Bringing the Drama

so after i got home from the race, and got ready, i made the salad. i actually used my cutting board for cutting for one of the first times i can remember. i usually just use it as a big platter to bring stuff out to the grill. the cutting board and my knife set (also being used for one of the first times legitimately) proved to be no match for the lettuce or green onions. maybe i should start getting heads of lettuce instead of buying the bag salads from now on since cutting everything up was easier and less trouble than i thought.

i had to chop nuts AGAIN and combine with the Ramen noodles once i was done with the lettuce, onions, and broccoli. the browning of the walnuts and Ramen would have been easier had i crushed up the Ramen before putting it in the pot, but that’s a lesson for next time. i thought the browning would also permanently stain my pot, but meticulous cleaning has prevented that.

i got out the ingredients i’d need for the dressing and whisked them together. i don’t really need a balsamic vinegar bottle to be wrapped like a wine bottle, but that’s what i had. it said it was organic, so i guess they figure they need to be extra fancy. at least it was not corked. i subbed in olive oil for vegetable oil because i had it on hand and i know olive oil is healthier. i had no idea if that would work, but i hoped it would. the whisking did not take long, and once i got that finished, i was done. the counter i used was the small patch in my kitchen that didn’t have something on it. i kind of keep a cluttered kitchen, but i did have about 3 feet of counter space to work.

i got to my aunt and uncle’s at 12:58, with 2 minutes to spare. the salad went over big, much bigger than i thought. i hadn’t tasted any of what i made before, so it was pretty unknown what the reaction would be. when i told everyone about the cheesecake, they were amazed again. when the desserts were finally cut, it became apparent that my cheesecake would have done better had i greased the bottom of the pan before i put the crust on. once a few pieces had been taken though, it was easier to get the crust off. the cheesecake was also a huge hit.

after i got home, i was exhausted and fell asleep before the Hornets tipped off, so i completely missed a big win in Denver. i slept 12 hours, so i missed the whole shopping experience on Friday morning too, which is just as well, because i don’t really need a new 32″ LCD tv for $500 right now. i think what i do need is a food processor.

my aunt called me Wednesday morning at work, and told me she was going to make her pineapple upside down cake, and i told her i was going to make the salad and another dessert. we were going to make more food than was probably needed but it was Thanksgiving, people could take food home.

in light of an audible needing to be called for the Thanksgiving dessert, i had kind of decided on a chocolate/hazelnut tart, but then my friend Brandi let me know about this caramel pumpkin cheesecake. i looked at the pictures and the recipe, and thought it looked really good. the tart, from the reviews i read, seemed like a love it or hate it recipe, and the cheesecake looked more difficult. i went ahead with plans to make the cheesecake (FROM SCRATCH!). i left work a little early on Wednesday so i could go to the gym (no CGG!) and then go to the store and get home in time to make at least the cheesecake. i had plans to run in the Turkey Day Race in NOLA on Thursday morning, but i was going to make it home with enough time to throw the salad together. my dad called me about the race, and asked if he could go, so i told him to meet me at my house at 7:15 figuring i’d be getting to bed by midnight.

i went to the store after the gym and after going to walmart the previous day, i wanted to get all of my ingredients for both dishes at Rouses, without having to go to walmart. i was able to find almost everything, including the same brands on the gingersnaps and pumpkin, i was on a roll. i called Brandi (she was also making the cheesecake) to get her opinion on using fat free cream cheese (we thought using half FF half regular would be okay). all i had left to get was the caramel sauce and green onions. THERE WAS NO CARAMEL SAUCE! all i could find was the shell stuff, which was not going to work for a cheesecake. i went to the other store (same chain) in town to get the green onions for the salad, and hoped they had caramel sauce. they did not. i was going to have to go to walmart.

