It ain't easy being cheesy

Of all the things I have ever cooked, I have never made macaroni and cheese from scratch.
I am not sure how this happened.
I think somewhere in my brain I thought it was difficult.
Oh, how wrong I have been.
I was going to make mushroom-sage bread pudding for a work potluck, but that would have meant going to the store on the way home from work on a recent rainy and blustery day.
I took a mental inventory of the items in my pantry and fridge and realized that I had a lot of cheese and a bag of pasta.
Yeah, I can make something with that.
A quick online check of mac n cheese recipes and I tossed all the stuff together to come up with a potluck hit: jalapeno mac and cheese and cheese and cheese.
The recipe, as written, has three kinds of cheese. The one I made for the potluck had more like six kinds of cheese because I had a four-cheese blend instead of the cheddar in the recipe.
Either way, this will be YUM!
I will be making this more often, though not all the time since there really is a lot of cheese and butter in this.
But definitely it will be my first choice for the next potluck.
Anyone planning a potluck anytime soon?

When good boobs go bad

Yup, my boobs. They went bad.
Well, not really bad, just lazy.

I had so much trouble breastfeeding that I just had to write about it.

Professional blogger

Well, not really.
I am not part of the Mom Blog at my work.
Technically this is not my job. I am not getting paid extra for it.
But it will be fun to contribute on occasion.
My first post: Talking about being an old mom.

Next up I will be writing about my boobs. Fun.

Almost tea time

After having so much fun writing the travel article about one of my dive trips, I decided to try my hand at writing an article for the food section.

Since I have put on many tea parties over the years, I thought it would be fun to write about that. My take on it will be how to put on a beautiful tea party while also keeping it simple.

In the past I would roast the chicken for the chicken salad sandwiches. I would make a roast beef for the roast beef sandwiches. I would make scones and a cake for dessert. One time I even made my own lemon curd and clotted cream. The only thing I never did was bake the bread for the sandwiches.

For the recipes in the story, I took advantage of the great precooked things my favorite grocery stores have to offer. The food was still delicious and beautiful, but I saved myself hours of cooking time and a lot of mess.

And, since I want this to be extra pretty for the paper, I also took advantage of having a professional photographer available to do the photos. We got to set up in the beautiful back yard at the home of the paper's garden expert.

I also got to use some of the lovely dishes I have collected over the years. Some I found at antique shops, some on eBay and some were my grandmother's. It was nice to be able to use them all to make a fun, eclectic set for the food.

It was a warm lovely day and the photographer from work, Leonard Ortiz, did a beautiful job.

But those are not the photos you get to see here. You are stuck with mine.

Once the article is published (scheduled for April 2), I will share his far superior work.

I did get to help him, be sort of the photographer's assistant, during the shoot. Which was fun and educational. I learned a few tricks about lighting.

And the recipes that have lived in my head for years? No recipes for now. Sorry. Those also will go up once they have been published in the paper.

But really... how cute are these little desserts canapes?

Getting paid to dive

Way back in November manfriend and I went on a boat diving trip to one of the Channel Islands.
We both took a lot of pictures and I wrote a lot of words.

And this weekend it was the cover story in the Orange County Register's Travel section.

You can read the story by clicking here. There are 30 photos in the slide show there, all of which were posted here first back in November.

The layout appears below.



Yay! It was a lot of fun to write about these dives. I guess it is fun to write about something that is so enjoyable.

Next up: I may try my hand at writing a food article.

Starting over, in a way

So I started my new job last week.
It's not really like a whole new job since I work at the same place, just in a different department now.
But it has left me zapped of any creativity and energy.
The first week was watching other people work basically.
Most of the stuff I did in my last job doesn't not apply in the new job. It's all new software to do the work and all new ways of thinking about things.

I have felt displaced without a real workstation of my own. I got tired of waiting for "them" to come move my computer, so I did it myself over the weekend.

But I still have no phone at the new desk. I still feel unsettled. I am still learning the people and the new dynamic after three years of being so at ease with the people in my old department.

And I have felt pretty useless at my job. Which I hate.

I like to be busy. I like to fill the day so the day goes faster.

I know that as I get better with the new processes, it will get better in general.

I had a little "aha" moment tonight. After wondering all day if I had done the right thing and wondering if I would get this and be able to do the most basic things, I had the "aha" moment.

I can do this. It will become second nature.

