You Too Can Be Like Me

I get a lot of compliments at work about my lunches. It always looks so good one person says. Or it smells delicious. Or wow you must be a good cook. Seriously... I'm not. I'm not a bad cook but in reality I'm not a good cook either. So here they are... my secrets for being a "good cook"

1 - I only cook what I like. I live alone. I don't have to cater to different tastes than mine. I cook what I want to eat.

2 - It's all about the mixes and sauces. I don't need to make Thai Curry from scratch... Combine a few tablespoons from a jar of curry seasoning and a can of coconut milk and there you go. Taco seasoning, lemon chicken, kung pao chicken, spicy beef and rice, blah blah blah... all from those spice packages at the grocery store. They have easy explanations on the back and if you don't like an ingredient on the list... exclude it. No big deal.

3 - Make enough so you have left overs. Don't want PB&J for lunch every day... bring left over dinner from last night. (Except fish. Everyone in your building will hate you if you reheat fish in the microwave. Seriously. I'm telling you. NO FISH!). Again, as a singleton, I usually end up with enough left overs for about 3 days. Most people don't have the fortitude to eat the same lunch every day for 3 days... but then again they do. They eat PB&J 3 days don't they now? :)

Could, Should, Will

Could: So we have a 3 day weekend coming up. I like to sit here and dream about what I could do that weekend. Fly down to Mexico. Train up to Vancouver. Go to Astoria and hang out on the coast of Oregon. (Ok probably not that one because hotels in Astoria are EXPENSIVE) I could go camping. Haven't been in awhile. It might be nice just to rent a car and spend the weekend camping. (Although camping is always more expensive than you think it will be)

Should: I should clean and work on sorting and packing. A three day weekend is ideal for this. I have stuff in storage to sort through. I have to clean. I can begin boxing things to get rid of them or to put into storage until I'm ready to move. I don't need all my bric a brac out or all my books and all that. (Or really I can get rid of things and throw things away and clean which is great and needs to happen.) I know I'm not moving yet, but I am going to move. Come hell or high water I'm moving somewhere...

Will: However given option a and b I think I can safely guess what will probably happen. I'll do nothing. There'll be some trashy marathon of some show I didn't know I loved like Burn Notice or Law & Order SVU or Lifetime TV movies and I'll spend the weekend slack jawed and slightly drooling whilst I watch trashy tv.

A world of Unknown

I'm frustrated. I had hoped to be on my way out by now which clearly is not happening. Philly has not called. I am emailing the recruiter today. I am sick of not knowing what is happening with that. Yeah, probably I'm not getting the job, but honestly they could tell me that you know? Especially as excited as they originally seemed about me. (Or if it is a 'hiring freeze' that would be nice to know too). My recruiter friend thinks they are still considering me but also weighing their options. I'm hanging a lot of hope on this one because there is not much out there right now frankly. The funny thing is that I thought I'd take a couple weeks off from the hunt because I'm burnt out on it... so now it is a forced couple weeks off and I'm panicking. :) Isn't that the way it always goes.

Work is particularly difficult right now. We're changing to a different life insurance vendor. That would normally be no big deal. The problem... I have 3 people who will be dying in the next few months. The new vendor won't pay their claims because they were not actively at work on the 1st of the month. The old vendor won't pay because they aren't our vendor anymore. Interesting Catch 22 that is. I'm working it out, but it is a bit stressful...especially for the one whose death is imminent. (Well or for the one who seems to be in denial about her status... she's a fun one to talk to).

I checked out http://www.adoptuskids.org/ last night. It is basically a catalog of kids in foster care looking for families. It is interesting and is giving me some good insight into my future plans, if I go through with them. A few blogs I've started reading are scaring the hell out of me. :)

Can I have my money back?

So one thing I hate about election time is the damn phone calls. I loathe being called by a recording to explain why I should or should not vote for candidate x, y, or z. I especially loathe it when the voicemail (it's always voicemail, I rarely pick up my home phone) is just a recording of how bad the other candidate is. It goes to my whole hatred of attack ads. I could not care less what candidate x is or is not doing. Tell me what YOU are doing. I think after this election I'm not going to vote for any candidate whose campaign includes phone calls. I'm going to make a list of which candidates call and leave me voicemails and I'm not going to vote for them. They may be the only candidate who is pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-puppies and kitties on the ballot but I will not vote for them because they've pissed me off. (obviously it is too late for this election because I didn't keep track of the 4 different candidates who called the past two weeks. FOUR candidates for a freakin' primary election - although since I didn't keep track it could actually be the same candidate who I got called about 4 times... either way, there were 4 voicemails at home).

I was thinking about this whole stance yesterday before hopping in the shower and it made me wonder... if I had donated money to a candidate who then called with one of those recorded messages could I ask for my money back? Can you ask for your money back once you've donated it to someone? I think I should be able to. "You've pissed me off, I'm no longer supporting you... give me my $20 back!" I like that idea. :)

John Vogt sat in the wrong seat...

And other adventures in flying today:

So I've seen more famous people being out and about at the Burbank airport than I've seen anywhere else. (not that that's saying a lot. I have only ever seen Heather Lock lear in public doing normal people things). Today it was John Vogt. He was actually on my flight from Burbank to Phoenix. I wasn't sure it was him at first but he was literally right behind me as I was getting on the plane and I heard him on his cell phone. It was totally his voice. So I'm sitting on the plane watching him, since I'm about 4 or 5 rows behind him, and I'm apparently a stalker (I don't actually think it is stalking if I happen to randomly see someone famous on the plane actually) when first this woman gets on and sits next to him but then she goes to the back of the plane. Whilst she is gone another guy gets on the plane and takes her spot. She comes back and a discussion ensues and that's when John Voigt discovered he was actually in the wrong row. Hee.

