taz_39 | Entries tagged with jobs

Thursday was fairly normal. I did a bit of worrying about my new transcription job...mostly I just hate waiting on that background check! It makes me feel I don't truly have a job yet. Impatient!

So I distracted myself with finishing the Minneapolis Foodie Finds sheet,
and a list of to-do's for post-tour life,
and a list of post-tour to-buy's on Amazon,
and a list of my personal Top 10 Tour Eats to share later.

Are you seeing a trend here? Lists and lists :p

I wanted to explore Madison's famous State Street lined with quaint shops, and take a walk around the Capitol building.
But every time I tried to get dressed and get going, my brain was like..."nnnnnnnOOOOOOOoooooo thank you."

So it turned into a very lazy Thursday of slumming around in pajamas, drinking tea, steaming some broccolini for dinner (which stank up my whole hotel room), and watching anime. Outside it was hazy and yellowish; the smoke from the Canada wildfires has finally moved into this area and it's definitely apparent. Not as bad as New York, but certainly noticeable. It is supposed to clear up tomorrow, so perhaps it was better to stay inside today anyway.

The evening show was just fine.
Our mascots collaborated on their poses this week.

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Friday turned out to be a very lovely day, one of those rare in-the-moment adventures that I will miss badly once this chapter of my life is over.

( CLICK HERE for Friday Adventures )

After finishing my walk back and putting my bagel and scone and fruit and rocks away, I walked the few blocks to Paul's Pel'meni for lunch.

Paul's is one of the top-rated restaurants in Madison, yet they only sell one thing: Russian dumplings called pel'meni.
They have two flavors, potato or beef. You can get one or the other or a mix of both.

I got a half-order of both flavors (about 20 dumplings.)
The available toppings were curry powder, butter, cilantro, sweet hot chili sauce, and sour cream.
For me it was everything but the butter, and I asked for the hot sauce and sour cream on the side.
The dumplings were super small, about half the size of a potsticker.

Here are the fillings:

I liked the beef best, it had a rich flavor like the meat had been simmered in broth and herbs.
The potato ones were yummy too though, and both of them were awesome with a dip of the sweet hot sauce and a little sour cream.

And since I ate them at the restaurant, there was the additional condiment of sweetened vinegar at each table.
That was REALLY good with both types of dumplings, although it did sting my stomach later on. Worth it!

I ate half the dumplings and took the rest home to eat for a snack later.

Chilling out in my hotel room, I reflected on what a beautiful solitary day this had been.

When the temperature is just right for walking;
and the local bakery has freshly baked scones;
and there are flowers in bloom everywhere you look;
and there are magical discoveries to be made in stores and on sidewalks...
it was the kind of day that comes rarely,
That makes me feel present, and alive.

I felt so grateful.

Who knows what will come tomorrow.
But for now, I had today.

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The show in the evening went well.
Of course I brought the glowyrocks for show-and-tell, and everyone oohed and aahed over them.
Taking pictures and videos of glowing rocks under black light is DIFFICULT, btw.

I managed to get just a few good shots
(CLICK HERE to see, use the arrows to right and left to scroll between media)

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Saturday I had a very slow morning, and finally practiced all of Spamalot Act 2 (it's been tough because I am tacet for a lot of it, so it's hard to pay attention when you're not playing.)

We had two shows, and both of them went pretty well with a full house and enthusiastic audiences.
Can't think of anything special to report; it was a normal two show day.

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Sunday, the usual pre-packing.
Prepping a tote of snacks and supplies for the 6-hour bus ride to Milwaukee tomorrow.

Both shows went well. Jameson's parents came to the evening show, so I got to chat with them briefly afterward.
It's been nice spending time with them while in Wisconsin; hopefully they'll come visit us in Florida or Jameson and I will get to visit them together soon.

We now have only eight shows left before the tour is over.

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Other Stuff:

Pictures of the Capitol building, at night and during the day.
I never did do that tour, but it was nice to just look at the building.

Peaches, my childhood favorite stuffed animal, who I brought on this last leg of tour to keep me company.
I built him a pillow fort, but he looks annoyed. Perhaps the thread count isn't up to his standards.

The final Megan's Foodie Finds restaurant recommendations sheet can be found HERE.

It's been really fun making these and running the group, and I think people have enjoyed it :)

So much for the art museum today :/

I had a bit of a rough night, mostly because I am absolutely terrified of getting sick right now (we have two band members with a cold/flu thing) and I woke up feeling run down and sneezy, so decided to take it easy today. Feeling sick, or having sick people around me, makes me supremely anxious, and sometimes I need to take a step back and grapple with that.

Understand that both my parents died of illness; I was punished for being ill when I was young; and I was raised to believe that you are a burden on others when you are ill. Just thinking about having to call in a sub during the last few weeks of tour horrifies me to no end. But I'm freaking out over the Worst Case Scenario. The much more likely reality is I'll probably get a cold and that'll be that.

Anyway, I took an allergy med to see if that would help.
Breakfast and working on this and that project, before walking down to Bavette La Boucherie for lunch.

They have a softshell crab BLT on the menu, but it sells out quickly so I was careful to get there early.
TOO BAD, though, because they were still completely sold out and won't have it again until next week after we leave. Argh!

It kind of works out, though, because another place that I wanted to try, Allie Boy's Bagelry, has so many great menu options that I had been considering eating there twice. Well now it's decided!

It's a cute little shop on a quiet corner.

Look at this tiny mouse-door at their entrance!

Inside the bagels were in baskets against the wall and I couldn't get a good pic.
I got there right at noon so it was quite busy with in-person and pickup orders.
Still, I didn't have to wait long for my sandwich.

The Rikki Tikki Tavi: grilled chicken breast tossed in a kale coconut curry, with pieces of apricot, date, raisin, almond, and tamarind-pickled onions, topped with crunchy friend shallots, cilantro, and mint. Served on a honey wheat bagel.

Very, very, very good. I would have eaten the chicken salad alone without the bagel too.
It was perfectly balanced. I like my chicken salads dry, and everything just had the perfect coating of coconut curry. The sweet dried fruits went beautifully with the savory pickled onion, and the crunchy shallots gave incredible texture.

I think this restaurant is fairly new because they don't have many reviews yet. This sandwich was WAY better and more sophisticated flavor-wise than I expected. I hope that this restaurant sticks around for a LONG time!

I was still feeling under the weather as I walked back, but tried to enjoy the beautiful sunny day.
And the wildflowers! Here is a thistle, one of my favorites.
This one is a "nodding thistle", and it won't have a fluffy "plume" like some other varieties.

And one of my mother's favorites, crown vetch. I was surprised to see it...it's been years since I've come across this flower in person.
I think of her every time I see it. She used to point it out to us on walks and ask us it's name, and we had SUCH trouble remembering.
Not any more, though.

Feeling down and stressed as I've been, it cheered me to come across it today.

Back at the hotel I drank lots of liquids and worked on my part for Spamalot before taking a nap.

I was awoken by the phone ringing; it was the Disney interviewer! The same guy who was supposed to interview me on Wednesday! I couldn't help but ask, "Hey, so...what happened with that!" He thinks something went wrong with the automated scheduling system. He says my interview never came across his radar, wasn't added to his calendar at all. This is quite believable because A) the scheduling AI doesn't have a human supervisor, and B) many people are looking at and choosing time slots at the same time, and if two people click on the same time slot at the same time weird stuff can happen.

Mostly I had been worried that I'd done something wrong, or that the interviewer had some sort of emergency. Gladly, neither was the case! So we had our interview, which was mostly just them confirming things like work authorization and scheduling me for next steps (background check, orientation, Traditions which is Disney's training/onboarding.)

After the interview I received a few emails with paperwork to fill out, which I did.
And now we wait. I'll hit the ground running with most of this stuff the day after I get back to Orlando.

The evening show went just fine. Paul's (drummer) parents have been sitting in the pit to watch us play, and I feel like I play better when there are people actually watching what we do :)

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Saturday, we have two shows!

I was feeling significantly better, though still a little post-nasaly and headache-y.
Would love to continue NOT being sick in ANY way.

I wanted to go get another bagel from Allie Boy's, but the one I wanted had been removed from the menu this morning!

Lol.

But that's ok, they have sooooo much great stuff on their menu.
The bagel I'd wanted was a dessert one: deep-fried carrot bagel rolled in spiced sugar with raisin walnut cream cheese, toasted coconut curd, meringue, and crumbled gingersnaps. I mean COME ON. Who wouldn't want that??

What I ended up with was a tartine, a pumpernickel bagel with chicken liver mousse, date molasses, chicken skin granola, bacon, and green onion. My god it was so good. Again, the combination of flavors and textures was perfect. Smooth earthy chicken mousse, crispy salty bacon and granola, and the sweet smoky molasses. OMG. And it was only $7!! Milwaukee is lucky to have this place!!

I may or may not have also picked up an enamel pin, because seriously, this food has been so good that I want to remember it for all of time!

Anyway, the rest of the day was fine. Two shows, probably the best audiences we've had all week!

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Sunday, today the weather was about 20 degrees colder and windy and rainy, but I finally felt better.
The change in weather may explain why I have been feeling crappy; I'm often ridiculously sensitive to barometric pressure changes.

In addition to the two shows I did all of my usual pre-travel stuff, like packing and wiping surfaces in the hotel room and Googling groceries, restaurants, and laundry for the next city.

Since it was an uneventful day, here are my reviews of the snacks I picked up at the grocery this week:

- Japanese BBQ Jerky: 7/10 The flavor is very good, lots of sesame and umami with BBQ! However the texture is surprisingly WET for jerky and may take some getting used to. This brand is better eaten with a fork than your fingers.

- Brothers Nuts Spicy Basil Pepitas: 8/10 Flavorful and crispy! They'd be awesome on a salad. I had them with plain wild rice and they were a wonderful texture and flavor element.

- Banana Bread Crisps: 7/10 Tasty! You have to use your imagination for "banana bread" though, they mostly taste like sesame/tahini. Nice texture and overall a nice snack.

- Moo-less Strawberry Shortcake: 9/10 It blended very well and was not chalky at all, AND it didn't hurt my stomach or cause any kind of lactose reaction! The flavor was kind of artificial-y to me, but mixed with a smoothie or some oatmeal it may not be as noticeable and I'm excited to try the other flavors. Definitely a product that I'll look for in the future.

- Sweet Earth Plant-Based Turkey: 2/10 I hate to waste food but I had to throw this out. The smell was so bad, and so strong, that I immediately checked the expiration date after opening it. I couldn't believe it's supposed to smell this way but other reviews online complain about the same thing. The smell was like dog or cat food mixed with a LOT of garlic powder. It took three days for the smell to dissipate from the tupperware I'd stored it in. I did eat some and it was "ok", but the smell was really difficult to overcome. Definitely avoid, get Tofurky instead.

- Byte bars: 5/10 These are ok but they have a sandy texture, I assume from added fiber, that isn't very pleasant. I also feel like for the cost, there are other bars that offer a better flavor and texture with similar nutritional profile. Nothing special and not really worth the cost of eye-catching packaging.

- Lenny & Larry Strawberry Shortcake Cookie: 7/10 pretty good! I still like Snickerdoodle better, but this one has a good flavor too

- NuGo Protein Bars: 8/10 Nutritionally pretty balanced, good texture, filling, and delicious! I only wish there were less sugar, otherwise these are a really good choice and I'll keep an eye out for them in the future when I don't have time for a meal.

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It's Monday and we're leaving late because the bus ride to Madison is only 90 minutes.
The hotel may not have rooms ready because we're arriving before 3pm, but that's ok if they'll let us drop luggage off.

Today I hope to walk to Madison Sourdough for my bread for the week, then to a local co-op.
For dinner I might be indulgent and have Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream, since we don't have a show and I'll have a full day to recover from any lactose effects.

For the rest of the week I have a few more foodie finds to enjoy, and then there are thrift stores, a botanical garden, and a vintage toy store that I'm excited to explore!

Random photos:

A cliff swallow that I found sitting in some mulch next to a sidewalk.
There were no apparent injuries but it seemed dazed, perhaps hit by a car or flew into a window.
It did flinch away when I picked it up, but I only wanted to move it to a safer location.
I found a hose nozzle on the side of the apartment building and trickled some water into a leaf for the bird, left it within reach, and set it gently in that quiet corner to go on in peace, whatever that may mean for it.

Mural near a brewery:

Cute paddle boats on one of the rivers that feed into Lake Michigan. It has been fun to watch these ferrying drunk tourists and college kids all over, and to watch the bridges and street-bridges raised and lowered for yachts and ferries much larger than this.

Another thistle, this one is creeping thistle which is considered an international problem because it can blight entire fields of crops.
Wow! I still love it.

I left my phone unattended for like five seconds, and the trumpets got their grubby little hands on it and used it to take selfies.

So I gave them a makeover.

Early day in California is a "normal day" on the east coast (i.e. I got up at 4:30am which is technically 7:30am)

The flight from Burbank to Chicago was our last flight on this tour. For the final three weeks, it'll be buses until we fly home.

I had motion sickness troubles because landing in Chicago is always a little wibbly due to the lake, then we had a two-hour bus ride in stop-and-go traffic, so as soon as we got to the hotel I walked to the grocery even though it was closing soon. Needed to be active and have my feet on the ground, otherwise I might dream that I was still on a plane or bus.

The nearest grocery is a Fresh Thyme, that Meijer-in-disguise that is spreading across the country.
This one had a layout really similar to a Sprouts Market: bulk section islands and prepared food islands, produce in the back, vitamins to the front near the registers.

Though I was trying to hurry, I found many nice things to try this week (and next since we're busing and I can take groceries with me.)

- Japanese BBQ flavored jerky
- Banana Bread Chips (they had savory cauliflower ones too, and avocado ones)
- Spicy Basil Pumpkin Seeds
- Vegan Deli Turkey
- Moo-less Animal Free Whey Protein (I've seen more and more non-milk whey products on the shelves and as a lactose intolerant person it's very exciting!)
- Two new-to-me brands of vegan protein bars (I'm not specifically looking for vegan here, but non-vegan bars generally have a load of lactose and I can't eat them.)
- A flavor of Larry & Lenny's cookie that I haven't see before!

I'll try all of these and give a review at some point :)

Back at the hotel I unpacked and was getting ready for bed when I discovered many more bug bites or rashes or whatever has been plaguing me since we went to California :( In a panic I took pictures and asked about them on a doctor subreddit, and was told they are very likely bug bite's but it's anyone's guess what kind until I actually catch the bug.

Sleep was a long time coming.

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Tuesday, I woke up way too early, still anxious from last night.

But after breakfast and some reflection time, I decided to wait an additional day to see if any more appeared.
If it was just a bug that was in my room, or in the botanical areas that I was visiting, perhaps it didn't make the journey to Milwaukee with me. If it was bed bugs or something viral/fungal/bacterial, I expect more to continue to appear this week.

Anyway, I often panic over health-related things due to some childhood traumas.
If I can be calm and wait, usually it turns out that the thing I'm facing was not worth the worry.

I walked to Walgreens for random stuff (earplugs, my preferred protein shakes which they didn't have) and then had my meeting to sign documents for my new job, and then filled out some paperwork for Disney to be a sub for Candlelight. Then I ate lunch and took a nap because, like I said, I got up too early!

I don't recall anything else special happening, except that a phone interview with Disney was scheduled for the next day.

Sound check was just fine, and the show was just fine.

Picture of the hall's chandelier as seen from my spot in the pit:

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Wednesday, after breakfast I walked 2 miles to a local co-op called Beans & Barley.
It was cute, but not as good as expected from the pictures.
i.e. in the pictures online there were a lot of grocery items and locally-made bread, but today there were a few sad vegetables and prepackaged loaves. Most of the store was devoted to hippie knick-knacks: incense burners, silly socks, coffee mugs, essential oils and soaps. Which, nothing wrong with that, it's just not my interest.

I ate in their cafe, which was also a disappointing experience as the staff seemed exasperated and service was VERY slow even though it wasn't crowded. I ordered a very simple grilled veggie sandwich, and it took nearly 30 minutes to come out.

That said, it WAS very good. The ciabatta bread was super soft and fresh, the veggies had a blanket of toasted mozzarella that was divine, and the veggies themselves had been roasted in a garlic olive oil. Flavorful and yum.

From there I walked to Whole Paycheck, where a homeless man outside asked for food, so for once in my life I actually got to give a homeless person something (the last time a homeless person asked me specifically for food, not money, was in Chicago in 2015.) We went inside and he loaded up a big plate at the hot bar, and picked out two drinks. After he'd gone on his way a security officer approached me to ask if the man had solicited me "inside the store." "Not 'inside the store,'" I replied, and he nodded and moved on.

I didn't get much, just the loaf of bread I'd hoped to find at the co-op and a bag of cherries because they've finally dropped below $5/pound.

Because the co-op had taken so long with making my sandwich, and because of the unexpected time with the homeless dude, I had to Uber back to be in my hotel room for the Disney interview. Ok I didn't HAVE to, but the email had specifically said they wanted me to be in a quiet area, and I also didn't know how long it would take.

I waited, and waited.
The interview time came and went. I decided to risk the noise of starting a load of laundry, taking the stairwell so I wouldn't miss a call in the elevator. Nothing. An hour after the scheduled time I emailed the interviewer to ask if there'd been a miscommunication. No response. An hour after that I texted the recruiter who'd been handling my scheduling thus far, to let her know the interview hadn't occurred. She said she'd look into it and get back to me.

And that was that. I got stood up!
Well, I just hope everyone who was involved is OK.

The show that night was normal.
Katie, our physical therapist, came to watch the show from the pit. It was fun to see her excited face as we played, lol.

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Thursday I didn't eat much for breakfast, partly because I've been super stressed lately (mystery bug bites from CA, long turbulent flights, interviews and background checks, people getting sick in the band, etc) and my stomach is out-of-sorts, but also because for lunch I was having sushi with Jameson's parents, and wanted to show up hungry!

It's a good thing I ate light because

So good! Real, fresh sushi is such a treat :)

After lunch we visited Milwaukee Public Market, which is more food hall than farmers market.
It was bustling with people buying fresh seafood, brauts, baked goods, and lunch.

Kathy and Jeff found some cookies to take home, I didn't find anything to buy but certainly enjoyed looking.
We also strolled down the nearby streets and found one of the restaurants on my Foodie Finds list, so I bookmarked it in my head for tomorrow's adventures.

For dessert we hit Purple Door Ice Cream.
I had a mixed scoop of beer & pretzel ice cream, and chocolate sorbet!

The sorbet was non-dairy and had the texture of a fudge popsicle, yum!
The beer ice cream was surprisingly awesome, a nice malted wheaty flavor with the salty pretzels (which were more chewy than crunchy but still really good.) It was sunny and lovely out. If this is Wisconsin's normal spring weather, I think I'd be willing to endure their winters!

They took me back to the hotel and gave me some treats to bring home to share with Jameson: a bag of mini Swedish Fish, and two bags of locally-made caramel and cheddar popcorn! If you've ever been to Chicago, you know that caramel + cheddar is one of the best flavor combinations on earth :)

Back in my room I chilled, fought with Venmo over a fraudulent transaction, and worked on Foodie Finds for Madison WI. Before I knew it it was dinner time, but I wasn't very hungry and just ate some fruit and a yogurt before heading to the show.

We had another cast member out but it wasn't due to Covid...I hope she's ok.

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Normally I post Thursday as part of the weekend, but my Friday plans include an art museum which will be a lot of pictures so I'm dividing it up. In other words tomorrow is the art museum and another local restaurant that was on my list, then we have four shows over the weekend and somewhere in there I'll visit a local bagel place that I want to try.

Jameson had a dentist appointment early on Thursday morning, poor guy.

I fell back asleep after he left, but woke up right at 8am.
Enjoyed a slow morning of touching base with relatives via email, and kind of organizing my job opportunities so I could analyze all the pros/cons of each...In the middle of which I got an offer for my first choice!!

