Sweet, Spicy and Sticky

Posted on February 7, 2009 by Frog

When I got the hot water bath canner out of the garage this morning, I’m sure the canner thought, “hey, it’s not summer”. No, it’s not but it is a balmy 63 degrees here.

I chopped up a pineapple, a red bell pepper and five habanero peppers and buzzed them in the blender. Then I put them in a largish pot, added copious amounts of sugar and began to boil. I was following a vague recipe for Pineapple Habanero Jam.

I made enough for four pint jars which all popped as soon as they came out of the canner. It’s been at least five years since I made jam so I’m a little worried about it setting up correctly. If it doesn’t set up enough, we’ll pass it off as glaze for chicken or ribs or whatever.

This is what greeted the better-half when he got home last night and opened the refrigerator (yes, I crack myself up):

Posted in Eating | 2 Comments

I have it on a feed

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Frog

The new administration is cool.

Not that you didn’t already know that.

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A Wee Bit O’Whine

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Frog

I was asked to attend a meeting today about data. It’s not as awful as it may sound because I’m seriously interested in why we don’t use data to our advantage. After the meeting I’m discouraged. There were 4 people in the meeting and 2 of us had a clue. One has potential for finding the clue and the fourth could be run over by a Mack truck full of clues and she’d still look around and ask, what was that?

Clueless Annie is our person in charge of special projects. If that’s not a nebulous task, I’m not sure what is. At least she’s only a part-timer. Still. She’s basically in charge of working on quarterly reports and she admitted today that she has no idea how to use Excel and that the tutorials offered by Microsoft are just too long. WTF? Actually W. T. F?

She suggested that perhaps we should look into having a half-day on training so all of us could attend. I managed not to throttle her right there but instead urged her to try the tutorials that are FREELY available because they are pretty good. Really. Take it from me–I write training curriculum. Microsoft does a nice job training you on how to use their MFing software. The Clue-Filled person seconded my idea of using the tutorials and added that Help was quite good as well. All true.

I went to a beginning Excel class 15 years ago and was bored to tears. Then I went to an intermediate one and then I bought a big-ass Excel bible and there’s absolutely no way in Hell that I’m ever taking a mickey-mouse Excel class again especially with Clueless Annie. She’s clueless and Dear God! her breath stinks. You know the breath I’m talking about–the I’ve only drank coffee all day long and ate a shit sandwich for lunch stank. Help me, but I think that stank is still stuck in my nose. For Pete’s sake she knew we were all going to be crammed into a tiny room and jumbled on top of each other. I had onions at lunch and I had the courtesy to chew a freaking piece of gum. GAAARRRRR.

Posted in General Spleen Venting | 2 Comments

Fast As You

Posted on January 31, 2009 by Frog

We went to San Antonio and Austin for our honeymoon. While we were in Austin we went to Waterloo Records and I bought Live by Dwight Yoakam. Every time we make our way to Texas we make sure we stop by Waterloo and we always come home with something. It’s a great store.

Today I’ve been listening to Dwight. I haven’t seen Dwight in years but I assume he still looks good in a pair of jeans. Oh and his singing is mighty nice too.

Posted in Listening | 1 Comment

When Hell Is Full, The Dead Will Walk The Earth

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Frog

Early this morning I was having a dream about vampires and zombies. Apparently the area around our house was full of them. I had to kick the kitchen chairs apart so we’d have stakes to dispatch the vampires. When we finished them off, the zombies took over harassing us.

Only these weren’t just any zombies. They were garden gnome-sized zombies and so we were especially worried about Simon coming into contact with any of them. Pretty soon we were outside wailing on the hordes of tiny zombies until we felt like those were done with too. Then just as the alarm clock went off, my dream self was telling the better-half’s dream self that I thought the zombies were gone. His dream self informed me he just saw one.

A few minutes I checked my weekly betterPropaganda email and noticed there was a song by Ursula1000 called Zombies available. Of course I downloaded it.

