Category Archives: Play

Stoves & Coffee

Recipes

In which I bitch but there’s a recipe, so that almost makes it worth it.

I hate electric stoves!

While I’m certain they’re a vast improvement over wood stoves, they still suck. Suck, suck, suck. You cannot adjust your flame, so you have to remove your pan from the burner and wait — sometimes a few minutes — for the temperature to adjust! How the fuck, I ask you, is a girl supposed to toast spices properly, or make gravy, or freakin’ sautee something?

I’ll tell you how: by moving the pan every four seconds. On the heat, off the heat, on the heat off the heat, waiting for the burner’s temperature to change to what you actually want it to be.

Gah.

I just made coffee. I put a cup of milk in a sauce pan and put it on the stove to heat, and the milk hadn’t even begun to steam let alone simmer by the time the coffee pot was done brewing. That’s just wrong, people. On a gas stove, you can boil milk in moments!

Anywho, today’s coffee recipe:

Brew coffee: Brew two Tbsp Nola-style coffee (a dark roast with chicory) in a drip maker with one cup of water.
Heat milk: Heat 1-1/2 c. milk in a sauce pan, with sugar to taste and a clove and a few cardamom pods.
Assemble: Pour the strong coffee into the milk, froth with a whisk, pour into a coffee mug and enjoy. Makes two cups.

AmmZon is home, so I’m gonna go talk to her and see how long it takes her to take her pants off. (Both of my roommates run around pantsless pretty much all the time. They’re, like, anti-pants or something. It’s funny.)

In other news, I installed Gmail on my cell phone.

Allow me to geek out for just a sec

LOTD

In which I introduce you to the LOTD¹.

I was reading through trouble tickets at work today, and found one that was virtually incomprehensible to me. (Yay! Learning curve!) The resolution of the ticket, was, and I quote:

‘gem install money’

Uh, WTF?

So a-googling I goed. Went. (Whatever.) Turns out that ‘money’ is a ‘gem’² for Ruby, a server technology, which runs on Rails (a full-stack framework for developing database-backed web applications).

In other words, I need to read much of rubyonrails.org.

That site in turn led me to sites using Ruby on Rails, and I ended up at 43things, and then 43places, and then OMFGWTFBBQ!! HOW DID I EVER LIVE WITHOUT THIS the ever-so-fan-fucking-tastic allconsuming, where I can track my voracious reading and even stick it in my sidebar. Finally, I ended up at the creators’ blog(s), which I blogrolled.

Oh, and there’s also listofbests.com (yes, I’ve read 42% of the Nebula List – I’m such a geek! – without even trying) which also rocks my socks.

So I still don’t really know shit about Ruby on Rails, really, but I think I love the people who love it. I’d better go read some more.

—–
¹ Link of the day.
² Extension.

If you were jobless, you could be this irresponsible too!

Social, Work

In which I party with the girls.

After my last post, hubby and I went out for a drink. Well, several drinks. I sat with a couple of women and talked and drank, and Bread went off with an old friend for awhile to go look at something somewhere — some boy thing. When he came back, we had another round then went for dinner at the Dead Cock with AmmZon and BoSe.

Raybo and Gorgeous showed up. After awhile, Bread and BoSe left. Bread gave me his cash to pay the dinner check. The girls started buying shots. I drank them.

Around 10:30 or so Bread called me from BoSe’s. He was ready to go home. I was drunk, and of course not ready to go home. I walked up and down the sidewalk in front of the bar with my phone to my ear, hemming and hawing. I didn’t want to get in a fight with him, but I didn’t want to go home either. Either he disconnected, or the call was dropped. He didn’t call me back. I didn’t call him back. I went back into the bar and Gorgeous bought another round of shots. I drank mine.

An hour later, Raybo and Gorgeous and I went to Gorgeous’ house and sat in her basement and talked. Later, Raybo and I crashed in Gorgeous’ living room. I woke up twice during the night, concerned that I’d drool all over the pillow I was using. I dislike drooling on other people’s pillows.

