Pros and cons

There are good things and bad things about changing jobs within the same company. Good things include not losing cool co-workers and friends, not having to move, and not having to learn your way around a new building.

The bad thing I have discovered in the past couple of days: no time for blogging since I'm finishing up my old job and learning my new one all at the same time.

Stay tuned

I just wrote a whole post and then deleted it because I decided that it wasn't very entertaining.

I've got nothing, evidently.

However, I think I can manage to rant about our neighbors tomorrow.

Ha!

I was at a gathering on Saturday night - people that I work with and their spouses. The only child there was about nine years old, and she did a pretty good job of entertaining herself most of the night. By about 11:00, though, she had tired of that and was looking for some socialization from the adults.

I asked her if she knew any jokes. I'm terrible at remembering jokes, but I enjoy them so much. She said she didn't really know any and then proceeded to regale us with non-jokes for at least 45 minutes. Here's an example: Why did the light bulb burn out? Because it doesn't have a brain!

Of course, we would have to guess answers before she would tell us the correct answer, which resulted in some actual jokes. (These responses were never "correct," by the way.)

Why is the skeleton red?
Because he's embarrassed that he's naked.

Why does the elephant walk so slow?
Because he has junk in his trunk.

And my two favorites because I made them up myself . . .

Why do spiders weave webs?
Because they can't knit.

Why do cows wear bells around their necks?
Because their horns don't work.

Bon bons for breakfast

Our volleyball tournament was last night. It was single-elimination, which means once you lose, you're out. I may have mentioned that this year, they lumped all the teams into one league instead of two. So half the teams are really good and the other half aren't. That means that half the time we have fun, competitive games, and the rest of the time, we just try not to get hurt.

In the first round of the tournament, we played a really good team, and we didn't win. We also didn't get hurt, which was actually the main objective. Unfortunately, that meant we were out of the tournament. The rest of the tournament games were between the good teams (since they had knocked the mediocre teams out in the first round), so we hung around to watch how the game should be played.

I had been feeling pretty proud of myself all day because I had upped my mileage on Tuesday and Thursday to 2.4 miles. Woo hoo! That pride was quickly eliminated when the team sitting next to us on the bleachers started talking about running.

Evidently, several of them are training for a marathon and/or have run marathons in the past. They kept talking about the run they were planning for Saturday. 18 miles! You can see why my 2.4 was not so exciting anymore.

The worst part was that they wouldn't stop talking about it. I think they talked about running for at least 30 minutes. The whole time, I could only hear 18 miles, 18 miles, 18 miles, 18 miles . . . By the end of the night, I was feeling like I might as well eat bon bons in the mornings instead of bothering with my measly little runs.

I got over it though - 2 miles again today.

As requested

Several months ago, a couple of our friends happened to be in town. We met up with them at their hotel and walked several blocks to a restaurant we thought they'd like. Well, the owners had decided (without asking us, by the way) it would be a good time for a vacation, so the place was closed. Instead of walking back the way we came, we decided to walk a few blocks farther to have drinks before dinner.

We went to a rooftop bar that had a live band. A LOUD live band. The atmosphere at this place is great except that they have a hard time getting the volume right. So the four of us yelled at each other over a pitcher of sangria.

At some point, the topic of movies came up, I guess, because I was yelling something about "The 40 Year Old Virgin," which we had seen recently. Unfortunately, the music stopped before I finished yelling. To the people within 20 feet of us, it sounded like this:

blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah VIRGIN!

All the people at the neighboring tables (and perhaps in the entire city) put down their drinks to stare at me. If I was a teenager, that would have been the moment that I would have tried to convince my parents that we had to move across the country. I would have been absolutely mortified.

As it was, G, our friends, and I laughed at me and we moved on.

Or I thought we had moved on until one of the friends, J, asked why that story hadn't made the blog. Good question. So here it is.

Do you want some cocktail sauce with your donuts?

