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Boss Tribute

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

I am sooo behind on blogging. My summer has been soooo much fun, but sometimes it is hard to get out and do all of that fun with work to do.

I’ve had my job at ARCADIS for less than a year, but I’m really enjoying it. Normally, I wouldn’t blog about work. If you’ve ever read dooce.com, you know that work and blogging typically does not mix (Long story short, this hilarious lady was fired for blogging at work in the oughts).

I’m really enjoying my boss, Megan. She is also the level-headed wife of an English Professor, so we have a few things in common. She is also my kickball captain. She has worked at ARCADIS for ten years now, and she does some pretty amazing things.

I liked my old job. I liked going in every day, and knowing I’d have two to five projects to create, modify, and maintain on a two-to-five year cycle. I was creating pieces of software that really helped people, and solving problems that probably only two or three other people on earth could fix — and then there was the day I wore patterned tights to work.

I was working with my old cubemate Allison, so this would have been 2006, maybe early 2007. It was an ordinary day, possibly early March, maybe October. I wore a pair of black suede calf-high flat boots with a courdoury skirt that flared to knee-height in the front and mid-calf in the back. Under the skirt, and only exposed from mid-calf to knee in the front, I wore a pair of patterned tights. They weren’t completely opaque tights, but they weren’t completely see-through either. The tights had a lacy pattern, and I got them at Target.

At 3PM, I get called up to the human resources lady. I figured I needed to sign some insurance paper or something. Then she asked me to close the door and sit down. I think it went something like this, “I’ve asked the accountant if he thinks fishnet stockings are appropriate work attire, and he doesn’t think they are. I agree with him.”

I was shocked! Two hours from COB is a little late in the day to send somebody home for a wardrobe violation. My shock continued, because I am a stickler for employee handbooks, and I was well aware that there was nothing in the handbook about tights/pantyhose/socks. I know this because when I started my job, the handbook had a stipulation about pantyhose; after the screws below my keyboard desk blew out two pairs in two days, I never wore them again and asked that the stipulation be taken out of the handbook (I was told it was not enforced). It was taken out of the handbook.

I asked which rule I was breaking, and pointed out the fact that I wore the very same skirt and boots combo to work for the past THREE YEARS. The patterned tights were the only thing that changed. The HR lady had no problems with my previous outfit, in fact, I did not have to go home, I just had to take off the tights. It took every ounce of will I had not to un-velcro my boots, whistle a bawdy song, and then fling the tights on the HR lady’s desk as I walked out the door.

I tried to appeal to her sense of logic, but she had none. She said, “If you have to think twice about whether something is appropriate for work in the morning, you shouldn’t wear it.” At this point I had worked for the company for eight years. I had never had a second thought wardrobe appropriateness, except for that one day where I had to go into the office to help out Japan at 2AM, put on a T-Shirt and jeans and the president chewed me out at 10AM for my dress. He told me to go home and change. I informed him I was going home to change into my pajamas as soon as I cleaned up somebody else’s mess in Japan. He apologized promptly.

There were no apologies from the HR lady. I asked her if there were other wardrobe guidelines that weren’t in the employee handbook. For instance, there was no stipulation about stirrup pants, and I could see them coming back into style soon in some form of leggings. I asked her if she wore these pants to work when the were in style in the 1990s and if she thought they would be appropriate for work.

Here’s the shocker, she did wear stirrup pants to work, considered them appropriate then, but wouldn’t consider them appropriate now. I asked her if she was thinking about adding that rule to the employee handbook. I also told her that when I go to the store to look for work clothes, even if the blouse is made of the finest silk, if it has a normal flat, round neck opening, I don’t buy it for work. “Collar or cleavage, I tell the sales ladies. You never call anyone in for that, and it appears to be the standard here.”

We were at an impasse. I told her that when she revised the handbook, I’d be happy to review it for her. At my old job, I was an exception handler. I was the person who had to figure out how the program would deal with every situation, so I didn’t get called in the middle of the night and the client didn’t lose millions of dollars. This is how I read employee handbooks. Maybe I should have been a patent lawyer.

I went back down to my cube, and preformed the most prudish strip tease in the world for my cubemate Allison: patterned tights on knees, patterned tights off knees. ALL KNEES ALL OF THE TIME! GET YOUR HOT NAKED KNEE ACTION HERE! I think I even kicked off my boots and complained to my old boss without shoes on (technically they were patterned shoes and I didn’t want to risk it).

Flash forward November 2009, my new boss Megan walks into work. She is wearing a black and white and pink striped turtleneck. As I see her walk down the hall I notice she is wearing a short black skirt and DA-DA-DUM-DA PATTERNED TIGHTS!

For her ten years of service to ARCADIS, I made her a blackberry pie to celebrate. I picked the blackberries myself, and cut out little shapes in the crust. From the top, clockwise, a star, a lightning bolt, her initials (MFE), another lightning bolt, the company logo (a fire salamander), another lightning bolt, “10″, another lightning bolt, with a cut-out star in the middle. I wanted the pie to symbolize how cool I think she is. Maybe it needed one more lighting bolt?