It's a data entry/transcription job that does contracted work for misc government agencies.
I was referred to the job by

fuzzilla after expressing interest, and owe her MUCH thanks!
This is a far better job than I was expecting to qualify for, and I'm very grateful.
Excited and a bit nervous, but mostly excited to get started!

Anyway, the rest of the morning was nice and slow.
After lunch I repacked my luggage, then finally and with a lot of grumbling tackled the shower.
So Much Scrubbing. But when it was done it was much better, and it won't be as hard to clean when I come back home in a month.

My new iPhone arrived! I immediately put it in its buttered toast case, with the Smuckers jelly phone charm.
I can't believe it all came together so well! Guffawed out loud!

Too funny. I probably won't keep the Smuckers on the phone all the time, because having something dangling from the phone is a bit annoying. But I can add it when I know I'll have my phone out of my pocket for a long time like on a desk or table. And then hopefully I'll have a plate to put it on too. Can't wait to make a call on it!

For dinner we went to a new (to us) place called New York Beer Project.
The food was good, the drinks were excellent. They make their own hard seltzer, and the flavor tonight was Dole Whip. Very yummy.
We had a nice meal and talked about all sorts of things. Like how our 10-year anniversary is coming up. Wow!
I've missed my Jameson :) It will be good to actually be present in each others' lives in a month.

Back home I received my official offer letter from FedWriters, so got to work filling out all of my paperwork for them.
Then set up my new phone while Jameson watched the Cubs. Later on we watched Top Chef together and went to bed.

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Friday morning after breakfast I packaged my old phone for trade-in and wrote some letters to grandparents and penpal, spent some time repacking my luggage.

I had my final interview of layoff at Orange County Courthouse (they scheduled the interview yesterday near the end of the business day.) So After lunch I drove all the way downtown. Parking at least was easy, and the massive courthouse was easy to find.

Security got a big kick out of my toast-phone; the first officer did a double take and had a good guffaw. The second officer did a double take and exclaimed, "I thought you were checking a sandwich!"

I found the interview office and waited with two other women.
And waited, and waited.
About 30 minutes later they finally called me into a conference room, where I was seated in front of a panel of four women.
Each one introduced themselves and described their departments...I remember Civil and Domestic, I think the other two were Criminal and Probate. So the reason for the four-person panel was multiple positions available across these four departments, and each department head would evaluate us for where we might be most needed/best suited.

The interview was intense, if only because I was the center of their attention for at least 30 minutes.
They asked lots of situational and scenario questions (i.e. "If you aren't getting along with a coworker, what would you do?") and asked for examples from my past work history ("Describe a time where you dealt with an irate customer.") Typical stuff, but with the questions popping out from four different people and all of them typing away on laptops while I answered...by the time they escorted me back out I was sweating about halfway down my shirt.

Also, no one commented on toast-phone, which I had placed directly on the table.
I think they truly didn't notice it.
They were very intrigued about my circus history though, and wanted to hear about the elephants (everyone does!)
And they were all very pleased about my transcription experience because it showed not only that I had jobs which prioritized accuracy, but also discretion and confidentiality.

Not that it matters because I've accepted another job. But I wanted to interview here anyway, because hopefully they'll keep me on file as "worth considering" in case I need to apply again. The world has become a crazy place, and as an INTJ I gotta have my Plan A, Plan A 2.0, Plan B, Plan B 2.0, etc.

I think it went well, but they were interviewing a LOT of people, so who knows.

Back home I had a snack and chilled, then made air fryer wings for us, one of our favorite treats.
We had a white pizza from Marco's with tomato slices, bacon, onion, and feta, and I got out some balsamic drizzle that made it absolutely fantastic. Got to remember that addition if we order it again.

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Saturday, I was startled to realize that I am going back on tour in a few days!
I've been so focused on using this layoff to build my little house of cards for when this tour ends.
And I sort of forgot it ain't over yet!

So I hurriedly worked on Foodie Finds for upcoming Thousand Oaks and Milwaukee.
The next several cities are so saturated with amazing restaurants, they're probably ALL going to be two-page recommendation lists.

After that, I swept the pool deck and garage, and ate my Cup Noodles Breakfast for lunch.

Here it is before adding the water:

And after:

And after cooking:

The smell of artificial maple syrup filled the kitchen while it was cooking.
After letting it cool Jameson and I gave it a taste.
Not bad! Obviously still full of weird fillers and loaded with salt.
But it was sweet and salty, nice chewy noodles, and even the freeze-dried egg and sausage bits were decent.

After lunch I went for a walk by myself.
It was sunny, not a cloud in the sky, and only moderately hot for Florida.
I did our usual neighborhood walk, which is about two miles.

In the evening we were invited to join an escape room with some of Jameson's friends!
It was a room meant for eight people, but five people had flaked on Party Planners Paul and Alanie (our two friends).

For those who don't know, Jameson and I are UNDEFEATED at escape rooms.
We've done something like 5-6 escape rooms together and have never lost one.

This one was virus-themed (too soon?) and the goal was to quarantine a facility before everyone inside turned into rabid zombies :p
We had an hour to complete the room (which turned out to be three connected rooms), and the five of us plugged away mightily, getting hung up twice and having to ask for hints.

It was a fun and challenging room, but there were some definite puzzle design issues. The biggest problem was that there were two audio puzzles, one where we needed to hear a series of six different pitches to find a pattern and another where we had to listen to the squeaking of lab rats to get a number sequence. Which was fine, but the room's themed soundtrack--alarms going off, pipes bursting, radio chatter, people zombie-fying--was so loud that all five of us found it really difficult to hear what we needed to solve the puzzles. When you have two ear-trained musicians struggling to hear an audio cue through the racket, it's too loud.

These two puzzles caused the most significant delays in our game. For the lab rat puzzle they actually had to stop our timer and come help us because the keypad we were trying to unlock with the squeak-code stopped working.

The other most notable puzzle issue was our very last clue, the one that we needed to leave the room.
It involved some of the lights on the walls near the ceiling. Before we started the room our attendant SPECIFICALLY said, "No clues will be on the ceiling or above your heads." Literally the LAST puzzle we needed to solve involved these ceiling-adjacent lights, and the room attendants had to verbally give us that hint because we were intentionally ignoring them, as we had been instructed. BOOOOOOO.

Anyway, despite those logistics issues it was still a very fun room and well done overall.
We BARELY won with only 52 seconds to spare!

Considering that the puzzles were designed for eight people and we only had five,
and that the room had only a 22% success rate, I think we did FANTASTICALLY well!

Victory photo:

From there we drove to Player 1, a video game bar.
Jameson & Co had been here several times, but I had not.
You pay a cover charge, and all the games are free to play!
( CLICK HERE for Gamer Bar )

Back home I opened my other Mystery Box purchase: a fortune bag.
It had a cute rubber band-powered butterfly, and a fortune that told me something like "You will enjoy career success but at the potential expense of your relationship." Old news :p

And also, this tarot card:

Yeah, definitely one of the more negative tarot cards you can pull.
But luckily I don't put stock in tarot. And guess what: sorrow and struggle come to everyone.
That's life. I don't need a card to tell me that :)

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Sunday was a relaxed day.
Jameson had a massage at 11, and while he was gone I attacked the shower one more time with bleach, ran the dishwasher, did a last load of laundry, and made a trip to Publix for a few travel foods because lunch will be on the plane tomorrow.

Literally did nothing else all afternoon except finish Wheel of Time: The Shadow Rising and start Wheel of Time: The Fires of Heaven.
For dinner, Panera, then Jameson went to rehearsal and I went for a sunset walk around the neighborhood.
It was mostly quiet, but a lot more cars than usual because of the holiday and there will probably be some festivities tonight.

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Today I am up early to eat something before Jameson takes me to the airport.
I'm going fairly early because of the holiday weekend, figure I'd better plan for insanity.

It's a 5-hour flight to LAX which will DEFINITELY be insanity, then fighting LA traffic to get to Thousand Oaks.

One month left.

I woke up at 3:30am (argh) and rode with some coworkers to the airport.

After stumbling around and sucking down coffee for a bit, I found myself in front of another "frictionless shopping" i.e. "no checkout" i.e. "cashierless" store.

This one is called &GO. You can see the cameras in the ceiling, and this time I also looked for the weight sensors under the shelves.

There was a sign-up kiosk for Amazon One!

Amazon One is a biometric payment option. It uses your palm print as a form of identification, and links that to your payment methods (as many of us have already done with facial recognition.) All I had to do was insert a credit card already associated with my Amazon account, then hold my hand above the sensor at the right distance, and a scan was taken. You can do one or both hands. Then you agree to the terms and conditions.

Voila! I've been assimilated into the Borg.

Some people find this tech invasive. I find it fascinating and efficient.
Sure, someone could steal my identity. Tale as old as time. I'm one of eight billion people, I'll take those odds.

Anyway, that was the exciting part of the morning.
Both my flights were normal.

On the Uber ride home I noticed a LOT of new construction.
New apartments, hotels, and lots of cleared woodlands. Pretty wild!
Orlando is expanding and expanding.

At home Jameson was working, but I snuck in and squeezed him hard before unpacking a little and running out to see the banana tree.

Oh dear.

I can't say I was surprised. But I was sad, and disappointed.
On the ride in, I had seen that water levels in all the lakes we passed were VERY low. And I kinda knew.
We did not get enough rain for the bananas to sustain themselves.
And Jameson dumping a bucket of water at the foot of the tree, once per week, is not nearly enough.

So, no java bananas this year. But! I am SO grateful that the tree grew bananas at all!
And there are four more trees that also have the potential to grow some!
And come June, I'll be around to ACTUALLY garden. So, it's ok :) I can't help but feel sad, but it couldn't be helped.

Jameson felt awful about it when I told him (no he hadn't noticed, like I've said many times he's not a gardener and works full time plus gigs, and I was not going to burden him with "Did you check on my banana trees today?" after he's already done 60 hours of work). He seemed a bit defensive at first, but I strongly asserted that it was NOT his fault, they were not his responsibility, and they're just bananas. Without near-daily care, there's nothing to be done...and I never expected or asked him to become their caretaker.

My little Meyer lemon tree may also be dead, or at least it is unlikely to fruit again.
It has no leaves and is mostly brown and dry. In this case I'm not sure why because the soil was very wet (it's in a non-draining pot).
Maybe it's rootbound. I'll do an autopsy over the weekend.

The vanilla orchid also looks like crap, entirely due to the dry weather.
The pipevine has died back a lot too, but it's still very present and even has a flower!

Look how big it is! The flowers on this variety can get up to two feet long and a foot wide.
It looks like meat, and has a rancid meat smell, because it attracts flies to be it's pollinators.
A lot of tropical and prehistoric plants adopt this stinky strategy instead of sweet nectar :)

Here it is from the side. The green bulb is the seed pod.

Anyway, the rest of the night was unpacking and some light cleaning and dinner from our favorite Greek place down the street.
I went to bed with a massive headache, which I should have paid more attention to, because it was a warning.

( CLICK HERE for medical drama )

Back home I had breakfast and cleaned the bathrooms to work out some of my anxiety, and shared the saga of my wussiness with Jameson. While he was at the gym I did a little photoshoot with the new phone case that I ordered from Japan several months ago.

I am such a huge food nerd, so when I saw this phone case I just HAD to have it!

Hyper-realistic buttered toast!
I mean look at that butter! Seems like it would be wet to the touch!

The extra-crispy crust!

This was made by a shop called Fairy and You in Japan, and sold on the site Minne, which is like the Japanese version of Etsy.
This type of "art" involving hyper-realistic food is called "shokuhin sampuru" and is very popular in Japan.
This person takes about a month to make the cases, and then it's another month to ship.
Since I'm getting a new phone which I'll hope to have for at least four years (hopefully more) I felt it was worth getting such a fun and wacky case!

After enjoying that, I cleaned both bathrooms (but not the shower, my arch nemesis. I'll get to that special hell later.)

After lunch I had an interview for Courtroom Clerk with Osceola County.
It started with a typing test, which made me nervous because it was via Zoom and the interviewer literally watched me typing via my shared screen. I've tested my speed many times but have never taken an actual test in front of someone before. My hands were shaking like mad, but I still managed 78wpm and 97% accuracy (I usually have 98% but nerves). The interviewer was very pleased with that, and we moved on to the other parts which were standard interview stuff. I felt like it went well, and they said I should hear something back by the end of the week.

After that I kind of splatted for the rest of the day.
My nerves were just destroyed because of the blood draw incident. I couldn't nap but felt exhausted in so many ways.
It was nice to just chill with my Jameson and do quiet things, and eat dinner together.

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Wednesday I got to sleep in until about 9 which was glorious and much needed.

After breakfast I went to Target to buy a new phone, bringing my buttered toast case to make sure it would fit.
Jameson's friend Paul works at Target, and we've both bought our phones through him before because he gets commission.
It went pretty smoothly but the phone will need to be mailed to me for some unknown reason.

The whole process took longer than expected, so I ended up doing a scheduled phone interview for a remote data entry position in the car. IMO it went really well, and they sent the application materials after we were finished. I'll be very excited if I make it through the application process!

Back home I had just enough time to scarf down lunch before an in-person interview with Sprouts 40 minutes away.
But just as I was done eating my phone rang, and it was Disney to give me more information about the Candlelight Processional gig.
Yay! Now I feel that it's official.

Drove to Sprouts and got there early, so did a little shopping :)
There was a new flavor of Olipop, and a root beer-flavored canned coffee, and a plant-based strawberry milk that I wanted to try!
The interview went well, but I'm not sure I'd be a good fit because they're mostly looking for someone to work nights.

I popped over to Whole Paycheck across the street to get sushi for dinner and wings to make on Friday.
Driving home was awful because it's I-4, it was 4:30pm on a weekday, and it was raining so people were fleeing the theme parks. What is normally a 40-minute drive took an hour.

Jameson and I ate dinner together, then he left for rehearsal and I did my paperwork for the data entry application, then dusted the house. I had wanted to do the shower too but was too tired.

Oh, and I got a funny ridiculous accessory for my buttered toast case!

That's a 3D-printed, true-to-size, single-serving Smuckers jam!

Someone made it for me on Etsy.
It's going to be a phone charm, attached to the toast at the bottom right corner with a looped cord.
I'll be able to remove it pretty easily when I'm going out somewhere, but on days when my phone is out on a table or desk it's going to crack me up to have my "buttered toast and jam" lol. Listen, life is short, and little dumb things like this make it worthwhile.

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Tomorrow is Thursday already.
It's been a whirlwind layoff for me, but I'm hoping the next few days will be more calm.

Plans for Thursday include attacking the shower filth, setting up my new phone if it arrives, and going out to dinner with Jameson.
For the weekend, I need to repack my suitcases and complete the remaining Megan's Foodie Finds sheets.
I'd also like to cook one meal for us before I leave again.

A normal travel day.

This TSA agent at Lubbock International gave me the creeps.
The minute our large group started piling in and lining up at the baggage drop, his hand went straight to his gun and he stood there staring at us and clutching it the entire time. Dude, CHILL :(

My stomach did not do well on the rapid-fire double flight with basically no layover (I tend to need time to recover from motion sickness between flights and didn't get it) but I didn't barf. Today my stomach feels temperamental, but I'm ignoring it.
Stress and travel, blah blah blah get over it.

The hotel in Kansas City. You guys.
I walked into my room and could swear they finished building it minutes before we pulled up.

Watch on YouTube

Everything new and shiny and so clean that I could possibly be the first person to stay in this room.
And it's very "Millennial Grey", which made me laugh.

It's a nice way to end this nearly three-month stretch on the road.
Three days of shows, then we get to go home for a bit.

I walked to the Whole Paycheck, also SPANKING new.
Since we only have three days I got limited groceries, and the only "new" items that I tried were an ayurvedic lemon chai-thing that was spicy and kinda grainy, and an Urban Remedy drink called "Blue Magic" that I've seen many times and have wanted to try.

Back at the hotel, unpacking and chatting with Jameson as we got ready for bed.
Oh, and finding our company rental car in the garage for easy access tomorrow.

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Friday morning, it was dreary and rainy out which suited me just fine as I have a lot of prep work to do.
Starting with pre-interview paperwork for Osceola County.

I now have a PCP appointment on Tuesday, an interview for Court Clerk with Osceola County that same afternoon, and an interview with Sprouts the day after that. Orange County hasn't set up an interview with me yet for their Court Clerk position, so we will see if that happens. All of that plus my usual cleaning, gardening, cooking, repacking, errands, and actually spending time with my Jameson, will keep me very busy for the whole week home I'm sure.

In the afternoon it was raining pretty hard and my umbrella was six miles away at the theatre, so I took the rental car to Andre's Confiserie Suisse for lunch. At first glance online it looks like a chocolate shop...and it is! But they also serve three square meals, wine and beer, and of course desserts.

( CLICK HERE for Andre's! )

The afternoon was lazy as it continued to rain steadily.

In the evening we drove out to the Starlight theatre.
I've been excited to play here ever since finding out that it's an outdoor stage.

I've played outdoors for theme parks, and this definitely had that theme park vibe.
Backstage entrances disguised as ivy-covered walls, castle-like structures, the sound booth shed.
Reminded me of Busch Gardens.

In the pit we had a surprisingly large space.

There were difficulties with the MD's setup, however.
The primary difficulty being the expensive and vital laptops, keyboards, and Ableton rigs exposed to rain.

Because of that, after sound check the MD station was moved completely under the stage.
He'll be viewing and conducting the show via a camera.
This is the first venue where we've been FULLY remote.

It felt very odd. The pit was super quiet; we couldn't hear our own sound out there in the theatre at all.
That makes a big difference because how we hear the sound in the space impacts how we play in that space.
I don't know about everyone else, but it certainly made me play with more hesitancy.
The fun part, though, was that we could still hear audience reactions.
And I think being outdoors gives a certain casual vibe, which results in people being more raucous.
Lots of loud whistling, cheering, "woooos", and of course laughing :)

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Saturday I had a slow morning and worked on applying to be a Notary in the State of Florida.
Because half of these government jobs seem to want it, and it's actually pretty easy to become one.

Partway through I took a break for lunch and a walk to Bay Boy, a sandwich shop only a few blocks away but up a steep hill.
They specialize in sandwiches made on Dutch crunch bread (also called "tiger bread".)

Today, it being a weekend, they had BACON crunch bread in addition to the regular!

I got one of each (had planned on only one but they were only $2 each!)
Here is the plain one. The bread is brushed with a mixture of rice flour, sugar, and yeast.
When it bakes the flour dries and creates the crackled pattern, a crunchy exterior but soft interior, and a little sweetness.

I tore off a piece of the bacon one to try and thought it was delicious! The bacon was in thick chunks but was also super crispy and delicious, and the inside of the bread was pillowy soft and divine. The bacon one was more dense than the regular due to the weight of the topping and probably some extra fat residue, but both were amazing.

After that I wanted to go for a walk as it was sunny and lovely out.
In the hotel lobby I came across Kevin (Head of Sound) who said that he and some friends had gone to a soul food restaurant I'd recommended for this week, and it had been amazing. Then as I continued on my walk, my phone kept dinging with all of the messages, pictures, and links that people were sharing in Megan's Foodie Finds.

As this tour comes to an end, it makes me feel really good knowing that I contributed something that brought enjoyment to some of my coworkers. The recommendations lists were fun to make, and lots of people got to eat locally and try something new that they may not have experienced otherwise. I'm glad I did it :)

I walked to a little plaza with a Half Price Books and a food co-op.
There was nothing that I needed but of COURSE I always find something to bring back!
This time it was a brand of jerky I'd never had before, and a can of local chocolate raspberry flavored coffee.

The show this evening went well, I had several friends in the audience!