I used to pass a biker bar on my way to work. They had a life-sized soldier mannequin that held a life-sized machine gun and was semi-crouched in a position that indicated he might charge. When they placed him near the road, he would often startle me as I drove past. They would also park a hearse outside that had the name of the establishment painted on its doors. I'm not sure what the message was supposed to be, but it didn't encourage me to eat anything there.

The biker bar closed a while back, and the new owners have been remodeling. They've painted the brick building coral, which is a bold choice, in my opinion. They recently put up the signs, and it turns out it will be a crab shack and bakery.

That's not a combination I would choose. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want to buy my baked goods from a crab shack. I'm interested to see if it lasts.

Moving on up

Where have I been? Good question. And the answer is . . . getting a new job!

I had applied for a different position at my current place of work a few weeks ago, and last Wednesday, the director offered it to me. After a couple of hours of feeling like G after a two-mile run (i.e., like I might throw up), I was able to get excited about it.

One of the best parts about my new position (other than the more important sounding title) is my new office. It's in a new building - so new it's not done yet - and it has a great view. I was touring the unfinished building with a colleague before the job and the office were officially mine, and she mentioned that some people work all their lives to get a window office.

I didn't say it out loud, but I was thinking, "Well, I have." I mean I may be young, but it's still my whole life.

If you know me in real life and didn't get an email telling you about my job, let me know, and I'll give you details.

Tomato/tomahto

G and I are in the midst of painting the outside of the cottage*. We got estimates from several painters for doing both the house and the cottage, and although we easily justified the cost for the house (it's tall), it was more difficult to justify having the cottage painted (it's small).

We started last weekend with priming the areas where paint had peeled off. Monday and Tuesday we painted trim, and we had planned to start on the walls tonight.

I talked to G this afternoon:
me: It's raining here, so we might not have to paint tonight.
G: Interesting choice of words. Don't you mean "might not get to paint?"
me: No, I was right the first time.

* In case you're curious, because I would be, the house and cottage will be light yellow (Weston Flax) with white trim and turquoise (Turquoise Powder) doors. The porch ceiling will be light blue (Fountain Spout), and the porch floor will be a really nice shade of green that I can't remember the name of. (All paints from Bejamin Moore.)

Stoked

I have wanted to learn to surf for many moons. G has tried to help me, but I was never qutie able to get it. A couple of weeks ago, we happened to be at the beach at the same time as our neighbors. I was out on a board the wife half of our neighbors had loaned me, but I wasn't doing much - mainly just floating around (which is very nice, I might add).

It came out that the husband half of our neighbors is a great teacher (he actually is a teacher, in fact), so he and I went out in the little waves close to shore, and he patiently coaxed me into standing up. It was super-fun, and I was really excited about it.

So yesterday G and I went out. I was anxious to try out my new skills on the shore break while G surfed the real waves on the outside. The shore break, however, was not friendly. I kept nose-diving the board in a foot of water, which means that I was scraping along the bottom with my arms protecting my head from the board which was flailing around somewhere above me. It was not fun.

Once G realized I wasn't having fun (because I paddled out and told him), he encouraged me to try the real waves out where he was. So I did, and I SURFED!!! I paddled for waves, caught them, and stood up. It was awesome!

I'm totally hooked. So if quit my job and buy a van, you'll know why.

I remain champion

We played volleyball last night (yet another of those sports that G can do better than me). We aren't very good at checking the schedule, so it was a shock to our team that we would be playing two matches (three games each) instead of just one.

We had a great time in the first match. Our skill level was very close to that of the other team, so the games were fun. They were also friendly, which makes a big difference. The second match was another story. We knew we'd struggle against the team because they are much better than us.

After two games against the second team, G and our teammate T walked off the court. T sat down on the sand exclaiming her exhaustion. I called out to G as he walked away to ask him where he was going.

"To the showers."
"We only played two games. We still have one left."

