I did not finish in the money. :(

Fourth place, I choked. I mean I was choking on the chunks of lutefisk that went up my nose as I was trying inhale and eat at the same time. NEXT YEAR!!!!

Be careful ... choking on lutefisk is probably not the way you want to go. Sorry I missed the chance to cheer you on ... GO BIG V NEXT YEAR!!!

I got a lot done today. Visiting my oldest in DC, helped with cleaning and packing his apartment, reading 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius' (I know, it's not new but I stumble upon most fiction late), hanging out with the two chocolate point cats that came from my cattery. Gonna pick my son up from work tonight and have a glass of wine and some goodies I picked up at Whole Foods. Whole Foods ... I think it'd be worth moving here just to have access to this grocery store. Wow.

That's great, man, glad things are finally going your way. Will this carry through the fall/winter, or this a summer arrangement?

We need to find classroom space to do it. I may do a morning section and SEIT in the afternoon. <fingers crossed>

I guess it's more than finding someone to let you use some space. There's probably all kinds of rules and shit about what the facilities must be. Certified toxin free, urinals 12 inches from the floor, and that sort of thing. Crossing my fingers for you. :fingerx:

Thankfully with the sequestration the Head Start program may collapse leaving me a space... not how I'd see this go ideally.

yesterday: finding a snake on my washing machine

My wife is coming home tomorrow after full-knee replacement surgery.

Before the surgery, her comments were "just shoot me" and "all I want is 20 minutes without pain.
Now, she's in for a month of major post-surgery pain, but looking forward
to less and less til maybe this new joint will only be a small nuisance.

Monster, we require details, preferably with pictures.

no pics, 8inch garter snake, named Houdini in abstentia ;)

"Adopted" 6/29, mysteriously acquired freedom from tank 1 floor up 30 feet across 7/3, reappeared 7/12

I bought my first pair of Crocs. Hard to believe they are so comfortable

I'm not sure your footgear is regulation soldier!

This is the first day since I had my infected wisdom tooth pulled 12 days ago that I have not taken any pain meds! Mostly Ibuprophen or Tylenol, but I've felt the need to take it just about every 4 hours. Swelling in my neck is gone, too. :D

Wow. I'm glad you're happy about that, but that's 12 days of misery.

My Mom went through two of them...the ability to walk without pain (or even roll over in bed) is truly awesome for her.

@LL - hoping your wife will have a swift and uncomplicated recovery. I've met many people who are delighted with their knee-replacement surgery; they tell me they've gotten their lives back. I hope that's the case for your wife.

@chrisinhouston ... getting off the pain meds is great! Glad you've turned the corner. Now you don't have to deal with those GI side effects.

@Big Sarge ... Crocs have become our quick-stick-your-feet-in-them shoes to run outside and grab some firewood or some herbs from the garden. I agree with you, very comfy and convenient!

My crocs are camo and are great when you have to go to the latrine at night.

:) Quite a sight Sarge.

Lil Pete's boyfriend has been peppering me with house construction questions all evening. Kids got the itch.

Oh, so the kid sees property, trees, and a seasoned veteran... one stop shopping. :haha:

Sarge doesn't mean those good-hot-weather-shoes-with-ventilation (which I own a knock-off pair of).
He sticks his feet in real crocodiles (I think he means alligators, though)

You don't pull the mask of the night latriner and you don't mess around with Maury.
Big Schuh, big bad Schuh.

Pizza night tonight!
Yumyum. Even Dad is having some.

Baking a cake tomorrow.
And then making Mum chicken liver in cream & brandy with tagliatelli on Thursday.

What am I saying?
In the kitchen, in this heat?

Also bought a pair of work shoes.
Not by choice - none of mine are suitable (which I suspected anyway.)
Wore them to walk round the block today. Sweet FSM my feet were hot.
What am I thinking? Work shoes in this weather?
But work shoes mean end of not working and job and MONEY!

Am working on the silver lining aspect here.
'Cept for the pizza. That's a slice of fried gold right there.

Damn, almost forget the real reason for the post.
The World's End on Friday.

Huzzah. Yes I have a ticket. I have forgone my usual treats in order to buy it, and am even intending to take water into the cinema with me rather than buying a bucketful of Diet Coke.

