I’m having a terrible time with this post.
I wanted to write something quick about the sucky start my day had had on Wednesday. But I didn’t finish and kept on writing on Thursday and Friday, and Saturday, and got caught up in trying to record things that happened later, that seemed related, that I observed – and of course, the food. Topped off by trying to edit on Saturday AM, on my new iPhone 6, where the Word Press app doesn’t work quite the same as I’m used to.
And now I see that I didn’t even get in watching Tina Fey and Ray Romano on some of Letterman’s last shows – but I’m sure there’ll be plenty of blog writers on that – and what I thought about an incredibly scatological commercial I saw, and the new toilet paper in the bathrooms at work. And the Sesame Street top-10 list. Network TV, that I’ve been oblivious to – Letterman made fun of JC Penny’s slogan, “When it fits, you feel it.” which evidently has been around for over a year.
The original title was “not a good way to start”, then I crossed that out and re-titled to “random observations”. The iPhone 6 Word Press took out the html strike-through code, by the way.
So, the original title has become perfectly meta.
I also got sidetracked by seeing a brief Facebook post by a friend, about how her day had started off sucky, and through the kindness of strangers, got better. I wanted the same feeling from some Friday morning blossom shots – see below.
Wednesday dinner: Roasted Green Beans & Potatoes with Shallots
I generally try to be polite – online snark has such a way of blowing back on you – but …
On Wednesday, I stayed in bed a little late and checked email on my phone. There were a bunch of messages related to the budget discussion for an organization I’m co-chairing, including a request from my co-chair to take the conversation off email to the phone. Which makes me feel like a scolded teenager.
Mark’s cat came and got back in bed with me – nice – but just then the heat came on. We’d opened windows and forgotten to turn it off; it was pretty warm outside overnight, but it got below the 68° that the thermostat was set at.
I remembered I’d forgotten to reply to an especially clueless student – although, actually, some other stuff I found out today turned that delay into a good thing.
The cleaners had been here on Tuesday, and that night I washed all the rugs, getting rid of winter grit, and replaced them with clean ones. Wednesday morning, I came downstairs and fed the cats, and the black one immediately puked up her breakfast onto the counter – not usual for her. I noticed other small puddles of cat froth in the back hall, and realized that somebody had frothed on the corner of one of new clean rugs. Already.
I was planning to bike, I had a pan of gluten-free brownies for a work party, internship students graduation thing, and I was going to go to the library and pick up a prescription, after work – all much easier by bike. It wasn’t raining when I was puttering around the kitchen, but just when I decided to go out, our 20% chance of showers started coming down. I had a new pannier and I got that installed, and then I went back in and ate a banana and read for a few minutes. Naturally, Hammie decided it’d be fun to jump in my lap, and flop her tail across my banana. But it was still raining pretty hard after all that, and 9:14, so I decided I better walk.
I had to juggle the ALA conference bag with the brownies in it, and my regular Hermione green bag , and my umbrella – and because I had on my slippery raincoat the straps kept sliding off. And of course by the time I got to work, it was almost sunny. Although it did rain some more, after I was inside.
Despite the rocky start, it was an OK day. The work party was surprisingly fun. I left the last of the gluten free brownies in the SLIS library for students and headed home. I left my work laptop at work. I made roasted potatoes & green beans, with some of the wintered over shallots I bought at the 2nd farmers market sliced in. I ate them with garbanzo beans on top of lettuce. I munched up a bunch of other stuff while I waited for the potatoes & beans to get done as I recall. And this was after having a sandwich for lunch, 1 1/2 slices of that no-knead bread, a few thin slices of aged Gouda, an egg, and I ate the extra half with peanut butter and jelly.
And oh yeah, I made rhubarb bars. My 9-inch baking pan was still at the library with the last of gluten free brownies in it, so it seemed like a good idea, Wednesday evening, to go out and buy a foil pan for the rhubarb bars. And pick up that prescription I didn’t get in the morning, by bike.