This is my friend Kristy (far left) and the friends that she brought to see our show.
The Starlight is WAY too big for our little production, so the box office is giving away free tickets with the passcode "Tootsie Pop".
It's nice to be able to get my friends free tickets for once!

They had a great time, and after the show we had a quick hug and a selfie before parting ways.

It's too bad that we didn't get time to actually catch up, but with the show ending so late and having to carpool back (and me with the keys) I didn't think it fair to keep my passengers waiting or to keep Kristy out late. It was good enough that we had a moment to say hi in person.

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Sunday I woke up with my brain buzzing through all of the to-dos that come with a layoff.

After breakfast I booked a taxi for Monday's airport trip because I'm paranoid about Uber availability at that hour.
Two coworkers wanted to come with me, so at least it turned out to be a useful booking.
Printed and signed my paperwork for my notary application, then in the afternoon walked to CVS for an envelope for said paperwork.

And that was pretty much it.
Packed, prepared for tomorrow's travels, ate my meals, and finally got ready for the show.

It was a pretty normal show, except we all got to wear graphic tees because Brandon (bass) is leaving us, and it was his departing request. I'm sad that he's leaving, but he lives in Florida so hopefully I'll see him around!

The show went normally, and afterward we packed up as usual and maybe a little extra because we're all about to be home for a week!
Near the stage door here at the Starlight is this plaque:

The wall in question:

There is not much space, but I made do. My initials are there somewhere at the Starlight.
Until we meet again, KCMO.

I drove the guys back to the hotel, filled the rental car with gas, and turned in the keys.
I weighed my luggage and set it waiting by the door.
Only a few hours of sleep, then it's off to Orlando!

Monday was mostly cooking.

I prepped both breakfast and lunch for work.
Breakfast: overnight oats with ground flax and high-protein milk, raspberries, Greek yogurt, and a few of my delicious preserved pine cones.
Lunch: "Tone It Up!" protein bar, slice of homemade wheat bread, low-sodium tuna pouch, Libby's veggie cup, handful of almonds, and a peach.

I got the crock pot meatloaf started shortly before lunch.
All the usual ingredients, shaped into a kind of rough oval and cooked for 5 hours.

The bigger challenge was the potatoes au gratin, which I tackled after lunch.
It's not HARD to make, just time consuming.

First I mixed heavy cream, shallots, garlic, thyme, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
Simmered on the stove until the shallots were soft.

While that cooled I sliced some russet potatoes very thin and layered them in a pie pan.
I don't have a mandolin, so had to do it by hand. Was pleased with my knife work.

I had to work quickly because the potatoes can oxidize and turn an unappealing shade of grey.
Did a cutesy flower pattern. You can layer them any way you want, but should try to have some edges up so they'll get crispy.

Blended the cream with our Ninja (an immersion blender would be way better but I don't have that) and poured it over the potatoes.
Into the oven at 325F for about an hour and a half.
Then out to cool. It needs to cool to allow the cream sauce to thicken.

While the potatoes cooled we went for our evening walk together.
It was very hot. We talked about how we're looking forward to fall weather, and Jameson explained some workings of one of his baseball Xbox games, which has gotten controversial because some player got expelled for drug use and since the game reflects real-life activities the gameplay has all changed. It was actually pretty interesting stuff. I'm always amazed when the digital and physical worlds collide in such a way.

Back home it was almost dinnertime, so I fired up the broiler, topped the potatoes with cheese, and put them in for another 15.
Sprinkled with fresh thyme before serving.

The sticking-up edges were crispy, while the layers below were creamy and decadent.

Served with slices of this meat football, which was also pretty good.

The vegetables were a disaster, I had bought nice fresh green beans and when I opened the bag they were slimy, like cut okra.
No good! Luckily I had some boring frozen veggies so just microwaved those quickly. Ho-hum, but it did the job.

I am lactose intolerant, and also count my calories.
Potatoes au gratin, loaded with fat and dairy, are not exactly a go-to for me.
But I plugged the ingredients into MyFitnessPal as a Recipe with six portions, then gave myself 1/2 portion of both meatloaf and potatoes, and that kept me under 500 calories for the meal.

After dinner we plugged away at our escape room game, and did a great job.
We even finished one puzzle with ten minutes to spare!

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Tuesday began the busyness for both of us.

I had discount court reporting in the morning.
The judge was no-nonsense, which I like a lot. It means he wants to start on time (yes, please) and he doesn't let claimants expound at great length (YES, please), and after each case he actually gives me his decisions instead of making me grovel or guess what he wants (yes, PLEASE!). So all in all it was a good and normal work day for me.

Jameson was not so lucky...I think most of his day was normal, but while loading up his car for rehearsal he bashed his finger really hard. There's a visible bruise under the nail.

A reminder that he plays PIANO. And has rehearsals EVERY DAY this week, and concerts over the weekend.
Argh.

My evening home alone was spent packing food and prepping clothes for work tomorrow, practicing trombone, making a hair appointment, ordering birth control, and jumping in on some data entry because there were some things that they wanted entered in ASAP.

Watched a little anime and thought many thoughts.
When Jameson came home we talked about our day and went to bed.

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Wednesday was similar. An early morning for me, a day of court reporting (this time it was 50/50 held cases/cancelled cases), then I went for my haircut. I came prepared with many pictures which didn't matter one bit, the stylist looked at them all and then did something totally different. Sigh. Whatever, it doesn't look "bad", just not my ideal.

During our chatting the stylist mentioned that I'd booked at a good time; college starts next week (the salon is near UCF) and things would be pretty crazy once school was in session. Based on that information I decided to hit a nearby Victoria's Secret to finally get bras, because if I wait I'll be fighting sorority girls for my sizes or something. I HATE shopping in general but bra shopping most of all, so I was glad to get this over with.

Back home I spent a little time with Jameson before he had to go to rehearsal, then ate dinner, practiced trombone, packed lunch, and had a big long chat with my sister Raven. She's a writer and has been submitting samples of her work via submission events on Twitter (had NO idea that was a thing but it sounded very efficient and time-effective). Then spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to tie the neck bow on my cream vintage shirt that I want to wear tomorrow. Somehow I never get the bow right. I'm literally going to have to get up extra early tomorrow so I can tie this damn bow.

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Thursday, got up early and tied the damn bow!
It wasn't perfect but just ok.

At work, a very normal day. Two canceled cases, and the timing was such that I got to take myself for two whole walks.
This added up to about two miles, so that was good.

On the way home I stopped to get ingredients for banana pudding cheesecake.
When I came back outside with my groceries it was POURING, full-on monsoon.
I shrugged and walked to my car, getting absolutely soaked.
If I had waited I'd be waiting for 30 minutes or more, and home was an hour away with perishable food in the trunk.

I got home just fine albeit uncomfortably wet.
Had a nice hot shower, and prepped a few things for tomorrow.
Mostly just grinding up the Nilla Wafers and making the vanilla pudding, and getting out the stand mixer and such.

As you can imagine, me and my lactose intolerant, low-fat self is not going to be eating loads of this cheesecake.
But Jameson is excited about it, and I want to bring joy to his life.
I'll freeze half of it. Frozen cheesecake is great, too.

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After today, only four more days of discount court reporting left.
On Monday I have Tootsie orientation via Zoom.
We're supposed to get onboarding paperwork as well, haven't seen that yet.

I have much to do over the next several days.
Tomorrow the cheesecake will probably take a good chunk of my day, it's something like a six hour process.
At some point I need to weed around the house and clean again.
Debating whether to go to Jameson's show...he's not enthusiastic about it and may not want me there. I'll ask.
And of course there's packing, and practicing.

Woke up at 8 on Friday to a slew of texts from siblings.

The half-siblings were discussing recent outbreaks of West Nile and Polio in their areas (yes, in the United States).
My contribution was, "Wait until 2050 when antibiotics stop working! Should be fun!"

The other chat was between my sister and step-sister and I, and they were sharing memories.
Today would have been our dad's birthday. He would have been 63.

Looking back on the memories that we all shared, I am sad and also grateful for that time together.
But there's no thinking about my dad at all, unfortunately, without anger.
You could have been 63 today. We didn't have to be here, and this didn't have to happen.

But there's no point crying over what-ifs and empty rooms and gifts not bought and cards not sent.

---------------------------------------------------

I sent my letter of resignation to discount court reporting.
They were fairly cool about it (I'm giving nearly a month of notice) but it feels weird and awkward every time.

I did some data entry until the site crashed, then sat around to help troubleshoot a little.
When Jameson got up I went out to ship my trombone mute off.
After that, a trip to a physical brick-and-mortar bank.
Banks are just as bad as the DMV, huge lines and long waits for no apparent reason.
I wish there were an easier way to get quarters (sometimes groceries and laundromats have them, sometimes not) or I wish we could be done with physical money already.

Speaking of, my fancy new travel credit card showed up. Maybe now I can get some points toward hotel stays or flights for Jameson and I.
Next to arrive were our silk pillowcases, to hopefully help with acne. I got us stars.

After lunch, more data entry and then the start of gathering things for tour.
Many things I'd left in the suitcases anyway.
But sorting them helps me to determine where things should go, what I still need to buy, stuff like that.
For example, I'll need to obtain travel-sized dish detergent, a sponge, and some Q-tips.
I *could* get oatmeal and ziploc bags, or might wait until I'm in Rochester. It all depends on luggage weight as I add things.

We had a walk in the evening, dinner from Publix. Nothing amazing.

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Saturday. Breakfast. Data entry.

We decided that the pillowcases are "ok", but since they are silk they are slippery and I'm not sure Jameson will tolerate his for long.
That's ok, I won't let them go to waste. Maybe I'll even take one on the road with me.

In the afternoon Jameson went for a haircut and I went to get fish and vegetables for dinner.
Fresh Market this time, because the drive to Whole Paycheck is such a chore with theme park traffic.

I also stopped at Bath and Body Works. I hate that store, but no one else has such a variety of scents to choose from.
So once a year I brave it to get a body spray and a hand sanitizer.
This year I ended up with strawberry shortcake sanitizer, and some kind of "Midnight Amber Blah Blah" body spray.
I *think* they smell good, but it's always hard to tell in a tiny room packed with 800 scents and myself and 30 other people spraying them all over.

Back home I relaxed a little, then practiced.
When Jameson got back I did more data entry and made the mango salsa for the tilapia.

Dinner came together in a very short time. I started the Jasmine rice first, that was about 20 minutes in the rice cooker.
Tilapia is only about 6-8 minutes per filet, and the broccoli is 6 minutes to steam.
It's a very fast, easy, healthy and flavorful dinner.

The rest of the night was kind of whatever, we were both feeling a little run down so took it easy.

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Sunday. Tossed and turned all night, feeling very anxious. Jameson was rolling around beside me too.
No idea why.

While checking emails and reading posts on LJ and DW, noticed that I've been blocked from commenting or outright unfriended in a few areas.
Which, you know. Justifiable. I've done the same thing.
But it did serve to remind me to A) work on not having kneejerk reactions to things people say online, and B) if I'm the one doing the blocking/restricting, to make sure I tell the person why I'm restricting them.
This was a good opportunity for a note to self on that front, especially with Tootsie starting up again.
I can't avoid pissing people off or getting pissed off myself, but maybe being more mindful will reduce the casualties.

It was a weird day with not much to do.
I somehow did two hours of data entry without realizing that amount of time had gone by, then swept the pool deck which took only 20 minutes. Lunch was leftover fish and rice and mango.

To Publix for ingredients for meatloaf and potatoes au gratin.

We had our afternoon walk, watched an episode of Sandman, played an escape room game on Xbox and were so motivated by it that we started planning an escape room night for us and another couple that Jameson knows.

Not to brag, but Jameson and I are GREAT at escape rooms.
We make a great team because we communicate, we listen, and we have complementary puzzle-solving skills.
We have never lost a room when we've played together.
Since the pandemic we haven't gotten to enjoy an escape room, so we're really looking forward to it!

Jameson also bought us tickets to Mickey's Not So Scary, which has already started.

I noticed that Walgreens has their Halloween candy out already too.
Fall is coming fast.

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This morning I see many of my LJ and DW friends talking about how it's getting cool in the mornings, and wearing sweaters, and kids going back to school. Oh, the jealousy! Florida is locked in summer until October. 90-degree weather for at least another month.

But today is the 15th, and a month from now (knock on wood) I will be in New York working Tootsie up again.
And hopefully wearing sweaters.

Today will be all about prep, food prep and travel prep and work prep.
I'm finishing breakfast, then I'll prep breakfast and lunch for work tomorrow.
After that it's prepping trombone music, writing out my new solos for the Entr'acte and practicing.
Then prepping the meatloaf because it's a slow-cooker recipe.
Probably the potatoes au gratin too, so they'll be done and all I'll have to do is broil them briefly before serving.
And then more prepping my luggage, sorting things into piles, taking stock of what's needed.

Starting tomorrow Jameson has rehearsals or shows every night this week, and I have discount court reporting for three days in a row.
I'm also getting a haircut this week.
On Friday I want to make the banana pudding cheesecake that Jameson has been raving about, and we won't be able to eat it until Saturday.
And on Monday I have a Zoom orientation with Tootsie.

Hopefully it's a busy but productive and good week.

Monday was less of a clusterf*ck than it could have been because I knew which rooms were available to me.

I got there right at 7:30 and started setting up in two rooms. Whichever computer loads fastest, wins.
That turned out to be the computer in Room 5, so there I went.

Got all of my documents ready, gathered my video meeting invites, reached out to the judge to let her know I was here.
She requested that I add her to the meeting first.

So, I opened Teams. And there was no waiting room.
Everyone was just, THERE, all at once.

The judge decided that this was MY fault and had a lot to say about it, followed by a lot of heavy sighing and exasperation because the lawyer said he was in the waiting room (there WAS no waiting room!)
I contacted tech support to confirm that the issue was not on my end, and then getting a new link for a new meeting took about 20 minutes. While this was happening I tried to break the awkward silence with updates on what was happening, only to have the judge snap, "I'm not familiar with the technology," so, ok, my bad, shutting up now :X

In the judge's defense, they said this was the third or fourth time they've held this hearing because some technological snafu has always gotten in the way of either the proceedings or transcript. I get it, and I hate MS Teams for this reason. But considering we were still perfectly able to hold hearings and were only delayed 15-20 minutes, I didn't think it was worth the rage being dished out.

But whatever, it's just another Monday in whatever miserable alternate timeline we've all fallen into here in 2022.

Thankfully we only had two hearings, and the second one was only five minutes long.
But then I looked at my docket for tomorrow and it's the same judge for the whole day. Sigh.
They are all phone hearings, so hopefully things will go smoothly and that will put the judge in a better mood.

The IT department was too busy to set me up in any rooms today, so I spent a little extra time preparing my paperwork for the next two days, hoping to spare myself stress. With that done my biggest concern is being able to find an available hearing room, and frankly if there isn't one that's not my fault either.

On the way home I stopped at FedEx to mail out some of the custom Beef on Weck pins I'd ordered to my bandmates.

It is really bothering me that I haven't heard anything about Tootsie yet, but I know I need to be patient.

On the way home I picked up Target sushi for myself, but then Jameson's rehearsal got cancelled so I had nothing for him.
Not only did the rehearsal get cancelled; the whole show, because of covid. I guess we're not through it yet.

And then he got the bill for his surgery ("Not a bill, just a summary") for FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS.
Not a real bill, but god DAMN, I truly hope his insurance covers 99% of that because otherwise we are in TROUBLE.

I try not to think about this country's horrific, bullshit healthcare system.
But at some point it will rear it's ugly head, and one of us will be facing bankruptcy over a stubbed toe.

-------------------------------------------------

Early, so early on Tuesday.
Breakfast of cold overnight oats with flax and raspberries, Greek yogurt, and ultrafiltered protein milk. And coffee.

At work I was able to sign in and get set up with minimal issues. A miracle.

It was the same snippety judge as yesterday, except today they were in a good mood so there was no excuse for how they talked down to some of the claimants, and at one point bit the vocational expert's head off for talking too fast (she was talking at the same speed she'd been all day as far as I could tell). Whatever, this is just not my favorite judge and hopefully I'll be assigned to them infrequently.

I avoided any demeaning talkdowns in my direction by simply saying "Yes Judge" and "No Judge" and "We're on the record Judge" and not much else all day. All of the hearings went smoothly because MS Teams wasn't involved, thank god. I was happy to send my paperwork in and drive home.

Another day of hearings tomorrow, this time they'll be spaced an hour apart which I think is perfect. Most hearings are around 30-45 minutes, and having 15 minutes at the end to wrap up paperwork or set up for the next hearing or just PEE is ideal. I don't care if it makes the day longer, it makes more SENSE and it's more accommodating to claimants, too. When the hearings are only 15 minutes apart you are guaranteed to be seen late, and I think that's inconsiderate scheduling. But what do I know, I just got here.

Just to clarify, I really do like this job. I like the work, the people seem really nice, most judges so far have been awesome, and hearings are incredibly interesting. I complain either because something got under my skin (happens at every single job) or because there are inefficiencies that I dearly wish could be made better, thereby making this a better job.

-------------------------------------------------

Another 5am wakeup because I needed to set up in a different room and early morning is the only time it's usually possible.

Bless his beautiful heart, John the IT guy was ready and waiting for me when I walked in at 7:30.
We got my station all set up, just in time for my first case at 9am.
Yes, it took about an hour to set up a normal Windows profile and applications.

But unfortunately the Judge was the one with issues this morning.
I dialed everyone into the Teams meeting, and she couldn't hear anyone, although we could all hear her.
This was definitely an issue on her end, so there was nothing to do but wait while Tech Support helped her out.
That took a whole hour, so we didn't get started until 10am.

We continued on that way, an hour late for each case, until noon because that had been a scheduled break.
So, skipping the noon break made the last two hearings on time.

Go figure. I desperately stole bites of wheat bread, green beans, "Tone It Up!" bar, tuna, and pear during lulls in transcription.
At least I was still able to eat.

The worst part of all of this isn't the technical issues or the missed lunch breaks.
It's that those issues, combined with poor scheduling, mean you end up sitting in uncomfortable chairs hunched over a keyboard for the ENTIRE DAY. No time whatsoever to stretch or go for a short walk, except to the bathroom. Overall it seems like whoever is running this operation thinks everyone working in this system is a robot with no biological needs. It's really weird. I mean I know some jobs are intensive or repetitive or whatever...but it seems to me that an agency that handles nothing but disability claims would have, I don't know, policies in their own workplace to prevent work-related disability!

Anyway, Despite all that it was a good day because all the cases were held.
I was exacting with my transcripts, so didn't have to stay late to edit them.
Doing my paperwork a day in advance was wonderful. I just had to check a few boxes for each case. Glorious.
I set up my paperwork for my next workday before leaving.

On the way home I stopped at Sprouts to get bulk seeds.
I want to add seeds to my next loaf of wheat bread, just to see how it goes.
I got pepitas, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, hemp seeds, sesame seeds, and poppy seeds (I wanted chia but they didn't have.)
And I grabbed some wings, we can enjoy them for dinner tomorrow.

Pretty bland week because I was working, but I'm glad to have the work.

Breakfast and a drive to Whole Paycheck.

Since it was Friday there was no good time to make the drive. All roads are clogged with tourists and seniors and people just trying to get to work. So I left at 11, and it took about 40 minutes to drive 18 miles.

Got two pork tenderloins, an onion, some local coffee ($$), premade sushi for us for dinner, chicken broth, and a coleslaw cabbage blend. And brioche buns because I don't want to make my own after all, I need that time for my data entry job this week.

Back home I ate lunch and finally buckled down to do some work.
Three hours later Jameson and I were both whining because we hadn't moved all day.
He was handling an unusual amount of issues with his students, and I was trying to finish a step that was taking way longer than expected.
We finally wrapped up around the same time, he spent some time watching mindless TV and I watched TikTok.

We ate the sushi. He left for rehearsal, I went for a walk.