G and T simultaneously groaned their disbelief. We got back out there, though, and somehow distracted the other team enough with our flailing around that they lost track of the score. While they weren't paying attention, we managed to get some points, and we ended up winning. That was just icing, because we weren't expecting that at all.

As we left, I overheard a group of guys on the bleachers wonder if the court we had been using was open. I told them that we were finished and that it was open. One of the guys asked why we weren't staying to play with them. I replied simply, "We're done."

As I walked away, I heard him say, under his breath in a flirty tone, "You're done."

Nice comeback, Romeo. What does that even mean?

By the way, the volleyball double header wore G out so much that he opted out of running this morning. I think that 2 miles might kill him again next week.

The pigs have flown

Yesterday was a momentous day. A monumental day. An unexpectedly satisfying day.

I am more fit than my husband.

G is one of those athletic people. You know, the ones who seem to be good at every sport they try? I'm pretty coordinated myself, but he beats me at everything - tennis, raquetball, running, kite flying, surfing, ping pong, etc. . . And he beats me easily. But it's okay. He's a gracious winner - not too much smack-talking - and I've learned to live with it.

You might remember that I've been running. Well my fractions of miles have turned into miles plus fractions, which is a minor distinction, perhaps, but an oh so important one. I've been running every weekday morning, with G joining me on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Last week I ran 1.5 miles on the days G ran with me and 2 miles on Tuesday and Thursday.

This past Monday, we ran just a mile because we woke up too late to go farther. Tuesday I ran 1.5 and I told G he should join me so he could work up to 2 miles. He's a much stronger runner than I am, so his response was something along the lines of "I think I'll be able to do 2 miles without too much trouble."

That brings us to yesterday, our first 2 mile run together. It went well. I felt pretty strong for most of it (which is new for me), and as we walked back home after the run, I asked G how it was for him.

"I think I'm going to throw up."*

And that, my friends, is how I became more fit than my husband. We are so proud of me.

* G did not throw up, and he is looking forward to another 2 mile run tomorrow.

Saaaaakeeeeeeeee!!!

G and I went out for sushi over the weekend. We aren't crazy about any of the sushi places where we live, and our favorite restaurant is about 45 minutes away, so it's a treat when we go. We discovered this place when G lived close to it before we were married (the dark ages). The owner still recognizes us, and she hugs us when we come in.

We had an excellent meal, but the most memorable thing was the group sitting behind us. They were obnoxiously drunk and loud. Actually, we could really only hear one woman. Everyone may have been drunk, but she was the only loud one.

They (or at least she) were drinking sake (Japanese alcoholic beverage, pronounced sa-key). How do I know? Her frequent exclamations of "SAAAAAKEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!" She couldn't stop saying this in her very smoked-three-packs-a-day-for-the-past-thirty-years voice.

She yelled at the waiter for not charging her enough. When she got up from the table, her bosom practically fell out of her shirt, and then she gave the waiter a big hug. He was smiling, but I'm not sure if that's because he liked her or because he was happy to see her go.

Just wait until it bites him

I have this weird itchy area right under my left collarbone. It appeared Wednesday morning and is showing no signs of going away yet. It itches just like a mosquito bite would (and I should know since they bite me all the time), but here's the weird part - it's not a circular itch. It's linear.

I was on the phone with my mom last night, and I was telling her about it. It seems that G thought I was being a bit of a hypochondriac. He was all "whatever" about the whole thing. I had told him that it was swollen, but he told me that was my collarbone. Then he got out the tape measure for documentation purposes. As he comes in close to measure he exclaims, "Oh, it is swollen." Yes, that's why I said it was, silly. (And in case you were wondering: 1.5 inches long, 0.25 inches wide at one end, tapering to 0.125 inches wide at the other end, 0.0625 inches high).

We had various theories about what could have caused this itchy injury. I'm leaning toward caterpillar based on the shape (how a caterpillar could have gotten that close to my face without alerting me to its presence is a mystery). My mom did some googling, but she didn't come up with anything good.