i went home and dropped off all my stuff, then grabbed some 20% coupons to BBB and headed off. the caramel sauce at walmart was right where it was supposed to be, with the chocolate syrups. i again called Brandi to get advice on sugar free caramel and then probably said other things but the 2nd call was a blur but i do remember talking to her as i searched in vain for a hand mixer (i could not find any, i’m sure they had some, but i didn’t have time). i went over to BBB and got a mixer and a springform pan set. i finally got home about 8:45 pm i think, ate dinner, and the cheesecake making was going to commence.

the cheesecake called for crushing 3/4 of the bag of gingersnaps, however, for me that proved to be more difficult. i have no food processor, so my first course of action was to step on the bag of gingersnaps. that didn’t really work as well, so i got out my ice cream scoop and pounded the bag. again, not exactly working. then i thought i could use my blender, unfortunately 30 min after i started. the blender worked like a champ.

i failed to think of the blender also after chopping the pecans. chopping nuts is one of the most maddening things to do and i had to do it TWICE, once for the cheesecake and once for the salad. i tried to combine all of the ingredients for the crust in the blender, but the blender did not work for that. it’s a cheap blender and probably decided after the gingersnap performance that the crust was going to be too much work. so i used a bowl and a spoon to make the crust. that worked out fine, and then i molded the crust into the springform pan. at first i dumped all of the crust into the pan, but then after realizing that would not work, i added crust as i needed it to mold to the pan. i didn’t get the crust as high up on the sides as i would have liked, but hoped that wouldn’t matter.

once the crust was done it was onto the filling. i got out the new mixer and the biggest pyrex bowl i had. in went the sugar and cream cheese. mix mix mix. i mixed at the slowest setting possible and still managed to fling cream cheese onto my shirt. the cream cheese got to light and fluffy.

in went the pumpkin. the canned pumpkin was pretty dry in the can, which was a little unexpected, however, it was good because it didn’t add anything to the already rising level of filling in the bowl. mix mix mix.

in go the eggs one at a time with mixing in between. mix mix mix. in goes the heavy cream.

mix mix mix. thankfully i didn’t have to add anything more to the filling because it was almost overflowing the bowl. i poured the filling into the crust and put it in the oven about midnight. i was thinking i may have to call my dad in the morning and tell him i wasn’t doing the Turkey Day run. i was going to try though to do EVERYTHING, so i ended up setting my phone to go off 70 or so minutes later so i could sleep while the cheesecake was in the oven. i grabbed a blanket and slept on the couch. the phone went off about 1:20 and i got up and took the cheesecake out. the cracks did not bother me, because Pioneer Woman’s (where the recipe came from) cracked also, so i figured i was doing everything right.

i had to let it cool for 30 min, so i set the phone again and slept on the couch. phone went off and i kind of hit the snooze. i got up about 2:30 or so and put the caramel sauce on, then put it in the fridge. i actually got in my bed a little before 3 am. i got up around 6:45 for the run, and was ready for 7:15. my dad was of course early getting to my house, but we were able to leave in time to make it down to the race. there were so many people there, way more than the race i ran the day after Halloween. i heard someone say on the loudspeaker than over 1000 people signed up the day of the race (including my dad and i). i ran the race in 48:16, which was good considering all that had happened in the previous 12 hours. i waited on my dad to finish, and we left. i got home about 11 and had 2 hours to shower, make the salad, and get over to my aunt and uncle’s for Thanksgiving.

in the spirit of Thanksgiving, i decided i’d bring a sour cream apple pie to the family gathering. i was excited about this, because Thanksgiving for my family is important, and this would be the first year i actually brought food. i called my aunt who is hosting to ask if there were any holes in the menu. she told me no, so i asked her about desserts. she told me there’d be brownies and that my parents were bringing a store bought apple pie from Sam’s. (WTF!) i exclaimed “i was going to make an apple pie!”, to which my aunt responded with “i was going to make a pineapple upside down cake!” we ended the phone call frustrated at the prospect of our culinary talents being stymied by the store bought pie.

after consulting with friends, i decided to still bring something, but not the apple pie. there’s nothing wrong with store bought food, but Thanksgiving? my friend Alton would be so disappointed.

work today was pretty great, although drama with White Shoes came up again. nothing major, but i had emailed the stuff he needed last week, and also copied my supervisor on the email, so he could take a look at it and make suggestions. the meeting for WS needed the information for is supposed to be tomorrow from what i heard. my supervisor emailed me edits, and i made them, then sent them out to WS again. apparently he’s on vacation all week and won’t be back till next week. so he doesn’t need them for a meeting this week. typical stupid crap he does.

in spite of that, good things happened today.

remember how i went to see Ryan Adams in Atlanta and he lost his voice, then stopped the show? today the band made the announcement that they would be basically going to do a do-over show. everyone who got tickets for the show in October will be able to get FREE tickets for the show in March, even though it’s at a different venue. how awesome is that? i hope all the douchebags who were booing and yelling all kinds of nonsense don’t get the memo. they were swearing not to ever come to a RA show again, so it would work out well for them anyway.

after work i went to the gym and did not see CGG, and made it over to Jacob’s in time for the kickoff of the Saints game. (also, i got to hang with Andrew, which was awesome. it had been a while since i saw him) the Saints went and manhandled the Packers in amazing fashion. i counted at least 27 mentions of Brett Favre during the game. it’s the 11th game of the season, between the Packers and Saints, and Favre got mentioned that many times. unbelievable, because if it was a drinking game, Jacob and I would have been on the floor by halftime (we had 16 at that point).

so tonight the youth group broke into 4 groups and each had $50 to go spend to buy Thanksgiving dinner for one of 4 local families. i helped out by driving. i had my ipod in the car, and let the guy sitting in the front seat, Troy, control it. he started going through the music on my nano, and he recognized Family Force 5, and told me he loved Death Cab. then as we’re going down the road he says “i don’t know some of these bands, Mute Math, Notorious B.I.G., Oasis….” i could understand MM, cause while they are local, they aren’t that well known. but seriously, Biggie and Oasis? i explained Notorious B.I.G.by mentioning 2Pac, who Troy knew, and then gave a short summary of the whole east coast/west coast drama, but i couldn’t remember who got shot first (it was 2pac). i told Troy that Oasis was big when i was in high school, but now not so much. they’re still around though, but i don’t think anything they’ve done was as big as the album Morning Glory is on. i felt so old explaining that. at least i didn’t admit my rap phase i went through in college, not that he’d have understood what i was talking about. (sophomore year, i remember watching the video debut for Victory with about 12 other people in our apartment. i think we were all disappointed.) of course i also go to talk about how i went to see Death Cab, and then about how i went to see Paramore, which made me feel a little bit more up to date on music the kids like.

about the Thanksgiving stuff, the 4 groups were divided evenly between the two walmarts in town, and we were tasked with also coming up with a menu. walking around with such a large group was a little awkward at first, but everything worked out really well. we had just enough money to get the turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, green beans, and a dessert. it was a great night. those kids are awesome.

when i talk about work, i usually try to be as vague as possible for no other reason than to keep things as simple as possible. lately work has been stranger and stranger, but not without drama. remember when i got upset about that guy who sent out the ninja report before it should have been sent out? that same guy got to me again on tuesday. he basically told my manager that i was not helping him with some work he had to do for this Friday. problem is, he never told me he needed help or that there was a Friday meeting. he (from now on he’s White Shoes) had asked me if i was working on his part on Monday, but my priority had been for the past two weeks to work on something else that i had finished Tuesday. White Shoes knew this, i had told him multiple times, and he always seemed to be okay with it. it was not that i was ignoring his part, but that work had kind of been put on the backburner by people higher up than me, so it wasn’t like i was going off and doing my own work. anyway, so my manager calls me on Tuesday morning and tells me he’s been told i’m not helping WS with his work, and that he has a meeting on Friday he needs help getting information together. i told him i had no idea there was a Friday meeting, and what did WS need. my manager told me to go talk to WS (because he didn’t know either). i got off the phone not very happy, and walked over to WS’s desk to ask him what he needed. i think i woke him up, because he kind of roused and looked at me as if waking up from a desk slumber. his first reply to what he needed was as generic as going to a mall customer service desk and asking where the clothes were. i asked him more specifically what he would need for this Friday meeting. he couldn’t give me an answer! so i said they’re probably going to be looking for powerpoint charts, did he want that. he said that’d be fine.

i got back to my desk and told someone over IM that i was tired of him getting a free pass to be a dumbass. if he had a meeting Friday that he needed information from me for, that’s fine, but tell me instead of telling our manager that i’m not helping you. he totally sold me out for no apparent reason. it’s not as if we’re the same level and he needs to look better than me. he seems to have a Napoleonic complex where he wants to be in total control, so by holding back information from me, he kept control.

so today i was able to finish what WS was going to need, and then found out that the Friday meeting agenda was changed and he wouldn’t be talking his part. i did not find this out from him (OF COURSE) but by someone else. i went and confirmed it though and he didn’t even apologize for not keeping me in the loop. i don’t like working with him because of stuff like this. incidentally, the part i’m working on for him, i came up with pretty much everything. so not only do i have to work with him just to get my part of the story done, i’m also wanting to make sure he doesn’t screw up what i’ve already done.

and i’m not sure if this was because of the economy, but now 2 of the 8 total jobs i had applied for have been cancelled. i got an email about one of the Birmingham jobs i applied for that they are not going to fill the position. no other explanation than that. hopefully that won’t be happening with the other job apps i have left.

so i’m still going to the gym, and have had run-ins with CGG. this evening i was able to avoid him by the grace of God. he totally missed seeing me while i’m right out in the open doing some shoulder exercises. i have failed to tell you about what happened about a week and a half ago. i recounted this story at IHOP after the high school football game last week and will now document it for the internet.

on Fridays i get there earlier than the other two days i go because i’m either off work early or because i don’t have work. so it’s almost unavoidable to see CGG on Fridays. two Fridays ago, i had gone and pretty much almost finished my entire workout before having probably the creepiest yet. i had seen him walking around, but of course just kept to myself. i had finished my three sets and only had one burnout set to do. (incidentally, the burnout set idea was from when Matt the intern would workout with Andy, Chad, and I and it’s basically one set of one exercise with a lower weight, which you do until you ‘burnout’). i had gotten some water and i thought i had avoided CGG, but when i turn the corner to go back to the weight room, BAM, there he is. i had to shake his hand or something like a “hey, what’s up?” deal, and i THOUGHT that was all. i walk into the weight room, i had my hand on the bar and he comes up to me. the conversation went something like this:

CGG: “hey scott, what kind of engineer are you at [Company Awesome]?”
me: “mechanical”
CGG: “oh yeah? and you do drawing like on the computer?”
me: “yeah”
CGG: “cool, so could you draw stuff like gym equipment?”
me: “not really. most of what i do is airplane stuff”
[i thought at the time how i wanted to go "UNLESS IT IS GETTING LAUNCHED INTO SPACE, I CAN'T DRAW IT!", but i guess me being nice helped me hold my tongue]
CGG: “oh okay”
me: “couldn’t you draw it like on paper or something?”
CGG: “oh no, my brother owns the place (and i thought “i’ll never get him fired!”) and i’m an MD but i’ve been out of practice for 4 years (i thought “i can tell you why!”) and we can’t draw anything”
me: “well, i guess you could go to a sports therapist and see where they get drawings for stuff, i have no idea”
CGG: “oh, okay, well, have a good weekend”

WTF? i could see where he was going with his questions. he was going to see if i could draw it for him, and there was no way ever that i would do that. i don’t get it. i was talking to a friend at dinner tonight, and he knows a guy who used to be a trainer at the gym i go to, who is now a trainer at a gym closer to my house. if the other gym is around the same price, i might be switching. i deal with enough ridiculous creepy stuff at work, like BO Guy’s trip to Colombia coming up in a couple of weeks (wait till i post about that!) that i would like to minimize the creepy/weird stuff as much as possible. i mean, yes, i am awesome, but at least my eye doctor only calls my cell phone for about a week after i go once a year. he doesn’t ask me about drawing new eye care equipment.

on Thursday before i left work, i had a good talk with my home shop manager. a quick rundown, so in the program where i do rotations in different departments, i’m still badged to the department i was hired in, which is called ‘home shop’. anyway, so the manager who’s my home shop manager now is different from the one i originally worked for, and IMO much better. the past month or so, i’ve gone to talk to her a few times about my job and my job prospects. it’s awesome to have someone at work who’s higher up than me to go talk to about some of the frustrations with my current job and have them listen. she’s able to give me some advice, and i feel better about the current state of things….up to a point anyway. i went and talked to her about my current job hunt and filled her in on my meet up with a guy in town from ATL. one of my friends in ATL told me about her old boss coming down to NOLA and arranged me to meet him. i went and talked to him Thursday AM for probably an hour. he gave me some advice on job searching, and about what he was working on. why does almost every other job i hear about seem cooler than mine?

back to the home shop manager, she told me about maybe why one of the jobs i bid for got turned down so quickly (because apparently the people in Denver aren’t very open to hiring non-Denver people). she also told me that i probably wouldn’t hear much until after the new year starts. yuck. this means i will probably have to start up taking grad school classes again. i’m not really excited about that. hopefully i’ll just find one class i can take which won’t cause me to lose my mind. i am DEFINITELY not going to schedule two classes ever again, one is bad enough.

so probably a month or so ago i noticed the Reba McEntire/Kelly Clarkson tour was going to be hitting Biloxi. i didn’t really know who to ask, because all the people who i went with to see KC two summers ago live far away. last Sunday in Sunday School, i brought up the show, and as soon as the words left my lips two girls went “OMG! FOR REAL?” newly listed last week was a 4 pack of tickets that lowered the per ticket price from $47 and $57 to $25, take that TM! (of course after the fees they were $35 each)

i knew the show would not be as cool as the last time i saw KC. that weekend will go down as one of the greatest weekends ever. nothing was going to come close to my friend Mike and i wearing American flag bandanas, nothing was going to be as great as jumping and flailing about during the show. sure, The Reeb would be there but really, would all of the fun?

i met the girls i was going with at the carpool meetup spot and we set off for the coliseum. immediately upon getting there we were stuck in traffic. the people directing traffic were not professionals and that getting out would be a nightmare. i parked on the last row of the parking lot, avoiding being blocked in. i’m not sure who suggested it (not me) that to kill time after, we could go wait by the tour buses. i figured that would be fine, since it would be either that or sit in the car for 30 minutes.

when we got inside we walked up to our seats, and saw it wasn’t really that crowded. we watched the opening act, who was the girl who played Barbara Jean on Reba’s show doing a comedy act. it was alright, but most of what she said was how cool Reba was, which got old after a while. the lights went down and Reba and Kelly took the stage! after the 2nd song (Why Haven’t I Heard From You?) we moved down to seats opposite the stage, so we had a great view of the video screen and everything. after we moved down there, i saw plenty of other people move. why sit in the $25 seats when you could move down to the seats twice as expensive?

the show was a lot of fun, and they both went through their major hits and some covers. KC only did two songs off her newest album, which was kind of surprising. she of course did the big hits off Breakaway, and i noticed Reba learned the words to a few songs this time since i saw her with KC on Crossroads. i only knew 5 or so Reba songs before the show and she did all of those. they also did some older Reba songs which probably made the older people in the crowd happy. you could tell Reba was really good at telling stories between songs, but Kelly wasn’t. there were a lot of old ladies in the crowd, so when Kelly would say something that she probably thought was funny, it would feel awkward because the older people wouldn’t really cheer.