A loop around our neighborhood is almost exactly 2.5 miles.
It was nice and quiet, still with a clear sky, sticky and humid.
I thought about lots of things, but mostly about how to cook pork tenderloin without drying it out, and wondering when Jameson might hear back about his job opportunity and whether I'll hear about Tootsie at all. It's now officially mid-July, so there are two months before that's supposed to start. A long time, but also NOT a long time.

Back home I made the coleslaw (I always find that making it ahead = better flavor), had a nice shower, and more TikTok and general lazing around.

I did a Bad Thing and bought two slimes from a TikTok shop.
One is a "glue slime" with crunchy bits, the other is a "clear slime" that features color shifting elements.

(VIEW HERE)

Both are scented. Slimes have become a huge thing with younger generations, I'm sure because they're damn satisfying to play with (can attest, Play-Doh and Floam generation here). And as usual with things-I-don't-need on TikTok, I'm amazed by the artistry that goes into crafts and wares for sale there. I don't expect them to arrive in great condition because it's so incredibly hot here, or last long because they are homemade after all. But maybe we'll get a few minutes of seratonin out of them.

------------------------------------------------

Saturday, up at 9 to have breakfast and get started on the pulled pork.

The recipe calls for a 3.5lb bone-in shoulder or butt. But that is a lot of fat, and there's a whole section of the recipe where you have to spend time letting the fat cool and scraping it off and draining it out and blah blah blah. I'd rather just use (and pay for) a leaner cut of meat. So, two 1.5lb tenderloins, rubbed in paprika, salt, and pepper per the recipe and mustard powder and ginger per me.

Once rubbed I seared them in a pan. Recipe called for cooking spray, I used canola oil because higher smoke point.
The first tenderloin caused a lot of smoke so I wiped the pan out to avoid burnt and bitter spices.

After the second tenderloin I poured chicken broth, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, molasses, and chipotle pepper flakes into the hot pan to deglaze it. Then I added 1/2 cup of the peach preserves from Rohrbach's, with a little real peach mixed in. The preserves tasted awesome, sweet and peachy. The real peach was a bit tart, but that's kind of the point.

When the sauce was blended I poured it over the tenderloins.

Added fresh chopped onion and garlic on top.

The recipe says to cook the bone-in pork butt on low for 6-7 hours.
I planned for four hours because I don't want the leaner tenderloins to dry out. We will see what happens.

Meanwhile Jameson and I ate lunch, then both worked: he did his school stuff and some programming for gigs, and I went back to my data entry project (which I stopped early because I got frustrated, their software is NOT ergonomic).
After two hours I flipped the tenderloins over and basted them.
Went to Publix for watermelon as we wanted a side for the pulled pork, but not something heavy.

At the four hour mark I checked the tenderloins. The meat fell apart when I touched it; didn't even need the forks. Awesome!

I strained out the onions and garlic, which were soft and flavorful.
Poured the sauce into a skillet with some corn starch, added the bourbon, and heated it until it thickened.
It was spicier than expected so I panicked a little, dumped 1/4 cup of it out and replaced it with chicken broth and ketchup to try and tone it down. It still turned out well but next time I'll reduce the pepper flakes so I don't have to do that again.

I shredded the pork and put it back in the crock pot with a little chicken broth to keep it warm.
You're supposed to toss the pork in the sauce but I wanted to have more control over the spice level for Jameson's sake, so kept the sauce to the side until we were ready to eat.

Toasted the brioche buns, then layered on pulled pork, onions and garlic, the peach bourbon sauce, and slaw.

Oh my gosh, it was so good! Jameson raved over it and had seconds.
The pork was very tender, not dry at all. I'm so glad it's possible to make this with a healthier cut of pork, I freaking hate fatty pork roasts.
The seasoning was perfect, both sweet and spicy.
Halving the pepper and thus not having to water down the sauce next time will make it even better.
And the slaw was awesome too. Not too creamy, with a little bite from the onions and vinegar, complemented the meat perfectly.

The recipe is HERE and I highly recommend it for a very easy summer dinner!

------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunday, Jameson had rehearsal all day (he's running sound for a local production, don't think I mentioned that).
He left around 10am just as I was finishing breakfast.

I spent a little time freaking out over tomorrow's hearings because they're both video hearings and no one has sent me the invite (AGAIN), and the first hearing is at 8:30am, meaning I'll have to be there an hour ahead (unpaid) to ensure I have what I need. Not only that, I might need tech support to set me up in a room again (more unpaid time). It's definitely a 5am wake-up tomorrow. Sigh.

So I sent a few emails begging for the basic information that I'll need to do my job, which I don't understand why I need to do.
And I called tech support and left a message that I hope someone will get early on Monday morning.
And I printed my little itinerary for tomorrow, and laid out my clothes, and packed a light lunch.
That's about all I can do about that.

Then I decided, why not hit the gym before lunch.
It's been forever since I went, and I wanted to procrastinate on my data entry work because I've just found out I'll have to redo a lot of it (not because of anything I did wrong but because their application is so incredibly full of bugs. Honestly I wish the problem were me, that way I could at least fix it!).

The gym was moderately full. I took it easy, being out of shape and all.
15 minutes on the elliptical (70 calories-ish), then 15-20 minutes of lifting weights and resistance.
It felt pretty good, though I felt like a wuss compared to most others in the gym.
But something is always better than nothing.
I want to do one more set like that again this week before doubling it to 30 minutes of elliptical and 30 lifting.
We'll see what happens.

Back home, a load of laundry and lunch (homemade wheat bread, egg whites, peas, pistachios, half an ultrafiltered milk).
I grudgingly worked on the data entry stuff for an hour or two.
Somewhere in there Jameson came home and had a quick meeting to attend online.
When he was done we had leftover pulled pork and chatted about our day.

---------------------------------------------------

Tomorrow, Monday, I'll have my two hearings (hopefully) and then if any rooms are available I'll try to get my profile set up in them.
Then some small errands and more data entry work, as Jameson will have rehearsal again.

The rest of my week is pretty busy, with courtroom work almost every day and a trip to the orthodontist to see about my ugly buck teeth.

Friday I did not have work.

I wanted to make steaks for Jameson and I, and he recently found a video touting "snacklebacks" on TikTok and they looked so good that I wanted to give them a try.

Not only that, I had promised to bring my sister Kate some passion fruit.
This promise was based on the mountain of passion fruit I'd seen last week at the Asian grocery store.
So OF COURSE when I went back today, there were ZERO passion fruit to be found.

They did, however, have the biggest dragonfruits I have ever seen (slightly smaller than a football).
So I grabbed her one of those, then went to Sprouts to get her some of the herbal sparkling waters that I love and hope she'll love too.
Then at Whole Foods I got our steaks, and some more exotic fruits for Kate:
eight passion fruits (that's all they had. Damn!), a mamey sapote, an extremely large guava, and a box of nice-looking rambutans.

Kate tries to have a plant-based diet, and is pretty good at maintaining it.
However she does live in Central Pennsylvania, so fresh exotic fruits are rare, expensive, and often are not of the best quality because they travel so far to reach PA. All of the fruits that I grabbed for her today are Florida grown except the rambutans (and I suspect the sapote is not local but whatever). Exotic fruits are expensive here too, but they're still cheaper than in PA and way more accessible and higher quality because they didn't have to travel far.

Anyway I hope she will like them.

Our steaks went into the sous vide for about 2.5 hours.

I was kinda disappointed in them. They were tasty, but kind of dry and tougher than usual. It was grass-fed beef which I don't usually get, so maybe that's why? The sous vide usually makes steaks juicy and delicious.

Ah well. The "snacklebacks" were the star of the show.
They are just tiny, grape-sized golden potatoes, sliced like hasselbacks.

You roast a head of garlic along with the potatoes, then squeeze the soft bulbs out and pulse them in a processor with salted butter, paprika, and pepper, and coat the potatoes in that.

I also added a sprinkling of chives, and made sure not to pulse too long so that there would be some nice garlic chunks in there too. I mixed mine with roasted broccoli.

It was a nice meal, just, I want to do it again because the steaks were lacking.

I didn't do much for the rest of the night, just packed a small suitcase (a duffle would have done the trick honestly) and a bag of snacks for myself for the road.

One thing that is good about driving up instead of flying is that I'll be able to stop at Buc-ee's on the way back down.
I've never had "Beaver Nugs" and want to get them for Jameson.
Also, I'm having to stay in an ULTRA-rural backwoods coal town since all of my hometown's hotels are booked for the 4-Wheel Jamboree.
While this is going to be inconvenient distance-wise, the one good thing is I'll be very close to an Amish farm stand that's very dear to my heart. I hope to pick up some locally-made treats, both to bring for the family gathering and to take back to Florida for Jameson to enjoy.

Specifically, I want to make peach bourbon pulled pork when I get back.
Using Amish-made peach jam or fruit butter for that would be AWESOME.

---------------------------------------------------

After about three hours of sleep, I woke up before my alarm.

Sleeping has been difficult anyway, but especially tonight because of the trip, and because Jameson was having more pain than in the past several days. I know that he will continue to have pain occasionally as scar tissue forms and as he continues to heal, but I am so jumpy about it.

My dad went to sleep one night, and never woke up again. I know that Jameson‘s situation is completely and utterly different, but there’s a very visceral fear that I can’t quite quash. I can’t help but worry a little.

My bags were already packed and by the door, I grabbed a few snacks from the fridge and hit the road.

My first gas stop was a Wawa, where I was surprised to see peanut butter fudge flavored coffee. It was black coffee but with the flavoring, and it smelled so good I couldn’t pass it up. Tasted just like regular gas station coffee; the main benefit here was the smell.
A Wawa photo promo of said coffee:

I stopped twice more before lunch, once for gas and once to use the restroom. Traffic was good and I made good time.

Did you know that there is a Buc-ee’s in South Carolina? I didn’t! Thinking that the nearest one was in Florida, I had planned to stop on the way back. But the one in South Carolina conveniently lined up with a bathroom break. Why not!

Well I'll tell you why not: it was absolutely batshi*t INSANE in there.
Like, standing room only. I couldn't even get to the bathroom, the line for it was almost at the front door (if you have ever been inside a Buc-ee's they are huge, try to imagine a line from the back of a Wal-mart about 2/3rds up to the front and you'll have an idea of the scale of what I saw). I did grab a bag of Beaver Nugs because they were right next to the registers and although the lines were long there at least they were moving quickly. But there was no way I was gonna explore when it was so packed people were INCHING through the aisles.

Buc-ee's has been trending strongly on TikTok, all of the videos raving over the food and the crazy merch and just the experience.
And free promotion is great and all, but I think this was WAY out of hand. I mean it was claustrophobic in there, far too many people.
I am 100% certain fire codes were being violated.
Anyway I got my nugs and got out ASAP.
These nugs I'll bring to our family gathering.
I'll get some for Jameson on the way back, at the Florida Buc-ee's.

Speaking of Jameson, he informed me that he'd puked up our nice steak dinner last night after I'd left.
I don't think it was food poisoning from my cooking because I ate all the same stuff and wasn't sick.
He says he feels a lot better today, and doesn't have a fever or anything, so we don't think it's surgery-related. Just bad luck.
Possibly something else that he ate.

I continued my drive, which was uneventful but long, especially around VA and DC.
As the sun set I was winding my way through Coal Township (yes, a real place). It was rather beautiful.

https://instagram.com/p/Cf1OJ4NguP1

I found the bar/inn with no difficulty. Tiny town, only bar.
I found the room even more easily. It was nice!
This must be their first season doing AirBnb. Everything is brand new, all of the furniture and even the mattresses.

(sorry the pic is blurry, it was a screenshot from a video that I sent to Jameson.)

The rooms are above the restaurant/bar, and there was live music for a while, but the band wrapped up well before midnight and it was actually kind of nice to hear. I got a shower and collapsed in bed.

----------------------------------------

I woke up at 8:30, feeling sore. Being in a car for 19 hours will do that to you.

I stretched and did some small deskercises to loosen up, then went out to find breakfast.
It was unfortunately Sunday in a backwater coal town, so nothing was open except the Dunkin' (which had a huge line as everyone in town was probably there) and the Weis (a PA-based grocery chain). So I chose the Weis and got a canned coffee, yogurt, a pear, and some "tea biscuits" which look like scones but are softer. Should have gotten something healthier but oh well.

After breakfast I realized the farm stand I'd wanted to visit would be closed as it's Sunday, so I went straight to my sister's house.
I was the first one there and it was nice to have a little time alone with her and her husband and my nephew/her son.

He stole my shoe.

I gave her the exotic fruits (which are all rather ripe at this point but not yet spoiled thank God) and described how to prep each one.
Then we chatted for a bit as she sliced some bread and cheese and such for a sort of brunch.

Soon my brother Jonah arrived, and we snacked and talked.
Jonah has gotten a lot of tattoos since I saw him last, he's working on a very complex sleeve. 36 hours invested in it so far, and another 20 expected. So cool!

(another screenshotted pic, sorry so blurry)

At some point we all grabbed either a beer or spiked seltzer and moved outside to sit on blankets in the sun. Kate's house is very rural, with a big wild backyard and woods. Deer often come right up to the house. No deer today, but we did see some orioles and finches and butterflies. I went around and identified some plants in their yard using an app on my phone, and we found one with loads of red berries that turned out to be extremely toxic indeed. Keep the baby away from that one!

Around dinnertime we made little veggie sandwiches (Kate is vegetarian), then my Aunt and Uncle arrived so we ordered pizza while they met the baby for the first time.

It was awesome to see my aunt so happy. She really doted on him the whole time, playing with him and holding him and interacting with him. I mean she raised two sons of her own so it's probably a good nostalgia/throwback feeling for her to interact with him, and/or she just loves babies. I can't relate, but did get a few smiles out of him while he was eating anyway.

The pizza arrived, and shortly thereafter my cousins Matt and David.
By this time the baby was in bed and it was getting late, so I only stayed another hour before heading out.

Driving back through coal country, it was dark and the roads were winding.
It felt...empty. Like a shell abandoned.
This is because my parents are no longer here.
All their history; all of our memories; all of the things that tied me to this place, really are gone.
The only reason I'd come back is for Kate, and for nostalgia.
There are no lights on for me any more. No welcoming hugs. No safety outside of that I can find for myself.
And that's ok. But it's sad. All that's left of my parents is old memories, scattering like dead leaves on the wind.

-----------------------------------------------------

I'm back at the AirBnb, checkout is tomorrow at 11.
I'll leave around 10, to be at the farm stand right when they open.
Then I'll visit with family until 5, and drive down to Richmond (having driven I-95 many times I know that Richmond is almost exactly five hours away so it is frequently my stopping point when I leave PA at night).
I'll stay in Richmond overnight, then get up at 4am so I can be in Florida around 3-4pm.
This is so that I have time to stop at Buc-ee's, get groceries, unpack, and prep my work clothes and lunch.

The next day will be my first day as an actual Verbatim Hearing Reporter.

Tuesday, off to the Toyota dealership.

I do this every time I've been away for a while.
Jameson moves my car for me while I'm gone, but he's no mechanic.
Lots of things can corrode or become damaged just from sitting outside in Florida's extreme climate day after day.

The associate looked at me like I was nuts when I explained there was nothing actually wrong, but I wanted the car looked over.
"It's been in storage", I explained, "and I'm driving up the coast to Pennsylvania next week."

Two hours later I STILL hadn't gotten an update on my car, so I texted the associate and was told it would need misc fluids flushed.
Ok, cool. I approved the repairs.

Two hours later they said my car was done.
I hopped in and noticed some empty water bottles in the passenger seat; annoying, but again, whatever.
The the windshield was dirty, so I pressed the fluid button.
Nothing happened.
Went back inside and let the associate know. She disappeared into the garage and came out a short while later.
"Ok, they've topped you off, you should be good to go!"

Great. Back in the car. Tried it again. Nothing.
Turns out there was a hole in the line...chewed through by some rodent.
"Want us to fix that?" the associate asked.

Um, YES. I've been here for FOUR HOURS specifically so y'all could find and fix shit like this.
It was busy at the dealership, and I was patient with the associate as this wasn't her fault.
But I did say to her, would it not make sense, after they "top it off", to maybe check to see if the fluid comes out?
She agreed of course, poor thing, and I waited an additional 20 minutes while they put in a new fluid line.

It would have sucked to be caught without washer fluid on my upcoming 19-hour drive.
I really, really hope that's all they missed.

On the way home I stopped at Gideon's Bakehouse.
I was still angry about the failed Hawaiian mochi, and wanted to get Jameson something special.
If you haven't had a Gideon's Bakehouse cookie, here's what they look like:

(not my picture, not my hand)

Gigantic and amazing, and probably delicious :)
I got two regular chocolate chip, a pistachio toffee, and a banana walnut.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday, early morning and work.
I feel pretty comfortable about most things now.
The main issues are going to be when something goes wrong, like when some judge's assistant fails to send our schedule the night before, or when we need a document that I don't know where to find, or there's a technical issue and I don't know who to contact.
But you know what, with all of those things, I can only do what I can do, and ask for help.

The actual job, I'm confident that I can do.

Today's cases went quickly. I really like when they're spaced roughly 45 minutes apart, that seems like a good time frame.
Some judges have them scheduled every 15 minutes which makes no sense to me.
Others have huge gaps in the middle of the day, so I'll be stuck with several hours of boredom and deskercises (and not getting paid, because we are paid per case. BOOOOOO)
This judge was my favorite so far. She hustled her cases along, but still allowed everyone to say their piece without seeming pushy or impatient. And she asked pointed questions and talked quickly. All of her cases ended within the 45 minutes, giving us plenty of time to wrap up paperwork and prep for the next one. I wish all days were like today!

Our last two cases were cancelled, so I got home earlier than expected.
This was good because I had work to do for my data entry job finally.
I got started on that while Jameson packed up and left for a rehearsal (he's just auditing for some audio work he's doing later).
Once he'd left I got myself a Chick-fil-a salad, swept the pool deck, prepped my clothes and lunch for tomorrow, and spent about two hours doing data entry. For dessert I had half of the pistachio Gideon's cookie, and it was freaking amazing.
It's really like a gob of cookie dough TBH. Rich and decadent and I probably should have only eaten a quarter of it, but oh well.

Later on, I could hear an owl hooing loudly from all the way inside the house, so I went out back to enjoy the insects and other night sounds.

CLICK HERE to listen.

----------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday was my last day of training for discount court reporting.
I got my trainer a gift card from Wawa as a thank you, she was chuffed.
(I noticed that she gets two coffees from Wawa each day, a hot one in the morning and an iced one in the afternoon).

The day ended up being rather stressful because some poor sap at the Judge's office never sent us our paperwork for the day, plus Wanda's computer took 20 minutes to restart, so we spent our whole first hour harassing the Judge's assistant and sweating while the computer grudgingly took minutes and minutes to load the most basic programs.

Eventually everything got going, though, and for the most part our hearings were on time.
There was also a break in the middle of the day which I used to pick up some groceries and book an AirBnb for an upcoming visit home.

Some of my family (my remaining family, I guess you could say) are getting together around the 10th, just to see each other.
It is very rare to get all of us in the same place.
One of my sisters came down with covid so probably won't be coming, but so far everyone else is still planning to come.
It'll be my aunt and uncle and two cousins; my sister who lives in town with her husband and son (we are meeting at her house); my brother Jonah, and myself. My sister Raven is our covid-sufferer and won't be coming, but we'll video chat her in.

I made a big mistake as far as travel and hotels for this visit.
First, I waited too long to book a flight because the prices kept jumping up and down by almost $200!!!
That, and all of the cancellations lately, had me nervous about pulling the trigger on a flight.
Driving is more expensive and a huge time cost, but ultimately I'd rather spend it than wake up to find my flight cancelled and have to miss the visit. So now I'm driving 19 hours up the coast, gas stops and all. $$$$

The other mistake was waiting to book a hotel.
I figured, nothing's going on in my dippy hometown. I'll wait until the last minute and get a good price.
Well a few days ago I checked the bookings, and there are NO hotels available under $150 per night.