So my next flight, it was REALLY empty. I'm in an aisle seat and this fairly youngish guy is on the window seat. After we've taken off I glance over to look out the window and notice he's watching something on his iPod. I look and realize he's watching p0rn on his iPod. P0RN! Seriously, dude? It's a 2.5 hour flight and you can't go without for that length of time. So once we're given the go ahead to begin moving about the cabin (because you can turn the electronics on before you can stand up) he and the iPod go to the bathroom. Ew. Ew. Ew. So during this 2.5 hour flight, he gets up no fewer than 5 times to go to the bathroom. Sometimes he brought the iPod sometimes he didn't. I kind of thought he might have actually been doing drugs in the bathroom, but I didn't really know. In any event he annoyed me greatly. By the 4th time he got up I kind of wanted to punch him.

In related news, the kiddos are very very cute. Tenna (as she calls herself) cracked my shit up. I spent the very short period of time being called Joyanne, Jordanne, Jodanne, and any other variation of Joanne you can imagine. That baby, Olivia, is a very good baby. I held her for a little while today before I left. It is not my favorite thing... holding little babies. They kind of freak me out.

It's like they're reading this blog...

Which I hope they aren't because that would be creepy and troublesome and undoubtedly would lead me to not getting the job. So I got an email this morning that they were still interviewing candidates and they would let me know what the next step is. (Philly that is). That's better than silence. :)

No news is ... well no news.

Every day I come home to the fear that there'll be a TNT (thanks, but no thanks) letter from Philly in my mailbox. (Ok by every day I mean today and Monday.) I think I want this job. I hope I want this job. I hope I don't just take the job because it is the first one I get offered. Then again, I move out to Philadelphia and the economy gets better and I can always just look for a new job.

I also haven't heard form the one I phone screened for on Friday. I'm not anticiapting on hearing from them. I'm really okay with not hearing from them. Seriously. I must have totally not been paying attention when I applied there.

This week so far I applied to one in Milwaukee and one in Virginia. I was about half way through my cover letter for another one when I reread the job posting and thought I don't want THIS job, so I didn't apply for that one. I think it was also in Virginia.

I haven't reached total desperation yet... although I'm getting there. Well not really. I just really want something to happen so I can get out of this limbo I'm stuck in. I don't want to make too many future plans because I don't know if I'll still be here in Seattle. I don't want to make too many weekend plans because I may need the weekends to pack. It just sucks not knowing what is going to happen.

Things I like right now

Sadly I'm not in a great mood lately. And honestly, you people that are happy with your lives, whatever. I'm bitter and grouchy and I may not be as supportive as I should. Get over it I say.

So here's a list of things I like right now. Yes I'm well aware most of this list will include escapist activities. We'll see how it pans out:

Burn Notice: I spent most of Saturday glued to a marathon of Burn Notice. I only wish they had shown the episodes in order because I am not a regular watcher of the show and it might help me out a little bit. Otherwise. Awesome show and I need to become a regular watcher.

True Blood: I wasn't sure about this season when it first started, but now that we might finally be getting some ending to the neverneding Mary Ann orgy and the Light of Day church story is coming to a head it is getting interesting. Apparently I'm much more interested in bloodletting than sex.

Movies: I went and saw Funny People this past weekend. It was pretty good but I agree with the critic who said the entire Marin County part of the movie shouldn't have happened. It started getting meandering and lost its focus. It as around the two hour mark I leaned over to Lyday and commented that the movie was getting toooo long. And we still had 1/2 hour left. But movie theaters are air conditioned and 2 hours of escapism is very nice.

Nintenduh: I've been playing Gardening Mama on my Nintendo since I bought the game on Friday. It cracks me up. It is not at all ecologically sound as I get to use pesticides to kill off bugs and some other spray to kill off viruses. Whee. :) Also fun is Final Fantasy Tactics Something of the Grimoire. The newest FF game I bought makes me motion sick. That sucks.

Mama Mia: I've watched this movie more times in the past month than I ever thought I would ever see it. It has grown on me and now I want to buy the soundtrack. But only if the cast is actually singing it. I don't want someone else doing those songs. (Yay! According to amazon.com it is sung by the movie stars!)

Unintentionally Hysterical

So somewhere along the line I applied for a job in a small town (townx) in a rural area of a mid-western state. I have no idea how this happened I think I thought it was actually in the suburbs of a larger mid-western town (towna). I had a phone screen for said job on Friday. I finally got some time to check out the website of the company on Friday morning and as I looked around the site it became apparent that a - I was wrong and it was not in the suburbs of larger midwestern town and b - it is not the type of company I would ordinarily be looking at.

As I was surfing around the company's website I headed on over to their community events. Oh... they do an annual day where the town can come and take tours of the factory and do arts & crafts... that's cool. And look they have a group that does trail maintenance neat. And they provide scholarships. Great! And hmm.. what could this last item be... disability hunt? Hmm... how wonderful, they take developmentally disabled folks out and do a scavenger hunt with them. Neat! No. If you take those two words at their most literal meaning you can get what the activity is... they take people who have been disabled out to go hunting. Like for deer. Or wild game or whatever. There are photos. I was cracking up.

Finally during the phone screen the recruiter mentioned that sometimes I may have to go down to the plant. In order to do that, I would have to wear jeans and steel toed boots. It was so hard not to laugh my ass off. I'm really glad she didn't ask why this job was important to me or what excited me about this specific job because I would not have been able to answer that at all.