For those who don't like to link it's the new Edgar Wright/ Simon Pegg/ Nick Frost film.
Mixed reviews, but the critics whose tastes tend to match mine - or at least overlap - have enjoyed it.

Yay! Friday!
Start work on Monday!
Not paid til 26 AUGUST though :eek:
Tcha, got a full store cupboard and will get through somehow.
At least all my clothes are provided and the 'rents will wink at what I pay them for a little while; they've seen the documents, they know the deal.

In summary and on balance, very happy.

We found a big goofy puppy running free on our evening walk. My husband went back with treats and caught him, only to find the dog had no tag. We kinda stared at him for an hour trying to figure out what to do with him. (Couldn't bring him in for the night or put him in our yard cuz our dogs would freak.) Finally, my husband started ringing doorbells on the street where we'd found him, and luckily he found the pup's family. Hooray!

send my thanks to Kitsune for his good deed.

In the middle of feeling at a very low ebb and very sorry for myself...Sundae sent cake!!!!

I almost cried (in a good way) when it arrived. A large slice of moist chocolate (I assume, havent tasted yet:p) cake wrapped in foil in a plastic box with the easily identifiable panda tape around it.

Bless you chika, you haven't half cheered me up :)

10 years, a week, and a day ago, Mr. Clod and I got married. We missed celebrating around the actual day because of me being on death's door, but finally got our chance to go out to dinner last night.

We went to Uchiko, where the executive chef is Paul Qui, the winner of Top Chef season 9. I've been to expensive places, but I've never been to a truly foodie kind of place like this where the portions are tiny and they serve things like fennel sorbet. Really amazingly fantastic.

Congratulations to you!

Choco, it wasn't a Korean family that claimed the dog, was it?

I, too, got cake!
It was sitting in its panda-taped box on the doorstep when we got back from our travels yesterday evening. I tucked it into the fridge immediately and had my slice for late breakfast this morning. As if that wasn't decadent enough, I munched on this divine morsel while Mr L pedalled 6 miles on the exercise bike behind me.
It was GORGEOUS! Thank you so much, Sundae, you shouldn't have!

Hooray for cake!

Congrats on your anniversary, Clod!

Boooo. The family is trying to sell their house; during a showing the realtor accidentally let the pup escape, and by the time the family got back home pup was long gone.

This is terrible, terrible selling behavior. Nevermind whether it's safe for the pet; you don't leave an animal in a house you're trying to sell!

Absolutely. One of the biggest stresses of selling a house with four smallish children was taking all the children AND all the pets out in the car while the house was being shown. But I would never have left the animals in the house.

Congrats on your anniversary, Clod! Many happy returns!

Very glad you got the cakie Dana & Limey.
I have no idea how well it has held up in the heat.
We had a couple of slices when it was fresh and it was pretty good.
After refrigerating the flavour seemed deeper but it was much more dense (I think we have our fridge too cold TBH) and had to be eaten with cream and a fork.

Still, it was worth sending it, if only so you got a lift seeing the box :)

I'm happy because we went to Thame yesterday, to an open branch of the shop I am going to be working in in Aylesbury. Thame is always fun to go to anyway, but a couple of sly passes of the Deli counter were very reassuring. I have been so worried and nervous about this. It took a visit to remind me that in fact I'm not going to be working in an impossibly grandiose environment; it is just a shop. And they had two school-age lasses working the counter at one point - how hard can it be?

Although I did have a panic when I realised I'd be expected to slice pies by hand. OMG. No amount of training in the world can make me slice straight. I can't even carve. I hack. Which is okay when you can gobble up the bits which look like shavings or wedges, not good when the customer wants a nicely presented slice of turkey, ham and apricot pie.

Still, I was heartened by the visit in general.

Bloody hell, girl, you gots some mad baking skillz.

That cake was lovely!

Now I want to know how deliously decadent Sundae chocolate taste like. Girl, can you kindly share the recipe? Thank you! :D

I just did three speedtests and got 0.46 mbps!!!!

I'm in the home stretch. I made it through today, I can make it through 12 more like it.

Just two more insanely hectic weeks with the stepkids, then a week with a big ol' blissful nothing to do--no camps, no drivers ed, no packing lunches, no nothing--and then school starts. Hallelujah.

Too funny. That's always been one of my favorite commercials.

