Enjablog

Fantastic turnout at this weekend’s cookie exchange. I think it was the best one yet.

Ian got his pan cookies done in the morning and gave the condo a nice cookie smell to it (so I didn’t need to light my cookie candle). Sonny and Yenny got there just in time to help set up some finishing touches. My parents and gramma arrived next with enough noodles and chicken for everyone (to eat there and to take leftovers home!). Also in attendance were Ian’s mom, my aunt and uncle, TLD, Healey, Jackee, SPJ, Lenny, and Stephanie. Yeah, like I said… We had a good turnout this year. :)

Cookies in attendance:
Macaroons
Lemon Bars
Wheat Germ Chewies
Chocolate Chip
Peanut Butter
White Chip Macadamia Nut
Quick Biscotti
White Chocolate Cherry
Sugar (Giant & Harris Teeter)
Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Pan Cookies
Oatmeal White Chocolate Chip
Sugar Duds
Tagalongs

QOTD: “Would you like a cookie?”
“I’m so glad I hired you!”

Saturday afternoon, I baked a double batch of white morsel macadamia nut cookies. I had some macadamia nuts left over from last year when I last made these cookies and bought an extra bottle because I didn’t think I had enough left for the whole batch.

I started out by mixing the dry ingredients and confusing baking powder and baking soda. So, I had the wrong amounts of each in the mixture. I resolved that by adding some extra cream of tartar and pretending like it didn’t matter since I don’t usually measure anyway. Yeah, that makes it better.

Next, I found that my brown sugar had hardened in the unopened package. So, I had to microwave that and break up all the sugar chunks. After that everything mixed together fine… until I got to the macadamia nuts.

I needed to chop up some macadamia nuts, so I, of course, took one out of the bottle to “see if it was still good.” You know, the excuse you use when you want to sneak some of the ingredients into the belly fund. I didn’t actually think that nuts went bad. Yeah, yeah… There’s the saying that someone’s a bad nut or whatever. I thought that referred to nuts that were bad in the shell. Even so, I guess I was conceptually aware that nuts can be bad. I just never really experienced one.

So, I ate a macadamia nut and it didn’t have the nice usual crunch to it and then it had a weird after-taste. A little bitter; just a little off. Then, I did what I usually joke about only having done as a child: I ran to the closest person (Ian, in this case) and said, “This tastes funny. You try one.” And he did.

Consensus was reached and the old macadamia nuts were not to be used. The new nuts were used after successfully passing my “test.”

As expected, I looked it up on the intarweb. I found that nuts turn rancid when left out too long. Problems with nuts:

Whole nuts, still in their shells are less expensive and will last up to a year without going rancid; just be sure to keep them in a cool, dry place. Shelled nuts—especially picture of nuts if they’re roasted—may last longer if they are kept in the refrigerator. If you plan on storing them longer than six months, consider putting them in the freezer.

QOTD: “That’s why phone sex sells, but not erotic audio books.”

White Chip Island Cookies

INGREDIENTS
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
2 cups (12-ounce package) Nestle Toll House Premier White Morsels
1 cup flaked coconut, toasted if desired
3/4 cup macadamia nuts or walnuts, chopped

DIRECTIONS

Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Beat in egg. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels, coconut and nuts. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets.

Bake in preheated 375 degrees F oven for 8 to 11 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Shoot! Totally forgot to blog this yesterday!

Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day

Met up with Sonny at the Carnegie lecture thing tonight on the origin of the earth and moon. The speaker was so good. She did a really good job simplifying concepts and explaining them in general terms. Also, she did a cool orbital dance. Part of an explanation, of course.

And to sum up my evening… Watching figure skating with Sonny and Ian:

“Is that girl spinning the wrong way?”
“I think she’s left-footed.”
“What is she, from Australia?”
“Oh, I get it! Haha… Coriolis effect!”

QOTD from an email from the chairman of a professional society for which I am the webmaster:

I would appreciate it if - before we meet - that you look at your newly re-done pages on Mozilla or FoxFire browsers to see how they render. It is not a requirement that they are identical.

