Are you friggin' kidding me??

If I was not already being laid off tomorrow, this was one of those weeks where I just might have quit.

It's been a busy week at work.

Sure, the one group that I need information from has been ignoring me. But there has been plenty more to do.

The two customer notices that needed to be written for projects that no longer have product managers. I knew what the changes were, but finding out *why* we decided to do these changes was "fun".

Re-doing one of our CDs. Three times now, this week.

Making 10 software/documentation CD packages to help get the other writer stocked up, to find out five minutes later that they're doing a software release tomorrow.

Hurriedly making the changes that were supposed to go into the hep files months ago, so they could do into tomorrow's software build. To then be told they weren't going to bother to update the Help files, even though I've been telling them they need to get them in.

Then the fun of undoing all the changes I made.

Updates for four pages to the customer web site.

Creating new CD labels. Five of them.

Creating new CD sleeves. Only one of those.

There has been more friggin' work to do this week than since the first of the year. Ok, maybe except for the last software release.

I kinda lost it when we got notice today that they're doing another software release tomorrow. Um... thanks for the notice???

Right around 5pm today, one of the dudes who is also on the layoff list crossed my path as I headed to the ladies room. He asked me if I was coming in tomorrow, since apparently more than a few people aren't bothering.

Yes, I am an idiot, and I am going in tomorrow. I will try to get some things done... not as much as I originally had hoped, but I sure as heck am not going to let that bother me.

So, easy dinner tonight was a must. I needed to get on the elliptical to work out some of the stress in my shoulders.

Bring on the Chicken Breasts With Garlic and Parsley.

I've actually made this recipe before, and it's one of those great ones where it takes you more time to prep the ingredients than cook the food. Me like.

Dredge some chicken breast pieces in Wondra flour, dump in hot skillet.



Cook until browned (mine always take longer than 3 1/2 minutes).



Dump in garlic, chopped parsley and butter....



It was hard to get a clear picture, with all the steamy goodness....


Ahhhh. Body happy, tummy happy, and the Miller High Life waiting for me on the coffee table will do some good in getting my mood happy enough to not just turn around in the damned parking lot tomorrow morning and head home.

Outplacement, Day 1

Ok.

I hate buzzwords.

HATE.

It comes from being a technical writer and getting to see the worst examples of buzzword-ish usage ever that come from people who don't understand them.

I will say, some marketing peeps know how to use them well and sparingly.

Those people are few and far between.

Today in Outplacement 101 was working on the resume. Now, I feel pretty solid about my resume. It's sadly been out there enough and luckily has proven itself enough that I know it ain't crap.

Ok.... number one... the Big Book of Resumes Ala Outplacement Company that they handed out... the guy told us to not open it and start reading or flipping through it until he told us.

Dude.

Writer here.

You can't hand me a freakin' pamphlet for a service I don't even WANT before I start to thumb through it and pick it apart. It's what I do.

A somewhat large part of being a tech writer is being a critic/editor to the stuff people want you to say. Well-meaning people hand stuff to you, wanting you to put stuff like "CAUTION!!!!!! This procedure is perfectly safe to perform" into documents that are going out there into the real world (and yes... that is literal... recently got that one handed to me). One of the many services you offer is going "Umm...... NO" sometimes.

However.... if it's a company-approve term, if it comes from above from marketing... you let it slide. Let them answer for it in grammar heaven. You were just following Orders, sir.

To quote That Word Guy.... "I usually have an opinion, but I don't always care."

From the approved resume format of the placement company, I just needed to do some reformatting. Turn large blocks of bullet points into paragraphs and have the only bullet points be specific accomplishments. I can do that.

Add those marketing-y type stupid phrases that are raping the English language?

"I buzzedy-buzzed-buzzed the buzziest-buzzish-buzz-buzzly buzz....."

Um. No.

Ain't happening.

And I have to wonder how out of touch this place is.

They still seem to think a resume as a piece of paper you actually hand to someone for the first time they see it, and it somehow magically gets you an interview.