Just like the process in the old job, this stuff will sink into my skull and become second nature.

Now if only I could get a phone.

Where I spend my days

We recently moved around here at work. I am now sitting on the other side of the building from where I was.
It's not a bad spot, just a different spot.
I am closer to the rest of my team, which is good.
But I do miss my nice, big, tucked-away corner.
But this will do.
With how newspapers are going these days, I am happy to have any desk.



Here is a look at some of my clutter. Some people have nothing personal, some people had boxes and boxes and cartloads of stuff to move.
I have just a few things to make it more pleasant. I like flowers.
Though I have decided not to keep anything here that I am not willing to walk away from.



More clutter and bits and pieces.



My new double-monitor setup. It is nice having the extra screen space. I had news pages up on one side to design and the other side was for the other stuff: messages, palettes, Internet, e-mail, etc.

So, there is is, where I spend my days. Well, my work days anyway.

Split down the middle

OK, since it has been food, food, food around this blog lately, I thought it was time for a quick update.

My weekend was actually pretty boring. So this should be short.

I normally am off Sunday and Monday, but due to some staffing things at work, my boss needed someone to work Sunday. So I volunteered.

That meant I had Saturday and Monday off this weekend.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I did not realize how much it would mess me up.

Anyway...

On Saturday I pretty much spent the whole day doing housework. I cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom, including wiping down all the cabinets and scrubbing the floor. I also cleaned both bathrooms and did some laundry.

Then in the late afternoon I went to Trader Joe's and got all the stuff to make a pizza on the barbecue. I know, not fancy. But that with a little salad was a perfect dinner.

Sunday I had to work. But before work, manfriend and I had planned to go to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana to see the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit.

We had tried to go the weekend before, but it was Target Free First Sunday. We had no idea. It was awful. Just too crowded to even move in the courtyard. So we left.

This time we bought the tickets in advance and figured it would be a much better way to see the place.

We were wrong.

The exhibit itself, the contents of it, were very interesting.

The way it was set up was very disorganized and had no flow at all.

And given how much they oversold it, the thing needed better flow.

The deal was you buy a ticket for a set time to go in. A $27 ticket that becomes a $29 ticket when you buy it online. I love the convenience fees.

Our tickets were for 10 a.m.

Fine, we got in by a few minutes after 10 even though the line was quite long. We were about in the first one-third of that line above. There was still quite a crowd behind us also to go in at 10.

On the way in, they give you an audio guide thing to listen to at the various parts of the exhibit.

They also tell you no photos inside.

I hate that.

I checked the Web site before going in and didn't see anything about that. Oh well, maybe I just missed it.

But I was bummed. I am cool with no flash photos, but I wanted to take pictures.

So I did. But just a couple, no flash and no real time to set up for them. So the quality is not great.

Anyway, back to the exhibit...

The thing was so crowded we could not even move past people to see stuff or get to other parts of the exhibit. We are both tall and ended up seeing most of it over the heads of other people because we could not get to the front.

It was not at all the peaceful, zen way I wanted to see this thing. Which is too bad. It really is an interesting story about how they found and excavated these things.

It actually really put me on edge. So after trying to see the whole thing and not being able to really get a good look at anything, we left.

I still had to go to work.

So MF went on his way home and I went on my way to work.

It was a pretty uneventful day at work.

When I got home, MF had made me a dinner of grilled chicken and tomatoes and an artichoke.

That was so nice. I love when someone else makes me dinner.

Monday was another quiet day for me.

I wandered around town looking for photo opportunities since the next Round Robin topic is "your hometown." I was pretty uninspired.

Bummer.

Then last night I made dinner of pork roulade with lemon, garlic and parsley. On the side I made steamed broccolini and white beans.

So that was it. My whole boring weekend.

No diving. Oh well. I have a three-day weekend coming up this week. So the plan is to dive at least one of those days.

If I could just take the bus, I would

My car...

His car.

Here we go again.

Seriously.

A little over a year ago I was sleeping peacefully when a banging on my front door woke me.

"Um," said my neighbor, looking sheepish. "Sorry to wake you. But, um, I kind of hit your car."

Yes, yes he did.

To the tune of a new grill, radiator support, radiator, condenser and hood.

It was all handled properly and through insurance and the car was fixed.

But it took a few weeks and it was annoying, because it was totally avoidable. He just backed into my car that was parked in front of my own house.

