Thanksgiving

Any holiday that involves pie is high on my list of great holidays. My mom spends days cooking one meal, that we inevitably eat in half an hour. My mom wants us to spend an equivalent amount of time enjoying her food, and we do over the course of the weekend. When I moved out, I asked if there was something I could bring, to help lessen the load.
One year I tried to bake a pie...... big mistake :) I mean, my pie was edible. But the crust had not been practiced for 25 years, honed to a delectable pastry. And the filling was ok, but it was not the result of the careful application of cinnamon to apples that experience teaches. And so it sat on the counter until all the other pie was eaten. So now I practice my pie technique in less strenuous competitions, so that some day, I will be as good as my mom.
What I have learned over the years is that my mom will make everything she has always made regardless of what I offer to bring. So my goals have changed, from trying to imitate a traditional dish, to just complimenting what my mom does. So I try to find a vegetable or fruit side dish that will be tasty. You know, you can find some really great side dish recipes on the internet. One year I made a cauliflower dish that was good. Another year I made a totally awesome BLTA salad (bacon, lettuce, tomato and avocado). This was so good, I repeated it the next year. This year I am trying out asparagus on my family. Shhhh, all they know is that I am going to bring a salad. But inside the salad will be asparagus. We will see how this goes over. As a backup, I am bringing corn, which everyone likes.
What are your favorite recipes, or the new ones you like to try?

Ode to a Junk Drawer

In one of Terry Pratchett's books, there is a goddess of Things that Stick in Drawers (Going Postal). She is responsible for junk drawers, you know the one you have where you can't quite get it open without sticking your hand in, and you are very careful about sticking your hand in because you never know what sharp object it will encounter........
I have lived in my house for two years, and in my kitchen I had two cabinets that qualified as junk cabinets. While unpacking, there were things I didn't know what to do with .... and figured I would find a place later...... and it was nice to put the stuff out of sight....... and you know how that out of sight out of mind thing goes.......
Later has come and gone, and the cabinets have multiplied their contents of "stuff" that has no place to live. Well, no more. One of the many reasons I love this time of year is I have vacation time to not go on vacation, but to stay home and do the little odds and ends that the rest of the year I procrastinate on. So today, I tackled these kitchen cabinets. So out go the empty light bulb boxes, the half burned candles, and the 6 extension cords. Voila! Empty cabinets.

I eat people like you for breakfast

Since I have been gone for a month, many things have happened that I have not blogged about, due to the lack of internet. And I forgot how to write a blog entry, hence the one I just posted without a title. I will get back into the swing of things eventually.

But as I was perusing my blog comments, I remembered that I had posted about the first dance I went to this year and the kid who was stunned to find out I am a successful, financially independent software engineer with a career. So to update you on this situation, I have successfully blown away two other boys heads! No, I really don't set out to do this. It just happens. So the next victim was at a dance, and he asked what I did and I said I work at IBM, and he was like, IBM, WHOA! what do you do there, and I said I write software. These are my phrases to play it down. And he was like, WHOA! you write software, oh my gosh, did you go to MIT and graduate with a 4.0, and I said something like that, and he said WHOA, and I said just kidding, I went to UNC Chapel Hill which is better (oh yea, Tarheels rock!). Anyway for the rest of the dance he kept muttering IBM! Writes Software! I did try to ask him what he did and make it sound like it was equally hard but...... it didn't help put his head back together.

So then at church on Sunday the pianist for the choir wasn't there, so a guy filled in. He did a great job. So afterwards I told him he did a great job filling in on short notice, and so we got to chatting and he asked what I do. So I said I worked at IBM. And his eyes got big and he said no way, what do you do? and I said I write software (obviously my playing it down phrases aren't working!) and his eyes got bigger and his head started to spin and he said, but you don't look like... i mean... i wouldn't have thought that you.... that is.... my brother in law is a geek and he has a gut and you don't look like .... and I said, oh, I am too pretty to be writing software? well, thanks. but what do you do? and he said he was going on a mission........... needless to say the conversation pretty much ended there because I had ruined his entire perception of what computer geeks are, and I didn't want to do any more harm to a future missionary.

I have to admit, part of me thrills at seeing the eyes grow big, the head start to spin........ but part of me does think I should be nice and come up with euphimisms for what I do. Where do you work? Oh, just a local company in RTP. What do you do there? Attend meetings and take notes, mostly. Satisfy customers. Corral cats with a leaf blower. Of course, I think my sister had the right idea.... "I can't tell you my name because I am in the witness protection program"

What will they think of next

I have been traveling on business for the last three weeks, and have not access to the internet in the usual manner that I do at home. For some reason customers lock down their internet access, so I can't blog or check facebook. So this is a blog entry that was written in notepad while I sat for 10 hours waiting for an upgrade to complete. Ah, the joys of the career of a software engineer!

The first amusement park I went to was Kings Dominion. I don't actually remember this, but my family went for my sisters 2nd birthday or something. Obviously, if I was only 4, I didn't ride many rides. The next time my family went to an amusement park it was Busch Gardens with my aunt and her family. I was tall enough to ride the Loch Ness Monster. It was sooooo scary! I was too scared to ride the Big Bad Wolf. Roller coasters for me are terrible things to be on at the time, but once you are off and safely back on the ground, it was fun. But during the actual ride, I am petrified. I think we also went down one of those rivers that you get totally soaked on. I wish I hadn't worn jeans. Wearing wet jeans is no fun at all. For our 8th grade trip we went to Kings Dominion. I had a great time riding the little kid roller coasters. I also rode the one that goes forwards and backwards, and much preferred the backwards ride. It seemed less scary that way. In high school, I went to the State Fair with some friends who wanted to ride the rides. I liked the Ferris Wheel. The gravitron thing was horrible, and I really never will go in one of those again. The one that swings you from side to side to side and then finally all the way around was also fairly scary. On an orchestra trip there was a little tiny amusement park. That roller coaster was not fun at all. I was sure it would fall over! All in all, I had decided that amusement parks were not my thing. But then I went on a business trip to California, and part of the trip was to go to the California Adventure part of Disney Land. They had a really cool glider ride that was not scary. Then they had a ride that was once again petrifying, until I was back on the ground. I am just not that great with the stomach wrenching, slowly climb to the top to tumble down the other side really fast kind of roller coasters. But there was a really nice Ferris Wheel, but one where the individual cars could move and slide just a bit more than going around in a slow circle. That was really nice. All in all, I would have to say I am not a roller coaster riding kind of person.

The first car I ever drove was a 1983 chevy little station wagon, blue. It was my dad's car that he had had ever since my brother was born. It was a stick shift, and I learned to drive it in a parking lot, and to seminary. My very first road trip was when we moved to North Carolina and dad wanted me to drive the station wagon, and it was scary to get onto the freeway! But I managed to do it. During the summer, I would drop Dad off at work, and then drive to my two jobs, and then Mom would pick Dad up. Sometimes we varied that schedule, but it meant I had the car during the day at my job. Usually I would eat lunch in the breakroom, but I decided to drive to the bank to drop off some paychecks. It was a damp and rainy day, and as I drove along the road there was a car who wanted to turn across my lanes of traffic. I saw them inching forward, but thought they were going for it, so I slammed on my brakes, but because the road was wet, I started to skid. The next thing I remember is being in the parking lot of a vet hospital, with two cars that were wrecked somewhere around me. Dad was really great, I called him from the vet and he came and got me and made sure I was ok. The unfortunate part was the car was totaled. So much for everyone of us kids driving the same car when we turned 16 :(