/enter real world

From the past ten years of my experience, a resume is something where people look for the words of specific skills that the hiring person is told to look for, and if you hit some majority of them, they call you to make sure you can put together a sentence and they ask you some basic questions. They call you in for an interview, or they don't. You can't understand the way it all happens, because every company is different.

And I'm not sure that they get how people hire tech writers is a little different. We're an industry fairly equally divided between full-timers and contactors, and most of the good ones are pretty good at picking up whatever industry/field/whatever they are in and running with it. The one thing you can really count on is that a good tech writer knows their tools, and won't need a lot of ramping up on a specific piece of software or general knowledge on how to beat content or reviews from people.

Buzzwords are not going to help me.

I'm hopeful tomorrow may be better, but right now I fear the follow ups with the outplacement company. I know I'll likey have to lie (although I can do that well, if I prepare for it) that I'm using their resume format. People miss things in the context of a paragraph.

• They
• Don't
• In
• A
• Bulleted
• List

Sigh.

It also doesn't help that I quickly lost ALL respect for the Big Book of Resumes Ala Outplacement Company when it was just SO badly organized.

The reason we couldn't open to page 1?

We started on something like page 34.

And then skipped around without rhyme or reason between the front and the back to do what we we told.

Bad.

BAD.

If my two current leads don't pan out, I may need to try and offer them some services to get that damned manual into some sort of thing resembling order.

Now I'm just another statistic....

I survived the fourth quarter layoffs and then the first quarter layoffs, but my luck has apparently run out and I'm a victim of the third quarter layoffs.

Ick pooey.

I'm not surprised... it's been gloom and doom in our industry and they finally had to cut deep enough to really hurt. I may have lucked out last time that they didn't want to slow down development, but they're going to be doing that after we're all out the door.

Thankfully this isn't a "don't let the front door hit you on the backside" layoff where people are gone before you know it... they gave a lot of us a month to work on getting things tied up and transitioned off. That's a huge help to the people who are left... and I've been in their shoes too, before, so I'm more than glad to help out. It's gonna truly suck around there in a month.

I'm grateful that I've had steady employment basically since November of 2005. I hope I can find something new quickly.

I'm glad this news came after the trip to Vegas, so we were able to enjoy ourselves and have a good time.

So, it's time to brush off the resume and spend some time on the many job sites on the interwebs.... time to throw my resume at everything I can find and see what sticks.

Luckily, the hubby has been cautiously planning for disaster since the start of the year and we have some money saved away. Today is a rainy day, I guess.

It's not the best severance package I've ever run into (a sad thing to have experience with) but it is something, so I figure I have two months before the brown stuff starts to hit the fan.

But it still stings a little... it always does. I happily listened to their calls of "take some time off today if you need to" and booked out of there at lunchtime. I couldn't think straight, anyway.

But, tomorrow morning, I'll shake it off and head into work just as if I was a contractor who was coming to the end of a gig... I've got a month to make sure I don't leave a storm in my path, and I do like to tie things up nicely. I've had to deal with those surprise storms and it ain't fun.

So... again.... no real blogging about food today, and likely for the rest of the week while I give myself some well-deserved brooding time.

What is that crazy neighbor lady doing???

Today was just an abso-bleeping-lutey fan-flippin-tastic weather day in Chicagoland.

We've been stuck with cold and snow and more cold and more snow since pretty much the first of the year. But the weekend brought the lovely drip-drip-drip-glop-drip noises of a thaw and two feet of snow melted, I believe we might actually see spring, eventually.

I needed to leave work early today... repair dude was coming to fix my elliptical. Oh, happy day! I've really been missing it.

So, 2:30pm with the sun shining and it being a whopping 60 degrees outside, I was happy to get out of work. Getting in 45 minutes early for a few days was TOTALLY worth it all when the sunshine hit me outside.

Got in the car, rolled the windows down, cranked some tunes and tried to enjoy the moment. I decided that if the repair dude came early enough, I'd run to the grocery that is basically across the street and get some brats and buns and get some grill on.