It also was annoying because I was asleep when it happened. I drive 37 miles each way for work and I park in front of my house and get hit.

So... today, again minding my own business.

This time I was working.

Just working away, editing business stories when my desk phone rings.

Which rarely happens and usually means someone has a wrong number.

"Copy desk, this is Jill."

"Hello. This is security. Do you own a silver Audi that is parked on 5?"

Me, thinking I had left my lights on..."Yes."

"Well, I hate to tell you this, but someone hit your car."

Great. At least the person was there, not a hit and run, which has been done in this parking garage before even though we all work for the same place and should have more common decency than that.

Apparently the owner of the other car backed into the space, got out and went into the building to his office.

Apparently he didn't bother to put the car in park or set the parking brake.

Apparently his car just rolled across the driveway and into mine.

I guess someone else coming into the garage saw his car up against mine and called security. The security guard then tracked down me and the other guy.

I got his insurance information and by the time I called about it 30 minutes later, he had already contacted them.

Yes. This whole thing would be classically comical were it not for the fact that my bumper will likely have to be replaced.

Perspective

Nothing much to catch up on really.
My week was work, sleep, work, sleep.
I should be off today but I am working overtime.
The extra money will be nice.
But I really do love my days off even if I do nothing more than hang out at home and do some chores.

I was going to go diving with the manfriend yesterday but that did not happen.
I am also contemplating the gear I want. The rental fee is anywhere from $45-$60 a day for the stuff, which will add up fast.
Of course, all the stuff is expensive to buy. I may try to get used if I can get decent stuff.

What else, what else...

Oh yeah, there is that whole deal with my employer starting to outsource some jobs to India.
Yep, jobs very similar to my job.
So that is scary and sucky.

Oh, that reminds me, I have a lotto ticket to check.

All in all, not a fabulous week.
But I've had worse and I know other people are in more dire straits than I am at this point.
I try to keep it all in perspective.

I was playing with my nephew yesterday. He will be 2 in September.
It's hard to be down or dwell too much on bad stuff when a toddler is running at you as fast as he can, blond curls catching the sun. And when he reaches you, his arms are flung wide ready to be swept up in a big hug.

Yep. Perspective people, perspective.

Four days off

To work. To play. To sleep.
Circumstances that I do not wish to discuss have given me four days off.
Yes, I still have a job.
If I didn't I would probably be off for more than four days.

All I can say is that I plan to enjoy the time.

Tomorrow will be chore day.
Work around the house must be done.
Inside the house. Outside the house.

Saturday is for play.
It's the manfriend's birthday.
He wants to go sailing. So we shall go sailing.
I think before that we are going to the gay pride parade in Long Beach.
It's a great people watching event.
And I think people should be able to love someone, even if people are named Harold and someone is named Stewart.

Sunday will be more play.
It will be nice to have two full days of nothing but fun.
I have no solid plans for this day. That is part of the fun.

Monday is for work.
More inside the house. More outside the house.
Whatever did not get done Friday.

There is supposed to be a heat wave this weekend.

We shall see what that really means and how it affects my plans.

I could very well end up in my living room with the a/c blasting all weekend.

Oh, but I do plan to cook. I have been craving my kitchen.

Snow, yo *updated*

*Here is a picture from my room this morning.

It stopped snowing, but it is still cold enough for me to think "I'm glad I didn't move here"

But it is nice to visit so I can wear my cute pink Burberry scarf and the fuzzy winter hat I got when I thought I was moving here.*

I'm in Denver, y'all.

And there is snow in the forecast.

Or should I say "more snow?" Since it seems to have snowed overnight.

I see a light dusting of it on the grass outside.

Anyway, I am here for a conference for a few days.

And I am glad the conference is in an area where I can get to good restaurants and bars easily.

Since I am pretty sure I did not bring the right shoes.

No, I left the strappy sandals at home because I knew it would be cold.

But I was not expecting snow.

I want to try to get out and see a few sights while I am here.

I will post pictures if I do.

Or if there is a blizzard.

Hello, guvna

When I got to work today, I found out Arnold Schwarzenegger will be in our office this afternoon to meet with the muckety mucks.

I am not sure he will be coming through my part of the building or not. We don't have too many muckety mucks over here in my corner.

I am not sure how far out of my way I would go to meet him.

But I have my camera with me. So if he does walk through here, I will at least try to get some pictures.