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red and black season

Sunday, June 6th, 2010

One of my favorite blogs for all things crafty/gardening, Little House in the Suburbs, has marked this weekend with the sighting of the first blackberry.

I’m over 2 hours away from Memphis, but roughly at the same latitude. We saw our first blackberry on Ty’s birthday (yesterday). We ate 4 today. They’re almost completely ripe, but we thought we would pick them before the birds got the first few.



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Ty’s wearing his favorite shirt, blowing out the candles on his favorite cake (Grandma Jo’s Wacky Chocolate Cake).

We’ve had one cuke, and three cherry tomatoes. GASPACHO! I am gazpacho, oh, I am a summer soup! I cannot wait.

trans fat cherry pie

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

Our friends Mark & Robin have a cherry tree. Last week they made a cherry pie, with a Crisco-laden crust. A few months earlier Robin had made a coffee cake with Crisco in the brown sugar crumbles, and it was good.

When I was younger, I enjoyed how puffy cookies made with Crisco were, but they were always so dry. Since then, I have been a butter girl.

I decided to experiment this weekend with a bunch of cherries. My mother-in-law uses the wonderful vegetable oil pie crust recipe from from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. I usually follow that recipe. This weekend I used the Crisco plus 8-10 teaspoons of cold water recipe from the same book. I had a few sticks of Crisco that made the trip to Nebraska with us two years go. The stuff doesn’t spoil, so I figured I should use it.

The pie was perfect: golden, brown, delicious. It definitely isn’t an every day thing. The salt content in the dough only complimented the macerated cherry pie filling. It was even better with ice cream. The recipe called for 5.5 cups of cherries, but I only had 4.25 cups. The pie didn’t explode or overflow like some pies do. I was really happy with the results.

Blackberry update: they are large and green. The tomatoes are very green too. We’ve got some shiny ones!

food of the south

Monday, May 17th, 2010

It is no secret that my favorite thing about the South is the weather. This feature goes hand-in-hand with the growing season. Last Tuesday we went to our first crawdad/crayfish/crawfish/mudbug boil, and it was super tasty.



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Crawfish can best be described as mini-lobsters. To prepare crawfish, you throw a bunch of live ones into seasoned boiling water for a few minutes. Then the deconstruction begins, separating the head from the tail. There are pincers, but they are too small to open without tools. Ty managed to get one opened and the meat was light like crab meat. After separating the head from the tail, the optional step is to suck the juices out of the head. Nintey-nine percent of the edible part of the crawfish is in the tail. That segment is encased in shrimp-like segments, but they usually have to be cracked open. After eating dozens of crawfish I had a slight bruise/bleed on my thubmb with a freshly cut thumbnail since the fresh skin was exposed.


The latest issue of the Oxford American
takes on food in the South. The climate makes the place, and the growing season, available ingredients, and preservation techniques make the food.

My garden has kicked it into gear. I’ve got tiny yellow squash, zucchini, egg plant, peppers, and tomatoes all ready to explode in the next month.



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jelly success

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

Last night I made some more jelly. I am absolutely horrified by the amount of sugar in jelly, but I understand it is a critical part of the preservation process. I made the Herb Jelly from the Ball Book of Home Preservation. I had a thyme plant that was getting old and needed to be split.

Another website suggested giving thyme a “haircut” to keep it healthy. I thought I had 2 cups of “loosely packed herbs”, but I don’t think I had enough. I added some parsley and rosemary. The jelly is made with cider (no sugar added) and vinegar (I used cider vinegar). It resulted in a very crisp and tart flavored jelly, with a hint of thyme. I was really afraid of over-herbing this one after under-jelling the last bunch.

It came out very tasty, but not as herby as I would have liked. It jelled like magic though!



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The garden is coming along. I got my peppers in the ground. The kale is blooming, so I need to yank it out. I already lost one bell pepper to some sort of snapped center stalk.



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Here’s that pollen shot I promised:



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craft fail: quick lemon ginger marmalade

Monday, April 5th, 2010

I decided to start preserving some of my excess herbs by making a savory jelly. My neighbor Sam wants to do that sometime, but she doesn’t want to make marmalade, so I followed this recipe for Quick Lemon Ginger Marmalade by myself.

EPIC FAIL: I ended up with ~15oz of extra marmalade. By chemistry experiment quantitative standards, this is a disaster. Everything would be fine if recipes displayed measurements in teaspoons or tablespoons of Sure-Jell or Certo or some other pectin product. In my home preserving book, measurements for these items are always by the package. For my recipe, I needed exactly one package of powdered pectin to 58 oz of marmalade (NOT 73 oz). Now I know next time this happens to break down the package into ounces or teaspoons and add the required amount.

