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April 29, 2006
Feeling the end of the month crunch
Usually I have just one project to focus on at the end of the month/beginning of the month. But for some reason, silly customers have all decided to turn up "by the 1st" or else they'll all drop dead or something :) So, I have three turnups going simultaneously, and all needing to be completed within the next 48 hours. Nothing's been going right with at least one of the installs, another one involves someone who used to be a friend but who is now behaving like a real asshole and not reading my "back off, dude" clues. The third I pretty much have no idea about other than receiving a mysterious phone call at 3:30 this afternoon asking me to complete things by Monday. Wheee!
Tonight I'm making Richard do the configs for my second turn up tomorrow. I've got to get up for a conference call at 8 freaking AM (set up by the former friend who has decided that he works for us and will be running the show. Umm. no.) to listen to GX do turn up in Atlanta. Then later in the day we need to make a customer's low level switch do big routing things. At least that customer is really nice... really nervous, but really nice. I tend to adopt some of the customer's stress because I know that they just want things to go smoothly and be over with, and that's my goal as well.
Then after I get all of that done, I can do the mind-numbing end of the month task. Then I can clean house. Yay! I hope to get some baking in Sunday night so that I can get some bakedgoodbribes out to Bob in VA since he's really done so much bitchwork for us onsite there. That will at least be relaxing and fun :)
Posted by jodikins at 12:48 AM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2006
The Inevitable
Well, it took me about 9 months, but I finally broke something that dropped to the concrete floors here. I was trying to rearrange stuff on the kitchen counter ledge but I was lazy and was coming at it from the kitchen side, not the diningroom/office side. Push, push, wiggle wiggle, and my glass cake plate/saver went down for the count. Even though it broke into some fairly large pieces, there was still a ton of shards to vacuum up, including the pocket in my purse where a big chunk and several tiny pieces landed. I'm taking this as a sign to hold off on starting dinner for a bit :)
It's been a lonely week thusfar. Lellie's still MIA with her severe headaches and I'm sure her overwhelming hatred of me, and Linda's down in SC with her in-laws trying to go without Internet for a week. So, I am chickie friendless for the moment. Although I do know someone who would just looooooooove it if I talked to her again, I think I'm better off lonely.
For dinner tonight, I'm going to try the Lemon-Rosemary Roast Chicken with Potatoes recipe from the May 2006 issue of Cooking Light. It reminds me of the amazing chicken dish I had in a trattoria in Rome.. egads, almost 20 years ago. The richness of the rosemary pairs well with the light punch of the lemon -- should be great!
Posted by jodikins at 5:02 PM | Comments (0)
April 24, 2006
More movie going
Last night we decided to go see Silent Hill at the new Lincoln Square Cinemas. The movie theater is awesome, stadium seating, leather seats that rock and recline, and general cleanliness. The movie was pretty eh. It lacked the suspense and terror of the video games, even though it tried desperately to capture the elements of the game. In that desperation , the movie just kind of turned into a series of cameos. Oh look! Pyramidhead! Oh look! The evil nurses! Oh look! It's that theme song. And then the dialogue, story line and acting all pretty much sucked, too. I had dreams about the movie last night, but they weren't nightmares. The dreams consisted of "man, what awful acting!" and "wtf were they trying to accomplish there?"
We drove around a bit yesterday, found out that Monroe is FAR, and that there is no Novelty.
Posted by jodikins at 1:58 PM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2006
Yay for Saturday
It's a beautiful sunny, albeit chilly day. Today I want to catch up on housework since tomorrow is supposed to be sunny like this, but actually warm. I think I almost got enough sleep last night, though it wasn't contiguous. Slept from 11:30am to 2:30am, got up, took the dog out, snuggled with Richard, played solitaire and went back to sleep at 3:30am, slept I think until 6:30am, quickly went back to sleep til 10am.