Super Bake Sunday

So tomorrow is the Super Bowl.
I will be doing the very ungirly thing by watching every minute of it. And no, not for the commercials.
I will watch because I like football and I like the Patriots. Yes, I liked them even back when they were losers.
While I am being ungirly and watching football all afternoon, I will counter that with the girly act of baking muffins.
Strawberry cream-cheese muffins to be precise.
I will make to sure document that and share it with you over on the food blog.
I made a pineapple coffee cake the other night. I was baking at 11 p.m. again. Crazy.
Sorry I have not posted that yet. There is still a bit left. If I can get to it to take a picture before the manfriend polishes it off, I will post that, too.

I also think I may do a big pan of steamed clams and mussels if I can get myself to the seafood market early enough.

It is supposed to be a rainy day tomorrow. It should be perfect for football watching and cooking.

Mostly I am just looking forward to the opportunity to not be at work.

I mentioned the other day to a colleague that I have jury duty coming up in March and how a nice, long, two-week trial sounds pretty good right about now.

His response was that it was sad when jury duty was more appealing than work.

I am sure it will settle down here soon. Just in time for everything to change again.

OK. I am off. Go Pats!

Excuses, excuses...

I have been blog slacking, I know.
Mostly it is because I have been going in to work earlier. Usually I would blog in the morning.
Lately I have been trying to get more chores done in the morning before work and blogging does not always make that list.
By the time I get home from work it is at least 9 p.m. and the last thing I want to do after sitting at a computer all days is sit at a computer.
So I need to work out some blogging time in the morning.
Anyway...

It's rainy here. I like it. I think I need to make cookies this weekend. Or a cake. Something. I love how the house feels all warm and cozy from the baking.

So, what have I done this week?
I got my chimney swept Wednesday. They also replaced the seal and chimney cap. He said the the old cap was too small for the chimney. I hope the new cap means that I can have fire without the house smelling like a campfire.

I did some minor household chores and errands. Other than that I pretty much just worked.

Boring. Yeah, I am boring.

I have begun planning my kitchen-warming party. That means I need to get on the ball and hem (or have hemmed) the curtains for the kitchen. I also need to paint the door. I have been saying that for weeks and never seem to do it.
It might be too damp this weekend. But if the rain continues, I won't have a choice. I need to have that done my Jan. 20 at the latest.

The party is Jan. 27.

Time to start planning that menu. Yay!

Well, I am going now. I hope to have more interesting and insightful posts in the coming days.

In the meantime, stay dry and stay warm.

Christmas vacation, just like when I was a kid

Woo hoo! Today is my last day of work this year.
It feels like when you are a kid and you get time off school for the holidays.
We do a raffle at work to decide who has dibs on holiday weeks.
If you win you can take as much or little of that week as you want.
The number of tickets you get is based on how long you have worked here.
I had four tickets. That is the minimum number of tickets.
I spread them around last year and got nothing.
This year I put all my tickets on Christmas.
Which I won.
The only downside is that means next year I am not eligible for the raffle. That is just one of the rules.
Oh well.
But starting tonight at about 7:30, I will be off until Jan. 1.
I really don't mind working New Year's day. I don't have to be in until noon. Plus it is usually pretty quiet in the office.
My plan for the time off is to finish all those final kitchen details that got pushed and pushed and pushed back until now.
I also will have Christmas with the whole family, maybe make a couple nice dinners in there somewhere, relax, try to get in a little culture or fun ... maybe a museum.
It's pretty unstructured at this point and I am so looking forward to that.

A bright spot in a gray day

It has been gray and dreary and cold (for Southern California) here for the past couple of days.

It was breezy when I left home at around noon and the roads were packed with cars.

I guess it is people out doing holiday stuff, but the traffic on the surface streets was awful.

It took me 25 minutes to go 6 miles to the freeway.

From there it only took 25 minutes to go the other 30 miles to work.

Drivers were just being so rude and stupid.

I really was glad to get to work just to be off the roads.

Of course, I would rather have been home with a fire in the fireplace and some soup bubbling on the stove.

Oh well. Maybe tomorrow after stamping.

Anyway, a few hours into work someone came over and said there was a great rainbow. We could see it from the window.

But I wanted a better view.

So I grabbed my camera and went to the top of the parking structure.

It was HUGE. It was a full arc over the whole sky. It was too big to all fit in the shot.

And you could see the full double-rainbow effect.

It was just beautiful.