I wasn’t that careless with my measurements, but exactly how much ginger do you need to shred to get 1 cup? What do you do with the excess ginger? Exactly how much lemon zest comes off of 6 lemons? I thought I had exactly 1 cup of juice. Maybe I should have cooked the mixture with the lid off. Maybe I shouldn’t have put the mixture sans sugar and pectin in the fridge overnight.

Another problem with the jelly-making process is that when the liquid is hot, you can’t exactly tell how it will set. I thought the marmalade was coating a spoon properly for the hot test. When I scrubbed the pot, what was left was very sticky and thick. When everything cooled, the marmalade looked very watery. FAIL.

I’ve heard jelly is a little bit more forgiving, and it is easier to get exactly “4 cups of strawberries” as opposed to 1 cup of ginger that may have been way too watery.

missing the blizzard

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

From my Facebook friends and family, I see I’m missing one heckuva blizzard in eastern Nebraska right now. I was taking a look at my copy of the St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church Centennial Cookbook (Johnson, NE), looking for holiday cookie recipes. My cousins, two aunts, and great aunts all submitted family recipes, and added funny notes to a few of the recipes, so I just enjoy reading it.

I found my great aunt Alice’s recipe for Snow Ice Cream, and thought I would share it with all of you who have an abundance of snow right now. I remember making this with my mom and dad on a snow day when they both stayed home from school, although we called it “snow pudding”, and just mixed in vanilla pudding with snow. The texture is nothing like regular ice cream, but amazing in its own way.

Snow Ice Cream by Alice Hahn
1 C evaporated milk
1 C sugar
2 beaten eggs (farm fresh)
1/2 t salt
1 t vanilla

Fill a large pan with snow from a clean and undisturbed big snow bank. Add the above mixture to enough snow to make the consistency of the ice cream. Eat immediately.

Recipe Note: In years past, after a big snow and the sleigh rides, building snow forts and snow ball fights were over, came time to make snow ice cream.

ENJOY!

birthday catchup

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

I want to acknowledge some other cool gifts I got for my birthday before the window passes.

My in-laws sent me some really cool plant stuff. The hand painted turtle planter will contain some sort of plant I bring indoors today. (Even though it has been in the 70s this week, it is starting to get down to the 40s at night.)



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They also sent me some awesome mushroom-shaped garden stakes. I can never keep track of where I planted things, so the stakes will be attractive and useful.



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Ty got me a gift certificate for the yarn store in Fort Smith. I bought some pretty cool stuff. I had to buy sparkly sock yarn from Turkey. I also found a project in the Vogue Knitting Winter 2009 issue. A short-sleeved sweater will be very handy to have here!



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My neighbors Sam and Sujith got me some nice bread flour, fig vinaigrette, some cake yeast, and a hunk of sourdough starter!


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We’ve already made bread from it once, and I’ve pieced out the starter to several friends. I’ve never made kneaded bread before, but it turned out great! I’m using this site for the care and feeding of my starter. The recipe creates a very large loaf. I had to give half of it away before it went stale. I suggest halving the recipe for a household of 2.

crafty cakes

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

If you read a lot of blogs, you know about the cake blog, cake wrecks. I once received my weekly dose of funny from Bob Saget and America’s Funniest Home Videos. I only go to cake wrecks every two weeks or so, but they’ve definitely taken up residence in my heart where Bob Saget used to live.

The website has all sorts of cakes that turn out horrible, but they also have pictures of the most amazing cakes in the world. One of the cakes I think should be featured on the site is the gar cake my friends Robin and Eric made. Robin’s husband Mark appeared on the Discovery Channel show River Monsters as what I like to call “The Gar Whisperer”.

Robin also made me a little fish for my birthday.



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I’m wondering if Robin has got a novel in her about zombie fish? Maybe a book about zombie crafts? Possibly a zombie pumpkin cake with toffee survival cookbook?

Crafty Books: 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

I’ve been posting so much about fiction writers and poetry writers, that I almost forgot this is first and foremost a craft blog!

I’m super excited about my fellow former Nebraskan crafter Garth Johnson’s new book 100 Ideas for Creative Reuse, due out in November.




He’s the author of the Extreme Craft blog, and posted today that he received his copy of the book.

I zipped over to amazon.com to see if any of my projects made the cover, or if I made it into the first few pages browsable by Amazon’s Look Inside! feature. After a few clicks on the Surprise Me! feature, and there is one of my projects at #242!

One of my favorite things about this book is that it has a single picture of each creative reuse project. There are no patterns and no instructions. It is a book of ideas, but it is also a fantastic book of possibilities for people who consider crafting as interesting and as engaging as solving puzzles or gigantic systems of equations. The picture of the finished item is proof that the puzzle can be solved, or that a solution exists. As a crafter, you can infer a few things from each picture, but the path you take in utilizing the creative reuse idea is completely up to you!

Earlier today at my new job, I had to fill out a section of my Corporate Resume about my published works and publications. I wonder if they’ll let me add my recycled sweater coozie to that list? I’ll post a little about my job this weekend.