I like your new left navigation but I am not keen - we (the [Society] EMC) do not permit any other part of the [Society] website - to use scrolling and hidden pages.

I went to work again. I got to take public transit in the rain! It was just as fun as I thought it would be. I also took Arlington Transit (ART), but I think I might figure out where the underground places go and hang with the mole people.

Went out to lunch with people as a send-off for the intern. I guess they don’t want too many girls working there all at once. It would be a waste of fulfilling quotas or something… ;)

Not much else going on. Going to the the Carnegie Institute lecture on the origin of the Earth and Moon tomorrow night. Come hang if you’re interested!

First day on the new job… I got to take public transit! It was as un-exciting as everyone else thinks, but I still think it’s cool.

Spent most of the morning filling out paperwork, tax forms, insurance stuff, etc. Then, I was shown my office and met my new office buddy. A UNO guy who’s been working there a couple years. There’s a Webb girl in the group too. Good that there’s a girl, not as good that she’s from Webb if stereotypes hold true… But that’s ok. There’s an intern whose last day is Wednesday. She seemed intern-y.

The average age in this company seems much lower than at old job. Haha… Old. Maybe average closer to mid-40s. I’m not that good at guessing ages, but not everyone looked like they were ready to retire right now. Saw some former co-workers who made the switch before me. And blipped one of my SNAME contacts.

My boss seems cool. Very busy though… he was hard to track down throughout the day. He gave me work to start on today though! Woo!

Ian and I met up with a few of my former co-workers for happy hour Friday night. Got all caught up on the office gossips. Since I’ve left, what does it matter if I know, right? Hehe… Played some pool and I won a game of cutthroat!! Ok, so I only intentionally hit one ball in (I hit 2 others in that weren’t the ones I was aiming for) and it was the last one on the table that wasn’t mine. But still. My luck came in at the right time. That’s the same as being good at pool.

Went out for date night on Saturday. Ian and I decided to get sushi, so we went and looked on the Washington Post Restaurant guide thingy and found a “new” place in Arlington to try out. About a mile away from home, I was going over the directions in my head and it sounded like it was near a place we had tried before… And when we got there, it turned out to be the place we had tried before. Oh well. It was good. :)

The entertaining/annoying part of the night was the family that got seated next to us. There were 2 adults and 3 kids. The girl sitting at the corner across from me spent about 40% of the evening staring at me and another 35% staring at Ian. She was creepy. Not like naked guy at the backdoor creepy. But like little girl in the Exorcist creepy. Anyway, later in the evening:

Kid1: Is octopus a mammal?
Kid2: No! It’s an arachnid. It has 8 legs.
Mom: No, it’s not a mammal.
Kid1: Yes it is! It lays eggs.
Dad: It’s not a mammal; it doesn’t breathe air.
Kid2: What about whales? They don’t breathe air.
Dad: Yes they do. They have a snout!

So I don’t necessarily expect the kids to have known about cephalopods, but come on… Shouldn’t the parents know that there are other classes besides mammal and arachnid (yes, arachnids are a subphylum, but whatever)? Not what those classes are, but just that there are organisms that don’t fit into either the arachnid or mammal categories.

Anyway, the later discussion between kid3 and the dad pretty much summed up for me the problem with that family. The father asks her whether she liked lemons, she says no, and he says not plain; they’re no good like that… unless it’s with tequilla. Then he proceeds to explain to her the lemon/salt/tequilla thing. Nice.

Went over with Ian to my parents’ on Sunday to meet up with my sis and hang out with the parents. Ended up hanging out with my sis for a while before our parents showed up. We played some Animal Crossing and everyone took naps. Oh! Oh! And in Animal crossing, I got my golden watering can!! Woo!

Did Ian’s family dinner thing after that. His bro got a new tripod for his camera, so they had a little picture night. There was some gossip to catch up on and then Ian’s bro dropped off Ian’s bike.

Finally! Finished. :)

My last day at my first grown-up job…

On my to-do list today: Submit timesheet, have logins/email/voicemail taken away, turn in badges, have requisite people sign off on my termination checklist.