I completely forgot about my hometown's summer redneck event: the 4-Wheel Jamboree. F*ck!

Loads of hicks from out of town and even out of state will be converging on the fairgrounds and tearing it UP.
As this event has been going on since before I was born, I surely don't mind all that.
But I DO mind not having anywhere affordable to stay!
The good news is I found a "reasonable" AirBnb but it's well outside of town, so more driving. Sigh.
The room was $65, but the FEES, oh my god!! Fees were as much as the room!!

Whatever, whatever. Grin and bear it.
It'll work out. And I do enjoy road trips in the end.

Finally the day was over, and I hugged my trainer and thanked her for helping me to learn.
The next time I come to work, I'll be on my own. Yikes!

I drove home, stopping to get more groceries and dinner.
Jameson had already left by the time I got back.
After dinner I wanted to go for a walk, but a sudden crack of lightning convinced me otherwise.
I must have been more tired and stressed than I realized, because I fell asleep right on the living room floor.
The sound of the rain probably helped.

When I woke up I cleaned up a bit and started packing my bag.

Tomorrow I will gather the remaining ingredients for dinner, plus some passion fruits to bring to my sister.
I'll make dinner for us and finish packing, and hopefully work on my data entry stuff (which I was supposed to do today before I got hit by that random nap). And then on the 9th I'll get up insanely early and start the drive to Pennsylvania.

I haven't been home since my dad's funeral.

Monday was pretty much covered in last post.

I finally finished the last episode of Stranger Things.
Went for a walk with Jameson.

--------------------------------------------------

Tuesday, waking up at 5am and having to eat that early is kind of a pain.
But if I don't eat there's no guarantee I'll have the chance again until at least noon if not later.
So, egg whites and oatmeal bread and peanut butter and raspberries and coffee.

Off to Alafaya. Past the coded door and to the foyer, where the two security guards and several hearing reporters (VHRs) were talking excitedly. This was the first day of in-person hearings since the pandemic started over two years ago, after all.

They were having sort of a huddle to check with each other about how things go for in-person.
Which really wasn't all that different from remote hearings.
Security Guard 1 was in charge of wanding people to death with a detection wand, checking bags, clearing folks for entry.
Security Guard 2 would then give them paperwork, most of which is a big questionnaire asking about covid symptoms and whether your address has changed, tedious things like that.
The VHRs would bring people back to the judge once the questionnaires were complete, and wipe down surfaces after everyone had left.

Seemed straightforward to me!

My trainer had me sign in, then went to make copies and while she was gone the judge came in.
A middle-aged guy who raised his eyebrows at me and said, "You're not Wanda...!"

I introduced myself. He seemed like a nice guy, and he definitely turned out to be.
Just super patient and chill no matter what fell in his lap throughout the day.
Which turned out to be two cancelled cases, two full cases, and one postponed case because the claimant decided partway through that they no longer wanted to represent themselves.

In between cases there was indeed time for a short lunch.
I ate, but between bites I worked on our end-of-day paperwork such that when the last case was over for the day, all we had to do was attach all the files and send the emails. Easy peasy.

I still left right at the worst possible rush-hour time, so didn't get home until after 6.
Some days will be like that. If your last case of the day is at 3:30 and it goes for an hour, then you have an hour's worth of paperwork, so be it.

Back home Jameson filled me in on his doings.
His follow-up was today, and they said he's doing great and should recover nicely.
They showed him the size of his mesh (it's almost a brick-sized rectangle, much bigger than we thought!) and explained what each of the incisions had been for. Three were for manipulating tools, one was for a camera, and the one at his belly button was where they pulled the mesh in. Crazy to think about, and awesome too.

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Wednesday, I got up early for a dentist appointment.
My dentist is downtown so it was quite a drive, but I used it as an excuse to visit the Asian grocery in that area as well.

My teeth!

Everything was fine but they did push cosmetic adjustments a little strongly this time.
Yes, I know I have horse teeth, people. But fixing that shit ain't cheap. I'll think about it but that's likely as far as it will go.

At the iFresh, which is the name of our Asian grocery here in Orlando, I was pleased to see they've gotten that baby bottle yogurt milk.
Everyone should experience it once!

As always there were so very many things that I wanted.
These canned milks had such cute graphics! I wanted them all. But they were ridiculously high in sugar plus contained milk powder, which is a big no-no for lactose intolerant people who don't want to be up all night. So I had to pass them by.

Other wishful thinking items included canned quail eggs, salted preserved duck egg yolks, and a bag of cream-flavored sunflower seeds (what does that even MEAN?).

( Read more... )

Monday, from what I recall, was pretty chill (I'm writing several days after which I don't normally do).

I used my new Tootsie schedule to update my Google map and foodie spreadsheet. That was fun!

Then I had to go back in Megan's Foodie Finds to fill in some of the cities that have been added.
Even though some cities are just one- or two-day stays, I still document the nearest grocery and pharmacy and at least one restaurant in case there's time.
I then went back through to look at the whole list kind of at a distance, to make sure I'm not including too much "New American" or like three burger places in a row or anything like that (I DID find a set of days where I had three burger places in a row! So I took one out in favor of a speakeasy with good food.

In the afternoon I freaked out about the food aspect of my new job...it's not clear that we get lunch breaks.
So I ran to Publix for some nonperishables. Jerky, edamame, meal bars. I have chicken pouches and fruit cups, but it's not clear whether I'll have time for things involving silverware. I nervously packed a bag with the food and another with paperwork, little portions of my 42-page instruction manual that I hoped would be helpful.

Then Jameson watched IT while I watched Stranger Things.

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I slept super poorly and was up at 5:30, because I have to be there an hour earlier than the first case. Sigh.
I ate the Osmanthus-flavored oatmeal from Yishi, and it was quite good (though still too sweet).
It was a floral, slightly bitter flavor.

Drove aaaaaallllll the way out to northeast Orlando. Usually a 40-50 minute drive, which I had planned for, but on the way a construction vehicle pulled out onto the highway and slowed us all to a crawl for at least a mile. I had to text my trainer to tell her I'd be late (I wasn't THAT late and she arrived at the same time as me so it was fine).

I don't know what I'm allowed to share or not, but to describe the workspace at least, it was a lot like any office building only the rooms were all deposition rooms. Each one had a mini-courtroom inside, with a judge bench and a big SSA logo on the wall. But there were no chairs for an audience or witnesses or whatever; just some conference tables, computers, TVs, and audio equipment.

My job was basically to facilitate a virtual deposition, while simultaneously recording the proceedings.
I watched my trainer do this and took lots and lots of notes.
As predicted, the hardest part of the day was not getting lunch and having to choke down food whenever possible.
As for the job tasks themselves, I think over time I will be able to do them. It's just remembering each task, the order of them, the completeness level that needs to be achieved.

It was a tough first day as far as sheer information overload. But, I've had so many many jobs in my life. This is just another one.

I got home around dinner time, and we ordered out.

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I woke with a start at 10:30. That's very late for me! I must have needed the sleep.

A normal slow day of blogging, going for a walk with Jameson, running to Ross for a legal pad and a binder.
I got a message from my data entry boss just checking in; I told her I'm fine and she basically said "Bless you, child!". I think other workers are perhaps complaining about the lack of work. We weren't promised consistent hours, folks. Welcome to the gig economy.

Then I got a much more stress-filled email from my discount court reporting trainer.
Apparently I didn't quite upload some things correctly, and didn't fill out things on the website correctly.
Right now I'm in training so it doesn't "matter", but it certainly will matter if I want to get PAID.
I was glad that they called to correct me, but annoyed that I had to focus on work things on my day off.
Welp, if you stop making mistakes, Megan, that won't happen.

Another night of ordered dinner, and packing quick-snacks, and watching Stranger Things while Jameson played Fall Guys with his friends.

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Up at 5:30am on Thursday. Breakfast and a sleepy drive across town to the SSA building.

Today I got to handle cases for the first time.
( Read more... )-----------------------------------------------------

Monday morning. My training with the data entry job was rescheduled for Wednesday which is fine.
We just ate lunch and I sent out the Beef on Weck shirt order, which took way longer than expected because I had questions that required a call to customer service. But it's all good, and hopefully people actually order them rather than sticking me with the cost of nine custom shirts.

Now I'm going to review some court reporter job stuff, because all of my cases tomorrow are in-person and I haven't done that kind yet.
If it doesn't rain we will go for a walk.

Back in Orlando.

I've partially unpacked, it'll get done eventually. A lot of stuff can stay in the suitcases until I know whether or not I'm going back out.

The data entry job has not given me any more work, but it's ok. They will or they won't.

I spent a few days cleaning and getting caught up with my plants.
There are now FIVE banana trees back there. Where is my FRUIT tho!

All of my little lemons are surviving and growing. The tree has a scalebug infection so I sprayed it with neem oil.

All I can say about everything else is "they're still alive". I'll have to breathe some life into some things in coming days.

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In food news, I finally got to crack open my pine cone "varenye", which is a specific type of fruit preserve found in Russia and Georgia.

Yes, it is real baby pine cones.

They have been boiled for a long time to soften them, and then boiled again in a sugar reduction to make a preserve.

( Read more... )

After dinner there was a thunderstorm which was nice.
We watched the finale of The Circle and a few episodes of the new Iron Chef, which is really growing on us.

Somewhere in there I got an email from our music coordinator on tour with an updated tour route and a promise to send an updated contract draft in the next few weeks. Yay! Another step toward "This is really happening"! She also revealed that the band call will not be until mid-September (it was originally around the 5th) so that gives me a little more buffer for giving notice to my court reporting job.

Speaking of that, my first day is supposed to be Tuesday.
I am nervous as heck, but there's not much to do but wait and see how it goes and walk in there like a newborn having not a clue about anything!

**Disclaimer: The content of this post reflects my own personal views, opinions, and experiences.
This post does NOT express the views or opinions of my employer.**

The venue: The Smith Center

(stock images)

Covid Tests To Date: 93

TL;DR TikTok: CLICK HERE

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Now that we are only bopping around Pacific Standard Time for the rest of the tour, we don't have to get up quite so early for flights, and there are no layovers. Direct short flights. Very nice!

So we left the hotel at 11, had an hour at the airport for lunch, and flew and landed and fought traffic and got to the hotel by around 4:30pm.

It's the Golden Nugget, which is "Old Vegas", Fremont Street.
In fact, the circus train used to park right next to the Gold Nugget. I hope to find the yard and take a picture.

The rooms are spacious but very sparse and with very little in the way of amenities for long-term guests.
No refrigerators, microwaves, or coffee machines.
Also no grocery within two miles (which is the farthest I'll walk in this kind of heat with groceries).

I'm going to have to improvise. But before that, I wanted to find a treat :)

Vegas has an AWESOME Chinatown. This picture is of just one little plaza. Row after row of strip malls packed with Korean BBQ and Chinese street food and K-pop/J-pop stores and Asian fashion outlets. Delicacies are to be found on literally every corner, with creperies and shaved ice and seafood skewers and giant bowls of pho or udon available in every single plaza.

I could literally spend DAYS exploring here.
Fortunately for my bank account, I don't have days. I had a few hours.
So I Ubered to SomiSomi for a taiyaki ice cream.

Taiyaki is a fish-shaped waffle filled with something sweet, usually red bean curd or custard or ube paste.
This was actually a Korean spin on taiyaki called "ah-boong", where you use the fish waffle as a cone for some ice milk.

Here is the mold for the fish waffle. A true taiyaki is flat, but see the oval shapes on the left?
That is to make the batter spread to the sides for a cone shape.

And here is the waffle itself before being filled. Look at how their little eyeballs are different!

You choose one filling for the taiyaki (custard, red bean, ube, or nutella) and then choose an ice milk flavor.
Everything sounded fantastic, they had so many good flavors like black sesame and matcha and milk tea as well as more "normal" flavors like strawberry and chocolate. I had to get the craziest thing I could find, which today was an ube-horchata swirl.

It was incredibly good. Ube is a purple sweet potato, so it is an earthy and sweet flavor. Horchata is a creamy, spiced rice milk.
The two flavors matched beautifully, and I was sorry that it was so hot because I had to eat quickly before it melted.
I've had taiyaki before but it was always prepackaged and had a chewy texture.
This was crisp and fluffy, with a lovely vanilla-egg flavor that was just fantastic. I got the custard filling and it was so creamy and delicious.

Here's the inside showing the custard, and the half-chewed fish (sorry it's so messy but there was no pretty way to eat this):

The shop was also selling a variety of collectible pins, and I just could not leave without this adorable ah-boong pin!
It even had the same colors as my cone!

That done, it was time to hit the 99 Ranch next door.
You guys already know that I love Asian food. But did you also know that a lot of Asian food is non-perishable? Convenient!
I shopped very carefully, examining packages to check for any "refrigerate after opening" warnings. I also kept an eye on serving sizes; canned food with more than two servings is not an option without a fridge. I aimed for high protein content, low sugar, low salt, and overall highest nutrition options. This could be my only chance to get groceries all week and I really wanted to make it count.

Then a trip to Albertson's for more normal fare like protein shakes, tuna and chicken pouches, canned vegetables, and bread.
Back at the hotel I started unpacking. First I set up my little cooking and coffee stations for the week.
This is not unusual, but they will get more use this week due to lack of amenities.

And then I packed a table with all of my food.

I'm using Garden of Life protein powder in place of both eggs and yogurt this week.
It's high in protein and has a lot of added nutrients and fiber, plus probiotics, so I think it will do nicely though it'll be less satisfying.

Next I checked out all of the cool stuff I'd found at 99 Ranch:

- Freeze-dried hawthorn berries: Low in sugar, good for you, flavor like cranberries or raspberries.

- Dried filefish: I thought this was a jerky (technically it is) but you're supposed to heat it up to soften it before eating. Which I did, and it was delicious! Sweet and salty and chewy. A little high in sugar but otherwise not bad.

- Dried bean curd: This was with the jerkys so I was hoping it could be eaten like one. It ended up tasting awful, like liquorice?? So this was the only thing that I threw out :(

- Pouch of misc freeze-dried fruit: Yes I know there are many shelf-stable fruits, but this looked fun to try :) There were whole dried peach and apple slices, some mango, and some whole strawberries. They were really good in oatmeal or by themselves.

I also found some prepackaged pho and Korean BBQ.
The pho includes EVERYTHING, even the chicken! You just need to add hot water.
And the BBQ is self-heating! I've seen videos of such products before on YouTube but this is the first time I'll get to try one out!

Then there was this "Instant Cereal".

There was a whole shelf of these at 99 Ranch in varying flavors, from plain oatmeal to rice porridge with nuts and seeds to mung bean and peanut varieties. All of them seem to be very sweet, and some were labeled as "dessert soup". I didn't want to get "junk food" but was so intrigued that I had to at least try one! Can't wait to see what it's like!

I also picked up some drinks to try (gotta stay hydrated in the desert, amirite?)

Three of these are flavored sparkling water, the one with the white rabbit is a soda that I've seen across social media and wanted to try.
The two small bottles are sweetened using sucralose, which is a shame, but I cracked open the cherry blossom one right away and was surprised at how good it was. It really was a floral, cherry flavor, with a nice fizz. I'd definitely drink it again!

I tried the others later in the week.
The Bing De Bao soda was really good. It was kind of like cream soda but with a more yogurt-y flavor.
The watermelon seltzer was tasty, nothing special just good.
The yuzu seltzer was tart, being unsweetened and all, but it felt refreshing and citrus-y.

Anyway, I finished unpacking and got cleaned up, then crashed for the night.

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Around 5am I woke in a panic because my throat was sore.

Remember when all that meant was that you might have a cold coming on, or that your throat might be irritated from the dry desert air?
Through sleep-crusted eyes I poked at the back of my throat and stared at it with my phone light.
It looks a little red, and it's only sore on one side.

Too tired to deal with it, I went back to bed.
When I actually got up it was 9:30, and I made oatmeal with hawthorn berries and a Core protein shake for breakfast.
I had received some paperwork from my new part-time job with TSOLife, so I filled that out (there was no W-4 so maybe they'll send it later?), then I sent my sister a b-day present and did my dishes and walked to Walgreens for a rapid test because the slightest sniffle could mean that I need a sub. We're getting tested after tonight's show but I think it would be irresponsible of me to spread covid around all day before that!!

The test came back negative, but as the day went on I was not feeling much better and was starting to get concerned.
So I texted our covid officer, who gave me a rapid test before last night's show. Which also came back negative.

So I played the show with a sore throat, and felt body aches setting in. Not good.

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Tossed and turned all night long with fever dreams, aches, snot, etc.

Was up at 8am and immediately took the second rapid test.

Welp. That's that.

Go figure, the most antisocial, introverted, never-hangs-out person has to go and get covid despite obsessive social avoidance and mask-wearing and hand-washing. And go figure, it has to be just as we've returned from a three week layoff.

And all my lovely explorations and foodie plans, out the window. Drat.

What this means is I will have to isolate for 10 days, and cannot return to work until the second week of Costa Mesa.
The company will have to find a trombone sub for all of those shows, possibly two if they can't get someone to travel to Costa Mesa with them.

On Day 6 if I'm testing negative I will be allowed to drive myself to Costa Mesa (next Tuesday) so that's one blessing, I won't have to spend much extra time at the Golden Nugget.

Also thankful that I'm a cheapskate who would rather eat canned tuna than eat out, because I have plenty of food to get through the week.
Also thankful that I DIDN'T go to Steve's cast party on Monday, where I probably would have spread this to other people.

Symptoms are hitting pretty hard, but my new part time job has started sending paperwork and setup stuff and has scheduled trainings and Zoom meetings, so I forced myself to complete as much of it as possible before 5pm EST.
I couldn't find a big portion of the paperwork, and I'm not sure if that's because I can't think straight or I really didn't receive the email.

As the day went on I tried to nap but failed, posted some stuff online, and made myself the instant pho for dinner.
It was quite good, way better than canned soup. The chicken was unprocessed thigh meat with collagen, making the broth savory and rich and just what one wants when one is not feeling well. I left out a lot of the seasoning packet to cut down on salt, and added some canned vegetables.

The ingredients in the bowl. Noodles have been cooked, just boiling water to make the broth.

Final soup with hoisin and hot sauce added.

The rest of my night was spent worrying about tomorrow's job training, worrying if I'd completed everything correctly, worrying about going stir crazy, worrying about how I'm going to get this and that done. Well I did TRY not to worry. Sigh.

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Woke up early for job training, feeling awful and wishing I could have slept.
BUT, if I lay out now this will become a task to do later, so, may as well do it. I can sleep all day if I like.

Training was good, though a little "spread", if that makes sense.
Like, trying to cover a lot of steps and processes and information in a pretty short session.

We learned a bit about the company, it's goals, the internal structure, what our role would be.
Then we watched someone demo how we'd do our job (or part of our job), which we couldn't do ourselves because none of us had been granted admin access just yet. It looks pretty straightforward, it's just a matter of remembering in what order to complete the steps, which websites and programs are for what steps of the process, and really working hard to make sure every single bit of info is transferred from one information source (a document or recording) to another (the resident profiles and online analytics database).

Doing this work means I will get to use Slack for the first time; it's just a chat, but pretty much everyone I know has used it by now except my non-administrative ass :p That and many other shared drives and programs and such, some I've heard of (Google Dashboard) and some that I haven't (Asana). It was all novel and therefore interesting.

Later in the day we got our admin access, and were each given a profile to try.
By this point I was feeling yucky again (my ibuprofen wore off) so I ended up working my profile in 20-minute chunks because I kept having to stand up and flinch from body aches, or make myself some tea, or do that stretch you do when your are sick and hurting, etc.
But eventually I got it done, and I can see how, once I'm not under covid's thumb, this should be actually a really nice activity to do for a few hours each day. So it'll be good for me personally, but also helpful to these folks in these communities, too.