Never fear, though, because G has the answer: "That looks like the bite of the blow-it-out-of-proportion bug."

Oh, really? Oh my!

I enjoy a bit of Antiques Roadshow every now and then. I'm not all that into antiques (perhaps that's because my budget doesn't allow much in the way of antiques at present), but I like seeing the people and hearing the stories about how they acquired their treasures. I often fantasize that some little garage sale whatnot that I bought for a dollar is actually worth hundreds.

The other night, I caught a little of the Roadshow, and I watched a really cute old lady have her Persian rug appraised. In case my granny is reading this, I don't want her to be offended by the term old lady. This woman was old - not like "over 40 old" or even "over 70 old," but actually old.

Anyway, this was a fairly big rug, and the woman and the appraiser were standing on either side of it. This meant that the woman was rather far away from the appraiser, and it appeared that she may have been having a hard time hearing him.

The appraiser was giving her lots of information about the rug - it was evidently a very nice specimen and in great condition. She was responding with only two comments: "Oh, really?" and "Oh my!"

"As you can see, your rug has many animals on it."
"Oh, really?"
"Earlier rugs often had men on horseback in addition to other animals."
"Oh my!"
And so on . . .

Then she deviated from those two comments:
"This rug is in excellent condition. I wasn't able to find any worn spots at all."
"It's made of wool?"
"...Well, yes..."

It turns out that her rug was worth $25,000, and the appraiser was able to tell her quite a bit about the rug. I hope that someone was able to write the information down for her, because I'm not sure she got it all, judging from her somewhat inappropriate responses.

Of course, maybe she really was surprised that earlier rugs had horsemen.

Fiiiiinally

G and I finally got together with my parents this weekend. We had such a nice visit. We went to a local historical locale, we ate a yummy dinner (with dessert even!), we went for a walk, and we told lots of stories.

I think the best part was playing games on Saturday night. G went to bed early with allergies (my parents have pets, which doesn't agree with G's sinuses), but my parents and I stayed up (until 10:30!) and played Chinese Checkers, Crazy 8's, and Rummy. I had a ball (and not just because I won a bunch, Mom and Dad)!

My mom kept trying to skip Dad's turn. After a dozen or so times, this became really funny. Then she dealt four hands instead of three ("Who else is playing, Mom?"). The highlight, though, was when we started playing Crazy 8's. My mom reminded my dad about how to play, and then it was her turn to go first. As she looked at her hand, she said, "Now what did I say? How do I play this?" We lost it.

It felt really good to be silly and laugh with my parents. It was a reminder that not only do I love them, but also, I really like them.

Our new stove

G and I are becoming more like adults all the time. First, we get jobs, then we buy a house, then we rip the house apart (that doesn't sound very adult-like, does it?), and now, we've bought an appliance.

We have a new renter in the cottage, and she let us know that the burner pans on the stove needed to be replaced. I bought new pans, but they turned out to be the wrong kind, and it was a little bit of an ordeal to find the right ones. We finally found them at Home Depot. But do you know what else Home Depot has? New stoves. With new burner pans included. And why spend $15 on burner pans when you could spend a few hundred on a whole new appliance?

Sounds a little rash, doesn't it? Our justification was that the cottage stove was pretty old and nasty and would need to be replaced at some point, probably soon. And to justify it further, we shopped around and ended up getting a great deal on the stove you see there (or one that looks just like it) at a scratch and dent place.

The scratch and dent appliance store is not in our home town, but I happened to need to go to that town (or near it anyway) last weekend. So I made a little detour to price stoves. Our idea was that we would only buy from the discount place if it was significantly cheaper than Home Depot since we like the convenience of easy returns if something goes wrong.