Posted in Thinking | 3 Comments

Working from home

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Frog

I’m working from home today because a course I’m working on needs image work and the person who usually creates our images has a conflict with doing the images for this particular course and so I’m doing them. At home. Because the getting longer all the time story is that I don’t have the appropriate software at work to create images. Also, I needed some Photoshop lessons and the better-half agreed to help me today.

All that to say, it’s nice working from home. This is a scene that would never happen at work:

Edited to add: that’s iced tea not bourbon as the better-half suggested.

Posted in Thinking | 2 Comments

He Started Off With Always A Friend

Posted on January 27, 2009 by Frog

Yesterday the better-half met me at my office and we drove to Charlottesville to see Alejandro Escovedo perform at the Gravity Lounge. Before the show we stopped by Miller’s and enjoyed the smoky goodness of a great bar. The food and drinks were well done as well.

We’ve seen one other show at the Gravity Lounge and were expecting places to sit. We overheard they were expecting 300 people. It’s not a huge space so 300 seemed like a lot. We found a ledge to perch on and enjoyed Shannon Worrell and Sam Wilson warm up the crowd. Actually, they were quite good but subdued as was the audience. At some point Shannon Worrell commented that she could hear a pin drop.

Alejandro Escovedo and his band started playing around 9 and they started with Always a Friend. I expected he’d leave that for the encore since it’s so popular right now. Instead he pumped up the crowd. We didn’t get to see the encore because we had to leave a little early to get the car out of a garage before they closed. We didn’t want to pay the fine or spend the night so I have no idea what the last few songs of the set were but I’m sure they rocked.

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Celebrating Early

Posted on January 24, 2009 by Frog

The Chinese New Year is on Monday but we’re celebrating early by having The Niece, Lil’ Elvis and their parents over this afternoon.

Posted in Eating, Generic Thoughts | 1 Comment

Brown Goes Down

Posted on January 23, 2009 by Frog

For Christmas we gave the MIL a rose bouquet a month from FTD. We bought the six month plan and today she was supposed to get her second delivery. UPS claims they can’t find the recipient name and won’t deliver the flowers until Monday. That’s awesome. Flowers hanging out in a truck/warehouse until Monday. Assholes. Now, I ask you how the frak did FedEx manage to get the delivery there without incident in December but UPS can’t seem to find a HUGE adult living community?

I went to FTD to lodge a complaint and I am sick to death of websites that say EMAIL US and then they proceed to strangle the everliving out of your complaint by not actually giving you the opportunity to complain unless it fits into a very narrow choice of pull-down menus. After fiddle fucking around on their site, I finally managed to send them an email. I know I could have called an 800 number, but I’ll be damned if I’m calling India to get a flower delivery issue in Richmond, VA resolved on Friday afternoon.

It just goes to prove the adage of No Good Deed Goes Unpunished and the newer adage that you may not have heard of When It Comes To The MIL There Will Be A Black Hole.

Posted in General Spleen Venting | 2 Comments

Words, No Pictures

Posted on January 21, 2009 by Frog

I just finished completing some information on a monthly report that everyone in my department must complete, but I get the lucky experience of being responsible for the entire thing whereas everyone else just updates and goes about their merry way. As I finished typing in some details about a course revision I just finished, I decided to look at all the things I’ve done this month. I’ve updated 5 courses this month, observed a day of training, passed a draft of an elearning course to a SME and managed to write an evaluation of why a course should not be moved to elearning. I’ve also worked on three online course modules.

I think I may have blown my wad for the entire quarter in the first three weeks of the year. At least I’ll have time to fiddle around with those three online modules and finish them with plenty of time leftover before the deadline pops up. And, I’ll have time to tinker around with school related activities.

Since the dissertating diva has talked me into speaking to one of her classes (with an activity no less), I’ll have time to figure out what I’m going to do about that. She’s also asked me to teach her how to make garlic hummus and so, as a smart-ass, I’m figuring out a way to do that via elearning. If it turns out well and fairly anonymous, I may post it here. I know, the excitement of it all!

Posted in Thinking | 3 Comments