I tried requesting some items from my bandmates, and from the covid safety officer: my fleece sweater and iPad which I'd left at the bandstand; my book, which Yael has retrieved but hasn't brought by yet; and some KN95 masks that I can use once I hit Day 6. The only person who came through was Bill (trumpet), who dropped my sweater and iPad off late last night after the show.

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Felt extra awful on Friday, which was a bummer because I'd hoped to gradually feel better, but I guess that's not how covid works.
Temperature was back up and the body aches were back, along with splitting headache and a feeling like there's a large rock lodged somewhere between my throat and collarbone. A little coughing, but it's a dry cough; it feels like my throat is swollen far down.

Luckily there were no assignments or anything from the new job, so I listened to a Brian May interview that Jameson had sent me, ate breakfast (I can still taste and smell thankfully), cleaned up, and then laid back down for a while. Didn't manage to sleep, but what can ya do.

For lunch I had my self-heating Korean BBQ.
Inside the container was a foil tray, a packet of vegetables, a packet of tofu, two oil pouches, one seasoning blend, a set of plastic chopsticks, and a chemical heating pad.

Following the directions, I put the veg and tofu in the foil tray and put the oils on top.
I didn't use all of the oil because it seemed like a lot.
The vegetables look really good: sliced potatoes, kelp, mushroom, bamboo shoot, and lotus root.

(yeah I overdid the chili oil haha)

In the bottom of the container I placed the chemical pad, then covered it with cold water, placed the foil tray on top, and put a lid on the whole thing. Soon I could hear the water bubbling, and after a few minutes it came to a full-on boil (see TikTok or Instagram for video).

After 15 minutes I removed the lid. The veggies were hot and looked good.
I added some of the seasoning mix and stirred it in.

The vegetables were quite good! Crunchy lotus root, soft white potato, and chewy kelp and mushrooms.
The tofu was meh, overly salted imo, but then again I found most of this overly salted.
And SPICY! Wooo, my sinuses were cleared right out! It was delicious flavor, that kind of fermented, tingly spicy that you get with some pepper pastes. I really enjoyed it, but did have to water it down a bit to be able to eat the whole plate.
Overall this was really good, I'd just go easier on my seasoning next time.
A really convenient and tasty meal!

After lunch I was startled by forceful banging on my door. It was the LVPD doing a "wellness check".
I found out later that they do this in Vegas hotels for any door that's had the "do not disturb" hanger on it for more than 48 hours.
Makes sense, in Vegas.

Soon after that Yael dropped off my book which I was super grateful for; I'd rather not stare at a screen all day.
I read for a little and took what has become my regular afternoon nap.
Then I worked on some more profile data transfers for my new employer. Now that we're trained in this one area we're allowed to grab that type of task for ourselves, and it gives me practice and something to do.

Lexii (our covid officer) came by with some KN95s for me, which is great because now I can safely go pick up food if I need to next week.

...and that was pretty much my day.

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Saturday turned out to be more interesting than I would have liked.
The day started normally, I woke up feeling crummy, had breakfast, did some deskercises, worked on some profiles for my job.
In the afternoon I decided to place a food order because my supplies are dwindling and I needed to stretch them to make it to Monday.

I left clear instructions for the Dasher to leave the food right at my hotel door, but the hotel would not allow her to deliver it to me.
Neither would they bring the food up for me.

Long story short, I tried every alternative that I could think of that would NOT involve me going to the casino lobby and potentially infecting other guests since I'm DEFINITELY shedding covid particles right now. Not one single alternative worked out. I ended up getting permission from our covid officer to go get the food myself, which I did, but it was extremely crowded down there and I was very angry and upset to have to do that. I could have just had them throw out the food and try again tomorrow, but I guess I was in a right state and didn't think of that at the time. Anyway, I wasn't down there for more than two minutes and was insanely careful to the point of even going outside at one point just to avoid a group of elderly women. So I'll try to imagine that I didn't infect anyone.

I ate lunch and appreciated having fresh food for once this week.
Did a little more work, and started looking ahead to Costa Mesa.

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Sunday, I decided to try my "instant cereal" for breakfast!

It came with a little tri-fold plastic spoon in the lid.

You are supposed to eat it cold right out of the can (or in a bowl if you want I guess).
You are NOT supposed to heat it up.

It was very sweet, and made up of cereal grains, beans, boiled peanuts, and small pieces of longan fruit.
I found the "broth" to be off-puttingly thick, so I rinsed the cereal off with some cold water and added a little salt, and that was a vast improvement. With those small changes it was quite delicious, and felt as substantial as a bowl of oatmeal.

Here are the ingredients:

With that, I really am down to the last of my nonperishables.

I did some more profiles for my job, watched TV and Netflix and GoGoAnime, read my book, and started building my TikTok video (that takes a stupid amount of time). And I checked the CDC website and our company handbook to see what I would and would not be allowed to do next week while quarantining from the show.

The CDC guidelines only require that I wear a mask at all times in public, avoid eating in public, and avoid contact with others.
The company guidelines say that I am to wear a KN95 or N95 and socially distance from all members of the cast.

So, I think that I will be able to go for masked walks, pick up food for myself using contactless ordering and pickup, and shop for my own groceries as long as I behave responsibly (minimal time in the store; only touch what I intend to buy; social distancing and masking at all times).

All of that said, I am excited!
Most of my adventures are walks anyway, and I can still do my foodie adventures as long as I'm smart about it. Yay!

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Monday! Finally!!

As I type this the cast should be pulling away on the charter buses.
They should be in Costa mesa in 5-6 hours (they have potential Memorial Day traffic to fight and a planned rest stop).
Tomorrow my isolation ends, and I will be able to rent a car and drive down to Costa Mesa myself.
I have made a list of all the things that I want to do in these final two weeks of tour.

Please rest assured that I will ABSOLUTELY be as responsible as possible, and take every safety precaution, as I complete quarantine.
That said, there's lots of great food that I am excited to try, and things to see!
Woooo!

Ok technically this is "Day 1" of ten-day quarantine. Whatever.

Yesterday was rough. I was feverish and had the most stabbing headache; it felt like a nail being driven into my ears and temples at random times and made me flinch (good thing there's no one around to see me twitching like an idiot). My eyeballs hurt to move, it hurt to turn my head, my whole head was ouch.

I alternated between feeling ashamed for getting sick, guilty for causing my employer and the rest of the band the inconvenience of having to get a sub with only three weeks of tour left, frustration at not being able to leave the hotel, and sadness for having to miss the entire first week of Costa Mesa next week. Getting messages from misc members of the cast saying, "Wow, you have to STAY there, that SUCKS" wasn't helpful at all (yes, I f*cking KNOW it sucks, thank you for slapping me with it again).
I actually cried a little out of frustration and annoyance (again, don't pity me. I'll get over it.)

I wanted to sleep but couldn't, although I did manage to fall asleep around 10:30.

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Today is a little better. My temperature is still elevated, but yesterday I was up to 101F and now I think it's sticking around 99F.
The stabbing pains are still there but it's just in my temples; the sore throat and pain in other parts of my head seem to have gone away.

I feel less depressed about "missing" Costa Mesa.
By the time we're there I should be feeling better and able to walk around outside with a KN95.
So I should be able to do contactless delivery or pickup of food, groceries, and other goods.
I just can't do any indoor shopping or exploring until Sunday 6/5.

Our tour manager has gotten me a rental car so that I can drive myself to Costa Mesa, separate from the cast, on Tuesday.
I noticed that the car is reserved for a full 24 hours, so I can probably do a contactless pickup of groceries for the week (the one where they put the groceries into the trunk of your car). Very grateful for that!

As for today, I could definitely use some more sleep, but had to be up at 7am for training with TSOLife this morning.

TSOLife does analytics for nursing homes and assisted living (I think I've mentioned it before as one of the jobs I'd applied to).

So far we've had a Zoom chat with the Co-COO, in which she showed us how the company gathers information, shared company history and structure, and made sure that we could access most of the accounts and software we'll need to do our work (as always with stuff like this, there was some tweaking needed with account access and such but she's working on it).

It's still not 100% clear to me how we actually do the work, but it looks like we'll start off being assigned files and then once we get the hang of it we can grab assignments ourselves. It all seems very casual and low-pressure; there are timelines and there's a lot of work to do, but the timelines are reasonable and the work is not going to be dumped on us before we're ready. It looks like there are a lot of ways to ask for help too.

I'm pretty impressed with their analytics and how they use the information that they gather, and can see how it's very much needed in the assisted living industry. Basically the goal is to improve quality of life in a lot of different ways, but mostly by showing the nursing homes which of its residents have the lowest quality of life so that staff can focus on those individuals and do things to help them (suggest activities, arrange visits or trips, add more variety to meals, etc).

Even though the work doesn't pay well, it does seem to be beneficial and worth doing.
A few hundred bucks extra in my pocket in exchange for a little data entry ain't bad, I think.

We are on a lunch break now which ends in about five minutes (I'm on Pacific time so for me it's a snack break).
Then I think we have another hour or two of them showing us how to actually do the job?

And then the rest of my day is empty. Suspect that I will want a nap, and then wake up from that anxious for something to do.

---------------------------------------

Training is over for today. It was a good overview of the work, but kind of difficult to get a grasp on the actual process without having access to a lot of the admin areas. They're working on granting us access now, then they'll give us some profiles to try out so we can explore the system, ask questions, etc.

Now it's time for lunch: canned tuna, canned veggies, bread, ho hum. Then hopefully a nap or a movie.
I'll have to start doing little exercises too each day. Sigh.

**Disclaimer: The content of this post reflects my own personal views, opinions, and experiences.
This post does NOT express the views or opinions of my employer.**

The venue: SAFE Credit Union Performing Arts Center
(It's so new that all I can find are the concept renders)

(stock image)

Covid Tests To Date: 90

TL;DR TikTok: Click HERE

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I slept terribly because I was constantly anticipating my alarm.
When it finally did go off I hopped up right away and got dressed, grabbed my luggage, and out the door to the waiting cab.

At the airport I had a little time for a snack before we boarded and took off.
A short layover in Salt Lake, and one last leg to Sacramento.

And just like that, I'm back on tour!

I got to the hotel way before pretty much everyone, and as a result my room wasn't ready yet.
They asked me to kill 30 minutes, so I dropped my luggage and was heading out when Adam (our new bassist) arrived.
He's from Salt Lake so it's not surprising that he showed up around the same time as me.
I told him that I was off to find Osaka-ya for Japanese treats, and he decided to tag along.

We chatted on the way about this and that, then found the little shop on a street corner.
It was even smaller than the one in San Jose had been, and it being a Monday they didn't have a big selection.
But what they did have looked beautiful, and it was hard to narrow down which to take home!

I ended up with these three, and Adam and I also munched on some peanut butter-filled mochi as we walked back.
This was his first mochi/manju experience, and he seemed to enjoy it.

In following days I ate all of these, and unfortunately they were kind of disappointing...the strawberry mochi was very artificial and left a bitter, weird aftertaste; the white bean-filled baked bun was salty rather than sweet. The purple one had cherry leaves and juice and a red bean filling, and that one was my favorite, but the bean filling was dry and it was kind of an unpleasant texture. I gotta say, the "wagashi" shop in San Jose was better by far. Sorry I couldn't give this one a better review :/

By the time we got back it had been almost an hour, and our rooms were ready.
I did my usual of dropping the luggage and having a look at the fridge before rocketing back out the door for groceries.

Along the way I noticed a gaggle of men standing on a street corner and taking turns gawking at their phones and then up at the sky.
Three construction workers in orange vests and hard hats, one homeless guy pushing a shopping cart, and a sleek-looking dude in a full suit, uncharacteristically clustered together and pointing excitedly upward. I looked and didn't see anything, but one of the construction dudes saw me looking and told me to take a picture of the sun using my phone. So I did.

Whoa. What is this witchcraft??
I didn't know at the time what would cause that, so I was a little freaked out and a LOT curious, and kept glancing up at it as I walked.
Turns out it's called a 22-degree halo, and it's a fairly common phenomenon that happens when there are cirrus clouds containing hexagonal ice crystals high up in the atmosphere. Wild! I was happy to see something so neato.

Anyway, I walked two miles to the Sacramento Natural Food Co-op.

(stock photo)

It was lovely! Nice big store, lots of organic produce, great selection of locally-grown and locally-made foods.
I got some coffee beans which smelled fantastic, and a loaf of bread from Grateful Bread.
There were many local bakery offerings to choose from and I was having trouble narrowing it down (soooo much sourdough) until this dark "Algonquin bread" caught my eye. Any unique or unheard-of flavor is a must-try for me!

I have no idea what makes this bread "Algonquin"; if anybody knows please fill me in. It's likely just some reference that I'm ignorant of. The bread is a dark brown and looks like maybe a rye or pumpernickel, but it tastes more like a Borodinsky bread. It has malted flour, wheat bran, and molasses, which give it a rich sweet flavor that is very enjoyable.

For my primary groceries I walked another mile to Safeway and just got my usual boring stuff.
Having walked nearly eight miles since arriving in Sacramento I decided to Uber back with all of my goods.
Unpacking took longer than usual both because I kind of forgot how to do it efficiently, and because there's limited counter space in this hotel room. It reminds me of the hotel in Kansas City actually; kind of a vintage, Deco theme with a lot of brass trim and aged furniture, but not a lot of actual surface area to put things out. No matter, I'll manage.

After unpacking I wolfed down a big piece of salmon with rice and broccoli for dinner, then spent the rest of the night typing this blog up and trying to remember how to do my job.

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I woke up right at 7am on Tuesday, which is of course 10am eastern time. Sigh.
Made myself some of the local coffee I'd bought (it's REALLY good) and some oatmeal with raspberries.
Took a quick walk to Target because I'd forgotten that I'm out of dish soap.
Washed the dishes, and just tried to chill.

It worked, I got in a nap before sound check, which went well.
This theatre is extremely new, and while that generally means a clean space and a good design it also means some kinks being worked out, like wifi is sketchy and there are doors with keypads that refuse to open for love or money.
Anyway, it was nice to be back and both cast and admin expressed that they had missed "their" band :)

Here's my stand, music on my iPad, and my little monitor for watching Soto (our MD) with.

Our show went well, I think we had some intonation issues from being apart, but in my experience as a musician that's pretty normal.
A good crowd, too.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday, still up way too early.
Noticed that there was a post from Ringling's social media, announcing the reopening of the show (again) and with several AP articles and interviews and videos to pick through. There still aren't many details about what they plan to actually DO, but there will definitely be no animals, no train, and possibly no clowns. There's also a big emphasis on audience participation. Some of my circus friends are speculating a sort of "America's Got Talent" tour, and I think that's not a bad guess, but that's also not very "circus".

Anyway, the main "update" here is that they've apparently decided on a new logo.
This interview from Today has the most detail, but there are more videos on the Ringling site if you're interested.

Watch on YouTube

Anyway, this announcement unfortunately took up a lot of my morning as there are people out there who think I'm a one-stop shop for Ringling info. The only reason I had All The Info while the circus was active was because I was upkeeping the blog, and the company supported my efforts with that. I don't know why people still think I'd have some sort of super-secret insider information when I haven't been employed by Feld for five years, and never even mention them unless it's to reminisce or share a news article.

Getting bombarded with questions and commentary just because I shared a link this morning was kind of a final straw for me.
Because I do "interesting things", or perhaps because I'm female and they feel they are entitled to my time and attention, over the past year I have garnered and unwanted following of specifically white men, between the ages of 25-65, who feel that they MUST send a private message for EVERY post that I make. Because just liking or leaving a comment is not enough; they require MORE. I'm supposed to take time out of my day, every time I post something, to individually respond to their private messages, usually asking a question about the content that has already been answered (i.e. "Is Ringling coming back?") or making some inappropriate remark about my abilities as a musician or as an amateur baker, or even about my appearance despite the fact that I rarely post pictures of myself (which is WHY I rarely post pictures of myself).

To sum it up, receiving six unwanted PMs this morning, all from men who can't be bothered to read what I posted or have any consideration for my time, was finally too much. I have tried to be gentle, I have tried to be polite, I have tried to be responsive despite the idiocy of the questions and the time it takes me to spoon-feed responses to these people one by one. But with Ringling coming back, there are plenty more announcements to come, and with a second tour of TOOTSIE on the horizon, I am just not going to be able to handle more and more private messages from this demographic. PMs are fine, when we are actually conversing. But that's not what this is.

So I made a short, kind of whiny TikTok, in which I begged anyone engaging with my content to please think a minute before asking a question that could possibly already have been answered by the very content that I posted.
Now, that is VAGUE considering the actual issue that I'm dealing with, which is PMs from a specific demographic.
But I am still trying to be gentle. I am still trying not to pick a fight. I am still hoping that some people are capable of changing their behavior.

Plus, I absolutely reamed out several of these men via PMs yesterday so those should have gotten the "hint" now that I'm not so cutesy and subtle. I doubt anyone will actually stop messaging me with stupid questions, or stop expecting me to dedicate chunks of time to their neediness each time I post something. But at least now I can say I've tried.

After dusting my hands of that, I took myself to the State Capitol.

There was some kind of administrative press conference thing going on on the lawn, so I couldn't get the distance I needed for a decent photo of the building. But it was nice to wander around. There's a garden attached to the capitol grounds with lots of very large trees and interesting flowers.

They had a small rose garden; most of the roses are about spent, but there were still some looking fresh.

There was a desert plant section, where some of the cacti were in bloom.

This cool little orange flower is called Lion's Tail, and it's related to mint.

I had never seen a "Chinese lantern" like this!
They were growing all over a large bush.

These pretty red coral flowers grow on the branches of a big stout tree:

But my favorite flower of all was not a part of the garden: a milk thistle standing proudly at an intersection, spiky and good.

It was getting to be around lunchtime, so I took myself to Solomon's.

(photo courtesy Visit Sacramento)

This used to be an Empire Records store, and the restaurant is now a tribute to that legacy.
It was unfortunately rather depressed-looking, perhaps because it was a weekday, but I got 1/4lb of house-smoked lox to take home and enjoy with my Algonquin bread and some egg whites and some chopped bok choy.

The evening show was just fine, we had a large crowd.
There's a line in our show, "I don't think you should be telling me what I can do with my body", that is getting a LOT more applause than usual thanks to current events.

Covid tests are now taking place after shows on Tuesday and Friday, so I got those and then walked home.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Thursday, we had matinees.
I managed to sleep in until eight, woohoo!
A slow breakfast and the realization that I'll have to go get groceries again, I'll be out of protein and fruit soon.
I'd like another jug of water too as it's so hot here.
Vegas will be even hotter, with daytime highs above 100F.

I decided to walk to Target before the matinee, and got my groceries and the water.
On the way back I figured, why not hit Frank Fat's for their famous banana cream pie?
It's a Chinese restaurant but for some reason they have the best banana cream pie in Sacramento.

Oh yes, it was just as good as it looked!
The bananas were somehow magically perfect, not over or under-ripe.
There was enough custard to coat the bananas and not much more, giving them almost a candied or glazed appearance and texture.
Topped with a big fluffy mountain of real whipped cream, sitting on a flaky yet strong crust (it HAS to be strong to hold all that!)
Man it was good!

I ate half with lunch and half with dinner.

Both of our shows went well, I didn't do anything else special between shows.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Friday, I woke up a bit nervous because of a job interview later in the morning.
I had breakfast and scheduled a laundry pickup with SudShare; I have tried to use this app before but the particular hotel that I was staying in would not let me leave items at the front desk for pickup. There are many cities where laundry services are not readily available, so I want to get used to using this app once in a while, and this seems like a good week to test it out.

