Feel the Burn

I got burned.

Not in the "my date never showed up" sense. Or the "I thought it was a good idea to invest with a guy named Bernie Madoff" sense. But in the literal, scalded, apricot-sized-blisters sense.

After the Thanksgiving dinner with my dad's side of the family but before the Thanksgiving dinner with my mom's side of the family, I wanted to breath steam from my mom's steam inhaler on the off chance my slight nasal congestion was a cold. But while I was holding it a little water splashed out and burned my left thumb. In the recoil I dropped the entire steamer, and spilled the entire contents of boiling water onto my lap.

Gotta say, I don't think I've ever gotten my pants off that fast. But it wasn't fast enough. My left leg got a swatch of first degree burn and my right leg got a second degree burn larger than my outspread hand. I didn't have the heart to ever measure it with a ruler because I thought that would depress me.

But it's better now. I was hoping the Internet was overestimating the two- to four-week healing time but no, I'm on right on track. Tomorrow I'll be two weeks in and the gooey center is starting to close up. But luckily it has stopped hurting, and only is uncomfortable when the bandage inevitably slips down. Of course, my scale for pain has been completely reset, so "uncomfortable" might not be what I would have called it before.

But in good news, today was my last real day of work until January. I accumulated a ton of vacation and extra time off over the last year and I'm finally taking it. I have a scientific writing class for the next two days, and then it'll be sleeping in, watching TV, and baking for Christmas. I also have other goals for my time off like eating more cheese, going to the Round Table Pizza lunch buffet, making spaghetti squash, and backing up my parents' computer for them. I've been meaning to do all those things for a while and I finally get a chance. Yes, I really do have "eat more cheese" on my goal list. It's on the whiteboard above my heater. (It's the whiteboard at work that has my list of cheeses. It took about two months before anyone at work noticed it.)

Another thing I should accomplish during my vacation is finish re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia. I'm trying to see if I can understand any of the Christian symbolism now that I'm older and have read the Bible the whole way through. So far, no. I might know more now but I'm still me and I never get symbolism. Things are what they are.

Plus, I just can't get over my conviction that Mr. Tumnus is a pedophile. I mean, an adult male naked except for a red scarf encounters a small girl alone in a strange place and persuades her to come back to his house where he plies her with food and music so that she falls asleep? Come on!

I can't take James McAvoy serious in any of his roles because of that movie.

I made an upleasant vegetable soup for dinner this week. I even bought vegetables especially for it. Stupid health kick. I mean, it's not that bad, but it's vegetables. Blatantly vegetables. Not even well-hidden, like when I put onions and celery and peas in a couscous pilaf.

The reason I was inspired to eat healthy was because last week I didn't eat healthy. I was in New Orleans for a conference for work, and I ate some good things. A peanut butter burger. Beignets. Cauliflower au gratin. Chocolate cannoli. Baked fettuccine. White chocolate bread pudding. Regular bread pudding. Notice how there aren't a lot of fruits or vegetables in that list. On business trips I can always tell my nutrition is suffering when I start telling myself fruit juice or the lettuce on burgers counts toward the 5-6 servings a day the government suggests for health and wellness.

I did try some regional specialties besides the beignets. The gumbo was all right, I don't see why it's a big deal but it's all right, but the crawfish pasta was the worst thing I've been forced to eat in a long time. I wasn't sure I'd like crawfish since I hate all other shellfish, so I thought crawfish pasta was a good idea since I could eat the pasta if I hated the crawfish.

Crawfish flavor migrates.

And thus my seafood list is still salmon, fish sticks, and tuna fillets out of the envelopes.

Oh, the conference was good too. It was on a lot of topics besides my actual area, which I found interesting. Best parts: when an expert on a panel answered the question "What is your opinion on the field of detecting subvisible particles?" with "I wish we had any ways to detect subvisible particles" and when one guy a few rows behind me in the audience began snoring ludicrously loudly. I also brought home six pens, a t-shirt, four or five reusable bags, a luggage strap, an eyeglass cleaning cloth, two full-size chocolate bars, and one pill within a pill that a company was advertising and I thought was really cool.

