18

Yesterday Bond told me a story about the field work she was doing with our (female) intern.

they were out in the field, sitting on the bumper of the Escape and waiting for a third coworker to get back to the car so they could leave the job site. As they were sitting there, a man came up and asked if the lovely ladies would like to purchase an Adult Movie (bow-chicka-wow-wow). When they both declined, he then asked if they were 18. What would he have done if they said Yes to the movie and No to the 18+ thing? would he have demanded his movies back? Aside from the fact that we haven't even gotten to the question of this man's mental stability since the vehicles have a nice, big City seal on the doors. Yes, that's what us government workers do--avoid doing work by watching porn all day.

Friendship Bread

10 days ago, one of my coworkers gave me a starter thing of Friendship Bread. I have dutifully mushed it and added the various ingredients. It came time to separate it, which required adding more milk. Milk that we don't have. Oh sure, we have SOY milk, but I don't know if it would ferment the same as cow's milk. So thus, instead of adding ingredients and then separating it, I just added the remaining "to make bread" ingredients and forewent the giving out of starters. Sorry guys, I know how disappointed you are right now. Please try to contain your sadness.

There's another problem. I don't have loaf pans. So it is in a 9 x 11 (or some such) pan instead. So, we'll see how this crazy bread turns out.

The thing I find funny about this whole Friendship Bread thing is that it's like a pyramid scheme...AND they have this silly little admonition about not giving away all your starter because only the Amish know how to make starter. well, the Amish and Google. there's also the rule of "DON'T USE METAL BOWLS OR THE WORLD WILL END IN A FIERY FIREBALL!" And I find this ludicrous. What's the thing of 'no metal bowls'? is it supposed to make the recipe more "Amish"? It's basically soured milk and yeast. I've made soured milk and yeast things in metal bowls all the time without any ill effects.

So now the bread is baking away, hopefully it's decent. Maybe we'll have this for dinner instead of Breakfast Potatoes. :)

Beet It! (Part 2)

So, after last night's smashing success (and insanely long time line) of roasted beet salad, we decided that we should do it again. Only being industrious, such as we are, we decided to grill everything instead. The menu is thusly:
Roasted beet salad (on the grill via aluminum packets). Sliced beets (homegrown), parsley (homegrown), butter, garlic, salt and pepper with some sliced green onion (homegrown). Spinach, beet greens, and bleu cheese to go on after cooking with homemade dressing (which is basically condensed orange juice with olive oil).
Cheesy potatoes (on the grill via aluminum packets). Sliced potatoes, butter, garlic, salt and pepper with some sliced green onion (on mine). Grated Kerry Gold Dubliner cheese to go on after.
Filet Mignon for Shawn (I refused to eat it since it's ancient)
Grilled Chicken Breast for me
And likely, for dessert:
Greek Yogurt with fresh blackberries.

See, we can do this eat healthy thing if I'm forced to use produce from the garden. Come on spring garden, get a move on!

Beet it

I made roasted beet salad for dinner tonight. With homemade salad dressing. It was pretty good, not super great, but I do like the salad dressing a lot.

I used Michael Chiarello's recipe on Food Network. So there's a ton of prep work, but still, the outcome was pretty good. Good enough that Shawn said he liked it. Actually liked it. Beet Salad. Amazing.

Since I have like 20 more beets to go, I'm guessing we'll be eating this a couple times this week.

So, let's see, all the things used from the garden:
Beets + tops
Onion
Pea Pods

Things bought at the store specifically for this:
Spinach
Bleu Cheese
Orange Juice

And I already had lemon juice, salt, pepper and olive oil on hand. So, all in all, not too bad. And it means we ate healthy for once. Go health food!

Association of Caffeinated Wheelmen

Caffeinated...My favorite state.

Soon we will be starting the commuters challenge. Soon I will be riding my bike again. Soon you will have to hear ALL ABOUT IT. Better prepare yourselves.

GAH!

Don't you hate it when you take a test, go to sleep that night and then dream about the test? Only to wake up the next morning and realize that you made a stupid mistake when calculating something?

Yeah, I did that. Screwed up finding an area. Added up the area but forgot some parts. The one saving grace is that I do not remember the answer options, so I may still have gotten it right if the one I chose was higher than what I had calculated. But still. Stupid mistake.

Also under "stupid mistakes" is forgetting to size something to the specifications they give you. That one I KNOW I missed because the answer I got was one of the options.

So...while I feel good about the test, who knows, maybe I just kept making stupid mistakes. At least my units all matched.

Celebrate Good Times!

Yeah, so THAT happened.

THAT wasn't so fun. I took a test from effectively 715 am until 6 pm. What did you do with your Friday?

I swear it was a dream though. Not as in the test was a dream because it was easy but because after lunch, I'm sitting there solving some problem when I feel like something is making my scalp itch. So I reach up and feel something on my head, figuring it's a twig or something from outside, I grab it. And then it moves. So I FLING the poor bug to the ground and quietly freak out. Can't be too loud about it because it is a test after all. I know it's harmless once I look at it as it's one of these:
This is a Ladybug nymph. AKA a baby ladybug. First time I've ever seen one in person. And it's in my hair. During the most important test of my life. Awesome. About 5 minutes later, I look at the floor where I had "placed" the insect and it is no longer there. About 10 minutes after that, I feel an itch on my leg, so I pull up my pants leg, absentmindedly, and go to scratch, only to find I've got a bug on my leg. And I again quietly lose my shit. Of course I look under the table and it is the SAME FREAKING NYMPH, people! I planned on looking for it after the test in order to take it back outside, but I forgot.

Now, I fully expect to wake up from this crazy-ass dream any second and go take the P.E. Exam.

Hangin' with my Peeps

Does anyone else remember when you could only get these in 1) Neon Yellow and 2) in Chick form?

Flowers

As I've been studying for the P.E. exam (which is this Friday, eek!), I haven't been blogging much (for those of you who follow my gardening blog, it just SEEMS like I'm blogging lots over there--I've been creating multiple entries on one day and then scheduling them to be doled out over the week. I only don't do that for this blog because this one tends to have events and thoughts more so than pictures. Though maybe I should do more pictures. Yay for easy blog entries! But I digress...)

Anyhow, yesterday I studied with two of my fellow initiates at the office from 930 til 630 with an hour or so for lunch. When I came home, I found these on the table:

Now then, I know what you're thinking: 1) Wow, your husband is so nice. and 2) Why is your calculator still in its original packaging? Aren't you supposed to be, you know, USING it to study?

And the answers to these thoughts are as follows:
1) It was not my husband who got these flowers for me, but my Mom and Dad. In fact, I walked in, Shawn was on the phone with his mom, and I saw the flowers, gave him a questioning look and his response was "don't look at me, I didn't get them for you." and I was like "yes, well, duh. They're obviously from a florist and not from the grocery store."

2) I have been using my calculator to study. BUT I didn't have a backup calculator and my current calculator does this weird thing where it sometimes won't register that you've pressed a key, so you have to mash down on the keys to get them to work. Therefore I decided I needed to get a secondary calculator in order to give myself options during the test.

Ut-toh

Last year I went to a Master Gardener's seminar. They handed out coupons for online ordering at Renee's Garden. The deal was buy 4 seed packs, get one free. I bought like 10 packs and then split the seeds with various coworkers and friends.

Renee's Garden has apparently gotten worried about my lack of recent purchases because they sent me an email with 15% off of my total order. Now I will spend the rest of the evening perusing the various seeds available, and then I'll ultimately talk myself out of buying any.

Now, if only I could get Botanical Interests to give me a deal (they've got some Black Krim tomato seeds I'd like to try).