Sometimes, a girl just needs to grill.

I am one of those crazy people you will sometimes see out grilling in the rain, or even the snow. I come from a family of year-round grillers. When I get my next grill (which will be better than the $120 lowest model gas grill I have now) I will become a year-round griller again. Hopefully by then we can get a brick or slab patio that will be easy to shovel off.

Repair dude was supposed to show between 3pm and 5pm, he was at the door at three and out the door 15 minutes later. Oh yeah!

Did a quick run to the store and apparently I was not the only one with brats on the brain... they were totally sold out of my favorite brand of brats, so I had to go for the second favorite. And I was so excited that I forgot to buy a green pepper for the hubby (whoops).

Came home, and I was so excited to get on my elliptical that I didn't even notice I'd forgotten to set the timer/program until after about 10 minutes. Oh well, extra workout for me today!

Opened all the blinds, opened a window, and just enjoyed the sunshine after that. I know gloom & doom is likely to hit by the end of the week. I suspect layoffs will happen on Friday, and I still cannot tell if I'm going to be part of it or not. Usually you can tell by people that stop looking you in the eye and so on, I've been thru this enough times to know some signs, but I just can't tell this time.

But at least we had a nice, tasty dinner, even if I was out grilling in the dark...


Some zucchini slices and some onions in a packet.....


Lovely browned brats and re-warming my leftover potatoes from Sunday.

A Happy Meal, indeed.

Who cares if it's going to rain tomorrow and possibly snow again by the weekend, or that I may be headed to the unemployement office on Monday, this was a meal where I could believe that spring is really *just* around the corner and maybe it won't all be gloom and doom.

Superbowl prep... GO!

First off... ugh. Industry I work in = NOT GOOD. I only half-jokingly blame it on Microsoft and Windows Vista being the only operating system on PCs for sale this holiday season. I fear I will soon be another faceless statistic in those jobless numbers.

But enough of that.... FOOD!!

If you have not yet started your Superbowl menu, if you're prone to do things like a Superbowl menu like I do, even though I really only watch football when the Bears are losing/on. But heck... and event that is all about things like ribs and wings and chili and potato skins and nachos... sign me up. I'll cook for that.

If you're looking for a starch to make, I'd suggest Parmesan Steak Fries. I think they were an Everyday Food (magazine) recipe from awhile back... but they are really one of those things that you don't need a recipe for. And I really don't follow the recipe anyway (surprise!).

Start out.... cut each spud - skin on - into 8 spears. I think the original recipe called for sixths... I find the eighths just cook a lot better. And I find it easier to do. Take that, Martha!!



Next up... the eggs. Recipe calls for eggs white only... but don't be one of the hatas that wastes the egg yolks. My own personal theory is that by using the egg whites one night, I am free to indulge and go for an egg yolk-rich recipe another night. I refuse to believe that eggs are bad for me.



Whip up the egg whites until they're nicely frothy. Not like you're doing serious pastry-like stuff with them, but nice and bubbly. Yeah, I was busy DOING it, so no peektures.

Egg whites, meet potato spears.....



After the toss in the eggs whites, you toss them in a serious amount of cheese. Original recipe was like 3/4 cup parm.... I use about the same amount (ok, well, more.... since I tend to double the recipe since I love these things) but I use Romano cheese... 1) We like it better, 2) I'm particular when it comes to parm and I like the expensive stuff, and I'm too cheap to use parm. I'll admit it.

Ready for the oven.....



And the important time and temp details....



While those cooked, it was on to mixing up some Blow-Your-Mind Blue Cheese Dip.

I liked the idea of the recipe, and I had light sour cream and low-fat Greek yogurt to use up. If you are not yet a convert to Greek yogurt... become one. People who say they can use yogurt like sour cream? I always though they were nuts until I tried Greek Yogurt. I can eat this stuff like sour cream.

Shallots and garlic, ready to be chopped...



Cooked those in a little olive oil, and no pictures because shallots make my eyes water about a zillion times more than any other onion or object on earth (ok... well, maybe the Sex and The City scene where Harry proposes to Charlotte... that one gets me teary every time) so no pictures of the cooking process since I couldn't see straight.