I thought I got five or six shots off, but when I downloaded them there was only one.

Hmm??

But while I was outside one of the staff photographers came out and tried to get a shot, but the clouds had shifted and the rainbow was gone.

So my one shot ended up as a small photo on our local section cover and as the lead photo on our Web site.

At least until some other news breaks to replace it.

Nice.

Well, I must be off now.

Stay warm, stay dry and stay safe.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that

Kitchen
I got the call yesterday from the tile place. My order is in.
I may try to get by there this morning before work, but it is in totally the opposite direction of where I need to go.
If I don't make it today, tomorrow or Monday will have to do.
I guess this means I cannot put off painting the kitchen any longer. That will happen Monday for sure.
Then the following weekend I hope to get the tile up behind the stove, sink and in the area under the glass cabinets.

Work
We got the information about our new workflow yesterday. It will not change my hours substantially. Which is great. And it won't change my days off. Of course, had it changed them to Friday and Saturday or Saturday and Sunday, I would have been fine with that.
But as long as I get to keep my Sunday and Monday, I can deal with it.
And it won't change my work too much. There were the usual skeptics, but I think it will be fine once we all settle into it.
Other than that, work is work.

Life
I've got a couple things in the works for Sunday with friends. My monthly card group is going to skip our normal get together and head out to the stamp convention in Carson. I haven't been to one of these things, but i have a feeling I should leave my credit cards at home and only bring what I can afford to spend in cash.

I made a card for the swap, but forgot my camera at work last night, so a photo will have to wait.

Then Sunday night, the manfriend and I will be having dinner with some friends at this place.

I have never been there, but I am already checking out the online menu trying to figure out what I want to eat. Wait, I want to eat ALL of it. It sounds great. And my friend tells me they make a killer martini.

It is in Stanton. Which is some vague place in O.C. But that is what Google Maps is for.

Well, I must be off now if I have a prayer of getting from Torrance to the tile place in Hermosa Beach and then to work before noon.

Yeah, I know. Noon. I sound like a slacker. It's just my crazy hours.

But these are the cute, cartoony rats...

So a couple weeks ago a colleague called me at home after my shift. There is a hole in the wall behind my desk that looks like it should be an electrical outlet, but instead is just an open hole with some insulation poking out.
Nice. Whatever.
But then he told me that he saw a RAT(!!!) poking it's head out of the hole.
The hole that is about a foot from my chair.
Gross.
That was the only shift I worked that week, since I had taken some vacation and personal days to get rest and deal with my kitchen planning.
I asked if he could send a message to the admin for our department to see about getting the hole covered.
So I kind of forget about it until I get back to work a few days later. I was expecting to see the hole covered.
No. They put a couple sticky traps near it. One was to the side, the other was way under my desk.
Yay. I can just see this rat venturing from its home in the wall and skittering across my toes as I sit here late one night.
I asked the admin again about having the hole covered. In the meantime, I covered it with a manila folder and some thumb tacks. Sure to stop a hungry rat, huh?
More than two weeks later, the folder is still there, but one of the traps has disappeared.
My imagination has the rat dragging it back into the wall so it can have a good laugh with all its rat buddies.
Which brings me to the real reason for this post: "Ratatouille."
The cute movie from Disney/Pixar about a French rat that longs to be a chef in Paris.
I'm not a big one for seeing movies in the theater. Mostly because I hate paying 10 bucks to see some of the crap they put out these days.
But my man friend suggested we see this and, based on what a friend said and on things I had read about the movie, I was up for it.
Was it the best movie ever? No.
Was it worth the 10 bucks each to see it? Oh yeah.
The story was cute, not overly surprising. A coming-of-age tale of a young rat who struggles against society's prejudices to reach his goal.
Oh wait.
This IS a cartoon, right?
Yes, this is a cartoon. And a very enjoyable one, even for adults. It does not rely too heavily on double entendres for laughs. It is just a nice story, with amazing animation and some disturbing scenes of rat infestations.
And there was something for everyone: a car chase, a villain, a love story... (no, not rat love.)
There were adults, teens and kids in the theater when I went and all seemed to have a great time with this movie.
And as a bonus, there was an animated short film before the movie called "Lifted."
All in all, $10 well spent.

Overheard in the elevator

One guy talking to another:

"My wife says my chorizo always comes out dry."

OK, OK. They were talking about grilling, but still.

Oh, and ain't that picture kinda nasty?