Flirt Fest?

In an attempt to begin to step outside of my familiar world, I am following my dear friend Sarah's advice and actively considering the deals "Living Social" sends me. It's no secret that I have what I call "self-perpetuated-technological-retardation" so the fact that I am participating in a digital coupon/groupon type of thing is quite surprising really.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, there was a 50% off deal for an evening of wine and chocolate pairings. Who could resist that? So, I bought a ticket. I swear I read the thing. Or at least I thought I did. My understanding was that it was a chocolate bar in my neighborhood that I hadn't heard of before. I am always interested in supporting local small/independent businesses so I was excited about it.

Well, it turns out the ticket I bought was a couples ticket so I asked Sarah if she'd like to go with me. Her response was "it's a couples ticket" to which I replied "well, yes, but people probably think we're a couple half the time anyway so who cares?" Then she sent me a calendar invite and we were all set for our date night with chocolate and wine.

Last night was our date night. We headed over from the office to what we both assumed was a business, i.e. a chocolate bar. I drove, Sarah pulled up the info on her iphone. As we pulled up to a big fancy apartment building, she said, "Flirt Fest? This thing is called Flirt Fest? I am not prepared to flirt with anyone tonight other than you."

Ok, wow. Really? Neither of us knew that this was not an actual business, nor did either of us know this thing was actually called "flirt fest" but we ventured forward nonetheless.

The security guard in the lobby escorted us to the elevators and gave us directions to the event: "go to the second floor, get off the elevator, go left, right, down the hall, through the white double doors, across the patio toward the pool, into the clubhouse..." She saw the completely blank look on my face and said (as the elevator doors closed on us) "it's not that complicated!"

After a couple of wrong turns, we found it: the clubhouse of a fancy apartment building where a nice young lady and a few helpers had set up a chocolate fountain, mini cupcakes, rice crispy treats (Sarah was VERY excited about these!), and bite sized brownies. There was a table where said young lady had 3 bottles of wine covered in satin wine bags to conceal the labels and 3 corresponding bowls of chocolates. You know those chocolate buttons you use to melt for coating candies or for making hot chocolate? That's what she had in the bowls.



Not really melt-in-your-mouth delicousness.

As we approached the wine & chocolate table to being our pairing experience, the nice young lady gave us a note pad and pencil to write down our thoughts about he wine, such as appearance, aroma, flavor, and a guess for price range. Then for some inexplicable reason she told us "don't worry about it too much. You'll probably do great. Better than me. I don't really know anything about wine." Huh? Ok...

Anyway, the wines were fine I guess. The first one was a syrupy sweet California dessert wine, the second one turned out to be a $10 bottle of Menage a Trois blend and we didn't stick around to find out what the third one was.

The good news is that we did laugh a lot because it was a fairly ridiculous event but the wine and chocolate part was not worth the money. The friend time was worth if of course. :)

So, here's to date nights, living social, bizarro flirt fests, and stepping out of familiar worlds!

grrr...

Irregardless is not a word!

underwhelming

You know you're getting older when your idea of a good Saturday evening is successfully filing your taxes.

Ugh.

panic setting in?

OK, so I told myself I wasn't allowed to start panicking or getting nervous about not having a job come March until it was February.

Well, it's February.

I am officially beginning to get nervous. Panic has started creeping into my vocabulary but I am not experiencing anything even closely resembling full blown panic yet (although I think I probably should!).

Three weeks of employment left.

I'm beginning to think the decision to resign from a perfectly good* job was more stupid than brave but as of today I am still holding onto the belief that it was the right decision.

*"perfectly good" is defined here through the lens of a very romanticized version of reality that is often applied to experiences in my past. In this case the romanticized version of reality is one in which both the word "perfect" and the word "good" have alternate meanings that include words like "misery" and "exhaustion" and "burn-out".

At least I know myself well enough to recognize my own unique version of sanity. :)

ARGH!

Inconsiderate people suck. It's just a fact.

For example:

I was recently asked to deliver some files to the office for a co-worker who was leaving town early the next morning. She said she'd drop them off in the evening. I waited. And waited. At about 9pm I left her a message asking if she was still going to come by. Mind you, I put my own plans on hold to wait for her because I agreed to do her this favor. She finally responded at about 10:30 that she had decided instead to go home and not worry about the files and just forgot to call.

That's inconsiderate.

Or this:

I was recently moved into an office that I now share with several people (another post on how I feel about this at a later date...). I decided that since I'm leaving and don't have that much more time here I'd put up with it. Now, when I have conference calls, which is very frequently, I am careful to speak at a volume that will be as minimally disruptive to my (many) office-mates as possible. When I meet with other people in my office, I try to make sure that we aren't disturbing the work of the others or find a conference room to meet.