I drove around on my way back to the airport to see if there was any Katrina damage still. It took me about half an hour to find an alternate route over one bridge that was still out, so that answer is "yes". Trying to find another bridge led me through a neighborhood that had empty plots, boarded up buildings, and some houses with the spray-painted X's from search and rescue. But oddly, when I got to the lower 9th ward that was supposed to have the worst Katrina damage, most of it was being rebuilt in a different, obviously more hurricane-resistant style, on top of pilings with rooflines diagonal to the river. My cousin told me afterwards that's Brad Pitt's pet project.

I made the best chocolate cake yesterday. A Triple Chocolate Fudge cake mix, four eggs, a cup of sour cream, half a cup of oil, half a cup of water, one and a half cups chocolate chips, in a Bundt pan. Warm out of the oven? Heaven. Oh my gosh that was good chocolate cake.

It redeems me after last week's disaster:




Now I know the pitfalls of a too-soft filling. I ended up bringing it to church on Thursday and my group members made it into a model of Waterloo with Trader Joe's animal crackers.

But at work when I brought in the good cake and mentioned I'd made one the week before that sucked one of the new group members said they would have eaten it anyway, they're equal-opportunity cake-eaters. Good to know!

Though I would still be embarassed to bring in the blue disaster.

The funny smell has been coming from the downstairs neighbors' often enough that I ended up with this collection of candle detritus:


I like the picture, I don't like the smell. Found out from the landlady it's supposedly Chinese herbs. Still, I'm not going to accept feeling nauseated in my own apartment. The next time I smell the smell I'm having a dance party in high heels. Or just getting my hammer out and making my point a little more directly.

But I want to buy my own place, preferably one without shared floors or walls. So, while I was burning more candles the other night, I figured out that if I reduce my retirement savings I might be able to do that in another year. That would be awesome. I just need to find a place that doesn't need too many repairs since I am demonstrably not handy.

Only six weeks of work until I take a month off for Christmas, and one of those I'll be gone at a conference and there's Thanksgiving in there too. Woo hoo! Unfortunately we added an extra experiment on so I'm running around this week, but I'm hopeful I'll be able to churn out the report that's due before the end of the year without much trouble. I did almost a quarter of it today, and that was in between a lot of running around.

And I mean running around literally. I kept having to look for people who sit on the first or third floors and my desk is on the second. So it was up and down stairs over and over. Which are oddly dusty. Our offices got renovated a few months ago and I don't think they've been vacuumed since. The new carpet is darker than the old carpet, so maybe it's just more visible now. But it makes me wish I had a Dustbuster. Though I'd have to go in on the weekend to do it, people would think that was weird. Probably.

Off topic, I am in love with this clip from Glee. I hate the original song - it's so slutty, and it reminds me of pedophilia, plus Katy Perry's falsetto is atrocious. I'll turn it off if it comes on the radio. But an all-male a capella group performing it? ::Swoon:: I've been letting it play on repeat.

I know it's been radio-silence around here for a while, and there's a good reason. I've been in Germany! Work sent me to Munich for almost four weeks to help transfer our process to the site there.

The trip ended up being really great. It was a good cap to an amazingly busy year. My work assignment was straightforward (answer questions from the folks there, help a little in lab), and everyone associated with my normal job was in a completely different time zone, so I had absolutely zero urgent things to deal with.

And, unlike in my regular job, I had weekends free! That let me do things like see the Residenz Museum (at right), the previous downtown residence of the royal family.

And go to Wollmeise and get yarn for my sister that she can't get in the States.

And I saw the Dachau concentration camp memorial - where I ran into someone I knew! My dad runs into people he knows all over the place, with the most impressive one being that he ran into a guy he knew while crossing the White House lawn. But I think running into Kevin, who was in band freshman year, at Dachau when we both happened to be in Munich on business beats that hands-down. Since we were the only Americans we knew in Munich we went sight-seeing together. To Salzburg:




To Schloss Nymphenburg, the royal summer residence that used to be outside the city and now is accessible by all trains.
Where I took this picture I really like of a gazebo on the grounds.