Turns out I got a great deal on a slightly beat up (but only on the sides, which will be hidden by cabinets) name brand stove. Woo hoo! The purchase was quite an experience. The salespeople at this store are like no salespeople I've ever seen. They don't dress nice (the uniform appears to be shorts, tennis shoes, and untucked t-shirts with "I love refrigerators" on the back), they aren't necessarily looking out for the best interest of the store (my salesman told me he regularly buys cheap appliances from the store and then resells them for a profit on ebay), and they aren't nice all the time (my salesman almost spit on me when I told him I didn't want his extended warranty).

But it worked out fine. We have a nice new stove that I can't operate properly yet. Oh, I think I forgot to tell you that this cheap stove is nicer than the one in our house, so we put our stove in the cottage, and we have the new stove. It works great, I just haven't figured out some of the details of the oven controls. I'm used to a dial and that's it. I'm sure I'll get it.

When I was standing outside the discount appliance place waiting for the stove to be loaded, I happened to glance at the exterior of the building. It is textured concrete blocks, but they've been painted. My guess is that it was a cheap paint job, because as I was aimlessly staring at the wall, I noticed a different texture in a couple of places. When my consciousness caught up, I realized it was gum. They had painted over gum.

The good ole days

One of my oldest friends, D (different than the D referenced here), was in town last week, so we got to have some catch-up time together. We had a really good time. We've known each other since before we can remember, so you can imagine that we have a lot of great memories of the silly things we used to do together as kids.

For example, at one point, we had a handheld tape recorder that we would make radio shows on. I remember making the tapes vividly, but I'm a little fuzzy on what we would actually say. I know we would use fake voices, and I think we may have sung. We also may have included a staple of ours from that time period - wimpy vs. hefty.

Hefty (as in garbage bags) used to have an advertising campaign that, at least in my memory, consisted solely of comparing their bags with a competitor's. The ads would show the competitor's bags breaking when filled with garbage, accompanied by a high-pitched voice saying, "wimpy, wimpy, wimpy." Then Hefty bags would be shown holding a large load of garbage with a deep voice saying, "HEFTY, HEFTY, HEFTY."

D and I (and our other friends?) thought it was hilarious to say the wimpy part in the hefty voice and the hefty part in the wimpy voice. We would go around saying, "WIMPY, WIMPY, WIMPY. hefty, hefty, hefty." This was our idea of great comedy, evidently.

Well, I don't know if you've seen it, but the wimpy/hefty ad campaign is back. I think they're using it for storage and freezer bags now, but it's the same concept. I saw one a couple of weeks ago, and it really took me back.

I'm not sure anyone would think I was funny anymore. Except maybe D.

One room closer

As you may recall, we had a problem with part of our countertop, and they took away the offending part to fix it. They brought it back a couple of weeks later to find that it still didn't fit properly. So they remeasured (with tools this time instead of eyeballing it) and took it away a second time.

Last week, they came to reinstall it yet again. I was lucky enough to be able to schedule the reinstallation on the same day another set of workers were going to be installing our new carpet upstairs. Luckier still, G worked from home that day, and we had a whole house full of people.

While the entire downstairs has hardwood floors under the brown shag carpet that was installed in the 70's, we presume, the upstairs was an after-market addition, and the brown shag only hides very pedestrian plywood. We picked a nice neutral carpet (which, oddly, is called morning glory), and decided to have it installed for us. Perhaps more importantly, we also paid for them to rip up the old carpet and dispose of it.

The countertop installers arrived first, with the carpet installers about 30 minutes behind them. When the carpet guys arrived, G and I were busy with the countertop people, so we just pointed the carpeters upstairs so they could get to work.

We were talking with the countertop guy when we started hearing all kinds of noises from upstairs - crashing noises, bangs, the sound of metal being hit with something. G and I looked at each other, and then the countertop guy, with a straight face, said, "Oh, that's totally normal with carpet installation. Don't worry about that. Just like you often hear breaking glass when we install granite. No problem."

Turns out the carpet installers had thrown the old carpet and pad out the window to the ground below. I guess the metal sound was either the carpet hitting the decrepit window on its way out, or the carpet hitting G's car before it hit the ground. I'm not sure.

