That was a good weekend.
I took Friday as a vacation day, which meant that I worked on my presentations at home rather than at the office but I got to sleep in so that counts. Friday night I went and played Bingo at Christy's grandmother's Elks lodge which is a lot of fun even if I don't win anything (and I usually don't).
Then Christy came to my place and we had a sleepover. Quite a traditional sleepover, with late-night chatting, sleeping in, and then pancakes. I made the triple ginger pancakes from the King Arthur whole grain cookbook and they were really good. I thought they'd be overwhelmingly gingery what with the powdered ginger, fresh ginger, and crystallized ginger but no. They were just pancakes with a delightful ginger flavor. And whole grain!
Then Christy and I rented Precious from a Redbox ripoff at the grocery store, which was very convenient and I completely understand why Blockbuster is screwed. The movie was good. Not uplifting but not as depressing as I'd predicted. We watched a little Eddie Izzard afterward to get the taste out of our minds. "They conquered the world through the cunning use of flags!"
Today was back to the grind. I really feel as if I have a regular job plus labwork, because I have to edge the labwork into odd little pieces of my day. A little bit of cell culture work in the morning, some arranging samples after that, meetings, desk work, going back to lab to sample, desk work again, running back to collect the samples, etc. I was walking all over so I didn't feel too bad I didn't make it to the gym (had to leave later than I wanted to, and was very hungry, all add up to not making it to the gym). Though I did boogie out to The Secret Handshake for twenty minutes at home, which should also count as exercise.
Thursday at the church group they're having groups from all over come to hear some big speaker guy. Christy and I admitted to each other we're excited about the prospect of meeting new guys besides the ones at our own church. I'll be covering the food table for a girl who can't be there, and I plan to bake something too. I'll have to think carefully about what would be the best thing to bring...
Monday, March 15, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
I can name 31 types of cheese.
I learned that in my training session today. Also some stuff about change control, new product introduction, process catalog. But mostly that now I can list 31 types of cheese. I forgot a few--Stilton, Edam.
Work has been busy. I have two important presentations in the next two weeks and I'm not prepared yet. So much other stuff has come up. I'm not even really sure what I do each day but these presentations, the major things I have do, don't get done. I did have a really great breakthrough yesterday. There was going to have to be meetings and discussion about how many decimal places we kept in this series of documents because when you imported values from Excel to Word, Word Word kept changing all these numbers to either look like "1. " instead of "1.00" or "0.249999999999" instead of "0.25". But I was trying it myself, and I realized if you put the number in to Excel with a single quote ahead of it before you imported it to Word, to designate it as text rather than a number, it came out perfectly. I let the tech writer know and she was incredibly happy. A single punctuation mark can save having to coordinate significant figure agreement across several departments! Thank goodness.
Sigh. Time to go to bed already. That two hours of non-work time went fast.
I learned that in my training session today. Also some stuff about change control, new product introduction, process catalog. But mostly that now I can list 31 types of cheese. I forgot a few--Stilton, Edam.
Work has been busy. I have two important presentations in the next two weeks and I'm not prepared yet. So much other stuff has come up. I'm not even really sure what I do each day but these presentations, the major things I have do, don't get done. I did have a really great breakthrough yesterday. There was going to have to be meetings and discussion about how many decimal places we kept in this series of documents because when you imported values from Excel to Word, Word Word kept changing all these numbers to either look like "1. " instead of "1.00" or "0.249999999999" instead of "0.25". But I was trying it myself, and I realized if you put the number in to Excel with a single quote ahead of it before you imported it to Word, to designate it as text rather than a number, it came out perfectly. I let the tech writer know and she was incredibly happy. A single punctuation mark can save having to coordinate significant figure agreement across several departments! Thank goodness.
Sigh. Time to go to bed already. That two hours of non-work time went fast.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Spent three days in Oceanside this week for work. Meetings and meetings and giving a training. Our group leader (my original boss) always insists I enjoy myself on trips for work, go to the beach, etc.
Those are kind of mutually exclusive for me. What do you do on a beach? Swim, I guess. I'm not into swimming. Sunbathe, but you know, the cancer, plus it's a work trip so I'm in the office during daylight hours. Scuba or surf but I'm allergic to wetsuits. Build sandcastles, I'd actually like that, but I A. never remember, B. never have the relevant equipment and C. would look stark raving crazy doing it on my own as an adult. And that leaves walking on the beach, which I did do.
