It Started with a Journal

I seem to be the only person who's ever on the internet on Fridays. Hello? **echo echo ECHO** But that just means I can be as random as I want.

1) Today was a pretty awesome day. I didn't get into the office until after 9:30. A bunch of people are out of the office, including my two immediate managers, so I took a 2-hour lunch. On the way back from lunch, we decided to get some coffee at the cafe, and on the way we were randomly stopped by a guy who was giving away fancy cupcakes (he was a vendor who was here to schmooze clients). I mean, talk about serendipitous!

2) I sound like the worst employee ever, but you have to cut me some slack. One of my coworkers has left the group for a new job at the company, and until we hire someone to replace her I am doing two jobs. I'm already fairly stressed out about it. :/ And while August was fairly quiet, we are rapidly approaching busy season. I don't know how I'm going to survive.

3) I was also bummed to miss our intern -- it was her last day today as well, and I didn't realize she was going to leave so early. She left a card on my desk, along with some Lush (Whoosh) shower jelly, which was super nice of her. I LOVE LUSH. I'm not as obsessed with it as I once was, but I still love their bath products.

4) I was watching Psych last night (S5E02), and out of the blue, Shawn and Gus are eating hot dogs, and Shawn goes, "These Japadogs are delicious." And Gus replies, "You know, I almost took Lassiter to the Japadog cart once, but I felt like I was cheating." !!!!!!!!!! The show takes place in Santa Barbara, and I was like, whaaaaat Santa Barbara has Japadogs?! (This was one of the places we went to in Vancouver.) Except they totally don't. JAPADOG is only located in Vancouver and New York (and that location only opened this year). Then I remembered that adelagia told me Psych films in Vancouver. So it was a shoutout to that city. :D I love the idea of the whole cast/crew sitting around eating Japadogs.

5) There's a new meme, similar to the "Hey girl" Ryan Gosling meme, only this one involves Jeremy. They all start out "Woman--" and use f**k liberally. And is most decidedly not PG-13, because of language and suggestiveness. Here are a few of my favorites so far. ( #FLAIL )

6) ( Can't get enough of Hawkeye. )

7) I have absolutely nothing going on this weekend. It is great. Maybe I will make cheese, like carrie_leigh did. Maybe I will watch Bourne Legacy for the fifth time. Maybe I will just make some pour-over coffee and read some bad teen lit. WHO KNOWS. THE WORLD IS MY OYSTER.

8) OMGGGGGGGGGG I love my new Blu-ray player. I guess I'm just totally behind the times and don't keep up with technology, but I had NO IDEA you could do so much stuff with them now. I only just figured out how to wirelessly connect my Xbox 360 to my computer so I can watch all the stuff on it; I didn't know you could do that with Blu-ray players now too. WOW! It took me a little bit to configure the settings on my computer and on the player to make it work, BUT NOW IT WORKS AND IT'S AWESOME.

9) I saw this today and totally thought it was Jon Snow. Seriously, doesn't it look like it?! But no, it's not. It's fake Jon Snow.

10) I have just ordered more fancy coffee. I'm so Seattle.

I'm trying something new, y'all: sugarless coffee. Not sugar substitutes, which my taste buds abhor, but lack of sugar, period. It's embarrassing how much sugar I need to put into my coffee. I'm like Umbridge with her tea.

I figure it's a matter of adjusting my taste buds. If I drink sugarless coffee more regularly, then I'll get used to how bitter it's supposed to be, and less sugar will be required to make it taste sweet, when I feel like putting sugar into it. Fewer calories, too!

I don't think I can stop adding milk/cream to my coffee, though. That's where I draw the line.

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I started watching Dr. Who! I'm on disc 4 of S1. ( Random spoilery commentary. )

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My library system needs to get with the program and start offering a hold-on-holds function. It's really annoying to put different seasons of a TV show in the queue, then have them come up out of order (alternatively, I could put a later season in my queue after viewing an earlier season, but then that means I might have to wait a realllly long time), or have a dozen things become ready at one time, etc. The King County library system has it, it shouldn't be that hard to implement this functionality!

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Had a lovely time yesterday with the D/G gals (minus poor sick Elle). We tried doing a potluck for the first time, and while it totally worked out, I think next time we do it we'll have to be a little less blase about who is bringing what. LOL.

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OMG, speaking of the D/G gals, I was showing them my little garden and bemoaned how it's the end of the season and haven't gotten any zucchini, haven't even seen any female flowers, period, they've all been males so far and they've all died off w/o having a female to fertilize...

Well, I went out in the garden this morning and saw that two flowers were open, and one of them was a female!!!!! Yippee!!!! So I plucked the male one and used its little pollen wand to fertilize the heck out of the female. I hope it was enough. There's a teeny tiny zucchini there, and I want it to grow!

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I got a new haircut! It was looooong overdue. That's when I tend to get my haircuts, btw. When it's way, way, WAY past time for me to get one. I had what I call "tabula rasa hair" in that it was so long and had long outgrown any style that you could do just about anything to it. Anyway, I guess it's just one of those things that I feel like it's a big waste of money unless there's some obvious change or something. And paying $75 for a proper salon cut is even more wasteful to me.