I logged on to my computer this morning and load up the timesheet program. Put in my log-in information and receive an error “You have entered an inactive employee ID.” Uhh… Try again. Same result. Check employee ID on badge. Try again. Huh. The boss stops by to let me know that he got an email notice saying my account had been deactivated and he is unable to approve my timesheet. Well, no problem… because I am unable to submit my timesheet for approval!

Go downstairs and chat with one of the managers who’s supposed to know stuff, but she can’t access it either. At least she clarifies, though… My account hasn’t been deactivated; it has been removed from the system. Great. Go up and talk to HR. The person signing me out doesn’t know, so she passes me off to someone else, who has to call someone at a different office to find out if this can be rectified. Fast-forward… They get my account put back on the system, fill out my timesheet for me, and submit. Do I still need my supervisor to approve? They don’t know… go ask my supervisor if he gets an approval request. Right.

Spent the rest of the morning tracking people down, but everything else went just fine. I am now unemployed and uninsured! Must be extra safe this weekend. :)

It’s the return of the Ultimate Blogger: Ultimate Blogger 2!

Yesterday was my last full day of work. Today will be meeting with IT and security to take away everything they’ve ever given me. Woo!

A bunch of people from my group took me out to lunch yesterday. Very nice. One of the guys started telling stories about his wife and mother-in-law and the rest of us weren’t in a hurry to get back… so about half an hour after the bill was paid, someone finally got up and decided it was time to go. Got taken totally by surprise (though, I’m not sure why… I should’ve seen it coming) when at the end of lunch they demanded a speech from me. Totally off the cuff. Oh well.

Tonight: Happy hour! Emailed a bunch of the younger types at the company to come out tonight. Most of whom I don’t see that often, so I haven’t told them yet that I’m leaving… Hehe. If they show up, I’ll let them know. :) -j.

I have started burying duplicate gyroids by the wall next to my house. If you have duplicates around, we can trade. Just bury your extras on the other side of my house. :) Thanks! -j.

Yay! Another cookie holiday! AND I get to go to Chipotle today. Life is good. :)

If you know me through the HOY, go hit my sister up for some cookies before they’re all gone. I got lazy with my wrapping/delivering this year.

I was locked up in the secure room for most of the day yesterday at work, but luckily I happened to be out right when Lenny called in the afternoon. He and Stephanie made a bunch of gumbo and invited the whole fam over for dinner. I was planning to do cookie deliveries last night anyway, so it worked out and I only had to make the one stop.

I ended up getting there a little late and my parents were already there, but Sonny and Ben (representing Yenny for the night) got there a little after me. So it all worked out alright. I saw everyone a couple weekends ago for the Superbowl, but didn’t really catch up then. So got all caught up on gossips. Ben and Sonny are preparing for their 10-year reunion, so they started naming classmates and bringing up old stories. And in 6-degree weirdness, a girl they went to high school with is the sister of the girlfriend of the brother of Stephanie. It was an entertaining evening.

Ok, so it’s Sunday and I don’t get snowdays for work anyway, but whatever. It snowed! The power in my building was out for about half the day. Ian and I spent that time reading the newspaper and playing Blokus. And by reading the newspaper, I actually mean the paper stuff that gets ink on your fingers. We order it, but I usually only read the comics and cut coupons. The rest I read online. Ian kept forgetting the power was out and doing things like walking into the bathroom and flipping on the light switch, then suggesting we watch a DVD, and going into the kitchen and turning on the lights to look for food. I guess having electricity is one of those habits that’s hard to kick.

Anyway, power came back up around 2 or 3 and I made some Valentine cookies. The plan was originally to make them yesterday and deliver them today. But with all the fuss about the blizzard, I figured I wouldn’t want to go out driving today anyway. So, I waited and made them today so I’d have something to do when I was cooped up at home.

I feel boring today. I only wrote up this entry because Sonny sounded so bored at home. (Hi!) I’ll go look for some adventures.

P.S. I buried extra snowman stuff by the wall next to my house if people want it. First come, first dig. Only thing there right now is wallpaper, but I’ll keep leaving stuff there through the end of the month.