The Fourth R

When I was in college, the band put on an elaborate city-wide scavenger hunt once a year. I only did it once my junior year. Through a variety of circumstances I ended up on a team with several younger trombones and we hurtled around Atlanta in an old minivan finding and deciphering clues.

Since it was the band, there were shenanigans. The instructions said to bring, among other things, water guns and towels. One of the trombones I was with brought his Super Soaker, and once when we encountered another team at a clue site he shot it at their car and almost got them. We definitely weren't near first place but we were progressing decently until the evening when things started getting weird. We reached a clue site where the clue for our team was defaced. We called in to the command center and the person on the phone said they were calling us cheaters and jerks who didn't deserve to go further in the competition. Because the guy shot a Super Soaker! It was confusing that they were so mad when they said to bring water guns, and since he didn't get anybody wet (much). They claimed he almost got a laptop inside the car wet. But still that didn't have anything to do with us cheating at the clues. In any case we ended up stopping a clue later or so.

But the disturbing part was afterward. The competition had a website that listed the teams, and after the competition, the winners. A few days after the competition I noticed on the website that they had posted on the website that our team were disqualified for being cheaters and jerks! I forget the exact phrasing they used, but something along those lines. Our entire team's real names listed with defamatory comments. You found the website when you searched for our real names.

I was MAD. One guy shoots a Super Soaker and our whole team gets vilified on the Internet? Whiny, over-share blog aside, I'm very conscious of my "internet presence" and don't want false, negative comments about me online. So I tracked down the event organizers and called.

The thing was, each year the scavenger hunt is organized by the previous year's winners. And alumni can play, so with their advanced age and additional resources they tend to win. The organizers that year was a group in their 30s who had long since graduated and supposedly moved on.

So I, a 20-year-old college student, called and argued with the lead organizer guy, a married engineer in his mid-30s about why it was inappropriate for his team to defame innocent parties for a stupid water gun. He was so irrational and so unreasonable (though they did finally take it down), I had this thought over and over: "I shouldn't have to be the adult in this situation."

I've been feeling like that lately. I'm an adult. And a defining characteristic of being an adult is being reliable.

Being reliable is returning emails and phone calls promptly.
Being reliable is showing up prepared and on one time.
Being reliable is keeping plans and not changing them unnecessarily.
Being reliable is doing your job.

I'm really tired of being reliable when very few other people are.

I'm tired of being the adult.

Admit It

So, I'm pretty sure my asparagus fern has bit the dust.

Fluffy has been a good plant. I bought him sophomore year of college from Kroger. Karen bought a plant at the same time, and named hers "Penny" because she was annoyed when I paid for mine in coins (and the self-service kiosk stopped accepting quarters so I had to use smaller denominations). He survived the indoor heat wave of Spring Break '04, and a summer with Karen in which she decided he wouldn't fit in her car so she trimmed him an inch above the dirt. He survived all that.

So I guess I kept expecting him to come back from turning entirely brown this winter, but no dice.

Now I'll have to find something else to plant in the giant pot I bought him.

I completely zoned out at work today around 4 pm. I was working on a journal paper I've been supposed to be writing for nigh on two years. I know I just need to knuckle down and do it, but I find writing a journal paper very intimidating. The style of writing in journal papers is completely different than how I write.

I write so you can understand it.

4 pm really is my desired quitting time. After 4, I just don't want to be there. Not that I can't be totally productive after 4. Not that I haven't spent 12, 13-hour days at work. I've seen the south side of midnight more often than I'm comfortable with. It's just that that's the time of day where I don't want to be doing anything related to work. Though normally doing something interesting, like data analysis, keeps my mind off my desired quitting time.

And turns out writing a paper isn't consuming enough, so I felt the 4 pm very strongly today. And then, in looking for something else in my email, I saw my boss's boss said she wanted the paper by the end of June, not by June. So I went home.

Tomorrow will also be a short day at work. I'm taking time off to go on a homes tour with a real estate broker because I've decided to buy a place of my own this year for the following reasons:

1. Real estate prices are down, so now is a good time to buy.
2. Interest rates are currently down but likely to go up, so I want to get in before that.
3. I anticipate heavy inflation coming down the pike, which benefits debt-holders, so it's good to buy now before prices inflate.
4. I have saved enough of a down payment to avoid an FHA loan.
5. I want to be able to paint walls.
6. I want more outdoor space for plants besides three feet of walkway outside my door.

Of course, with what I think is a responsible monthly payment, the only places I can afford are next to the railroad tracks or the highway, are being sold "as is", or are in an area of Redwood City in which all business advertise only in Spanish. The houses my real estate broker thinks I can afford are nicer, so we're going to disagree. Though the prices I told him were 10% below what I'm actually willing to pay so we might be able to find a middle ground.

We'll have to see. I'm fine with ugly but I want structurally sound.