My office-mates however find it necessary to YELL at each other across the room and when they are sitting right next to each other. They put conference calls on speaker phone and feel the need to yell into the phone. And then there's the incessant tapping of the fingernails on the hard desk surface while on the phone and nervous shaking of legs which cause squeaking of chairs.

That is inconsiderate.

I have asked them to take calls off of speaker phone and I have asked people to turn their volume down when possible but COME ON!!!! You share space with other people. Why do I have to tell you that you are being inconsiderate? I know I am sensitive to annoying sounds but really? Is this necessary?

It makes me really really grumpy and I don't like being grumpy. It's not a good look for me.

car alarms

Growing up my sister had (and still has) extremely sensitive hearing. She could hear every little sound and I can only imagine how incredibly annoying that must have been as a young person. I feel like maybe I have developed the same supersonic hearing as an adult (I was always a little slower...). Unfortunately mine only pertains to repetitive sounds that I find not only annoying but intensely infuriating.

Car alarms. I hear them. I hear them over every other sound. Apparently I even hear them from inside full and loud restaurants and bars with doors closed (at a recent birthday party, we were inside a packed and loud bar and I heard my friend's car alarm from outside the bar - my friends now think I'm crazy - well, crazier).

This brings me to the question: what good do car alarms even do?

Here's the thing: car alarms go off all the time and when they do, nobody does anything. Everybody just gets annoyed (especially me). Nobody actually looks to see if a car is being broken into or stolen. People who have car alarms eventually get up to see if it's their car that's making all that horrendously infuriating noise, hanging their car clicker thingy out the window to see if it will turn the alarm off. If it's not their car, they just go about their business. That's if they pay attention at all.

I have only once in my life had a car alarm. It was in a well-used red Fiat Uno in the early 1990's. I didn't know I had a car alarm and had no way of turning the damn thing off the first time it decided to go off while I was still in the car with the car running (well-used Fiat, remember). Luckily I was at our community theater where lots of semi-tech-savvy people were willing to assist. As 4 or 5 of these semi-tech savvy people tried to get the alarm to quiet itself, I finally just told them, "RIP IT OUT!" and so they did. And that was that.

In other words, car alarms are dumb. Just had to get that off my chest.

fleissig, fleissig

Instead of a lazy Saturday - which is typically my first choice for a Saturday, whether I can afford it or not - I decided to be productive. I was assisted in this decision by the fact that I had to be up at a decent hour since my apartment building is being re-keyed and the locksmith was going to be here by 10. That meant that I had to get up well before that so I could get dressed, clean the apartment and wash the dishes. I have absolutely no idea why I feel that it is necessary to clean my apartment for the locksmith but hey, any form of motivation works!

After I had done all that it was 10 and the locksmith wasn't here yet. Then I remembered the big bag full of fresh produce from my weekly local organic produce delivery. So, I decided to prepare for the week:

First I made breakfast burritos to freeze, whole wheat tortillas filled with a mixture of red, kidney, and black beans, some salsa and a sprinkling of cheese. YUM! I can just grab one in the morning on my way to the office, heat it in the microwave when I get there and have a great start to my day!

Then, as the locksmith was still not here, I decided to finally cut up the GIGANTIC butternut squash that has been hanging around my kitchen for a couple of weeks. Last weekend I bought some short grain brown rice so I decided to make butternut squash risotto. It turned out to be a pretty big batch so I froze that too. Now I have 5 servings of butternut squash risotto ready to grab for lunches or quick dinners.

Then, since I had a pile of butternut squash already cut up (it was just too much to use it all in the risotto) I looked around for ideas of what to do with it. AHA! I had a bunch of carrots and so I decided to make creamy carrot and butternut squash soup. I used a starchy potato instead of cream to make it creamy and that is now cooling until I can put it through the food processor to make it smooth and creamy. More lunch options for the week!

It didn't matter at all that the locksmith came and went at some point, I was on a roll. I turned next to the meyer lemons. What to do with them? I briefly considered a meyer lemon pie but quickly realized there are no graham crackers (for the crust) in my pantry. So, instead, I have made dark chocolate and lemon sorbet. It's going in the freezer as soon as it cools and it will be a delicious treat after dinner tomorrow night.

I am stopping myself now because my freezer is full and I realize there are only so many lunches in a week and I'm a bit over that quota. Besides, I should probably write some cover letters and send in some job applications before the day is over since that was supposed to be the purpose of spending my Saturday at home. The good news is that now I have a clean apartment, a clean kitchen, and lots of already prepared food for the week. This means that I can spend my Sunday and the evenings this week doing the job hunt thing without having to take time to prepare food or clean.

Also, since I spent a good chunk of the day brainstorming cooking ideas, I have some good ideas for quick dinners this week to use the rest of my produce if I get sick of risotto or soup, including fresh trumpet mushrooms over pasta, savory kale pancakes, and stir fried collard greens.

I love the wonderfully fresh produce available year-round in Northern California!

OK, now it's time to find a job!