We also toured monuments and fancy churches:


And Schloss Blutenburg, which had a moat!




I was also in Munich during Oktoberfest. While this made hotels difficult to find and expensive, it did mean that work organized a trip to drink beer. Here I am with Thomas from work with the Oktoberfest grounds behind us:



After I finished working I had two days off before I flew back and I saw Rothenburg ob de Tauber, a well-preserved medieval town:




And I visited the royal palaces Linderhof:



And Neuschwanstein, the one that inspired the Disneyland castle:


Neuschwanstein was gorgeous inside (and they allowed no pictures so I can't show it). Unlike all the other palaces I saw, which were rococo and gold leaf everything and swirls and vases, Neuschwanstein was supposed to look like a medieval castle and had a totally different style. More carved wood and murals. Really beautiful.

And then I flew back! By that time I was very, very tired of German food (which is mostly sausage, pork, and dumplings). But on the flight they announced that in honor of Oktoberfest they were having an Oktoberfest-themed meal! Curses. But the Italian food that I had there was great. I want to try making spaghetti carbonara again, because the stuff I had there was so good. I even had wild boar pappardelle at one point that was beyond delicious.

And since I got back I have had a horrible, horrible cold and have been completely out of it. I'm very glad at whatever foresight made me block off this week as vacation. Well, I'm not sure if it was foresight. It was more that I have an unbelievable amount of vacation and comp time I haven't been able to take, and grabbed the opportunity when it arose. But in any case, it worked out really well because I've just putzed around and watched TV and blew my nose all the time.

Poetry

Found this which I apparently wrote sophomore year at Tech. Sums up a lot.

Maybe if I weren't sober or if I weren't straight
Would I accept the impossible date
From the guy in my math class
Who stalks me all day
From morning till evening
He won't go away

He won't make eye contact
Except when he stares.
He's socially awkward
And hygiene impaired.

To Illustrate

I think graduating college has been good for my appearance.



2004 2010

I'm randomly at my lowest recorded weight since 2003 (the only upside to stress and long hours) so I realized before church this would be the perfect time to wear one of the skirts my mom made that are kind of tight at the waistband. Good choice, turns out at five pounds less they fit great.

Yesterday I went to an ice cream tasting thrown by a couple I know from church. (Balsamic Strawberry - yes. Miso Peach - no.) The husband told me that my Facebook post about salmon-flavored burps made him laugh so hard he wasn't able to post a comment. That makes a couple of people who have told me they like my Facebook posts. It's weird because they just come about because I have friends from every aspect of my life so I can't post about work, I try not to be about church all the time, I don't like doing politics, and that leaves the random little stuff. Like saying that after two years I finally got tired of Frosted Mini Wheats which bizarrely garnered the most replies I've had. It's nice to amuse people though I guess.

This week I've been eating cauliflower with American cheese melted over it. That always reminds me of food coloring.

When I was 13 I wanted to learn how to decorate cakes. The Wilton class at the party store was canceled so I taught myself. But my mom didn't believe in artificial food coloring, so I was limited to coloring frosting with cocoa, spinach juice, or beet juice. While I made some very pretty monochromatic cakes in shades of chocolate the Wilton yearbooks had amazing cakes in a rainbow of colors.

But then there was an incident that made my mom change her mind. One day I wanted to make a cake with pink frosting all over as the base for monochromatic roses and leaves. My mom remembered we'd had beets for dinner earlier that week and instructed me to use the collected juice from the bottom of the jar where the leftovers were stored. So I did.

But when we tasted the cake something was horribly, horribly wrong. What my mom hadn't remembered and I, at 13, didn't think was important, was that my dad had put the beets away in the same container as cauliflower with cheese. So by using the juice in that container for the frosting we had ended up with a cauliflower-, cheese-, and beet-flavored cake.

And after that I was allowed to use fully artificial, fully rainbow food coloring.