Cooked shallots and garlic (my eyes were better) going into the sour cream, mayo and yogurt mixture.....



And don't forget to add the mustard powder, like I almost did.....



Mmmm... blue cheese dip.....




And by that time, fries were ready to come out of the oven....




Oh yeah... you want to use a Silpat or baking paper for the fries. They'll stick to metal or foil or glass like a corruption charge sticks to the governer of my fine state of Illinois.

Very tasty. Not super crisp on the outside, but there is cheesy goodness to be had, plenty of fluffy potato.... they are a crowd pleaser. They'd make any football watching fan or non-fan happy.

The dip... I tried some tonight (with some Chicken Rings from White Castle... gormets, I tells ya) and the first taste was HOLY YOWSA GARLIC. A little better after that. It's still a bit chunky for my personal dipping purposes... I might go at it tomorrow with a wisk or potato masher to break up the big cheese chunks. Or not. We'll see.

So... looking forward to a fun and food-filled weekend. The next two weeks at work and the layoffs that will be coming... not so much.

... and we're almost off....

Ugh. Hubsy didn't get off work until a quarter after 8 tonight, and got home a half hour later. Grumpy, surly and disgruntled don't come near describing his mood right now.

It was a calmer day at work... it seems like even when (and it might not be until 2009) the sale of our company goes thru, we can run around like dunk monkeys with poodles for hats and the head company won't care, as long as we continue to meet our goals. That makes me happy. I do hope we get a little more structure coming down from the moutaintop from them, it would be a good thing. But, there are still a lot of people who do not like change at all and will continue to be unhappy. Takes more work to be unhappy 8 hours a day than just deal with change, IMHO.

Might post while in Vegas... might not. Right now, just looking to be away from my & the hubby's work for awhile.

In 48 hours......

... I will be on vacation. In Vegas. Hopefully returning to the Flamingo after meeting some 'net friends for a drink.

I'd be slightly more relaxed about it all right now if I hadn't learned today that my current company is merging with a new one. On the surface - we do good on low end, cheap stuff and they do good on high-end, expensive stuff and I think we made a dent in their market share last quarter - it looks like it's on the up & up and will be a good thing. But I, and many I have worked with, have been through it too many times to be 100% comfortable with it all. And it is all just hitting way too close to home with finding out last year, two days before a Vegas trip, that I was downsized (although having to do an hour and a half worth of work for Old Company tonight, "downsized" has a slightly different meaning).

But who cares!! Vegas awaits. I don't think we'll have any gourmet meals this trip.... just not in the mood. Might hit the semi-upscale burger place at Paris... there are rumors of foie gras on a burger there... but even I'm not in to the foodie thing at this point (which is a shame... I've got Restaurant.com certificates for like 4 places that I suspect will go unused).

But who cares?? One more workday, then Vegas!!!!

From lands far away and unknown......

Ladies and Gents.... this post comes to you from lands far and unknown from my usual spot...... I'm sitting upstairs in our computer room. Supposed to be the second bedroom, but we have it turned into a 'puter room.

This is the hubby's territory. Since I got my laptop (before we moved into the townhouse) I haven't spent much time at my ole desktop PC. I throw it some love now and then, but I spend most of my time with my laptop. But, the hubby got some wrestling pay per view tonight and he's watching that, so I have banished myself to the unknown lands.

I go downstairs every once in awhile.... to get a beer and to hear the Man talk about how great this $12 Pay Per View is. I do my duty.

God, this rooms is a mess. I try not to come in here too much. And I'm trying to not pay attention to the dust bunnies.

On the more hausfrau-ish front.....

I have my fingers crossed that next week I'll have enough garden tomatoes for BLTs. I am looking forward to that moment.

After my day at work today (in the midst of a software release and my coworker overslept this morning and was very rested all day) was just hell. I don't know if it is just not being used to the pace I used to function at all the time or what... but was I ever glad to leave work today. Even if I have to find some time to do some work over the weekend.

Ok.... that's all I got in me right now. i suck. and using my split keyboard it odd, but it does feel better on my hands, which are killing me right now....

A Tomato Three Way

Pardon my grammar and typing... it's been "one of those weeks" at work. I'm a little surprised at how "out of practice" I seem to be at having, ya know, a lot of actual WORK to fill up my day. But, I guess the problem has been that it doesn't just fill the day, I've been bringing it home to get a couple more non-office hours in.

Anywho.....

Tonight's dinner featured three forms of tomato. I love summer!! At the grocery store last weekend I saw green tomatoes, so I bought those. I have been craving fried green tomatoes, but I've been unwilling to sacrifice any of my tomatoes on my plants. I'll happily overpay for grocery store green tomatoes!

I was also excited because yesterday I picked my first purple cherokee tomato. Yay! Although eating it today, it probably could have used another day or two on the vine.

So.... dinner was fried green tomatoes, and the purple cherokee and some cherry tomatoes on a salad, and Reuben sandwiches for the main. The local deli/produce mart is apparently adding homemade corned beef to their "homemade " deli selections. Wow. Was it ever good. They already do Italian roast beef and turkey and both those rock (and are half the price of the brand name stuff) and they've also recently added chicken breast. I plan to keep buying!

Not too much else happening. In for hot weather over the weekend, and I had planned on prepping/browning some meatballs this week to dump in the crockpot at some point, but when I looked at my ground beef (I usually do half ground beef, half sweet sausage) on Tuesday it was already kinda grey and scary, so I tossed it. At least it was only cheapo "ground beef" - no particular cut associated with it - so it was only a loss of a couple bucks. But, I might pull the sausage outta the freezer tomorrow and make an early trip to the store on Saturday to still do it this weekend.

Other than that.... just looking forward to the weekend and not having to deal with formatting a 280 page file or 20000 lines of HTML code. Like I said, it's been a fun week.... NOT.

Yum

So... a few weeks back, I picked up Gordon Ramsay's "Fast Food" at Costco. Taken a couple ideas from it but I haven't done a full-on recipe.

The hubby was atcually looking thru the book the other day, and saw the "Scrambled Eggs with Crabmeat & Chives" and said something along the lines of "woah, that looks good."

I already had some lump crab in the fridge, and it did look like a great, easy meal to make in the hot weather we currently have.

It's pretty easy... start some eggs in a pan on medium to low heat, and when they are about halfway scrambled, dump in your crabmeat, some chives, and a couple of tablespoons of creme fraiche, and don't overcook it. I served it on top of toasted English muffins. The hubby took one bite and said "This is the best thing I have EVER eaten. Or at least in the last six months." I'll take that praise!

It really was good... and no harder than making scrambled eggs. I used a $15 can of lump crabmeat, but it would work nicely with a mix of lump and backfin meat. Or really any crab that is a step above the canned Chicken of the Sea crap they have next to the canned tuna.

Getting busy at work. We've got a major software release in about a week and a half, so we've (ok, ME, other co-worker has been working on other projects) been working to get stuff prepped for that..... so of course this week we've had a new, not as major software release that came out. While not a big deal for the engineers to make a fix, build the software and release it, it means we have to re-do CD artwork, CD sleves, and a bunch of content to simply update a damned version number. Not so fun. And my day ended with someone turning over about 40 pages of doc that needs MAJOR rework by the big software release. Tomorrow is gonna be a looooong week.

Was thinking of actually running out for lunch tomorrow to pick up some Roly Poly - I am addicted to that place and have not been there in too long - but tonight also included a spinach salad for me, and I have enough leftovers that I could take that for lunch tomorrow. Decisions, decisions. And my lazy self would just rather not have to run out in the middle of the day and deal with a hot car and the hot temps and the people acting stupid because it's hot. And maybe, with the workload I already have on my plate, it might be best to stick close to the office. Because if the last ten years of the "hard work and lots of unpaid overtime = PINK SLIP" have taught me, it is that my ass it OUT the door at 5pm each night. Sigh.

