Stone Age Cell Phones

I work for a 24/7/365 manufacturing company, and I'm one of the "lucky" ones who has to be on call whenever the manufacturing group needs "assistance". Up until this month, The Company has reimbursed us $45/month towards our personal cell phone bill. Which is pretty excellent! I've got an iPhone, cause I'm a total techno-geek. My minutes are pretty much evenly split between calling my mom and getting called by work.

But then "someone" looked at who was getting reimbursed at work, how much they were getting back and who had company issued blackberries and determined there was an "issue". Cell phone reimbursements would stop immediately and everyone below associate director level was going to have to reapply for a phone/blackberry. Cell phones would be issued only if it was mission critical and if you want to move your personal number to the issued phone, The Company would own your cell number by the end of the year.

So, everyone supporting manufacturing submitted their requests. One group got shot down outright. My group, after a 5 month delay, got our high tech Nokia 6301's. As you can see from the photo, it looks like a slide phone... nope, looks like it might flip open to reveal a qwerty keyboard, nope... looks like its a shiny version of the Nokia I bought in 1999... BINGO!

I tried texting, took me 3 minutes to get the word "beer" to appear. Apparently 2337 should be "adds". And it wasn't exactly intuitive how to rotate through the words. (yes, my first text on a work phone was "when are we going for beer").

Anyway, the extended period of time of text, the fact that I can't just magically beam my work contacts to the phone, its not completely customizable and, well, isn't a smart phone has made me realize that, to me, a cell phone is about as useful as a cassette player.

And work thinks a bunch of engineers are going to give up their iPhones and Blackberries for this... that just cracks me up!

Bored in the kitchen

Well, its official, I'm bored in the kitchen.

I've mentioned before that I love to cook. Honestly, I really like all of it, from the shopping, prep work, cooking, eating (ok, not the cleaning up... but who does, really?). But, I work 9+ hours per day, which doesn't include the almost 2 hour (round trip) commute. And I married one of the top 10 pickiest eaters on the planet (no cheese other than mozzarella, no cumin, nothing too spicy, nothing "weird", the definition of which varies on his mood) and we have 2 pre-schoolers, so you can imagine how easy it is to be creative in this house!

So, when I made the "exotic" meal of pan fried chicken with spicy peach salsa/bbq sauce with barley and acorn squash and apples as the sides, well, I was the only one enjoying it. And there's nothing more depressing than cooking a great meal, and then while I'm thoroughly enjoying it (sometimes, even doing a little happy dance), look around and see glum faces, or get asked for "something else".

So, the big question now, is what do I do about this? Do I resign myself to endless nights of making plain chicken, or do I cook two, or three, or God Forbid, 4 different meals? (Yeah, right!) Or do I make what I want, and have the three of them just stare at it.

Lately, the answer has been to bake. And I bring the leftovers to work, if there are any. And work always seems to enjoy my cooking. But then again, which would you rather have: devil's food cupcakes with peanut butter frosting or acorn squash and apples?

I've been out-baked!

I enjoy baking... hell, I enjoy cooking. Hubby isn't too thrilled with me cooking, as I tend to dirty every dish in the house and destroy the kitchen. But I'm a really good cook, so he deals with the mess.

When I first met Hubby, he could barely boil water. I kid you not, one day he asked me to make him pudding and handed me the box of instant pudding. After I stopped laughing, I asked him to look at the directions and walked out of the kitchen. That was his first foray into the kitchen, and he's been slowly getting better at it.

Earlier in the week, he was craving brownies. He didn't even ask, he just picked up the King Arthur Baking Book and started cooking. An hour later, there were the most incredible, moist, chewy, fudgy brownies covered in vanilla ice cream. I've officially been out baked! I've got to post the recipe, they were THAT good.