This morning Gorgeous took us to Raybo’s car and headed to her day job. I stayed at Raybo’s house while she went to her new job. I texted Bread.

NLW called. God, I’m an asshole. I was supposed to accompany her to Des Moines today, but I’d totally forgotten! And since Bread’s leaving town tomorrow I figured he and I had a bunch of stuff to do (like hit the bank and get the jeep some tires so I’ll have a car while he’s gone) so I took a rain check. I apologized profusely to her; I should have remembered about our plans and called her yesterday to cancel. We hung up and I texted Bread again.

At 11:30, I texted him again then took a shower. I went and got coffee, cigarettes. I went to the employment office for awhile. I went to the bank. I paid the mortgage. It was hot as fuck, walking around town all over the place. I hung out at the job services office a little longer than necessary because they had their A/C set at, like, 72 degrees or something. It was winter in there, and felt awesome.

I called Bread from Mi-T-Mart. He didn’t pick up so I left a message. I sat on a curb and smoked a cigarette and watched heat radiate off of the pavement.

I walked back to Raybo’s house, and I’m sitting in her basement using the computer–

–Bread just called. BoSe is heading out to let his dogs run around the farm, and I’m gonna go catch a ride…

Later: I’m home now. Bread’s doing laundry. I’m applying for jobs through iowajobs.org.

I found one, an office position at a music company, that looks pretty interesting. The ad doesn’t say, but it appears to be a sheet music company. They encourage people with musical backgrounds to apply. Sounds like a fun place to work, too.

It’s hot as hell:

A HEAT ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 7 PM CDT THIS EVENING.

TEMPERATURES RISING INTO THE MIDDLE 90S TO AROUND 100 DEGREES WILL COMBINE WITH HIGH HUMIDITY LEVELS TO CREATE HEAT INDEX READINGS OF 105 TO 110 DEGREES THIS AFTERNOON. THE HEAT ADVISORY MAY BE EXTENDED FOR PORTIONS OF THE AREA DEPENDING ON THE PROGRESS OF AN APPROACHING COLD FRONT.

THE POTENTIAL EXISTS THAT THE HEAT ADVISORY MAY HAVE TO BE EXTENDED INTO WEDNESDAY FOR PARTS OF THE AREA.

A HEAT ADVISORY MEANS THAT HOT TEMPERATURES AND HIGH HUMIDITY WILL COMBINE TO CREATE A SITUATION IN WHICH HEAT ILLNESSES ARE LIKELY IF PRECAUTIONS ARE NOT TAKEN. DRINK PLENTY OF FLUIDS… STAY IN AN AIR-CONDITIONED ROOM…STAY OUT OF THE SUN…AND CHECK UP ON RELATIVES AND NEIGHBORS.

The incredible heat has caused BoSe’s lawn to spawn a strange, fast-growing mushroom. I took pictures of it but my cell phone’s decided it doesn’t want to send pictures any more. The thing was doughnut-shaped on Sunday, and yesterday — less than twelve hours later — it had grown even more huge, and flattened out into a fungusy satellite dish. BoSe thinks it’s contacting the aliens, so keep an eye out for the Mothership, y’all.

Vuboq Totally Rocks

Social, Spiritual, Wishlists

In which Internet friends are just as good as meatspace friends! Seriously! Dude.

Yesterday I had class until 4:30, then Bread picked me up and we went out to the farm. We made dinner together, with chicken from his mom’s freezer and veggies from AmmZon’s garden. Basically, everything save the tomato and the garbanzo beans in the salad came from someone else — —

— the world, it seems, is calculated at moments to make a girl feel all abjectly grateful and shit. I’ve never been so broke in my life, but dinner last night was wonderful, and all made up of gifts.

If that weren’t enough, after the dishes were done I walked down to the mailbox to grab the Netflix vid I knew was waiting there (it turned out to totally suck) and there was a box from amazon.com, too! And since I hadn’t ordered anything it had to be a present! A PRESENT!

