cheese. We folded over the other edge of the pastry and sealed it.
We baked it for about 20 minutes and let it cool a bit before we sliced two pieces. The better-half decided that some drizzled honey should be added to help with the sweetness factor. He’s the one with the sweet tooth in the family. The honey was a good addition and I added it to the recipe when I jotted it down (well, I typed it, but you know what I mean).
In other fresh vegetable news, we pulled up all but the roma tomato plant this morning. The hurricane last weekend didn’t do any favors to the already pathetic garden and the tomatoes had pretty well stopped producing anyway. We still have the pepper plants and I am once again impressed with how well the serrano peppers do here. Tomorrow, I’m making pesto to freeze.
I’m thinking of pulling at least some of the annuals out of the pots around the pool and starting lettuce seed. The plants are about done anyway and lettuce does so well in pots. I’m going to have to cage the pots, though, to keep the stray cats out of them. God knows that’s not the kind of fertilizer we want.
My freaky co-worker was offered a job with our client who is taking over our operations. My supervisor did not. Yeah, a little touchy.
Among other things that make her freaky, my co-worker is also a consistent liar. I guess she thinks we’re not actually listening, but we catch her in logic traps and lies frequently. Yesterday she just didn’t show up for work. Because she didn’t have power in the morning and then had to run some errands in the afternoon. Seriously. Also said she had no way to communicate. Funny how her damn iPhone hasn’t shut up today. I suppose it is possible she didn’t charge it in the car she drove around to run those errands. But, I think she’s just being a lying dick.
We’re at day five of no power and it will be surprising if it’s on when the better-half gets home tonight. The power company is working hard on restoring lines and clearing downed trees, but it’s just a bad scene out near us. There’s only so much they can do quickly.
I’m headed to college town where they had no ill effects of the storm. It will be nice to sleep without hearing the drone of generators.
Well, that title is a bit wrong. I have a new friend. A WiFi hot spot. Yeah, the internet withdrawals have been fierce. And, with all the trees, broken lines and snapped poles who knows when in the heck we’ll get power or internet back. Guess what? In spite of what NPR is telling you, there was a storm in Virginia too. Not just in NY and Vermont. I know, who knew!
I drove into the office this morning. Luckily the tree that was wedged over the road yesterday:
has been cut so now it is only blocking one lane.
I got to the office to discover we had no power and the landlord didn’t want anyone in the building. Perhaps they should have put up signs because after I was told to leave, I looped the building and saw someone unlocking the other door. It was tempting to go in behind that person to see if the reason for closing was only about the power and not that the bathrooms didn’t explode all over that sh*thole. A girl can dream.
So the wind started around 7am and we lost power around 2:30. Basically, if we didn’t have cells and a generator we’d be alone and drunk in the dark. I kid. Sort of.
We made dinner thanks to generator and the propane cooktop.
Sorry for the large picture. I’m using the cell to post and there’s only so much control I have in posting.
Last night we made corn dogs mostly from scratch. We doctored up a box of Jiffy Corn Muffin mix, jammed some sticks into slightly sauteed hot dogs and then fried them in our garage. Because that’s where the fryer is, naturally.
Cute little dogs all in a row:
The dogs were coated in flour to help the batter stick:
We used an old beer glass for the batter dip, but we think we need something as long but not tapered in the future. Perhaps a cheap flower vase would work:
Here they are getting GBD (golden, brown and delicious):
The look pretty good on the plate next to a three-cheese spinach casserole and grapes with feta:
We decided this one looked like a cactus, but now it’s kinda like “whoa, children cover your eyes”:
