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Employment Woes

Wednesday morning, my supervisor pulled me aside to tell me since management wants to go into beta just before I take 2 days of vacation. And since one of those vacation days conflicts with a week long Microsoft training course I was signed up for they are pulling me out of the class. I wasn't happy about it. She wasn't either but the decision came down from on high.

Wednesday afternoon, a co-worker and myself had to drive 4 hours to my current employer's home office. Instead of heading straight to the hotel, we stopped along the way to get dinner. We ended up hitting the hotel around 8 PM. When we checked in there was a message asking us to call our supervisor. Neither one of us liked the sound of that. We tried calling her back but got her answering machine. We left a message and I went to my own room. I had been laying down for just about an hour and was thinking of hitting up the hotel's hottub when the room phone rang. I picked it up and it was my supervisor. She was calling to tell me the company had decided to close our office once the lease runs out. Apparently, there's going to be some sort of transition plan if you want to move out by the home office and continue working for the company. But as I told a co-worker, I'd rather slit my wrists then move to keep working for this company. So I've got somewhere between 4 - 8 months to find a different job¹. Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of sleep that night and I wasn't feeling motivated for teaching the next day.

Thursday, I went into the office. I chatted with a few people and they were all sympathetic (and wanting to know what we were going to do). Then I checked on the classroom and it wasn't setup correctly, so I got to do some last minute running around to get it fixed. Then I taught, trying not to put them to sleep. The two big problems with the class were that it had to be put together at the last minute and I had 3 different groups of people attending the class. Each group having a different, non-overlapping skill set; making it impossible not to be too basic for one part of the class while being totally over the head of a different part. *sigh* Still some people seemed to get something out of the class and nobody actually snored through it.

Thursday night, we drove home.

Friday, I went into my soonish-to-be-closed office and while it was a dark humor going around; most people seemed happier than I've seen them for some time. Maybe good things will come of this moronic decision. Who knows? I just know that I'm going to be much more motivated to find a different job (I'd been half-heartedly looking already) and the company's customers who pay support fees are going to get seriously pissed off².

So if any of my readers are in the Eastern Iowa area and are hiring, maybe you could let me know?

¹ We've got some kind of extension on the lease so it's anybody's guess when exactly our office will be closed, but we do know it will happen sometime between September and December.
² From what I understand the majority of the company's best help desk personnel are in my office. So the customers will have to wait longer to get somebody to talk to them about their issue(s) and then wait even longer for that person to fix their issue(s).

Tags: con, dinner, easter, HAL, home, Humor, IM, job, office, problem, sleep, sound, tea, vacation, work, working

Recipe: Beef Peach Pie

The apartment complex Ariesna and I live in is located directly behind a grocery store. The store is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (except for a couple of holidays). Given it is only about a 5 minute walk to get inside the store; we tend to leave the decision of what to have for dinner till it is time to make dinner. The upside is we don't have to keep a lot of food around the house and we can get fresh meats/fruits/veggies for dinner. The downside is we are frequentally tired after work and just grab some sort of box meal, like Hamburger Helper, as we don't always feel up to doing real cooking. Tonight, like many nights, neither one of us knew what we wanted for dinner. I started poking around online looking for a recipe to try and found the following recipe AllRecipes.com.

Beef Peach Pie

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 1 cup soft bread crumbs
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 pinch pepper
• 1 (15 ounce) can sliced peaches, drained
• 1 tablespoon vinegar
• 1 tablespoon ketchup
• 1/4 cup brown sugar

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a medium bowl, mix together the ground beef, egg, milk, onion, bread crumbs, salt and pepper. Press into a 9 inch pie pan like a crust.
3. Prick meat all over using a fork.
4. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven.
5. Remove from the oven, and pour off any excess fat.
6. Arrange the sliced peaches over the beef.
7. Mix together the vinegar, ketchup and brown sugar, and spoon over the top of the peaches.
8. Bake for an additional 20 minutes.
9. Let stand for at least 10 minutes before serving.

NOTE: This recipe is copyright 2006 Allrecipes.com and not CC licensed like all of my works on this site.

I think Ariesna mostly made this dish to humour me. She hates peaches. But from the moment she pulled it from the oven, I was sure we had a winner. The scents coming off the pie were mouthwatering. Then I got myself a plate, a fork and took a bite.

Oh. My. Gawd. It was GOOD! The brown sugar mixture carmelized over the meat creating a heavenly glaze. And the juices of the peaches soaked throughout the meat, every bite was delectable.

AWelkin, does this dish sound good to you? We're thinking about making it again when you and Bryon come over on Friday.

Tags: beef, dinner, Food, recipe

Ain’t Dead Yet

Today marks the completion of my third decade on this planet and I am quite pleased to be able to announce that I ain't dead yet. But worry not gentle reader, I'll not be subjecting you to some passé retrospective about my life. Instead, I'll just recap today and today alone.

I was up playing Wild Arms 3 till about 3 am as I just couldn't sleep. Most likely due to an excessive amount of munching on holiday goodies while downing glass, after glass of soda¹. I found one monster to fight that took around an hour to defeat but it jumped my characters up 4-7 levels! *grin* Then when I eventually got to bed; I slept poorly. Our apartment is just too dry this time of year and our little humidifier stopped working. This causes me to keep waking up with sinus headaches and a terrible thrist. I got out of bed about 8:30 - 9 and went back to playing the video game a bit more. Shortly there after, Michelle got up and gave me my birthday present.

What'd she get me? A case of blue balls Bawls. Then after lazing around most of the day; we headed out to the local mall to meet some friends.

I'd foolishly asked a bunch of friends to join us in watching the Narina movie with a follow-up plan to eat dinner together. There was one point that I'd not factored in these plans. This year, my birthday fell on a Saturday. Just about the last Saturday before Christmas. Traffic was insane and people all around were grouchy, though we did run across some nice people that helped us get around the parking lot². We went over to the mall a little early and bought a new humidifer and then headed down to the theater. We got tickets, met up with our friends and went in to watch the The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

*whew* What a movie! While not perfect, it was probably as good as we could hope for from a Hollywood production.
High points:

• The actress playing Lucy was spot on. Most of the other actors cast in the movie were also quite good
• The backgrounds were gorgeous.
• The addition of the Nazi bombing run at the beginning of the movie really helped to give context to the time of the story.

Low points:

• The costuming on the witch. Her outfits were ugly and just didn't work with the imagery I have in my head for the character. Though I do have to admit the black , soulless eyes did work for me.
• The witch was not nearly as afraid of Aslan as she should have been. In my memories of the book, the witch was terrified of Aslan but the movie seemed to put them on a more even footing.
• Maugrim's voice. The actor doing the voice did a fine job, but being the only character without a british accent really stuck out and annoyed me.

Overall, I'd say it was worth seeing in the theater and it is something I'll be adding to our DVD collection when it becomes available.

After the movie was over, we headed to the restaurant. Oh, I should mention we had called earlier in the day to try making reservations but were told they don't do that for parties of less than 8. And that they would have plenty of room for the 6 of us. When we got there; we were told it would be a 2 hour wait. We decided to switch to the Oyama Sushi restaurant. They seated us within minutes of our arrival (even though they were already pretty packed). Then they plied us with drinks until our food was ready³. We had a jolly time chatting and drinking (non-alcholic, for the most part) but all good things do come to an end and eventually we all headed home. It was a very good day and while I ain't dead yet; I am a bit tired so good night, sleep tight and don't let the space bugs bite!

¹ a.k.a. pop to you heathens.
² A few people threw their cars into reverse to open up bigger areas for us to drive through and things of that nature.
³ It turns out this weekend contains not only my birthday and practically the last weekend before Christmas but it's also graduation weekend for the University! No wonder everything was so packed today! This also explains why it took so long for our food to arrive.

Tags: annoyed, Car, christmas, Code, collection, con, dinner, drink, dvd, Food, friends, hell, holiday, home, IM, job, Life, Link, movie, park, sleep, tea, video, war, weekend, work, working

What A Day

I had originally planned on attending a Pampered Chef party with my wife last Sunday. I had been thinking it would be some pleasant socializing over some tasty food with a bit of somebody trying to sell me some pricey kitchen stuff. That is to say a not entirely unpleasant to spend part of one's afternoon. Instead about an hour before the party, our friend Bryon stopped by and mentioned that Bruce Campbell was in town giving a short talk and promotting his new book, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way.

I thought about it for a minute, but I knew there'd be more chances for Pampered Chef parties and I doubted I'd have any better chance of getting to see Mr. Campbell in person. So after a quick shower¹, Bryon and I hopped into the car and drove into Iowa City. We got to the site about 40 minutes prior to the event began. We waited around and it turned out one of my co-workers was also there². Then about 10 minutes before Mr. Campbell was scheduled to begin speaking; they opened one set of the doors into the auditorium and let everybody in. And naturally, it wasn't the door we'd had been waiting at. *sigh*

Eventually, everybody was inside and mostly seated but then the organizers explained how the signing procedure was supposed to work and said the new book was for sale at the back of the auditorium. So we ended up giving up our fairly good seats to go get in another line. It took a while to get through the line, but it was good that we both went to the line as Laura³ showed up looking for us. Apparently, she decided the party wasn't her cup of tea. While we were waiting in line; she kindly thanked me for "being so god-damn tall".

There was a considerable amount of waiting in line to get the book, but eventually we all got our copies and headed back to find new seats (the good seats we'd had were long gone). A bit after that Mr. Campbell started taking questions. It turns out he's a very charismatic speaker. There were a number of questions about him working with Sam Raimi, but the only one that really stuck in my mind was:

Questioner: When working on Spiderman, did you hang out with Tobey Maguire?
Bruce Campbell: Why would I?

*grin*

After far too little time had passed, Mr. Campbell stopped taking questions and then made a short speech promoting B-movies as the only place that is still creative in Hollywood.

...getting bitten by a radioactive spider is a b-movie!

After the speech, they started having people come up to get their books signed. Bryon & I had relatively low numbers but when we were going up they weren't actually checking peoples numbers. Eventually I got up there and had Mr. Campbell sign my book; but I felt like a complete twit, the entire time I was there. I mean I have enjoyed all of his movies that I've seen and what I read of the book while I was in line was very amusing but I didn't really have anything to say to him. He was very polite to me, but it was a rather uncomfortable moment for me. Signed memorabilia is nice to have I suppose, but it doesn't do much for me. To tell the truth, I'm not entirely sure why I went up to have him sign the book. Other than I'd waited in line to get the sticker saying I could do so. *shrug* Life, go figure.

After that, we took off and headed off to meet up with some other friends for some RPGing. When we got there they were still finishing up with the Pampered Chef party and I got to munch down some of the leftovers⁴. Then it was game time and afterwards off to Old Chicago for dinner. All in all, a very pleasant Sunday.

¹ Bryon arrived before we were expecting anybody. And yes, I'm extra-specially lazy on the weekend; so if I'm not expecting company I will hang around the apartment without getting myself up and ready for the day.
² That would be Quincy for those that are curious.
³ Another friend of ours. One who was supposed to be at the Pampered Chef party.
⁴ Ah, breakfast at 3pm....

Tags: Books, breakfast, Car, Chicago, Code, con, dinner, Food, friends, IM, Life, Link, Love, movie, Movies, party, quote, radio, RPG, tea, tools, war, weekend, Wife, work, working

Illegal Dumping

Before dinner this evening, my wife & I walked down to our local Farmer's Market. It was a bit hotter out than I'd thought it would be, making me extra glad we'd brought along bottles of iced tea to drink. However upon returning home, we were dismayed to find our apartment to be a scene of some illegal dumping.

The Accused: Captain Jack -- known aliases "Jack", "Captain", "Fuzz Butt", "Stinky", "Jacque"
The Crime: Illegal dumping (e.g. pooping on the bathmat not more than two feet from his litter box).
The Prosecuting Attorney: Me.
The Judge: Her Honorable Judge Michelle¹

Statement by the Prosection: In this apartment there are 3 living beings; myself, my wife and Captain Jack. Two of them were out of the apartment at the time of the incident. No illegal dumping had occured prior to Michelle & I leaving for the Farmer's Market. The apartment was securely locked while we were gone and there were no signs of forced entry.

Statement by the Accused: *meow*

Verdict: Guilty as charged. The accused is to have his nose pointed at, but not quite in, the illegal dumping to show him what he did wrong. Further, the accused is to held in solitary confinement for a period of not less than 10 and not more than 30 minutes.

¹ Judge Judy ain't got nothin' on my wife! *grin*

Tags: coffee, con, dinner, drink, gallery, hell, home, IM, tea, Wife