Yesterday my books from Amazon came, and I sat down and read Skipping Christmas. Ironically, the Cookies for Christmas cookbook arrived today :) In other good little homemaker news, Linda's going to buy some patterns for shorts and skorts and skirts, buy some fabric, and have me whip some up for her for a modest fee. My initial reaction with sewing projects is always "oh I don't know if I can do that", but let's face it, last year at this time, I made my own freaking wedding dress. Difficult fabrics, zippers, incredibly fitted princess seams, darts to fit the skirt. Yeah. I'm good to go with making clothes. Now that my desk is clean, it will be easy to sew on it. I just need to set up one of the folding tables somewhere in the house to do the cutting and laying out of pieces.
Posted by jodikins at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2006
Spring in the woods
Today has finally been nice enough to inspire a little more walking in the woods, much to Gbic's glee. The path from last year has changed a lot. Winter storms took down quite a few trees, and while cleaning those up, maintenance workers went ahead and widened the path and cleared out a lot of the undergrowth and vegetation that gave the path a Secret Garden feel. Fortunately Mother Nature appears to be fighting back, throwing up tons of fiddleheads where the ferns had been chopped to the ground. We were also treated to some Bleeding Hearts in full bloom. I snapped a few shots with my phone, but if tomorrow is as nice as today was, I'll go back with the real camera and document the path again.
The laptop was returned -- they were very apologetic and luckily the problems we observed presented themselves rather quickly when we booted it up at the store. Sucks to be whomever they were selling it for since they won't get anywhere near the $400 they'd have received from us buying it.
Posted by jodikins at 4:33 PM | Comments (0)
Cough
The good nes is that my congestion and runny nose are all cleared up. The bad news, I seem to have developed an intermittent drip in my throat which is causing a cough which is causing a sore/raw throat. Future guests will have to go through a quarantine period before entering the house :)
I'm behind on everything. Housework, tons of dishes to do, stuff to freeze in the fridge, and lots of laundry to do. Work, lots of follow up to do on a lot of fronts, and guess what, it's almost the end of the month again. Woo. Life, tomorrow I need to return the laptop from Saturday, and return some phones and generally run around getting my money back.
My order from books a million came today, yay! The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion, and The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. I see lots of breadmaking in my future, but not for a while.
Posted by jodikins at 1:42 AM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2006
Just a normal cold
Feeling a bit better, far less snotty and congested. I'm still pretty tired and weak overall, but for once the cold didn't turn into a sinus infection or a lung infection. Yay! Easter was low-key, not much happened in the way of cooking or eating really. I think I'll be all better by the end of the week, so hopefully I can finally enjoy a weekend :)
Ebay has been my friend and my foe lately. Friend: found great sample tubes of the Pevonia stuff like I got from the salon for cheap, and I found a book I'd been looking for the past few months. Foe: bought what appeared to be a good laptop, but it wasn't accurately described. I've dealt with those folks before (they're a consignment outfit), so I emailed them right away Saturday night when we found deeper video problems than described in the auction. Hopefully they will take it back -- I'm sure that it wasn't something that they saw or were aware of when they booted it up, but the previous owner should have disclosed the problems before giving it to them. Also on the foe front, I bought a book at the end of March and still haven't received it. I'm peeved, but will give it until Thursday (the three week mark) to file a claim with eBay/Paypal.
And speaking of three weeks, three more weeks til our first anniversary, woo!
Posted by jodikins at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2006
East Coast germs
This is my explanation for the misery I am experiencing. Tom brought germs. Tom passed germs to Richard. I avoided germs and fought them off for days... until Richard decided that I needed to get sick too and infected me. Richard and Tom both suck.
And Scary Movie 4 sucked.