Enter Tippr. I purchased a voucher a few months ago for a haircut at the Gilt Edge Society, a salon in Belltown (right near Tom Douglas's restaurants, actually). I really liked Cadance, the gal who cut/styled my hair. She was way hipper than me with her multitudes of tattoos and bleached pageboy cut, but she was super cool about my more conservative preferences in terms of my hair, while being very helpful about what might look good on me and a style that required very little maintenance (I don't have the time/patience in the morning to spend on my hair). She did ask me to use some serum on my hair in order to protect it from the heat of the hair dryer, but she didn't push any products on me. I told her I had serum at home from the last time a stylist convinced me to buy product (that I never used), and she just showed me how and when to use it.

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More car stuff...

AAA. I've never needed or wanted AAA, but now that I have the clunker it's probably a good investment, just because of the towing alone. I kept putting off getting it, though, and it's a good thing, because the other day Allstate Roadside Assistance cold called me and wanted me to try their service for $1.99/2 months, which has basically everything AAA has, except for the maps (which I don't need/use) and the discounts (again, don't need/use). So I'm covered for the next 2 months, woot. And after that I can cancel and join AAA if I want.

When I bought my Lexus I was told that I would have a little certificate waiting for me as a gift from the dealership. Family members and I have purchased a number of new cars over the years, and that's never happened. A car dealership, give something back after milking you for all you're worth? Hah! So I had pretty low expectations. At one end I was thinking, maybe a $25 gift card to Starbucks. At the higher end, a $100 gift certificate to a restaurant. They called me the other day to say that it was ready, so I picked it up at the same time I got my new plates. A $150 Visa gift card, so I can use it anywhere. :O How unexpectedly awesome. I have to say, I am pretty impressed with this dealership.

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TV Show Meme, Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale.

I'm going to go with the season 1 finale of Alias. I don't want to get into details and spoil it for anyone who hasn't watched, but I will just say that it was awesome (much like Alias S1 itself).

It's Friday. It's been a crazy week. Publishing for Monday's content should be set. I am giving myself the afternoon off.

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My favorite new coffee drink is the Americano. I love the deep coffee flavor. I've finally figured out how to achieve an almost perfect Americano, but there's still one thing missing. My favorite Americano consists of 2 shots of espresso in a short cup, with room. So the espresso to water ratio is bigger. However, I also like my coffee drinks very creamy and sweet, so I add sugar (preferably vanilla sugar) and cream. I like the short because of the espresso-water ratio, but also because I don't actually drink that much -- I usually can't even finish a tall. I also like my drinks scalding hot. The problem is, with as much cream as I like, the drink is usually lukewarm when I'm done "fixing" it to my preferences. Not quite sure how to fix that except nuking the drink right afterward, which I don't like to do because it changes the flavor.

At Starbucks, it costs less than $2 for a short Americano, and I don't want to turn it into $4 by doing a lot to it, lol. However, their short only consists of 1 espresso shot. I'm not sure if it makes more sense financially to get a short and add a shot of espresso, or get a tall (which comes with 2 shots) and get less water. Next time I'm going to add vanilla syrup, since by paying with my Starbucks cash card that should be free. Unfortunately that doesn't help my lukewarm drink issue.

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My mom called me last night and was like, I want to come visit you guys and meet Jaime! So I booked her a flight. If only the timing worked out so that she could come at the end of August, it'd be better, as Alaska's having a sale during that time period. Sigh.

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I've been hearing/reading a lot about Beer Butt Chicken, and I think I might be one of a handful of people who have never made it. I love, love, LOVE the high-roast method that Jade and I discovered a couple years ago, and swore I'd never cook a chicken in the oven any other way again, but I might have to try beer butt chicken. I just have to know.

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When K. graduated from medical school oh, about 16 years ago, some of us went to New York for her graduation. While there, we shopped at Tiffany's (well, *I* didn't) and afterward went to Bergdorf Goodman for lunch, as they have a little cafe there. Several of us ordered one of their chopped salads, and it was the best salad EVER. We all agreed. Years and years later, we still remember that salad.

I guess I never tried to search for it online or anything because I didn't know what it was called, the salad ingredients are fairly generic, and it's been so long that their menu had probably totally changed, and maybe they didn't even have a cafe anymore.

Well it just goes to show that it never hurts to try. A couple of weeks ago I did a search for it using "Bergdorf," "salad," "thousand island," and "beets," which were the only things I knew of for SURE that were descriptive of the salad. And viola! Someone else had waxed poetic about it in their blog, in 2006!

"Goodman’s Café, hidden in a corner of Bergdorf Goodman’s beauty department, is definitely a ladies who lunch (and shop) spot. For me, it’s all about the Gotham salad. This chopped salad is made up of diced chicken breast, ham, Gruyère, tomatoes, beets, bacon, hard-boiled egg, iceberg lettuce and Thousand Island dressing. While there is nothing extraordinary in the components, the combination is a real winner! I love the texture of the crunchy iceberg, sweetness of the beets, softness of the egg, sharpness of the Gruyere, and the extra kick of the bacon. It is one of my preferred light lunches, accompanied by a glass of Duval-Leroy Brut champagne."

The Gotham Salad! That's what it was!! Now I want to replicate it. The problem is that I think the key is in the dressing, and I have no idea how they make their thousand island dressing or where they buy it from. I mean, the rest of the ingredients are pretty run of the mill. So it must be the dressing that brings it all together to make The Best Salad Ever.

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And finally, I leave you with...

TV Show Meme, Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times: Bad Blood, The X-Files

I LOVED this episode. It was funny and wonderful in so many ways. It's probably not the best episode to watch if you've never seen XF before at all, but if you know the characters and their nuances well, it's hysterical and fun, with just the right amount of MSR (Mulder Scully romance). Plus, Luke Wilson is in it.