Randomosity

Been meaning to say something.... was very sad to read about the passing of Dan Savage's mom last week. I've been reading him for years, spoken to him via email after reading his book "The Kid" when my brother and sister in law were in the throws of the adoption process.... just a great guy. Funny, insightful... and I've been a fan long enough to know how big of an influence his mom has been. And I know how much it sucks to loose the parent you're the most like. My heart goes out to him. Hopefully right now he's in a bar of the sout' side somewhere with his family getting very, very drunk and remembering hilarious stories about his mom.

Pulled together a pretty nice dinner tonight.... but you get a rant before you get the details! One of the things that irks me the most about Rachel Ray is that the cooking is so rushed. It's yet another show that seems to stress what a chore cooking can be, and isn't it great to burger-fy your meals so you can be out of the kitchen in 30 minutes (and... I'm a fairly skilled person in the kitchen, and any of her recipes has always taken me at least 45 minutes... I'm just sayin'....). Sometimes it's nice to spend some leisurely time in the kitchen. Not being rushed, just giving the cooking process the time it needs to do its lovely magic.

Sometime last year at the end of tomato season, I found myself with a couple of very beautiful tomatoes on hand, ready to go south, and a couple extra cups of heavy cream on hand. What to do? I tossed the cream and some garlic confit in a small pot, put it on the simmer burner on low, and let it go for about an hour and a half. Then I added the flesh from my wonderful summer tomatoes, and we had a lovely tomato-cream pasta sauce for dinner.

I've done it a few times since, and as long as you give it about an hour and are around to stir it every five minutes or so, you are rewarded with a wonderful sauce that a lot of Italian eateries can't compare to.

This week, the roma tomatoes at the produce mart were looking really good, so I bought several. Ok, about three to four pounds worth. We had some with the tacos/nachos last night, but tonight, as soon as the cream (oh wait, I used half & half tonight... not quite as good but still very tasty) came to a simmer, I threw in the whole tomatoes (with the bottom scored) for a minute, then peeled/seeded/chopped them and threw them in. I started cooking at 6pm, and dinner was ready by 7pm. I was not rushed, I spent my time dealing with the tomatoes, peeling some shrimp, getting my pasta water to a boil... and it all came together, but none of it rushed. And it was a zillion and a half times better than any sauce fromajar. Who needs a recipe when you have decent ingredients? The only thing that might have made it better was figuring out how to work bacon in there.....

Work.... ugh. Yeah. There is an industry standard program for producing "print" manuals, and we don't use it at my place. We use a program that has not been updated in ten years. Some people are fanatical about it, but I have yet to be convinced. It's not nearly as feature-rich as the industry-standard tool at this point in time (hello! Program has not been updated in TEN YEARS!) and I've just had a lot of problems with it crashing. It's even more crash-happy than the industry standard program, which can be a little crash happy sometimes, but there are at least ways to fix it. Anyway... today, the program crashed on me, and took an entire chapter of the book I was working on with it. Poof. GONE. No where to be seen. Not in the recovery file. Not in the auto-saved "backup". Gone gone gone. A day of work down the drain, since luckily I don't really trust the program and I at least make a PDF of my work at the end of the day, so I at least had the text I needed. Sigh. Man, I do not like this program. I really, really want to go back to the industry-standard program we used at the last job.

Hopefully a quiet weekend ahead... looks like my bro is getting sprung from the hospital tomorrow or Saturday, so I'll be happy to leave him alone and let him get some rest over the weekend.

Is it Friday yet???

Worst. Command reference, EVER.

For those that do not know, I am a technical writer. What does that mean? The manual that came when you bought your modem that you just threw in the garbage? Yeah. I write those things. 'Splaining to people how to use hardware and software is what I do.

This week at work has been updating and old old old old old document. For an analog modem. A very expensive, still well-selling modem. And the main information in the guide hasn't been updated in several years. And it's bad.