The grocery store didn’t have any 9-inch foil pans, so I bought a pack of two shallow 12 inchers. Which turned out to be a good size for the bars – except – the foil pan had kind of scalloped edges, to which the bars stuck. And I was worried about transporting the floppy foil pan by bike – the bars would crumble. I ended up cutting off the edges to make nice square bars, and packing them into a plastic container. I should of used my metal 13 x 9 x 2 pan, that has the snap-on plastic lid, that I can bunge cord to my bike rack. Oh, well. To fill the bars, I used the rhubarb jam/puree I made on Sunday, according to the recipe from this rhubarb & cheese-filled coffee cake. I had also chopped up and macerated some of the rhubarb in sugar, a la this recipe, but this (fibery) rhubarb didn’t soften – it stayed hard and green. I threw that in, too, and was worried that it would not get thoroughly cooked in the bars. And it still didn’t seem like enough filling, so I threw in the jar of jam that had the strawberry, cherry, and apricot jam solids, leftover from filling the spoon cookies. The bars were praised at the meeting I took them to Thursday, and again I took what was left over to the SLIS library.
Foil pan – note scalloped edges
Thursday started with Hammie on top of the frigermator – so that was kind of fun.
The rest of Thursday, was a blur of meetings – I had 11 draft personnel policies to read before the first meeting – and trying to grade, and emails to try to get students placed in internships this summer. I thawed out hamburger meat, flour tortillas, and veggie broth, to make beef enchiladas, but when I got home I just wasn’t that hungry. One of the meetings included lunch. Union catering box lunch – plastic clamshell with a turkey & cheese sandwich on a soggy bun, salad: mixed greens in a little cup with a pouch of dressing, bag of chips – that I took and left on the goodie table at the SLIS library with the leftover bars – and a chocolate chip cookie that I took one bite of and decided I best save the calories for the rhubarb-cherry-strawberry bars. After work, I spent almost an hour and a half writing up my notes from meeting with the candidates for Dean of the Graduate School, since feedback was due May 8th. Then I had bar edges and ice cream for dinner, and watched Ripper Street. Don’t know what they’re going to do with Inspector Reid, now that he’s killed someone – although, we are watching this a year late – I just checked the episode list, and now have an idea <grin>.
On Friday, I woke up and couldn’t decide why I hadn’t elected to work at home. Maybe it was because I had a 2-hour block of exit interview slots with graduating students from 9:00 to 11:00 – but only one student signed up, for a 9:00 – 9:30 appointment, and it was a phone call. My other timed things for the day were a lunch at noon at Union South, and a phone call with my co-chair regarding the budget, continuing the conversation that started Wednesday. And we had tickets for the symphony, last of the season.
I biked in, and took pictures of blooming trees on the way there and on the way back. Did the interview with the student, came home, and ate bar edges for breakfast. I set up my computer on the kitchen counter, and worked, though just more administrivia – I still have not done a significant amount of grading. I biked to the lunch, another Union-catered affair, same sandwiches as Thursday, so I elected to have salad and a cookie. Much better cookies this time, same salad, better dressing, NOT in a pouch, in a bowl with a dipper. Naturally, I dripped salad dressing on my skirt. Came home, worked some more, had the dread phone call, which was surprisingly not terrible – until my co-chair found it necessary to scold me. Sigh.
Mark took me to the Apple Store to get my iPhone 6. When we got back at around 5:30, it seemed more important to play with the iPhone until it was time to go to the symphony, than to make the enchiladas. To transfer all my stuff from the old phone, since I had not been backing up to the cloud, I had to back it up to my computer. Then, when I connected the new phone, turned out that my old iPhone 4 had a higher iOS then what they were shipping on the 6s – so that was an hour+ download. The uncertainty of getting all my stuff to transfer to the new phone required stress eating, so I had leftover potato salad and fried rice and two graham crackers with Nutella. I wasn’t able to turn the new 6 into my own phone until after the symphony. Now I think I like the iPhone 6 OK, but I’m not sure. I’m still in the missing the way my old phone worked mode, and getting used to the change. Mostly, it’s too big. The off button is in the wrong place, too.
Here’s all the blooms from Friday morning – enjoy:
