/end brooding

So... I think I have had enough brooding time. It is what it is, we've gone through this before, and thankfully we've been working to get ourselves in a position to handle the Big Things that life throws you, and for the immediate future, we should be able to keep things all balanced. Thankfully we're both smart enough people that we did a regular loan when we bought our house, and we've never let investments seem like real money.

But I have noticed the trend in my life that layoffs ALWAYS happen right around the time of some family gathering. ALWAYS. This time around, it was my nephew's birthday.

And of course... I had to bring some food.

Reuben roll ups... basically the same filling as my Reuben dip - cream cheese, a little mayo, Thousand Island dressing and some rinsed/drained sauerkraut, smeared on lavash and rolled up, then cut into little pinwheels.



... and Asian Cucumber Salad, which takes about ten minutes to make if you have a slicing blade for a food processor. I did use more sugar than the recipe suggested (I was also making a much larger batch than the recipe suggests, so I don't know if that is why it was less sweet than I'd have liked to start off with) but it was good. I have another Asian-style cuke salad I've made before that is not far off from this one, but I think this one is a winner since I don't need to simmer any vinegar, which makes the whole house smell pickled for a day.



Party was fun... kids parties usually are... my nephew is *very* into all things Star Wars right now. How things change, and how they stay the same.

The funniest bit... while opening presents, my nephew was trying his best to be a good boy like mom teaches him, but at one point he opened a gift that was clothes, he pulled out a plain, gray t-shirt and said "A plain tee shirt. I've always wanted one."

Yes, the room broke out into hysterics. You can't help it. And I was a bit jealous because I don't think I could crack jokes that good at 6.

If you ever see a 7-foot tall comedian who is Ukrainian but was raised in America in on the comedy circuit, or the *really* funny pro basketball player, in 20 years, that'll be my nephew.

Party was around lunchtime, so I had to throw something together for dinner. I totally forgot about the brats I had, and it was raining cats and dogs, so I didn't really want to grill.

Frozen pizza, to the rescue!!

My pizza.... I always like to add something veggie to mine. In this case, some chopped spinach and a little extra cheese.



I actually found out tonight, after seventymillionzillion years of cooking for my husband, that he doesn't like veggies added to frozen pizza because "they don't get cooked enough." To me, the beauty of putting your own veggies on a pizza is that they remain kinda crisp... so I think he's a bit of a nutbag and I'm right.

In any case.... his plain pizza..... with a little extra cheese since the automatical pizza making machines always seem to miss some spots...



One key to super-thin crust frozen pizzas, I have learned, is to start them in a cold or not fully heated oven, and check at about ten minutes after they go in or just wait for the smoke alarm to tell you they are done (old family joke... every time the smoke alarms started going you tried to be the first person to yell "Pizza's done!" because 7 times out of 10, it meant the pizza was indeed done. Those other 3 times, it just meant some other dinner was done).




So... tomorrow starts my first week as a doomed woman at work. I do have to say... the layoff is atypical of the way Big Parent Company has done them in the past... some people we let go as of Wednesday, some as of Friday, and some of us there for another month. This lead to a LOT of confusion with people who were still glad to see others around on Thursday, thinking it was done. I spent half of my Friday going "Well... nope... I'm just here for another month...."

In any case, I have work to get done before then. What makes me saddest is the actual documentation itself... we'd just started to get things into shape where I was cleaning up Horrible Documentation Sins of Times Past and were getting actual software changes documented into the software release that the docs went out with.... that's all out the window. And it hurts to see that. There are always going to be things like errors that slip past... but intentionally doing sub-par docs is just a bad way to do things.

But, also on the horizon... they're doing a two-day workshop for outplacement, and for the first time, I tend to take advantage. I'm more than happy for any pointers on my resume or portfolio, and at the very least, it is two days, paid, away from the misery that is the office at this point, with a free lunch. Sign me up for the dried-out chicken sandwich, please.