Will you be at Pennsic? Come to my party!


The fine print reads... * 7 Flavors x 3 Rims (salt, sugar, or none) = 21

No invitation necessary to get in. But I'd rather not entertain complete strangers. So please only bring friends.

 
On my way up to GNEW last weekend I visited for a night with my sister and brother-in-law, and got to see their new house. Photos from that visit are up in a new Flickr Set.

 
A little while ago while running errands, I discovered my car has a neat little security feature I never knew about. (I mean, I've only had her 2.5 years.)

If I lock all the doors with my key remote, I can only unlock them that way as well. The master unlock switch on the driver's side door won't do it. What this means is that I can leave all my windows down while bopping into a store. But by locking the doors with my remote anyone trying to jump into my car while I'm briefly away won't be able to. (They'd have to climb through the window. Not that this would necessarily stop them. But it would slow them down.)

 
Driving home from work this evening, I had to stop the car to wait for a bunch of Canadian geese, all lined up like baby ducks, to cross the road. Surreal.

 
Just a quick note to let everyone know I didn't get the job I interviewed for last week. Oh well. At least it was more experience interviewing.

 
I think it went well. I interviewed with the woman who would be my boss if I get the job, and she seems cool. Also, as it was clear that she doesn't have much experience interviewing, I felt a lot less nervous about not having much experience being interviewed. I was supposed to also meet with someone from HR. But by the time we finished the first portion of the interview she was in a meeting. So she'll be calling me next week to talk on the phone.

I'm mostly trying not to think about it, but when I do I'm finding myself being cautiously hopeful.

Many thanks to everyone who wished me luck. Oh, and if you want to help me not stress, keep me distracted with other things. In particular, if you feel so inclined, I'd love any comments you might have about my latest batch of photos.

 
I have a new Flickr set up, of my photos from Independence Day Weekend.

 
I just got off the phone and I have a job interview on Thursday!

I'm 27 different kinds of nervous about it.

First there's the fear of the idea of leaving Dunn McKenzie, as I don't want to leave them in the lurch. I've gotten around this by just not thinking about it, figuring I'd cross that bridge when I got to it. And I'm still not at the bridge. But it's now getting into sight.

Then there's the worry that I won't do well at the interview, as I have next to no experience with them.

Then there's the question of whether I really want this job or not, as it is further away than what I've mostly been looking at, and I'm not sure I want that commute. Though of course the reason I even applied for it given the commute is that it does appear to be my dream job (AP specialist at a large accounting firm.)

Then there's the fear that if I get the job that I won't be able to go to Pennsic. Yeah... Duh! Most of my brain is rational enough to tell me that a new and stable job is more important than my vacation. But there is that irrational part of my brain that's yelling, "I wanna go!"

Of course there's also the simple fact that it's not like I'm the only person they'll be interviewing for this position. So it's entirely possible/probable that I'll get myself all worked up about this for no reason.

Gah! I'm nervous!

... from my mini-vacation visiting family in western NY. I am completely fried, but I had a great time. Going to go collapse now. More text and photos to follow later.

I am so completely in love with a new dish I've concocted. I was inspired by one of my favorite frozen dinners, Marie Callender's Cheesy Chicken & Rice, and I decided to see if I could make something similar in a pan on a stovetop (for one pan Pennsic cooking, don'cha know.)

1 cup rice mix
1 10oz. can chicken
1 4oz. can sliced mushrooms
broccoli florets
shredded cheese

Cook rice according to package directions. When rice is done, add all other ingredients to the pan and stir until the cheese is melted and the other ingredients are warmed through.