they finished the main set having not sung “Since U Been Gone” or “Fancy”. you knew they HAD to do both of them. so the crowd’s cheering, and the arena is dark, and then the bands come on stage and start playing music that ended up being SUBG. Reba and Kelly emerged back to back from a riser at the top of the stairs. OMG! they sang it and everyone’s going crazy, and then they started Fancy. the entire crowd is up on their feet screaming and yelling and singing. the lights on the stage are at their peak, and then they finished. it was amazing!

after the show, we sat in our seats as the crowd was leaving. there were so many hair and fashion disasters, it was almost hard to believe. i went past the merch booth on the way out and while there saw a guy with a Reba tour shirt and i think it said either 1991 or 1998 (is either okay?). he was telling the girl he was with, which shirts he saw that he already had. it was kind of scary. he kind of looked like the brother from Napoleon Dynamite. after we walked outside, we saw the insane amount of traffic, so we walked around to find the tour buses. there were probably 30-40 other people back there, including one group of ladies who i think were intentionally trying to channel Reba. they all had sequin type shirts on and that mid to late 90s Reba haircut. i almost asked to get a picture with one of them, but i didn’t. the security guards were kind of jerks and made up stories to get everyone to leave. i felt bad, because most of the people back there seemed to be normal people who just wanted to catch a glimpse of their heroine (Reba). by the time the tour bus drama ended, the traffic had cleared out, so we hopped in the car and headed home.

after the months of watching the campaign go from inspiring to annoying to maddening in what seemed like 10 years, we finally got to vote last Tuesday. my parents usually work at the polling places for elections, so they voted early. my dad kept bugging me about voting early, but i kept telling him and other people who were telling me to vote early that i wanted to wait until election day. i liked the feeling of community with the rest of America. besides, my precinct is basically my neighborhood, and for every other election i’ve voted in there’s never been a line. not even in 2004. i get to vote at the local “used to be cool, but now it’s awful” mall, and i think my entire time voting in the Presidential primary a few months ago was 3 minutes and most of that was taken up by the people finding my name in the roster book.

i wore a red shirt to work on Tuesday. it was not random, i wore it for a reason. nobody said anything to me at work, but i knew, and that’s all that mattered really. the carpool was down to two on Tuesday, and yes, it has turned somewhat awkward. i’m making it through though. i had mentioned to thomas about maybe leaving early, so later in the afternoon he asked if i wanted to leave an hour early. i took him up on the offer, and we left early to go vote, anticipating long lines. our site manager (three or four levels ABOVE me) had encouraged us the day before in a meeting that voting was important and if we had to take off early to do it we should. work should never be an excuse for not voting, which i’m in agreement with.

anyway, so i show up at the mall to vote, and my precinct has the longest line. there were probably 40 or maybe 50 people in front of me. the other two precincts voting at the same place either had no one in line, or 5 people. i had read Kari’s Capra-esque election day experience earlier in the day on Tuesday and wanted the place i voted to have stickers. they didn’t even have to have the Presidential seal on them. while in line i talked with the people around me and was proud i had read and written down my decisions on the 7 state constitutional amendments on a post-it note. the people in front of me were busily reading a printed out webpage explaining what they were, the same one i had read earlier.

i waited in line about 40 minutes until i got to the table where three people were in charge of finding your name on the roster and then writing it down. the guy who actually had the book was probably in his 50s. the two people on either side of him probably were in their 80s. the guy at the right side of the table was a little old man who only moved his head to hear the name being called out, then he would turn back to his sheet and write the name in cursive. the lady on the left side of the table couldn’t hear very well, so the guy in the middle turned to tell her the name. once they finished, i went to a booth. voting took me maybe 1 minute. i had the big races and the amendments, and already having my post-it note with FOR and AGAINST on it, i was good to go rather quickly. i checked my votes to make sure i didn’t hit any incorrect buttons, then hit ‘CAST VOTE’ making sure my choice for President did not change or anything. there was a rumor some of the machines were changing the President vote, but i think that was probably user error or something. i came out of the machine, and went to leave. there was no one handing out stickers! however, i did get to for the President for the 4th time in my life, on the big election day, with the rest of America, and that is the most important thing. i just wish i could have gotten a sticker!