The truth is I'd worked out at the hotel gym that morning so my legs starting hurting after I'd walked about 20 minutes, so I took some time to walk very slowly and then very quickly through a flock of seagulls, which was actually quite entertaining and juvenile, and then went back to the car.
That night I got the best pad thai I've ever had from a place called Thai One On. My sister and I have tried pad thai at a number of places by now and I never saw why people liked it. But this place's pad thai, simply delicious. Interestingly flavored noodles, little bit of crunch from peanuts, just great. I'd get it again. I also got a fish dish because I thought fish would be healthy but it turned out to be fried and wasn't fantastic.
There was another food find, too. A place called The Petite Madeline Bakery, highly rated on Yelp. They had a pastry that was croissant dough rolled up with cinnamon sugar like a cinnamon roll but coated on all sides, not just inside, and then baked in a muffin tin. They called them the All-Day Buns, and they were heavenly. I went twice. The first time I also got a chocolate croissant and the second time I also got a "meltaway cookie" that had the most amazing delicate texture and a raspberry walnut scone that was the best scone I've ever had with a simultaneous moist and tender crumb and a vein of raspberry jam on top. On my first visit I got a vanilla latte which was about as good as Starbucks (i.e. nothing to write home about), but on the second visit I tried one of their teas because it had freesias in it. I love freesias as a flower because they smell great, but I'd never eaten them before. And the tea was very good. The only tea that I've never needed sugar in. It seemed naturally sweet. I've looked for something similar online I could purchase and can't find it.
I'm afraid my expense report for this trip is going to look really odd. The first night when I was driving from the airport to the hotel, I didn't know anywhere to stop for dinner so about halfway there I got off the highway and planned to use my GPS to search for restaurants (the most useful feature of the fancy-smancy GPS I bought, moreso than the traffic alerts that were the reason I got that model). But the first safe-looking place to pull over had an El Pollo Loco. I was curious about El Pollo Loco, having only tried it once before in high school I think, so I ate there. Turns out I shouldn't have, but now I know. The next night I couldn't pick anywhere I specifically wanted to go to dinner, rendered indecisive by everything's large relative distance from the hotel and that at the time I didn't feel like Thai which was the most recommended on Yelp, until I saw that a grocery store was nearby and I honestly gasped out loud and thought "I could buy a Lunchable!" I swear, I've got to be the only adult in the Four Seasons who thinks that. And I got a Lunchable, and a bag of salad, and a tangerine thing that rattled around in its rind but was good. And a pint of Ben and Jerry's. And I really enjoyed it! We're allotted over $50 for dinner and I had a Lunchable. And then the next day, there was a Taco Bell within walking distance of the plant, and I'd been seeing commercials for their new 5-layer burrito with nacho sauce between two tortillas around beans, meat, and cheese. It sounded great. I like tortillas (and pasta and noodles and bread and rice and everything white, refined, and anti-Atkins), and nacho cheese, and overall it just sounded great. But by this point, past the bakery the previous morning, a pint of Ben and Jerry's, and everything else I felt I should only get one Taco Bell item. So I just got the 5-layer burrito. It cost 97 cents. I am going to expense-report 97 for lunch. Plus, the next night I got kind of lost trying to find a restaurant near the airport before I returned the rental car, didn't have time to go to a sit-down restaurant, and ended up at a Dell Taco because there were several fast food joints and I'd never eaten at a Dell Taco before. Like Taco Bell, but it serves hamburgers and fries in addition to tacos. I decided I like Taco Bell better.
Anyway, it's going to be a really weird expense report. The whole time I was there I kept thinking what was my boss going to think when she had to review the expense report. It's an odd assortment of food. I think a lot of it was that the hotel was really far away from everything, like 20 minutes. It was hard to coordinate getting dinner after work when I wasn't necessarily hungry right at five. When I'm down there for longer at the end of the month I'll stay in a hotel that's closer to the plant, to restaurants, and that will have a kitchen. Just having a fridge will make things easier, this time I kept shoving salad in the little mini bar.