All About Me

I was going through Picasa today and realized that in four years of primarily only having photos of myself that I took on my own, I have chanced across some instances of honest, true portraits of realistic expressions on my face.

Since I'm feeling maudlin and unimportant lately, I'm going to indulge myself by posting some.

Honest happiness when showing off the quilt I made Karen for her wedding.

Ditto for a quilt for Project Linus.

Pensive in Virginia the summer I interned in the middle of nowhere.

Slightly suspicious smile in current living room.

Calm, ordinary smile.

Tired outside a pizza parlor in San Diego.

Lonely in Rothenburg ob der Tauber , Germany.

Speaking At Full Speed

At work, there used to be a guy who was very outgoing. If I hadn't already nicknamed a guy in college Overly Enthusiastic Mark, this guy would have gotten that appellation. He liked talking to people; his frequent laugh would echo raucously over the cubicle forest; he seemed happy.

That changed.

Over time, he gradually got quieter. His laugh didn't echo around the office area. His hands didn't gesture as widely when he talked. And then he left for another job.

The other day I happened across an AIM conversation I had three years ago and which I didn't remember. More importantly, I didn't recognize my own writing. It was witty, pithy, insightful. The me from back then greatly entertained the me from now. But I don't talk like that now. With that certainty, confidence, intelligence.

What the hell happened?

Part of the reason might be that with that particular friend I decided initially to hold nothing back. To immediately shoot down his stupid ideas, not even bother to entertain them. To give my opinion unabashedly, defend my position. "No, you can't wear red shoes with your interview suit, you'll look like Ronald McDonald." "Giving your girlfriend a RockBand action figure as a gift, while fun, says 'we're not serious!' exclamation point included."

But more, I worry I've changed. Have the constant pressures of being polite and PC at work and church repressed me? Is this the price I pay for the improved social skills I've gained from those environments - a loss of myself? That the socially acceptable me isn't really me?

When I was a senior in high school I was frustrated with writing a PC, smarmy, self-aggrandizing college essay and drafted what would be an honest, accurate description of myself.

I'm a weird little nerd who plays trombone, actually has a moral compass, is too mature for her age and her friends, enjoys spending time alone and playing on the computer, sews, knits, cooks, and bakes because she's fifty years behind today's modern woman, who no one understands because I use big words and say what I think.

I think I'm just revisiting that last clause. I want to speak at full speed again.

Unusual Productivity

I am surprised at how much I did this Sunday.

First, I had to get up early and go to church to set up the Communion juice and crackers. Normally I just distribute the juice into the cups, so I went a lot earlier because I'd have to set out the cups and also crack the matzoh into little pieces. Breaking the crackers took longer than I thought I would and I made a big mess. I mostly cleaned it up. Mostly.

But I still ended an hour before church, so I buzzed off to work and sampled my one reactor quickly. Turns out it was doing fine and didn't need any interventions, which is good. I like the quick weekend visits I've been making lately. I don't even take my purse off--I just wear it under my lab coat. Only fifteen minutes today!

I whipped back to church and got there fifteen minutes before service started, so I went to Payless Shoes around the corner, just to browse. But they had a good pair of peeptoe black pumps, which I've been looking for, so I bought them. Third thing done of the day and it wasn't even 11.

Then church, then my friend Christy came over for Excel lessons. I love Excel so when she asked if I could show it to her I was awkwardly enthusiastic. It's unlikely she'll need to know the heavy-duty mathematic calculations I use Excel for, so I showed her how to input data, how to sort it, and how to make charts.

To make up for it, today I did nothing of note. I guess I made some chocolate scotcheroos from the corn syrup cookbook I randomly own, and diddled around on my keyboard trying to re-learn Pachelbel's Canon, which I used to have memorized.

Mostly this week is focused on Wednesday because that's the start of my sister's and my trip to Disneyland. My sister wanted to go, and I haven't gone since high school (which was with the marching band and is colored with memories of the cool kids sneaking booze in their shampoo bottles and the drum major drinking peppermint schnapps in Coke which even at the time I thought was a weird combination), so we're going this week. We carefully planned it to not coincide with any UC's spring break, and not to be the week before or after Easter in order to avoid elementary school spring breaks. Wednesday I drive out to my parents' for dinner and to see them, then I'll stay with my sister so we can get a ludicrously early start down to LA. Ludicrous because it will break my "no getting up before 6 am" rule. But I'm game. I'd much rather get up that early for Disneyland than for a meeting, which I've also done.

I hope the freesias are blooming at my parents' house. There aren't many around here for me to smell. They're definitely my favorite flower. They smell so good. So far this year I've only gotten a few stealth smells in when I can find some at the edge of someone's front lawn. My mom tends to have a lot so I can get good smells in. Last year she let me take a big bouquet back with me to Oceanside after my one weekend visit, and they perfumed my whole hotel room.

Pretty, see:

Argh. Have to go to bed. I want to try and jog before work tomorrow. I have been lax about it, though I've been running around for experiments at work so much my pants are loose anyway. Probably doesn't count, though.