Posted by jodikins at 7:58 AM | Comments (0)
April 10, 2006
Hostess Mode: Off
After the past few weeks of cleaning, and the past few days of being a good hostess (getting up hours early to make breakfast, etc), I could really use a vacation :)
Fairly uneventful weekend. Richard's friend Tom flew in Saturday at noon, we got in Pike Place Market in the afternoon. Sunday we did a harbor cruise and I cooked dinner for the three of us and Nina came over. Today we went up to Snoqualmie and saw the falls. Tom was low maintenance, and since he'd really come out to see Nina, we didn't have the entire burden of entertaining him 24/7.
Yeah, not an exciting blog entry, but overall I'm just really freaking tired. The cleaning, the running around, the getting up ass early and standing around for a few hours cooking, just gahhh. I want to get back into a semi-normal routine and just relax.
Posted by jodikins at 11:46 PM | Comments (0)
April 3, 2006
Yay for spring!
I spent the weekend doing not enough cleaning, but I hunkered down and did the end-of-the-month work project that I always dread. I took care of that rather handily, so today I'm basking in the euphoria that I always get when that project is done :)
After making about 2 quarts of candied orange peel, I sat down to try to plan things to make while our houseguest is here this coming weekend. Tom has allergies (with the animal to human ratio in this house, I suggested he might wanna double down on the allergy meds :), and has some... interesting food sensitivities/dislikes. Lactose intolerant, no milk, no cheese, no ice cream, doesn't eat vegetables or fruits. I suggested Jamaican to him, and said we could have Jerk pork/chicken and Rice and Peas. He said he won't eat the beans, and I said he could pick them out then :)
Now, this is an interesting dilemma, because the two desserts that I would typically have with a jerk meal would be: either a key lime pie or key lime panna cotta, or a fruit cobbler with ice cream. All of those are out for various reasons. So, the other day I came across a recipe for Mexican Chocolate Loaf Cake. I thought we could maybe do that for dessert with a coconut milk based creme anglaise, and it would be all good.
The Mexican chocolate cake worked out beautifully in the fleur-di-lis bundt pan that I have, but it wasn't quite what I envision going well with the lingering burn of the jerk. The coconut creme anglaise was pretty meh overall. Not bad for totally non-dairy, but dairy is a million times better. It might work with some other dishes, so I'll keep it in the recipe folder. So, now I think I'm going to bust out something my mom made when I was a kid -- oatmeal spice cake with a broiled coconut/pecan topping. I'll do that with an optional orange sauce on the side, and I'll change up the spices more to make a little more jamaican -- perhaps some fresh ginger?
Tons more to do on the cleaning front, but I think that a lot of that will wait til tomorrow. I wanted to make sure that the work week got off on the right foot. There are still a few loose ends to tie up, but other than that it should be a fairly quiet week, workwise.
Posted by jodikins at 4:06 PM | Comments (0)
April 1, 2006
Orange Peel
I'm certainly glad that the work week is over, but now it's time to start knocking things off the weekend task list. There's lots of cleaning and laundry to be done, but I also wanted to get some cooking in as well.
I'm finally getting around to making candied orange peel out of the fabulous 10lbs for $10 organic oranges I picked up last week. Sadly, I did wuss out and only bought 5lbs, but I still had some oranges from the week before. I'm trying a new recipe, and I have to say that I really enjoyed the preparation technique. Cutting the oranges into quarters or sixths and then removing the pulp is much better than painfully peeling each orange with a peeler. I never end up using the naked oranges anyway. But with the new technique, I had this gorgeous bowl of orange segments. I could have bagged those to eat, but it's been a long time since I had really good orange juice. So time to indulge myself :) I dumped the segments into the food processor, and then strained the pulp. Almost a quart of really really good juice! I still bagged and froze the pulp. Not sure how much flavor is there, but I'll break off pieces of the frozen pulp to clean and freshen the garbage disposal.
I'll be using the candied orange peel in a Hot Crossed Buns recipe I found. In general it's a good thing to have on hand -- it makes a quick dessert just sprinkled over some ricotta cheese.
Posted by jodikins at 9:56 AM | Comments (0)