Serves 2-3

Notes & Commentary
For the rice I've been using Rice Select brand Royal Blend of Texmati Brown and Wild Rice with Soft Wheat and Rye. It's got a good variety of textures, and the wheat and rye are nicely chewy. But you could use whatever rice or rice mix you prefer. For the chicken, I've been using Stop&Shop brand. Maybe not the world's best quality, and I might not use it for something in which the chicken is more prominent. But for chunks in a casserole? Just fine. For the broccoli, I've been using frozen florets (about half a 1 lb. bag per batch.) At home I've been thawing the broccoli in my microwave, and then trimming off just the very tips of the florets to use, discarding the stems. My thought is that at Pennsic the broccoli won't stay frozen, and will thaw in the cooler enough to be cut. For cheese, the first time around I just grated a random amount, and it wasn't quite enough. Tonight I measured more carefully, using a half pound. Okay, maybe that was a bit much. But boy did it make it nummy!

The biggest difference between the frozen dinner and my recipe is that the cheese in the frozen dinner is a cheese sauce, whereas mine is just melted bits. So it does have a very different texture. (I could make my own cheese sauce. But that would take more time and defeat the point of only getting one pot dirty.) But it's not like it's an unpleasant texture - just different. And a nice advantage of making my version is that it doesn't come with unpronounceable ingredients.

Apparently the cops made some sort of big bust somewhere in my neighborhood in the past few days. I noticed nothing, so it must have happened yesterday during work hours, or Saturday night while I was at Can't Stop the Serenity. So if I noticed nothing, how do I know? Because a guy from Channel 12 just buzzed at my door looking for neighbor reactions. I declined as I'm not really interested in being on the news. (Plus, I'm currently not wearing pants.) Admittedly, there was also the small bit of inherent suspicion of not necessarily believing anything anyone tells me over my intercom. But he does appear to have been legit. That's because peeking out the window after ending our conversation, I did see the guy walk back down the driveway carrying a serious video camera, and there is a car parked in the lot next door that's plastered with the news logo.

 
It's the 31st anniversary of me giving my dad his most memorable Father's Day present ever

I broke my arm at the church Father's Day picnic.

 
I've been playing with making and decorating cakes practically since I can remember. In the past decade, I think I've actually gotten pretty good, for a self-taught amateur. For several years now I've wished I had the opportunity to enter some sort of cake decorating contest. But I've never discovered one that was close enough.

But thanks to the wonderfulness that is Cake Wrecks, I've just learned about the Threadless Threadcakes contest. This one you enter just via submitted photos. OMG, I can do this! OMG, I so want to do this!

Now I just need to pore through the Threadless catalog to figure out which shirt will inspire me. Uhhhh.... Yeah, that's going to take a while. I'm familiar with Threadless, and I know I've loved/coveted some of their designs. But it's not like I can think of any off the top of my head. But hey, the rules say friends can help. So if you've got any favorite shirts of theirs and/or any ideas for how they'd make a cool cake, let me know.

 
equality isn't actually a subject for debate

Thanks to nisaa for pointing me to it.

 
I just figured out what I'm going to do for the cake for my family's 4th of July party. I'm very pleased, as I think I've come up with something that's a nice balance between fun and interesting (and helping me to increase my skill set) and not too crazy given the limited time I'll have and that I'll be baking in someone else's kitchen.

Now I just need to choose a flavor, and I'm stumped.

So what do you think? What flavor combinations (cake, filling, icing) most says "4th of July" to you?

 
I just did data-entry of 143 login account information sets. Each involved entering 4 names, an email, and setting two user level modes. Ugh. I'm just a smidge fried.

 
First, I have a small set of speakers up for grabs. They're 7" wide, 10" tall, 7" deep. They have dark brown wood cases and orangish-brown speaker cover fabric. I don't think they're necessarily very good quality. But they do work. I'll throw in about 60 feet of speaker cable, in two almost equal lengths.

Second, I still have a bunch of books unclaimed.

 
I just scored 4.675 yards of silvertoned silk dupioni. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. But it was too pretty and too good a deal to pass up.

 
lady_gaby and I have declared "Philly Cheesesteak in a Frypan" a success! Woot!

 
I was just sorting through my patterns, and discovered that somehow I have two copies of Simplicity 3782, size RR (14, 16, 18, 20.) If you're curious, a photo and review can be found here.

If you want it, it's yours. I can either hold on to it until we next see eachother, or if you're willing to PayPal me the cost of shipping, I'll send it to you.