Cage Fight

Associate director: "They're going to lock us into a room until we make a decision."

Co-worker: "Like jury duty."

Me: "Like a cage fight."

I guess we all have different frames of reference.

Since I'm not involved in the cage fight, work has been going very well lately. I'm less stressed than I have been in a long time. Probably since July or August 2009. Even less stressed than during my whole December off, since that was complicated by my giant burn and it didn't end well. Very nice. I've been wondering if some source of stress up the management chain has been relieved. Sometimes I know what's going on that makes people worry but sometimes I have no idea. Maybe now is a good time for everyone.

Whatever. I hope it sticks for a while.

Not that I haven't been working hard. I've had back-to-back experiments and haven't had a day off since March 6. I kind of did it to myself so I can't be too mad. I accidentally got scheduled for ten reactors instead of six and thought, "Hey, more data!" and ran them all. I'm a sucker for more data. Idiot. But it went okay, and I did get more data. It doesn't tell me much, but it's more data.

I tried a new way to cook chicken tonight. I was making a meal for a woman from church who can't leave her house. I've cooked for her twice before and knows she prefers healthier selections because she's injured and can't work out. So what's healthier than baked chicken? I put a half-breast in the fridge to thaw on Monday and figured I'd bake it with the excellent spice rub "Pappy's Seasoning" that's fantastic on chicken. But then today after I got home from work I suddenly remembered the last time I cooked for her I made her Pappy's chicken! Obviously I had the same great idea twice. (Just like how when my friend Yael comes over here for dinner I've twice had the great idea to make couscous with chickpeas and vegetables since she's kosher-itarian). I have standards about this, so I had to make something else.

So I remembered how my friend Allison does great looking roast chickens, and dotted it with smashed garlic cloves and rosemary leaves instead of the Pappy's. But there was nowhere inconspicuous to take a taste, so I have no idea how it turned out. It looks pretty good but I have no idea. I'll have to try it again at a time when I can eat it.

I'm also going to try something new tomorrow night. We're having a potluck for my church group and I'm not going to have much time to cook anything what with work and making this meal tonight. I've been very intrigued by the recipe in Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook where you layer hominy, frozen corn, roasted chilis, and cheese in a slow cooker.

I have hominy. I have frozen corn. I have green chilis in a can which is close enough - I'm not going to the effort of roasting chilis for a slow cooker recipe. I have cheese especially because there was an extra package of Mexican blend after our last potluck.

But I don't have 4 hours of slow cooker time so I'm going to bake it like a casserole because I don't see why you really have to make it in a slow cooker. And I'm going to add layers of ground beef because I don't have two cans of hominy, and that should make it heartier. So we'll see. It could be horrible. But there will be boys there. They eat anything. One eats hot sauces as entertainment. Yeah, beef in the hominy should go over fine.

I anticipate having to explain what hominy is at least four times over the course of the evening.

Instructions Are For Sissies

Yes, obviously, the first thing you're supposed to do with a new recipe is read it all the way through. And I did. ...Enough to get all the right ingredients.

I was making a strata for Bonnie and Allison, who came over on Sunday for a book-less book club--which is bookless because our foray into classics with Lolita was particularly disastrous. Stratas are easy. You layer bread with some other ingredients--here, sausage and Granny Smith apples--and pour over eggs. The perfect make-ahead casserole.

Except the catch. You don't pour over just eggs. It's eggs mixed with milk. I got to that stage of the recipe and thought it was weird the eggs only covered the filling junk halfway. Yeahhhhh, totally forgot the two cups of milk. I ended up dumping out the entire casserole into my biggest bowl and mixing in the two cups of milk. And some extra eggs just in case. So much for the layers the strata is named after.

Then the next day I realized I forgot to put in the sage I paid $5 for at the grocery store.

At that stage, it stayed sage-less. In the end it turned out pretty well. I think the dumping and stirring incorporated the bread bits nicely, so it was a uniform texture throughout the egg portion. Bonnie brought fresh pineapple and berries for a luxurious fruit salad and Allison brought great scones (Ina Garten). We do food good.

Today I was at 99 Ranch and had a devil of a time finding tamarind paste. At least, I think what I got was tamarind paste. But then, I was never sure what I got last time was tamarind paste either. That stuff was a sticky block called "Tamarind Seedless" which nonetheless had tons of crap in it. Today I found a jar labeled "Concentrate Cooking Tamarind". We'll see. Tomorrow I'm making pad thai again, returning to the America's Test Kitchen recipe I first tried but this time without the dried shrimp that made it taste like death.

Half the battle of cooking Asian recipes is getting the right ingredients. When I bought the dried shimp I couldn't find it either because it wasn't in the aisle labeled "Dried Seafood". Perplexing. I should probably just go to the other Asian store that's organized by country. But it smells worse.