Brownies from King Arthur's Flour Baking Companion

6 oz unsweetened baking chocolate

1.5 sticks butter

5 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

2.5 cup sugar

1/3 cup light corn syrup

1 1/3 cup flour

1 1/2 cup chopped nuts, mini marshmallows or mini chips (optional, yeah, right! Todd did pecans)

Pre-heat oven to 375 and grease a 9x13 pan

Melt chocolate and butter together in a sauce pan, let cool slightly

Beat together eggs, vanilla, salt, sugar and corn syrup until light and fluffy (this takes a few minutes)

Stir flour into melted chocolate. Fold chocolate batter into egg batter, stir in nuts/chips

Spread batter in pan and brush top w/ 1 tbsp milk

Bake 35 minutes until top is crisp, but a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out covered in chocolate.

Cool several HOURS (ummm, we waited until they were slightly warm) then cut. Cuts easier with a plastic knife or a metal knife sprayed with Pam.

If you don't have the corn syrup, you can make them without, but they won't be as moist. You can probably add some instant espresso (maybe 1 tbsp) and they would be pretty darn close to the Starbuck espresso brownies.

Back to Blogging, and Reunion

One of The Girls asked if anyone had a blog. I remembered wanting to start one, and figured now would be as good time as any, since I'm in a tizzy over reunion. So I trying thinking of a title for 2 days. TWO whole days, and I'm coming up blank. Then, I figured I'll just pop over to blogger and see if they have blog name suggestions. I log in and up pops my blog. Damn! I created this over a year ago and forgot about it. It's 1 whole entry, but hey, I had a title! and a pretty creative one too, if I do say so myself.

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So, reunion. My 15th college reunion. I have to admit, I had more fun than I thought I would have, but its probably due to Karaoke at the pool hall. More on that later...

Key info about me and my reunion:

*I went to a small geeky college in a small run-down city.

*I have an incredibly crappy memory for people I haven't seen in 15-20 years.

*I'm really good a smiling and nodding while looking at photos of people I'm supposed to know since I saw them almost every day during college. 15 years ago.

*I hate being the one having to decide what a group of 13 people are doing for dinner at 545, when we have tix for the 7 pm game.

*I am always the one having to decide what a group of 13 people are doing for dinner at 545, when we have tix for the 7 pm game.

My same core group of (geeky) friends showed, plus my BFF flew in from Cali! :) We went to the grand opening of the new football stadium/athletic center (which the school needs, cause geeks are SO athletic!), we hung out at the fair eating junk food and hit the bouncy house for my 2 boys. We went to the student union to buy some shirts, hung out there, got free pizza (yeah! I didn't have to figure out the dinner thing!), then went to the hockey game. Which, turns out, was an exhibition game. No wonder I was able to get tix the same day!

It was so disjointed and unorganized. There wasn't a class get-together, so other than the people we ran into by shear luck (and I was able to read their name tags and see the class year), I only saw people I know. Plus, college campuses aren't exactly toddler/pre-school friendly. Do you know how many times I had to say "No, you can't go play with the big boys?" But, they had fun at the hockey game, so I'm glad my boys came.

Honestly, the highlight of the weekend was hitting the local pool hall at about 10 o'clock Sat night. It was filled with LOCALS. Nice people, but, well, upstate NY locals. Hubby stayed with the boys at the hotel, so I could go out with my classmates/friends. 7 of us wander into the place, we all get drinks (for under $30!), then proceed to take over the jukebox. Then the karaoke started: Survivor, ABBA, Prince, Bon Jovi, AC/DC, George Michael, Tupac (yeah, I'm still not sure how he ended up there, but we were grooving to Tupac). It wasn't Karaoke night. We still had a blast, and I like to think everyone was laughing with us, 'cause everyone WAS laughing.

You haven't lived until you've seen an overweight almost 40 Indian geek sing "Eye of the Tiger". He wasn't half bad either!

The worst part about the weekend? BFF and I might have agreed to organize the 20 year reunion. Then I won't have anyone to bitch to! At least I've got 5 years to worry about it, right?