Everything turned out great! We're happy with our countertop (finally!), and the new carpet really makes a difference upstairs. G installed a new fan up there this weekend, which means that the guest room is done! So come on over. Except that there's no furniture. You don't mind, do you?

The restaurant, part III - you say potato, I say no thank you

I already mentioned that the restaurant serves side dishes family style. They had a variety of choices in two categories - vegetables and potatoes. We opted for a potato side and were intrigued by the Steakhouse Potato Platter.

Our server described this as diced potatoes, broiled so they are crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, with onions and spices, too. Sounded good to us, so we ordered it.

Our main dishes arrived first. G and T had an enormous Porterhouse, which the server dished up for them, drizzling melted butter over the top. My crab cakes looked a little too uniform to be gourmet - they actually looked like deep-fried frozen chicken patties. And while the menu led me to believe that the crab cakes would arrive on a bed of baby greens with vinaigrette dressing (because that's what it said), there were just a few sad pieces of naked lettuce on the side of the plate.

When the Steakhouse Potato Platter arrived, our disappointment continued. The potatoes were not crispy at all. And instead of tender, I would describe them as mushy. They tasted like Waffle House hashbrowns. (If you are actually familiar with the Waffle House menu, you'll know that their hashbrowns are shredded, not diced. The point is, we should have paid $1 for the Potato Platter instead of $9.) I would bet they were not broiled. My guess is deep-fried and then warmed for a hour or so under a lamp to achieve maximum mushiness.

So all in all, the restaurant experience was a total bomb, other than the fact that it makes a fun story. The lesson to be learned is that if you plan to open a fancy restaurant with crappy food, make sure your servers are excellent salespeople.

The restaurant, part II - one sauce fits all

When our server was telling us about the restaurant, the first thing she described was their signature sauce, which was on the table when we arrived. It was a red sauce, served in a small silver gravy boat.

"This is our Shebang Sauce. (Meanwhile, we're all thinking, "Shebang? That's the best you could come up with?") It's a tomato based sauce with horseradish root, honey, and assorted spices. It's great on everything. Try it on your dinner rolls. It's also great on salad, steak, and seafood."

We were a little skeptical that any sauce, much less one called Shebang, could be good on that many things, but we tried it. It tasted exactly like a mixture of cocktail sauce and barbecue sauce. Classy, huh? We didn't like it on the dinner rolls.

We each ordered a salad with our meal. I had a lettuce wedge, which is a wedge of iceberg lettuce (hence the name) with bleu cheese dressing on top. $9. G and T each had the tomato and onion salad. In my experience, this type of salad usually comes with a balsamic vinegar dressing. Not at this place. Evidently $6 only buys you three slices of tomato and one slice of onion. No dressing of any kind.

T asked if there was any sort of dressing on the salad, and our server cheerily replied, "No. Try the Shebang Sauce! You'll love it!"

G tried it, but, in fact, he didn't love it. It seems odd to eat a tomato-based sauce on a tomato. There's just something wrong about that.

At some point during the meal, the server came to check on us.
"Have you tried the Shebang Sauce?"
"Yes."
"Did you like it?"
Loooong pause. It appeared that no one was going to step up, so I finally squeaked out a tentative "yeah." G then mentioned that it tasted a lot like cocktail sauce. She apparently took this as a compliment.
"Yes, it does have a little tang to it."

Yes it does. Just like barbecue cocktail sauce.

*I just visited the restaurant's website, and it turns out I've been spelling the name of the sauce incorrectly. It's Shabang! Sauce. Or SHABANG Sauce. It has "attitude and flavor." But I'm sure you could tell that already by the exclamation point and the all caps. You can order it from the site - six 12 oz. bottles for $59.95. "Pour it on salad, steak, seafood or anything your lusty heart desires."

I can assure you that my lusty heart does not desire any Shabang! Sauce on anything. Except maybe shrimp cocktail.