My interview was at 10:30 and it went shockingly well.
It only took about ten minutes, and it was basically to ensure that I'm a Real Person who really can do some data entry.
MY concern here was to confirm that the job was fully remote, and that the work can be done at any time of day, as long as it actually gets done, and the answer to both of those was a strong "yes". This means that it's a job I can do both during the twelve-week layoff AND while on tour. Yay! I've never done remote work like this before, but it sounds like it could be a good fit.

While I was in the interview a Sudster picked up my laundry at the front desk, so now we wait and see what it's like to get the clothes back!

To celebrate supposedly getting a job, I took myself thrifting!

First to a Goodwill that was not on the map as "boutique" but was definitely boutique.
I was surprised to see such nice stuff in a Goodwill; prices are higher, but you also don't have to paw through a warehouse-load of clothing to find your hidden gems. I tried on several things but in the end nothing was a keeper.

There were two more vintage/thrift stores nearby so I visited each, where I found many fabric patterns that I absolutely adored but just my luck, everything was either the wrong size or wrong style. Plus their dressing rooms weren't open, so there were lines of women in front of the mirrors, all of us struggling to cram blouses over our t-shirts and try to guess if they fit well. I did find one nice blouse, a shiny black with red flowers, that I think will be good for post-tour work. Ten bucks.

By then it was well past lunch time and I was very hungry, so walked back to the hotel.
I got a message from SudShare:

That was quick! The next message was from my Sudster saying they'd drop it off in a few minutes.
I had just enough time to throw my bag in my room and scoot back down to the lobby before he showed up with my laundry.

Look how nicely folded! And the underwear was separated neatly in a smaller bag inside.
This service was WELL worth it.

Without using SudShare I would have paid $20 to Uber to the nearest laundromat (or alternatively, spent 30-45 minutes walking in 90-degree weather carrying all of my clothes to get there, then paid $7 to wash and dry, plus spent the next two hours trapped at the laundromat getting harrassed by random men while I waited. Then another $20 Uber back to the hotel (or alternatively walking back in the heat with all of my clean clothing against my sweaty body). The total cost would have been $27 plus 2-3 hours of my time. Just for one load of laundry!

But instead I paid $20 for someone to pick up, wash, dry, fold, package, and drop off my laundry while I went thrifting.
That's a good deal!

I will definitely keep this app and use it again.
Typically I have no problem walking to a laundromat or spending a few hours at one to save some money.
And a lot of hotels do have laundry facilities.
But every once in a while you have a city like this where paying someone with a car and a washer to help you out really is the best option.

Anyway you get the idea. I put the clothes away and ate lunch, then was going to take a nap but a live band started rocking out in the park across the street, go figure. Instead I watched a little Netflix and did a little Vegas research.

The evening show was nice. Our trumpet chica Yael volunteered to do a "Tootsie Takeover" on Insta, so she was making little stories throughout the day and as the night went on. I was briefly in one, awkward as usual, which you can see on this week's TikTok.

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Saturday, I woke up earlier than I wanted to. Weird dreams about baby quail kept me up. Sounds cute, but it wasn't.

Breakfast, a little internal moaning because I'd intentionally "forgotten" to get some small grocery items and would now have to walk to Target...I do this kind of thing to myself on purpose because without a reason to exercise, I often won't, and "Unless you go get that food you're going to be very hungry today" is a good way to bully myself into a walk.

So the morning was spent savoring the quiet cool of my hotel room, then huffily walking to Target for literally just a banana and some protein, then cleaning up and heading to the theatre for the matinee.

The show went well, both shows went well, nothing to report except that for the first time on this tour I had to run to the bathroom in the middle of Act I because I'd chugged a coffee right before the show started (so amateur, I REALLY should have known better!). But it didn't impact anything thankfully, and it happens to literally all of us at least once. Once in a blue moon matter does trump mind.

On the way back to the hotel I chatted with Adam (bass) who said he'd been back to Osaka-ya to try more of their manju, and that he really enjoyed it. I resolved to give them another chance tomorrow morning.

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Sunday, only one show today!

I ate breakfast and started packing, then walked back to Osaka-ya.
They did indeed have a better selection, and some fresh sushi as well, so I picked up two manju and a bento.

The manju were chocolate-filled chocolate mochi, and a sort of dorayashi (sweet pancake) wrapped around a piece of peanut mochi.
Both were quite good. The sushi was "futomaki", which is a type of vegetarian sushi roll containing picked vegetables and seasoned egg pieces. That was also really good, the flavors were sweet and sour and nostalgic. I'm glad I went back to try more of their food!

We had our one show and it went by quickly.
Really lovely audiences here in Sacramento, lots of laughter and each night a handful of people stuck around to applaud the band, which doesn't happen often and makes us feel special :)

I was happy to spend the rest of my night packing more, eating a dinner of random leftovers in my room, drinking tea, and watching anime.
In Vegas, the food situation is going to be "rags to riches".

On one hand, I have some exciting restaurants to visit including a taiyaki stand in Chinatown; a new Italian restaurant in the Arts District serving handmade pasta; a bar in Container Park that sells Hot Cheetos sliders; and an old favorite cafe, Makers & Finders, that has a really exciting and eclectic menu.

On the other hand, we are staying in Old Vegas and will have nether refrigerators nor microwaves in our rooms, meaning the rest of my meals for the week are going to consist of delicacies like canned meats and vegetables, shelf stable fruits, dry goods like nuts breads and jerky, and single-serve meals cooked in my electric skillet. Yum, yum. Going without a fridge sucks, and I'm bummed, but will make the best of it like everyone else.

Let's ROLL them dice!

Alright, here was my "take two" with the rye sandwich bread.

The only change that I made was to replace some of the water with pickle juice and to reduce the onion powder by half.
Personal preferences that should not impact the stability of the dough.

Here is my beautiful little dough ball post-kneading, mostly in the stand mixer and a little by hand just to make sure it felt right.

Here it is after the rise. Looks totally fine.

I separated the dough into two equal lumps and added cocoa powder to one lump, making it look darker.
This time I separated out about 150g dough from each lump.
It seems that 750-950g is what is supposed to fit in my 9x4x4 loaf pan, so I aimed for around 800g.

The rest I rolled into a bun that looked hilariously like a baked potato because I put the darker rye on the outside.

I then rolled the dark and light loaf pieces out and laid them on top of each other, rolled them up into a tight spiral, and put them in the Pullman pan to rise.

This was the part where everything went pear-shaped with the first loaf.
I am pretty sure that either
A) my hands were wet while shaping the dough for the second rise and that may have weakened the gluten structure, or
B) I had it rising in the microwave with a mug of hot water, and that may not have been needed and it rose too fast and tore itself.
Plus the whole overfilling the pan thing.

Anyway, although the dough still looks a little lumpier than I'd expect, it thankfully did not tear and also filled the pan quite well this time.
It was a little tapered at one end so 850g is probably the magic number, at least for this particular loaf.

Into the oven for what seemed like an ungodly length of time, and I added the "potato" to the oven 15 minutes later and kept an eye on it.

Here is the finished loaf.

Much better than yesterday's, but still a bit lumpy for unknown reasons.
The lovely golden crust and sweet swirl and lighter crumb make up for the lumps.

Also, finally some straight sides!! YAY!! Love that Pullman loaf pan.

Here is the "potato" post-bake, still looking like a potato even with the scoring!

The inside of the potato! I might make something like this intentionally to give as gifts. Hilarious.

So overall the second attempt was successful and closer to what I was looking for, though still not "perfect", whatever that means in my brain. Both loaves are edible, just one is shorter and less dense than the other and doesn't look as ugly on top.
I need to seriously begin considering whether those differences are worth a new loaf each time they occur, just to appease my OCD.

Now we are drowning in rye bread but it's ok, I've still got two weeks at home and one loaf will be finished during that time.
I'll freeze half of each, this way when tour is over I'll have some bread to enjoy before making a new loaf of whatever-comes-next.

All that accomplished, I checked my email and was surprised to find an offer to take a 911 dispatcher evaluation.
I'm still pretty nervous about pursuing that avenue, but I feel like it's one of those things where if you can handle it/get certified in it, you will always have it as an option for work. I will take the evaluation this week and go from there.

The rest of my day was quite slow.
With no actual job and many of the house chores covered, and Jameson gone by 4pm each night, I find myself with a lot of down time.
I called the Maryland unemployment agency to try and get my application reopened, and filled out my calorie counter.
Read a little bit, watched some more Netflix.

Tomorrow is a busier day.

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Tuesday. Woke up early because the plan was to seal the deck today if it doesn't rain.
I have six bags of polymeric sand, and was going to rent a plate compactor from Home Depot.

Drove out to the HD, only to find that while the thing will probably fit in my car it is far too heavy.
300 pounds! Whoops. I didn't think it was quite that heavy.
Feeling embarrassed, I cancelled the rental and went back home to decide what to do next.
I put the deck furniture back out (at least it looks nice out there now that everything has been swept).

Talked it over with Jameson, and decided to wait some more.
I could have tried without the compactor, but there's no point doing this half-assed, we'd just have to redo it again in a few months.

That decided, I had a phone meeting with my bank about moving some of my meager savings around, then ate lunch, then went for a walk around the neighborhood. Saw a turtle in a pond, and thought about this and that.

Came home in time to receive a package: some pine cone jam that I'd ordered after seeing a TikTok about it.
(The TikTok is HERE)

Having had pine pitch honey before (which was intensely bitter and difficult to eat) I didn't think this could be much worse and wanted to give it a fair shake. Due to the state of things in Russia and Ukraine where pine cone jam is traditionally made, it is difficult to find at the moment. But I searched for it at random, and it randomly became available during this break. I'll have to decide whether to try it before I leave or after I come back.

Back home Jameson had gotten a call about getting a chest X-ray and bloodwork for his upcoming hernia surgery, he'll have those things later this week. I got a shower and read my book while Jameson played an MLB game. He left for rehearsal around 4, at which point I ran a cleaning cycle in our washer because it's starting to smell like mildew in there. I like to clean when Jameson's not home because he both works from home and relaxes at home, and I like to minimize annoyances for him if I can.

As the washer ran I researched more jobs, this time types that I could do while touring.
If I get to do the second year of tour, there are a lot of cities where we're only there for a few nights instead of the full week and I wouldn't have time to explore. But I might have time to bang out some transcriptions for someone or something.

I finished up the John Gacy documentary about the time Jameson got home.

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Wednesday, Jameson had to pick up some paperwork in the morning.
I got up at the same time he did, had breakfast, and randomly decided to take myself for a minor adventure.

First I went to the nearest Yankee Candle store to see if they had "Lush Berries", which is Jameson's favorite scent.
They didn't, and they didn't know if it would be discontinued either, so I bought one from Ebay.
It would be nice for him to have a comforting scent available after his surgery.

Then I tried to hit The British Shoppe because people keep telling me Crunchie bars are the same as sponge candy.
But since the pandemic their location has changed, and not knowing this I arrived to find their old location shuttered.

I gave up on that and went to Lotte Market instead.
Lotte is a small Asian grocery chain that's usually found in Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia, but for some reason there's this one store in Orlando. The store itself is large and quite similar to an H-Mart as far as selection. I only needed imitation crab for making crab chips for Jameson and I. But. It's an Asian grocery. If I thought I was JUST walking out of there with imitation crab, I was fooling myself.

Right at the entrance there were shelves full of carnivorous plants.
WHY. Did these people see me coming? Is there a correleation between people who like Asian groceries, and people who like flytraps?

I had to look, and the flytraps were absolutely gorgeous. They were big and healthy, with happy red traps and long stalks of white flowers. I wanted one SO BAD. But they were $15, and I already have flytraps, and I don't need to burden Jameson with any more.
Then there were pitcher plants. ARGH. There were large ones in hanging pots, but they also had small seedlings for only $8.
ARGH. I picked one up, I just had to. Those are easy-care and shouldn't cause trouble for Jameson while I'm gone.

So we've taken three steps inside the store and I'm already clutching something I had no intention of buying.
Off to a great start!

I managed to pry my eyeballs away from the cute food court and take six more steps, which got me to produce.
And of course right on the end is a fruit I've never seen before.
Something that looks like giant tennis ball-sized green and purple grapes, labeled "star apples".
I stared at them for a full two minutes, then walked past.
I found the imitation crab.
I walked back past the produce and somehow one of each color star apple was in my hands, along with the krab and the pitcher plant.

ARRRGH. Now I need a BASKET.

I got the basket and went up and down the aisles in a desperate sort of way, trying not to want.
There was a small package of grape gummies, Jameson would like those. Into the basket.
Oh, I wanted to share honey butter chips with him too. A bag of those.
Crispy dried squid? Don't mind if I do.
There's that peanut brittle that Jameson likes!

I got to the refrigerated section and found a mini tree ring cake, into the basket for Jameson.
And in the freezer section I definitely couldn't resist just one thing since I never have a freezer on tour so ice creams from the grocery are never an option. It was a hard choice but in the end I settled on a box of four chocolate taiyaki, wanting to pick something less weird so Jameson would enjoy it too (I badly wanted Melona bars but he wouldn't eat those).

Finally I escaped and drove straight home, annoyed with myself but also excited, I can't help being excited.

I opened the honey chips right away, and Jameson inhaled those grape gummies instantly.
Everything else was put away for now, which was about the time I realized I'd forgotten to check the krab for MSG.
Sure enough, it has it. ARGH. At least krab is already garbage so I won't feel bad about throwing it out and buying the MSG-free version at Walmart tomorrow. But it's pretty ironic that I went all the way across town for that just to throw it out.

I ate lunch and researched how to eat star apples, and looked at some more jobs.
A package arrived for me, it turned out to be the temari ball I'd ordered from Etsy.
I had found this one almost a year ago and when I saw it, my heart skipped a beat.

My mother made a series of three blue velvet pillows for me when I was little, with embroidered flowers exactly like these.
The same shade of blue, even. At the time I couldn't afford this, but did message the shopkeeper to ask that if she ever made another like it to please let me know. We both forgot all about it until a few days ago when I was looking for a Mother's Day gift for my stepmom and stumbled across her shop again. I ordered an origami flower bouquet, and the seller must have seen our old messages because she immediately wrote and said, "HEY! Do you still want that temari ball?". I cringed a bit at the cost, but figured it was now or never. I've already blown too much money on this break. It's a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, anyway.

My phone interview with the ABC store wasn't an interview, it was just the manager asking if I could work weekends and holidays and could I lift 35 pounds. The pay is not what I would like but the store is so close--just a five minute drive--that it may be worth the lost dollar.

Then I went through all of my junk, most of which is stored in large Tupperware containers in the spare bedroom closet.
I do this once in a while to see if there's anything that I want to thrift or throw out, or to rotate things out or add to my memory scraps (programs from Tootsie, ticket stubs, etc). That killed an hour before it was time for Jameson to leave. After he left I went to Lowe's for weed killer and a small bag of potting soil to top off my houseplants, then Chick fil A for a market salad, then home to eat dinner and type this up and do a load of laundry.

Not working is weird and I don't like it.

--------------------------------------------------------------

It's Thursday, right?

Breakfast, and I ate one of the "star apples", the purple one.
Here it is cut in half.

There is latex in the skin, so if you are allergic to latex don't eat this.
You're not supposed to eat the skin anyway. I scooped out the flesh with a spoon.
It reminds me of a persimmon, but with less "warmth" if that makes any sense. And with a mild flavor and texture closer to a lychee.
Not bad, but nothing particularly exciting. I wonder if the green one will be any different.

After breakfast I filled out a CapTel application. May as well just cross that bridge.
Completed some more applications and wrote some letters to my pen pals until Jameson had to go have a blood draw at 11, then I sped over to Walmart to get the non-MSG krab, boy do I feel dumb about that.

But look, you can get krab in a SNACK PACK.

Good lord! Do people like krab enough to SNACK on it?
Back home I still felt so anxious from not working. I can't even cook dinner really because Jameson has to leave so early each night.
Next week I'll get to make dinner for us at least twice, though.

Jameson did some work and played MLB.
I applied for more jobs, some of which had tests or evals attached.
I applied to the garden center at Lowes; to a cashier position at the Asian grocery; a customer service spot for a random real estate firm; a remote HR assistant job; a transcription and data entry job; a technical writer job; a cashier and confectioner for Kilwins.

I don't expect to hear back from anyone. I apply for about five jobs a day, and if I hear back from one a month that's "good".
This is what comes of having no value to society, kids.

After Jameson left for rehearsal I went to Publix for a PubSub for dinner.
Back home I ate it and then braced myself to take the 911 dispatcher evaluation.
The email said that it could take "up to two hours", and gave a vague description of the test sections ("information retention", "data entry", etc) so I wasn't totally sure what I was in for.

It turned out to be intense but interesting.
If you're an LJ friend, I've written an extensive post on what it was like.
If you're not an LJ friend, the TL;DR is that it involved multitasking and a balance of accuracy + speed, which had the same sort of feel as my work at CapTel, so I felt very grateful for my prior work experience. We will see if anything comes of this application, or if I could even handle such work.

The test took me somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour. Afterward I went for a walk to kind of de-stress.
Then back home for a taiyaki ice cream! It was very good but not particularly special other than being in a tasty fish shape :)
Next time I'll get a weird flavor and eat them all myself :p

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friday I woke up naturally at 8am, perfect.
Coffee and oatmeal and yogurt and the green star apple, which was sweeter and juicier than the purple one but otherwise the same.

In my email was an invitiation to interview for the 911 dispatch position, meaning I've passed the evaluation.
The interview will be early Tuesday morning (I originally thought it was Monday but no).
But that certainly isn't all of it. If I pass the interview there are then many further steps to reach the point where I'd be considered for training.
A polygraph test, another evaluation, a background check, another interview, a SECOND polygraph test, and then even the training doesn't guarantee you'd get the gig. Whatever, I have nothing better to do, right? I'll go as far as I can with it.

For lunch I wanted to play with the air fryer.
I made the green beans first, tossing them in olive oil and salt and pepper, then sprinkling them with lemon juice partway through.
They turned out nice! No pictures because they just looked like charred green beans.
They weren't crispy like chips, and I don't think they were necessarily supposed to be.

Then I did the krab, carefully unrolling each stick...well, you can see the whole process by clicking HERE.

They turned out just like this, I had seasoned them with low-sodium Old Bay and they were pretty good!
Just, a little chalky, and a little too salty for Jameson to like them much.
I probably wouldn't make these again, but they were fun for just one time.

Didn't know what to do with myself after that, so boiled some pasta to eat later for dinner and then decided to separate my larger banana pup and put it in the ground nearby. If I don't want three banana trees I can always sell it when the tour is over.

The little bebe, separated from his mama:

My banana plantation, apparently.

After Jameson left for his show's opening night, I dusted off the ceiling fan blades and then vacuumed.
And then listened to 911 calls and asked myself if I could do this.
And that aside, what about the schedule? I've heard that it can be long hours, and any time of day.
Things to think about.

----------------------------------------------------------

Saturday morning, and Saturday in general, were quite slow.
I couldn't even think of anything productive to do. Too early to get groceries or ingredients for next week's dinners.
All the main chores are done. Not a lot of new jobs to apply for once the weekend starts.
Too early to repack for tour.

So...breakfast, screwing around online, wiping my Meyer lemon tree with alcohol because there are scale bugs on it again.
When the sun goes down I'll spray it with Bonide or whatever.

Chatted with Jameson as we made lunch. He watched the Cubs game, I read for a bit then took myself for a walk.
I went off-roading, into the undeveloped area behind our development.
The only wildlife I encountered was a turkey hen with two chicks; she was so startled that she froze, while the chicks instantly dashed into the underbrush. Mom then strutted slowly away, clucking loudly, I assume to draw me away from the chicks.