I waddled back up the driveway with my prizes and sat on the bed — the bedroom has A/C — and opened the amazon.com box. Two books off of my Wishlist from Vuboq!

Bags: A Knitter's Dozen (A Knitter's Dozen series) The first item in the box was Bags: A Knitter’s Dozen. I love to knit with wool, and I love to felt wool, and I’ve been searching for The Perfect Bag for about 15 years now. Perhaps after knitting a couple-few of the cute bags in this book, I will feel compelled to design, knit, and felt myself the bag of my dreams.

And then I’ll make it in a few colorways so I’ll always have one that matches my outfit. (Because if you know me in person, you know how important matching is to me.) (Which is, like, not at all. No, I mean, I like it when my stuff matches, but not enough to really go out of my way to be sure that it all does.) (Snort!)

Get A Financial Life: Personal Finance In Your Twenties And Thirties The second book was Get A Financial Life: Personal Finance In Your Twenties And Thirties. The karmic grinder that has been my life of late has me thinking that a little self-education, particularly in the area of personal goddamned finance, wouldn’t be a bad idea.

To wit: I’m a few years shy of 40 and yet when I woke up this morning I had no savings, a bunch of debt, and an IRA that wouldn’t if cashed out even buy me a decent car (even before taxes). This strikes me as being less than ideal, particularly since I’m supposed to be a grown-up of some stripe, hence this book’s presence on the wishlist.

Anyway, the POINT is, friends rock! First, dinner courtesy of friends and family, and then a random present in the mailbox. This new theme of gratitude is a nice one; I much prefer it to the ‘everything sucks and this is really fucking hard’ theme.

The past few months have been — and are continuing to be — difficult on a lot of levels. It’s definitely an ego-grinding process; after you’ve spent a certain amount of time feeling like you’re the doer, that you’re the one who makes certain things happen, I guess the universe then conspires to teach you otherwise. In other words, at the foundation, all the things you do that make you feel like you’re doing what you’re supposed to, can just… go away. It’s ultimately out of your control; you really could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Not long ago, I was going to work and doing my chores and paying my bills, and all that made me feel like I was in control. Today, I’m not really doing any of those things but by some miracle I’m still eating. I guess the lesson is some combination of surrender, gratitude, and I-am-not-really-the-doer.

I guess I’m past the oh-fuck-this-sucks-and-I’m-frustrated-and-angry phase and have now ground off enough ego that I’m settling into the oh-this-sucks-but-not-my-will-but-Thine phase. Which is a much sweeter space to be in.

I do sort of wish I could be learning this lesson without being quite so desperately on-the-verge-of-bankruptcy broke, but I do have a rather thick head so it’s likely I’ve missed the lesson the past few times it was offered me.

Class has turned out to be pretty fun. I haven’t really learned much that I’ll actually use about the software, but I certainly will be able to pass the test. And that’s pretty much the point. The people have been really nice, and I like the instructor/s in particular. Too bad the next course I need is so many weeks away.

Hopefully I’ll get a job next week. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Bombay Ginger-Limetini

Recipes

In which we invent a new cocktail.

Gorgeous and I accidentally invented a brilliant drink. Behold!

Bombay Ginger-Limetini

Juice of 1 lime
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1-1/2 shots vodka
1 shot simple syrup
1 slice fresh ginger

Stir and serve in a tall glass over ice.

Mother

Spiritual, Travel

In which I’m driving to Chi-town.

My guru, Amma, is in Chicago today and tomorrow. I’m gonna take the Exploder and drive up there for darshan. I haven’t failed to see Mother in July in at least ten years; don’t see why I should start now.

V wants me to hitch a ride back to Fairfield to see Her this weekend but there’s no room with the couple who are going. Well, no room back here — they’ve got a space for the ride out but it’s occupied from Fairfield to Indy.