There are a lot of types of tech writers in the world. There are far too many that just slap the company logo on a document someone else gave them and call it a day. There are those that will argue and set up meaning after meeting arguing over fonts and text colors. Various ways you can easily "pretty up" a document without adding any value.

I like to think I'm one of the writers who likes to add value to things. Like the recent incident of our mind-blowingly bad troubleshooting. Yeah, it identifies a lot of problems and tells you to do a lot of things, but for years it all went without someone looking at it and realizing it never brought you to "if that didn't work, do this" type statements. Left far too many assumptions (a bad thing... since if they knew it that well, would they be looking at troubleshooting anyway???)

In the case of command reference-type information, a lot of tech writers don't really look at the information, it is a case of making it pretty and at least use formats consistiently. The doc I'm working on now doesn't even go that far. And it's hurting my brain.

Not to mention, I've not only got to update it in English... I've got to then do it in six other languages. Oh the fun.

Dinner tonight was a sleezy favorite.... chili omelete. The second trip to Vegas that the hubby and I made, we got in early, left our bags at the Monte Carlo and went walking. We ended up in the Miracle Mile shops at the (then) Aladdin, and ended up at Cheeseburgers to grab a bite since we were both famished. I was all over the macadamia nut waffels (or was it pancakes?) until I saw the omelete. We're both HUGE suckers for anything chili cheese, and we both ordered the chili cheese omelete. And oh my lord.... I am so glad we did. It was fantastic. If there was a place around here that served those at 2am as drunk food, I'd weigh 300 pounds.

Cheater jambalaya

1. Ya start with a box of Zatarain's jambalaya mix.

Real 1. Strike that. You actually start with some sliced polish sausage. GOOD polish sausage.

2. Brown that in a big ole pot. When it's brown, add the water stated by the box directions, and scrape the bottom to get all the browned bits. Bring to a boil.

3. Add some chopped okra - either fresh or frozen. If frozen, you need to bring the water back to a boil.

4. Add the rice mixture.

5. 10 minutes before the rice is supposed to be done, add some chopped frozen shrimp (or whole, if they're small) and some already cooked & shredded chicken.

6. Serve with lotsa hot sauce.

It made for a good meal tonight.... finally got some seasonable temps after all the warmth. When my dad was alive, jambalaya making was a day-long event that would happen in the winter time. It would start in the early morning with cooking the chicken (or whatever game birds my dad's friend had recently given him) for shredding and to use the bones to make stock, and it went on all day from there and was 100% from scratch.

The first time my mom semi-half-assed the jambalaya from a box, we were all floored. It was damned close to the all day version. Good outcome with little effort.

And good for tonight... I'm pooped. Today was "moving day" at work... moving all the crap I've aquired over the past two years - and all the crap the other writers left in their cubes and going thru about 8 years backlog of files to see what we needed to keep - in to a new cube. Excuse me... a new DOUBLE cube that is all mine (for as long as I'm.... uh... without a firm layoff date, I guess). It's nice... I pretty much need a cube for me and my three PCs and laptop, and a cube for all the product samples I have (which we - I still have a mouse in my pocket - need to keep in case any testing or updates need to happen) and the backlog of doc samples, doc software, CD backups, various style manuals and other junk. Stuff is moved, about half unpacked. We'll see how big of a dent I can make in it by the end of the week.

Off for a few days

(if anyone is even out there??)

The not-so-great developments at work are set to take a whole new shitty even more sucky turn tomorrow.

We leave for Vegas on Thursday morning.

Over the weekend I made a BLT dip for each of the parties I was attending, and both were a big hit (but boy, I like Farmland bacon more than Oscar Mayer bacon lately). Also made a Clam Dip that left me highly unimpressed and I don't think went over as well as the BLT dip at the one party I brought it to.

No cooking tonight.... totally not in the mood. Jimmy Johns to the rescue.

Did go outside and pick some lovely red tomatoes off my plants. Four. They're purty-ful. And I forgot to water my plants, so I really hope it rains tonight.

So.... I'll post a report on the Vegas trip when we return. Hopefully with more energy and hope.