Those are kind of mutually exclusive for me. What do you do on a beach? Swim, I guess. I'm not into swimming. Sunbathe, but you know, the cancer, plus it's a work trip so I'm in the office during daylight hours. Scuba or surf but I'm allergic to wetsuits. Build sandcastles, I'd actually like that, but I A. never remember, B. never have the relevant equipment and C. would look stark raving crazy doing it on my own as an adult. And that leaves walking on the beach, which I did do.
The truth is I'd worked out at the hotel gym that morning so my legs starting hurting after I'd walked about 20 minutes, so I took some time to walk very slowly and then very quickly through a flock of seagulls, which was actually quite entertaining and juvenile, and then went back to the car.
That night I got the best pad thai I've ever had from a place called Thai One On. My sister and I have tried pad thai at a number of places by now and I never saw why people liked it. But this place's pad thai, simply delicious. Interestingly flavored noodles, little bit of crunch from peanuts, just great. I'd get it again. I also got a fish dish because I thought fish would be healthy but it turned out to be fried and wasn't fantastic.
There was another food find, too. A place called The Petite Madeline Bakery, highly rated on Yelp. They had a pastry that was croissant dough rolled up with cinnamon sugar like a cinnamon roll but coated on all sides, not just inside, and then baked in a muffin tin. They called them the All-Day Buns, and they were heavenly. I went twice. The first time I also got a chocolate croissant and the second time I also got a "meltaway cookie" that had the most amazing delicate texture and a raspberry walnut scone that was the best scone I've ever had with a simultaneous moist and tender crumb and a vein of raspberry jam on top. On my first visit I got a vanilla latte which was about as good as Starbucks (i.e. nothing to write home about), but on the second visit I tried one of their teas because it had freesias in it. I love freesias as a flower because they smell great, but I'd never eaten them before. And the tea was very good. The only tea that I've never needed sugar in. It seemed naturally sweet. I've looked for something similar online I could purchase and can't find it.
I'm afraid my expense report for this trip is going to look really odd. The first night when I was driving from the airport to the hotel, I didn't know anywhere to stop for dinner so about halfway there I got off the highway and planned to use my GPS to search for restaurants (the most useful feature of the fancy-smancy GPS I bought, moreso than the traffic alerts that were the reason I got that model). But the first safe-looking place to pull over had an El Pollo Loco. I was curious about El Pollo Loco, having only tried it once before in high school I think, so I ate there. Turns out I shouldn't have, but now I know. The next night I couldn't pick anywhere I specifically wanted to go to dinner, rendered indecisive by everything's large relative distance from the hotel and that at the time I didn't feel like Thai which was the most recommended on Yelp, until I saw that a grocery store was nearby and I honestly gasped out loud and thought "I could buy a Lunchable!" I swear, I've got to be the only adult in the Four Seasons who thinks that. And I got a Lunchable, and a bag of salad, and a tangerine thing that rattled around in its rind but was good. And a pint of Ben and Jerry's. And I really enjoyed it! We're allotted over $50 for dinner and I had a Lunchable. And then the next day, there was a Taco Bell within walking distance of the plant, and I'd been seeing commercials for their new 5-layer burrito with nacho sauce between two tortillas around beans, meat, and cheese. It sounded great. I like tortillas (and pasta and noodles and bread and rice and everything white, refined, and anti-Atkins), and nacho cheese, and overall it just sounded great. But by this point, past the bakery the previous morning, a pint of Ben and Jerry's, and everything else I felt I should only get one Taco Bell item. So I just got the 5-layer burrito. It cost 97 cents. I am going to expense-report 97 for lunch. Plus, the next night I got kind of lost trying to find a restaurant near the airport before I returned the rental car, didn't have time to go to a sit-down restaurant, and ended up at a Dell Taco because there were several fast food joints and I'd never eaten at a Dell Taco before. Like Taco Bell, but it serves hamburgers and fries in addition to tacos. I decided I like Taco Bell better.
Anyway, it's going to be a really weird expense report. The whole time I was there I kept thinking what was my boss going to think when she had to review the expense report. It's an odd assortment of food. I think a lot of it was that the hotel was really far away from everything, like 20 minutes. It was hard to coordinate getting dinner after work when I wasn't necessarily hungry right at five. When I'm down there for longer at the end of the month I'll stay in a hotel that's closer to the plant, to restaurants, and that will have a kitchen. Just having a fridge will make things easier, this time I kept shoving salad in the little mini bar.
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