I haven’t decided yet if I’m leaving today or tomorrow. I haven’t discussed this plan with any of the devotees I know, so I don’t know who’s there to crash with or if I could find a cheap motel nearby.

My husband is adamant that I go today, but he has no idea how much money there isn’t in the checking account so I’m not really listening to him. On the other hand, I doubt I have it in me to drive up and back without sleeping in between so perhaps a motel is a must. Plus I could spend a night in blissful aloneness. Which is a lovely idea, truly.

I might drive up tomorrow, stay up all night for Devi Bhava, crash, and drive back the following evening. Dunno yet.

Anywho, I need to go surf for driving directions and possible motel reservations.

In other news, everything here in Selling Roofs Land is the same. The boys canvas, meet people, get paperwork signed, and bring me scope notes on graph paper. I type it all up into lovely Xactimate bids. We give the bids to the “management,” who promptly leave town for four days rather than approve our bids and give them back to us so we can sign contracts to put roofs on. It’s like any other job I’ve ever had: chaotic, disorganized, and frustrating. Fortunately, the three of us are fucking brilliant, so we’re doing better than nearly everyone else combined.

I have to decide in the next two days if I’m staying on here or asking LISCO for an extended LOA… or quitting a job I’ve had for six years. Bread and BoSe are committed to doing this roofing thing for the long haul, but oddly enough I’m getting a little homesick. I miss my girlfriends, I miss my dogs, I miss being able to snatch a little privacy here and there. Plus I actually like my job at LISCO and honestly don’t want to lose it. Of course, we could feasibly be here until Thanksgiving. Hell, I don’t know. I’ll go see Amma and decide after.

Have a lovely day, my babies!

Finally. The Cute Part.

Travel

In which we find the “Greenwich Village of Indianapolis,” (don’t laugh, it isn’t polite) and it really is Good!

There’s a neighborhood north of downtown called Broad Ripple where all the brew pubs and coffee shops and bike shops and jazz clubs and groovy people hang out. It’s a half-hour drive from here, of course. It’s adorable — centered around a greenway that used to be a train track and all the buildings are homes rather than business buildings.

We went to eat at a Thai place but it no longer existed. We ate instead at the Broad Ripple Brew Pub and it was the best food I’ve had since we got here. The menu had a vegetarian Shepherd’s Pie on it, fer chrissakes, along with several other vegetarian options. They also served traditional pub fare, like fish & chips and Scotch eggs. I had a spinach melt and chips, and it was amazing. (Iron and dairy! What more could a veggie girl ask for!) Bread had a blackened tuna sandwich, BoSe had a shrimp po’ boy, and PaKa had the fish & chips. The guys shared a Scotch egg appetizer. Apparently the pub’s IPA was really good as well, but I settled for water since I’m really not much of a beer drinker and I wasn’t really in the mood for a raspberry ale or mead.

Broad RippleAfter we ate, we sat in the grass near the greenway for a bit, examining a bit of random art. At first glance it was rather cartoony, but the more you looked at it the more you saw. (The piece has faces on all four sides. It’s pretty amazing.) We got some dog love from random canine passersby. I saw some cute boys; the guys saw some cute girls. Then we meandered the block and a half back to BoSe’s rig and he drove us back to the motel.

The next time we go up there, I want to eat falafel and listen to jazz. Oh yes I do.

In other news, I spent much of yesterday afternoon lounging by the pool, and I have a patch of sunburn on my chest and it itches.

Saturday! Eh.

Travel, Work

In which you can hardly tell it’s the weekend.

Today is the first day of our third week in Indy. I feel both as if I just arrived, and as if I’ve been here forEVer.

BoSe and Bread had a nine o’clock this morning. I tried to get the bid done last night, but it’s hard to work in the evening because the boys wanna relax and keep popping in and out so it’s hard to get any questions answered, like, “What the fuck is a D&R wrirmiumumm?” or “Don’t you know how to spell chimney?” or “Is this a 4 or a 9?”

