taz_39 | What the Actual F is Happening

This was a pretty crazy week.

At work, I had training in the Training department. It went ok, although I was nervous and made a few mistakes. Pretty sure that's expected though, no one seemed put out. I appreciate the patience that people have with walking me through things. I think that once I have my own class to train, and get through the first one, things will go a lot smoother. It's just something that is easier done than discussed or observed, you know? But the discussion and observation are still definitely helpful and necessary.

We also got an email about whether we're still interested in working from home, this time with a company-provided computer. YESYESYESYESYESYES, PLEASE YES. It would help my sanity so much to have an hour or two of extra sleep, and two fewer hours fighting traffic. God I hope we can start working from home again soon. And I hope I didn't screw myself out of it by accepting the hybrid role, because Training is on-site only. Argh.

Then there's the whole steno class thing, which I've detailed in other posts this week.
I find it funny that once again all this craziness occurs on a week where I happen to have taken an extra day off.
My car accident in 2019 was also over a week where I had used PTO. Same with other unexpected life events, somehow they tend to fall on weeks where I've unknowingly gifted myself the extra time to deal with it. Weird.

Anyway, I woke up on Wednesday super super grateful to have a three day weekend after a crazy week of training and sudden school transfers. My meeting with my school's advisory department was at 1pm; before that, I had breakfast and cleaned up a little around the house, and tried to relax.

The meeting went well, I guess. I basically restated everything that I had put into the email, with the added note that my teacher had not shown up to class on Monday and it also looked like she had faked a class cancellation email (but the timestamp gave that away). I was told that I can get my full tuition payment back, which is great, that's pretty much all I care about. I just want to get out of here and move on with my life.

After that I had lunch and drove out to Underwood music to pick up my bass trombone. Hopefully now I'll be able to sell it to help afford a steno machine.

Back home I decided to try making bread again. It did not go well.
I tried measuring by weight instead of volume, and while I did get a better rise out of the bread it was very dense and kind of weirdly textured, like gummy or something.
I tried the same recipe one more time but did the entire thing by hand, no stand mixer, and this loaf was even worse, dense and even more flat than my first attempt.

Having tried three times now, making changes to the same recipe, I decided to look elsewhere for instruction.
No doubt the recipe I have is good, but there are all these changes I'm having to make. For one thing it was a recipe for two loaves, so I've had to half it (the author says this is ok to do). Then I had to convert the measurements from volume to weight, and I'm not sure how accurate that was. Finally they were using a different kind of yeast, so I had to reference a second recipe to see how to use the kind of yeast I actually have. Oh, and I've been using the wrong size loaf pan and the wrong type of wheat flour/too much wheat flour. Who knew there were different kinds of wheat flour??

I went to bed disappointed after all that effort, having thrown away every loaf I'd made, but determined to try again in the morning.
The next morning I picked a recipe from Jenny Can Cook. Her recipe uses milk and an egg instead of vital wheat gluten and water, and only utilizes the mixer for about two minutes, the rest of the kneading is done by hand. I made a quick trip to Walmart for a smaller pan as well. I read the recipe, measured the ingredients obsessively, and watched the video, making sure I did everything exactly as shown.

And finally, I got bread.

It's a little bit crumbly, but frankly it's way better than previous attempts and I'm happy with it. Now that I have a recipe that works, I can work on tweaking it (or just keep the recipe, it's pretty tasty!). It'll be good for me to practice making my own bread, and probably healthier than storebought too.

Throughout the day I got a lot of awkward emails from my teacher asking for information to complete my transfer. I tried to provide what she was asking for while reiterating that the advisory department wanted me to wait a week to allow them time to "rectify things". I probably won't wait the week, but I do want to at least talk to someone from the other school first.

For dinner I made cheeseburger fusilli, a recipe from The Dude Diet that is pretty much an adult version of Hamburger Helper. It calls for lean ground beef, loads of spinach, and whole wheat fusilli. It's one of our favorites and it's very easy to make.

On Friday I was grateful for the extra day, but there wasn't much relaxing to be had.
I've only got one meyer lemon left and it needs to be used before it goes bad, so I made some lemon ricotta pancakes with blueberry compote, frying up some scrapple on the side for Jameson. You whip the egg whites and fold them into the batter to make the pancakes light and fluffy. They were so good, I think I'll whip the egg whites for every type of pancake I make from now on!

After that I had my meeting with my transfer school.
It went pretty well. The teacher seemed nice, and got me all set up with access to the classes and forums and whatnot. It seems like an actual school, something I haven't experienced for a while. And while I'm glad to be transferring into a learning experience and out of a whole lot of unnecessary drama, this also means that I'll really have to start working, and will have less time for, say, food experiments :/ But, that's life. I'd better do my best.

The rest of the day was taken up with chores and work prep: laundry, meal prep, cleaning up the mess I made in the kitchen, and filling out withdrawal and transfer paperwork for the schools.
In the afternoon we went for a walk, which must be the first exercise I've had in like a month. I'm absolutely amazed that I haven't gained weight this year. I would like to thank my genetics, and my obsessive nature when it comes to calorie counting. I have this one pair of pants, which are my "fat pants", and my rule is that if I don't fit in them I need to lose weight. I bought them while on the circus; they're black dress slacks with absolutely ZERO stretch, not even in the waist, and they're a size four. So any time I get critical of myself, or start worrying about my weight or appearance, I put those on. I put them on today, and they still easily fit. So I need to STFU and be grateful.

Anyway, after the walk I got started on dinner prep while Jameson worked on our most recent puzzle, currently covering the entire dining room table. Dinner tonight was coconut curry meatballs over jasmine rice with naan on the side. It was ok, but I like the red chicken curry recipe we default to a lot better.

After dinner I spent some time exploring my new school's website and all the different folders. There's a lot I'll have to learn, but at least finding everything is straightforward. I finally bit the bullet and bought the student version of Case Catalyst, which is a popular steno software that will be needed once I'm certified. It's several hundred dollars, so, ouch. I'm currently waiting for the installation code to show up in my email...it makes me nervous that it hasn't shown up yet (it's been an hour) but a lot of this software is created/owned by literally one dude somewhere, so he probably has to check his email before he sends it or something. It ain't Microsoft, is what I'm saying.

Tomorrow my lovely three-day weekend ends, and I go back to work, but only for four days.
I really hope I'll get to work from home again, and am going to offer that I can switch my days off in order to be more available for the training department, if it will mean I can get two days from home.

Hope you all had a lovely week.