Original post is here.
Recipe is here - UK measurements, sorry.
I read pretty much all the comments the first time I made it, because it is a financial commitment, as opposed to making a carrot cake or a coffee (flavour) and walnut cake. So I tweaked it according to my needs.

If you make, please post a photo, as I know yours will look far more beautifuller than mine. You have such exquisite attention to detail.

Thank you for reposting the recipe and thank you for not scolding me for being lazy to look your original post. :)

Oooh!

Today I learned about a canned coconut milk that truly contains no additives, meaning my kids can eat it and I don't have to hack apart my own damn coconuts to get coconut milk for recipes.

It's the little things.

you say coconut milk, and I immediately think "curry"; the very epitome of something with the opposite of minimum ingredients.

Your impression does not necessarily reflect reality, though. :)


Ingredients in a common curry blend:

Plus meat, rice, coconut milk, and say another 4 for veggies... equals 13.

Ingredients in Mrs. Baird's white bread:

Equals 20, not even counting the stuff you were gonna put on the sandwich. In fairness, 5 of those are vitamins required by law, but a curry still comes out with fewer.

I'm with Big V in that a curry from scratch uses the most ingredients of anything I cook at home.

I don't put all that rubbish in bread when I make it.

I'm very happy and proud tonight because my oldest son completed his first century ride today in the Bike to the Beach charity ride for Autism Speaks. My son has Asperger's Syndrome and is an attorney with the USPTO. He's been involved in road biking for a number of years.

My son volunteers with a school that has a large population of disadvantaged immigrant children. He teaches them math and science and provides a male role model for children in 3rd to 5th grade. Two days ago he was one of the staff members on a school trip to Six Flags (!) - and survived to tell the tale. It sounds too patronizing and motherish to say that I'm proud of him. I am just filled with joy and admiration that he has taken time from a new and stressful job situation to do things that have been difficult in the past, and that are so important to others.

Awesome. But: not patronising to be proud of your son for anything. And nowt wrong with 'motherish'.

One of the very best feelings in the whole world !
. It is to be remembered in the darker times.

Yay for your son, Ortho.
Parents are allowed to be proud of their children's achievements.

I'm happy because Mum is very happy with me at the moment:

Partly because I've been training and I know she worries and frets when I'm not working, as well as being fed up with having me underfoot. I've not been very helpful with housework during the heatwave either; both of us are just too hot to do anything useful after about 10.00.

Partly because she knows I am working. It turns out I am on a steep learning curve and she appreciates that; she can tell her friends I am not just stacking shelves.

And partly because I am bringing home yummy food ;)
She was so diasppointed today because I was Rotisserie training (stand-by for photos of burns after 08/08 when our strore opens) because she was really hoping for some chicken. Cheeky mare, we didn't even get to taste it. She loved the filled baguettes I brought home last night.

Oh and she has decided not to take Wolf's Chocolate Banana Bread out of the freezer.
Tony and Eileen are coming in a fortnight and she wants to save it for them.
I was gratified she didn't want her own recipe Banana Bread frozen - she just wanted to plough through it.
But I'm equally gratified that she wants to save Wolf's recipe loaf for company, having sampled it. 'Tis obviously the good stuff.

An addendum to my moany post about my new employers (Mildly Irritated thread) yesterday.
I had my first day training in my actual, real, proper branch today.
There are glitches, but I was happy to be there and felt really fired up.

I can't say I won't be moaning again when I come home on Wednesday (08.00-18.00?! OMG!) but I am excited for the store opening on Thursday.

Helped set up the Meat & Fish counters today.
I got halfway through and experienced the feeling of being overwhelmed, that it could never be finished ever and I didn't know what I was doing.
This is the point in moving house where I sit on the floor and cry.
But I was working with Raj who has years of branch experience, is a Meat & Fish Specialist (and very proud of her counters) and as well as transferring to Aylesbury she has voluntarily seconded to four other branch openings.

So I kept it buttoned because I didn't want to sound too negative and the feeling passed.
I was in safe hands.

I'm not working tomorrow and am almost a little disappointed.
Because Raj has the Meat & Fish counters looking organised, even if everything still needs to be wiped and washed and wiped again.
Whereas we didn't touch Deli at all.
The girls will do it in my absence tomorrow.

Back Weds for set-up and more Rotisserie training.
And tasting ;)

Fantastic, Sundae! I hope Wednesday and Thursday go well.

Wednesday was instructive, but long.