So I had the bid nearly finished except for calculating the siding (damn gable ends, man) when I went to bed. Which means I got up at 7:30 this morning to do math.

Math, people.

Actually, I made Bread do it. But still.

Mozart in the MorningI got the bid finished and printed for the guys and turned in our expenses to Dee all before 8:30 in the morning. BoSe ran for coffee, so now it’s nine and I’m listening to Mozart In The Morning and sipping a hazelnut latte and the door and window are open and the guys have five appointments scheduled for today and I’ll probably be alone much of the day. Unless Truck or PaKa come over to hang out.

I don’t think I have anything in particular to work on, so I guess I’ll troll Xactimate’s built-in Help system (I totally RTFM) to see if it can teach me how to make it calculate siding easily without having to draw the entire goddamned house.

Sunday, of course, is laundry day. I hope to God we manage to actually sleep in tomorrow.

In other news, Bread had one of those disturbing anxiety dreams that make you feel all discombobulated when you wake up. Apparently he dreamed Indiana had weird laws and his mom called to warn him but he got arrested anyway and was in one of those paper suits, handcuffed into a paddy wagon, and kids were asking him for cigarettes. He said he felt all weird all morning.

It's Friday, but I'm having a Monday

Travel, Work

In which I woke up on the wrong side of the bed entirely.

I woke up totally fucking aggro this morning. Then my computer was acting like a slow piece of shit while I was trying to produce some printed bids. Then the guys were freaked out about this thing and that thing (this gig is incredibly talky — everyone’s always talking, and either freaking out or reassuring each other in turns… I think it’s a sales thing). Then Bread had said last week he would for certain take Bowling Jesus to the airport this morning, but then he changed his mind and left for a scope with BoSe so now I have to drive to the goddamned airport and I don’t want to do it.

I hate it when he flakes like that, especially when he expects me to unfuck it for him. He does it to people all the time, but if someone flakes on him you never hear the end of it.

There are still contract issues between WGC and 2X4, and our ‘team leader’ is maddeningly vague about it. We keep hearing that “everyone’s making ten grand a week here!” but no one admits to it. Who the hell is this nebulous “everyone”? It’s frustrating and maddening and we’re all vascillating from really feeling confident that this was a good idea to feeling convinced we’re being made chumps of. The emotional rollercoaster, while interesting, kinda sucks.

You wouldn’t believe how much talking goes on. We’re all living in the same motel, so every evening everyone comes back from the various corners of the city, changes into shorts, pours a drink, and starts making the rounds. There are guys wandering around for hours, chatting and chatting and chatting and chatting. It’s a huge game of “so-and-so said this, did you hear what what’s-his-face said?” and information and gossip swirl around like oil on a puddle, forming and reforming into different configurations.

I’m the defacto software expert, so people call and drop in all the time looking for help with Xactimate. Rarely do they actually need help using the software; usually they have a policy question but they don’t know enough to know the distinction. I’ve helped people put images into Word documents, I’ve designed and distributed templates for business cards, I re-wrote the 2X4 flyers into 4th grade English, and I’ve helped my team leader on his bids more than once. PaKa is coming over in a few minutes because he doesn’t know how to calculate drip edge or water&ice or something.

I’ve been drinking too much coffee. Grrr.

Update: It’s gotten worse. The talk-talk-talking, the rumours, the crazy girly insanity. This whole scene is driving me nuts. One guy was ousted today; he was attempting to do what I do — support salesmen by doing back-end data entry and officy stuff — but the team leader told the guys who were using his services that they’d be fired if they continued to do so. It’s worse than high school, peeps. If we don’t get that check today I’m gonna go postal. I think it’s time for a drink.

Daylight

Blurbs, Travel

In which it’s weird.

Being this close to the time line means that the sun is still (just barely) above the horizon at nine PM. It causes us to eat dinner really, really late. And we tend to stay up until eleven or twelve every night.

I bet it’s awesome to be a kid here ’cause it’s light sooooo late during summer vacation!