A good introduction to standing for periods of time - something it took me months to get used to when I only had a Saturday retail job. A ten hour shift was a shock to the system but it won't happen again unless I choose it and today's four hours were a cakewalk in comparison. For my feet and back I mean.

Today - opening day - my gosh the store was busy.
If it's like that every day we will certainly get complaints about the number of tills and the length of queues. When I say "we" I mean the store - on Deli we're currently learning and are officially overstaffed. Just because we are learning from Partners seconded from other branches. Four extra today, three tomorrow.

We were advised not to let them do things for us, and I think we all really took that on board. I asked the experienced Partners to step in twice; once when a lady was adament she wanted thin hand-carved ham (generally I would have to advise the customer that it is a difficult proposition, but it was opening day and that Partner has 26 years of experience) and once when another Partner was already machine carving Parma ham and the customer said she was happy to wait. So I asked him to carve another six slices, engaged her in conversation and got her to taste the cheese we were sampling. She didn't buy, but it's part of the W Way.

When I go in tomorrow I'm going to check whether we will be paid overtime or whether it will be "time-banked". If we are paid it, I'm going to soak up as much as my feets and back can handle. Good for me and my product knowledge. Good for the store in increasing staff during the crucial days of making a first impression. Good to get experience under tutelege.

But I have to admit it's just about the money.
I'm contracted for 17.5 hours a week at present. Why on earth would I want more time off? Might still slip in a few extra hours here and there just because all the above is true too.

Anyway, came home a happy (lola) bunny.
Looking forward to tomorrow.
Mum & Dad and Maureen came in to see me today.
Stevo might come in on Saturday.
The rest of you are welcome, I'll post a map if you like.

None of my usual obessive photo taking, until I get my discount and start shopping there. Then I can post products without commenting on the fact I employed there. Let's face it 99.9% here have no access to this chain. It's just I said before, the place is very protective of its image.
NO photos or comments unless officially sanctioned.
NO detrimental comments etc, etc, etc
You know the deal.
Pretty much a sacking offence.

It sounds like a great start and some intelligent planning on the part of management - having the experienced Partners there to refer to in unusual situations must boost the confidence as everyone finds their sea legs. And it sounds like you rocked the the W Way! The chat and cheese tasting will bring that customer back.

Don't worry about pics if they're not allowed - your writing is wonderful, Sundae, you take us there without pics. A map would be cool, and welcome. :)

So happy to hear your first day went well, Sundae!

Excellent news, Sundae dear!

Sent by thought transference

Long days.
Learning curve.
Up at 05.15, eyes self-sealing now.
21.00 is probably going to end up my regular sleepy time but I'm trying to ease into it. No point going to bed at 19.30 and then being up from 04.00.

But is good.
Like the positive vibe. Like the vast majority of my colleagues (I'm me, I'm not brainwashed.)
Like the chap who sings "Cherry Baby" every time he sees me; prolly old enough to legally be my Dad, but it cheers me up no end.
Like - no, love - the products we sell.

Happy me.

:thumbsup:

You go, girl. :)

Well I noticed a feeling while driving like my tires were out of round or something balance related. There wasn't a shimmy in the steering but I had noticed at slow speed the Land Rover acted like it was wobbling down the road.

So I dug out my Pep Boys receipt with the life time warranty and balancing, etc. and took it in. Pretty quickly they found my rear drivers side tire had a belt inside separated which made it spin all crooked and uneven, thus the wobbly feeling. That in itself didn't make me feel happy but with prorating it for 30,000 or so miles, etc I only have to pay $88 for a brand new tire.

The good part that makes me happy is that I have been planning to replace the 4 main tires with something more aggressive for off roading but my spare is an older Michelin street tire and showing signs of sidewall cracks from age making it useless if I need it. I was trying to avoid having to buy 5 tires at close to $200 each so now I will just get 4 tires and use the new replacement tire for the spare. Problem solved! :cool:

Over the weekend Lil Pete's boyfriend gave her a water lilly. She put it back in the water to keep it fresh and went sailing with the boy. Benny (the border collie) crept to the water's edge, very gently plucked the flower from the water, and placed it in Lil' Griff's, the third wheel's, lap.

Aww... That's adorable, Griff.

Benny knows how to suck up. :haha: Wonder if he was trying to cheer up the chaperon/3rd wheel?