It was a nice walk. The rest of the day contained nothing but watering the little banana and watching anime and a jaunt up to Sprouts just because I'd forgotten they'd built one near the Whole Paycheck and wanted to check it out. It was nice! I'll have to go there instead of Whole Paycheck more often. I got Jameson a healthy-ish grape soda, and myself some uniquely flavored seltzers from Aura Bora, one cucumber lavender and the other lemongrass coconut.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Sunday, Jameson had a matinee at 3pm and was leaving earlier than that to do some setup.
I had breakfast and moped around a bit (sinus headache) before getting dressed and insisting on taking myself to the Orlando Farmers Market out at Lake Eola. I've always wanted to go but never could because I was working. It was a nice day, still too hot but there are a lot of shade trees around the lake. It being Mother's Day also, people were out as family units, kids laughing and teasing the ducks and swans, lots of dogs on leashes. I saw a samoyed and sent a short video of it to Jameson, he likes that breed.

There were lots of things that I wanted including local goat cheese, spreadable caramels, bourbon wings, local honey, and bread from a local bakery. Exercising great self-restraint I only bought a few sticks of exotic jerky from a stand whose owner was ironically from Lebanon, PA (I found this out by recognizing a PA brand of jerky). Then it was just enjoying the walk and looking at the wares and the lake and the people smiling and having fun. That was really nice :)

Somewhere in there I kind of wondered if I should have friends.
Nah. Too much work :P

On the way home I stopped at a pharmacy for a rapid test because I've been feeling a little under since yesterday.
My sinuses feel snotty and my head hurts. Not really covid symptoms but I'd rather be safe than sorry.
Test came back negative so I continued about my day, having a nice snack for lunch and just kind of contemplating life.

Jameson returned a little after dinner time, so we got to enjoy an evening together for once.
This means watching tv and/or him playing Xbox while I watch and/or me playing Spider.
We often don't talk to each other except to share thoughts here and there. Being in each others' company is enough.

------------------------------------------------------------

Monday.
Only one week left until I fly to Sacramento to rejoin the tour.
The last two weeks went both quickly and slowly.

I am excited to go back to work, but also upset that I'll be missing Jameson's surgery.
It makes me feel like a bad partner. Which I know I can't help the date they schedule him. It's just how I feel about it.

Today I have an interview for a part-time position as a Verbatim Hearing Reporter, which is kind of like a discount court reporter.
The posting was vague so I have quite a few questions, but this type of work could be a good "in" for court reporting in the future.

After that, grocery store for my last week of supplies plus ingredients for our meals.
I'll be making spaghetti with homemade meatballs and "mozzarella bombs" from TikTok, and salad, for one meal.
Another will be the fermented hot honey with fried chicken and some sort of sides.

Tuesday is the 911 dispatch interview and cooking.
Wednesday is sealing the deck, if it doesn't rain.
And the rest of the week is repacking and preparing for one last month of exploring out west.

We (the band) woke up super early to fly home.

Three of us (Bill, Josh and I) were flying to Florida, so we shared an Uber XL and got there in plenty of time to get through security and find breakfast. I also grabbed a sandwich to bring on the plane.

It was a full flight and I had a middle seat but I didn't mind because it was near the wings. Less turbulence there supposedly.
Other than being long, it was a rather pleasant flight. I watched Dune using the United app, and ate my sandwich and the Biscoffs I was given, and was generally a lot less stressed than I could have been. Flying so frequently this year has helped reduce my anxiety in that regard, which is wonderful. It's still there, I still get anxious, but it's noticeably lessened.

Once landed and luggage retrieved I had to catch an Uber home because Jameson had SpongeBob rehearsal.
I got home right as he was leaving (that happens a lot!) but gave him a big hug and stared into his adorable brown eyes before he went on his way. Inside I dropped my luggage and did a quick-scan of the cupboard and fridge, then off to the grocery.

I got my regular foods for the week, plus ingredients to make fermented hot honey and potato bread.

Back home I put everything away and wolfed down a chicken salad for dinner, then got to work wiping down the kitchen, washing the bedsheets, and cleaning the master bathroom. I had some pretty noticeable jet lag so that plus unpacking a little was all I was able to do.

Oh, and I opened my mail!

First there was this gorgeous wooden cutting board, handmade by our friend Tim, a former saxophonist with us on Ringling Bros. He is also the guy who gives me all of my stock trading advice, and he also plays baseball semi-professionally in the minor leagues, and also is an excellent woodcrafter. Some people just have ALL the aces in their deck, no?

Some aspect of this board displeased him enough that he wanted to sell it at a reduced price, and when I jumped at the chance he offered to send it just for the cost of shipping.

This is the best cutting board I've ever owned. It'll be a while before I'm brave enough to use it, but when I do I'll think fondly of all the work that Tim put into it, and cherish each cut. Tim's shop, by the way, is called Caught Looking Woodworks, and he makes a heck of a lot more than just cutting boards.

Next there were some jars and a pH reader for the hot honey, and a box of winter things I'd sent ahead of myself, and a gorgeous late birthday present from my sister Raven, this special edition custom-bound copy of Howl's Moving Castle!

What a gorgeous book. Now I'm excited to read it all over again!

If you've never read Howl's Moving Castle, perhaps you've seen the movie by Studio Ghibli?
If not, I very highly recommend it, especially for young ladies. It's a beautiful story and well done in both book and movie format.

The book appealed to me because it's similar to a fairy tale, except instead of the youngest sister passing all the character tests and winning the boons and marrying the prince, it's the oldest sister, who is not remotely interested in adventure, who gets swept indignantly off on a wild journey to find herself and her true love.

The movie appealed to me because A) STUDIO GHIBLI and B) The lifestyle that the main character experiences while living in the Moving Castle was so, so heartachingly similar to how I felt living on the circus train. That silver, curving, creaking metal snake winding between mountains was my Moving Castle. My right place to be.

Anyway. That's all gone now.
But this book is a beautiful memento. I'll write Raven a thank-you.

----------------------------------------------------

Tuesday I woke up because Jameson woke up, at 9:30 which felt like 6:30. And the jet lag continues!

A nice breakfast, then out the door to have a look at my plants!

The little lemon tree is doing quite well! Though a bit ant-swarmed.
There are four little green lemons which are all strongly attached, so I have high hopes that they'll hang on until I get back again in June.

The poor vanilla orchid was not so fortunate.
A huge portion of it died off during several nights of below-30 temps that we had over the winter.
Vanilla is not meant to survive in any climate where frost is possible, so it is not surprising that this happened.

I'd say at least 50% of the plant is dead...but there is a surprising amount of new growth, which is very encouraging!

Out in the pollinator garden, everything is "dead", not really but the colder-than-usual winter did cause more dieback than usual for everyone. Even the milkweed is on the Struggle Bus. Surprisingly, the one plant actually doing well is the pipevine, which has been a slow grower ever since it was planted. Suddenly it's three times larger than when I last saw it, with huge heart-shaped leaves bigger than my hand. Maybe we will even see blooms this year!

The biggest excitement was my java banana trees.
They looked awful the last time I was home (February) leaves all dead and rotting:

But now the largest tree is taller than me by at least a foot, with new leaves, and not only that, it has pups!

The pups are a REALLY good sign. They mean that the plant is comfortable enough to reproduce...which means it should soon start thinking about bearing fruit! I'll have to do more research to see what it needs at this stage, but how exciting!!

Sidenote: there's a low-key banana war going on between me and the neighbors, and at this point I am winning big time. We got our banana trees around the same. His failed to thrive for some reason, so about six months later I saw him standing in the yard talking to his son and gesturing at my tree, which had grown twice as tall as his. A few days later he and his son dug up his tree and replaced it with one that was larger and taller than mine. Since then I have been fertilizing and watering my two whenever I'm home, trimming dead leaves off and such, but otherwise leaving them alone. Now my larger tree is again taller than the neighbor's, and has two pups. Meaning I now have a total of four banana trees and he's still got the one, though neither of us have fruit yet.

Is this a part of becoming a homebody or a curmudgeon, having "whose-plant-is-bigger" wars with your neighbor? Lol!
We are not actually in competition over this! And he's a great neighbor. I'm just proud that my trees are doing well :)

Back inside I got cleaned up before starting on the fermented honey project.

There's no written recipe for this, so I had to watch two "It's Alive!" videos by Brad Leone, one where he makes a fermented garlic honey and the other where he does the pepper honey. The reason I had to watch both is because for the garlic video he gives instructions on how to burp the containers and watch the ph levels to avoid botulism. In the pepper honey video it seems to be assumed that you already know what to do about all that.

I am doing a reduced recipe, so sliced up three habaneros, half a serrano, and half a large jalapeno, removing most of the seeds from all.
Into a clean Ball jar:

Then started spooning the thick raw honey on top.

I did dip the jar in warm water just to loosen the honey up a bit so everything could combine well.
Then I topped the jar with a coffee filter tied on with a rubber band, and stuck it in a cabinet.
For three days I'll leave it mostly alone, maybe stirring it once per day.
Then on the third day I'll put the lid on loosely and start burping the jar and stirring it once or twice a day.
This will go on for about 10 days (you can let it go longer but I want to start using it before I have to go on tour again).

That done, I cleaned up and moved on to making the dough for potato bread.
I used a King Arthur Flour recipe, which was all fine and good except it was for two loaves and I only wanted one.
So I halved it. And OF COURSE I forgot to halve just ONE ingredient which WRECKED my dough.

So, dumped it out and started over. Luckily it's a very easy recipe: flour, potato, potato water, yeast, sugar, salt, egg, butter. Mix in stand mixer with a dough hook. Stuff it in the fridge and bake the next day. The remade dough looks fine, although I think it's too yellow (I added turmeric because that's what Martin's does to their potato bread to make it yellow).

Then lunch and job applications, then Jameson had rehearsal so I did more cleaning while he was gone.
A load of laundry, cleaned the small bathroom, scrubbed the shower (my least favorite chore), put the recycling out, dusted, and vacuumed. I felt awfully tired at this point because my body thinks it's 2am. But soon enough Jameson was back home and it was bed time.

---------------------------------------------------

I woke up at ten. That's so late! Argh. Jet lag sucks.

I got the potato bread dough out and shaped it, then had it rise in the microwave with a mug of hot water.
While that was happening I mostly bookmarked jobs and researched how to apply poly-something sand to the pool deck to help fill the cracks and prevent weeds. It's kinda involved, but I think I can do it before tour starts up again.

When the loaf looked ready I popped it into the oven for 25 minutes, then another 20 or so tented with foil.
It came out looking "ok".

Once it was cooled I pulled out the bamboo slicing guide that Jameson had gotten me.
It was so great! I got nice even slices of bread. Didn't wreck a single one.

The bread was fluffy and very flavorful, and you could not taste the turmeric at all.
I was very pleased with the soft moist texture and the even crumb. Definitely a keeper recipe.

However, looking at the shape of that finished loaf was the straw that finally broke my back.

I have been trying SO HARD not to be a spoiled brat about my loaf pans.
"You already have THREE good pans!" I chide myself internally any time an ad for a Pullman loaf pan crosses my feed.

But you guys, look at the first picture of the loaf. The pan was NOT RIGHT for that bread!
First of all, a traditional loaf pan is a TRAPEZOID.
That means the end pieces are never going to be a straight cut and the loaf is never going to have straight sides.
And secondly, most recipes call for a 9x5 pan when in reality that is TOO BIG for most yeasted breads!
The bread did not even touch the sides of the pan more than halfway up on my loaf, and there are about 2" of tapering at the ends of the loaf because it couldn't reach the sides.

I HATE this. It annoys me so much!!
Normally I cope by using my 8.5"x4" pan instead, but when I do that I STILL get the trapezoid end pieces.

So this was it, looking at my trapezoid loaf I just couldn't take it any more.

I flung open the portal to the domain of "Yaweh-zon" right that minute and offered up a Prayer For Capitalist Appeasement, along with an offering of twenty-eight USD, in the hopes of receiving a Pullman loaf pan.

And Lo, some of "Yaweh-zon's" cold, fiberoptic neurons must have vibrated in preprogrammed empathy with the consternation of its fleshy first-world devotee, because not five hours later there was a Pullman loaf pan sitting on my doorstep.

Wow.

Here is the difference, folks. This is the Pullman 9x4 next to my 8.5x4 pan.

This is going to make a big difference for how my loaves look.
Mainly, the loaves will be taller and will have straight sides.
So they should look more like store-bought sandwich bread, instead of lumpy trapezoids.

We are going to make a rye swirl bread next week in this Pullman. Can't wait.
If this subject fascinates you as much as it does me, here's a great article on the benefits of Pullman pans from King Arthur Flour.

The rest of my day was spent weeding the pool deck, sidewalk, and driveway, then a quick trip to Lowe's to see if I could rent a plate compactor for the poly-whatever sand to seal the pool deck. They didn't have one so I'll have to try Home Depot tomorrow. Jameson left for rehearsal around dinner time, so I had avocado toast and peanut butter banana toast on homemade potato bread for dinner. Very yum.

-----------------------------------------------------

Thursday, not much happened. I applied for jobs and rented a plate compactor for Friday through Home Depot.

For dinner I made us a meatloaf with mashed potatoes and green beans, and it was barely ready in time for Jameson to enjoy it.
It turned out kinda wet, so it probably isn't a keeper recipe.

After he left for rehearsal I went to get the bags of polymeric sand that will fill the cracks in our pool deck to help prevent weeds.
I have no idea how many bags we need, but got six 35-pound bags and if that's too many hopefully I can return the unused ones.
Then I started stressing about how to use the plate compactor, and whether I'd be able to finish the deck before a planned outing Friday night, did I make the reservation too late, I'd only allowed about four hours to get it done, blah blah blah, to the point where Jameson, upon returning from rehearsal, rolled his eyes at me and advised me to wait for a later date.

He's right, of course. There's no sense forcing this to be finished tomorrow, and no reason; I can get it done any time in the next two weeks.
I cancelled the reservation and will try again at a later good-weather date.

--------------------------------------------------------

Friday, I set my alarm for 8:30 just to wake up before 10 for once.
Had breakfast and applied for jobs, called around to see if people were hiring.
It was depressing. These are the kinds of jobs I had in high school, and I'm almost 40 years old.

I guess I should have double-majored. Too late now.

I spent several hours on that, then wasn't really sure what to do with myself so swept the pool deck to somewhat prepare it for whenever I seal it. Then I read some of Howl's Moving Castle, dozed off for a little, and before I knew it it was time to drive to St. Pete to see our friend Lea perform Footloose at an outdoor theater!

It was almost a two hour drive, and when we arrived we were starving.
At an Irish pub we found a black-and-bleu burger for Jameson and an ahi tuna wrap for me, surprisingly good for bar food.
Then we found Simon (Lea's husband) who had saved us a spot by spreading a big blanket on the ground.
There were lots of people there and it was shaping up to be a good time...
but then right at 7:59, it started to rain.

Look at this poor sap with a chair over his head! Lol

In the end we got rained out! It started to pour, triggering a mad dash for umbrellas and cars.
We piled into Simon's car, soaking wet, along with his MIL and her friend. Simon first dropped us at Lea's rented place (she doesn't live in St. Pete but is staying there for the duration of this contract) then took the MIL to wherever her ride was waiting. Eventually Lea joined us, exasperated and flustered because the show had been cancelled. We made plans to get dinner and got soaked again getting to the car, but the restaurant we wanted was packed and was no longer taking walk-ins.

At that point Jameson and I decided to head home as it was 9:30 and another two-hour drive awaited us.
Bummer! But it was a funny, Murphy's Law kind of adventure :) And I was happy to see Lea and Simon anyway!

Back home Jameson's PlayStation 4 had been delivered! He's been waiting on it for over a year.
It was too late to play with it now but tomorrow I'm sure he'll put it through it's paces.

--------------------------------------------------------

Saturday, I again set my alarm for 8:30.
Wrote an email to my sister, who has finally been able to close on her new house! So happy for her!

Then looked up what to do about my banana pups; the consensus seems to be it's a good idea to let the mother have no more than two pups at a time, and maybe separate the larger pup once it gets over a foot tall, so I "could" separate the taller pup for sure. I haven't decided yet.

The fermented honey isn't bubbling, so I checked the pH just to be safe and it's 2.20-ish, which is good.
It might just need more time. It does look looser. And it smells nice.

Once Jameson was awake I actually started doing things like typing this blog and dusting the bookshelf in the bedroom and getting dressed. Jameson went to get a haircut, and I went to Target for some small items like napkins, Jet Dry, and gelatin for making sponge candy (also, did you know that adding gelatin to whipped cream stabilizes it? Learned that today!)

Back home I put everything away and had lunch. Soon Jameson was back and he worked while I kind of screwed around.
Then we decided on air fryer wings and pizza for dinner, because this is the only time he'll be home for dinner for the next week, and he loves air fryer wings :) So I went to Whole Paycheck for the wings, and also grabbed my favorite horchata protein shakes and some roasted artichoke for myself.

The wings and pizza were great. I watered my banana plants because it didn't rain.
Jameson set up and played with his new PS4, and I watched; I love watching him play games especially multiplayer, it's so fun and unpredictable. And I updated my to-do list and watched the start of the John Gacy documentary.

Overall, a lovely relaxing day and evening.

---------------------------------------------------------

Sunday, my brain is getting closer to waking up at 8:30 on it's own. Yay! Two more nights should do it.

Made myself an egg this morning, and applied for some jobs.

Then I wanted to have a crack at making honeycomb candy.

The version that I am making is the kind that is called "sponge candy" in Buffalo and Canada.
The method for making either is the same: heat sugar and corn syrup and water to a certain temperature, then sift in baking soda which causes a foaming action and a "honeycomb" structure when the mixture has cooled.

The difference with the Buffalo version is you also whisk in some gelatin, which causes the bubbles to be more fine and uniform, like a synthetic sponge. Hence, sponge candy:

(photo from HomeInTheFingerLakes)

As opposed to honeycomb candy:

(photo from numstheword)

We were given some pieces of sponge candy during rehearsals in Buffalo, and it was awesome, which is why I wanted to try that version.
It came together quite easily, easier than caramel. You only have to heat it to 292 degrees, and then the hardest part was just getting it into the tray before it started to harden around the whisk.

I could have let it caramelize a bit more but I was nervous about it deflating/burning.

Then lunch, then more applications, then a walk around the neighborhood.
By that time the sponge had cooled enough for me to attempt to cut it.

It looks pretty but it was soon a sticky mess.
It's really too humid here in FL. The stuff was dissolving as I touched it.
But I managed to get it chopped up after a fashion, then melted some cheap coating chocolate that's been sitting around since Christmas to try and salvage some of this before it melts further.
(Most pieces are fully covered. These look pretty but they'll probably dissolve overnight.)

About the time I was finishing that up Jameson had rehearsal, and it being 4pm I thought there was enough time to do the rye bread.
Made what I thought was a beautiful dough, then let it rise...still looked quite good...

Split it into two equal portions and put one back in the mixer with some cocoa powder to make it a darker color.
Everything was going well.

Now I was supposed to roll the dough into a log, creating a swirl with the light and dark dough.
But once I had my shaped loaf, there seemed to be too much dough for the pan.
Now that I think about it, in the video he was using a 13x4x4, and mine is only a 9x4x4.
I didn't really think that this would matter but apparently it did, because during the second rise we had this happen:

I don't know if that's due to overfilling the pan, or some other issue that was not apparent until now.
Up until the second rise everything seemed just fine. I did not change one thing about the recipe.
I had no idea what happened but baked it anyway...maybe it won't be pretty but it might still be edible?

I did bake it and it looked "ok", though the top was just bizarrely lumpy. No idea what happened there.

Also the bread is quite edible, though dense and overly moist. I got a nice swirl.

Jameson said he'd eat it, so I wrapped half for the freezer and left the other half out where I know he'll eat a sandwich with it tomorrow and then forget about it so it'll end up in the trash anyway.

I was unhappy with it, so whether it's stupid of me or not, I'm making another one tomorrow.
Also after tasting this I want to reduce the onion powder and add pickle juice to replace some of the water.

-------------------------------------------------------

Monday. I didn't sleep well because my brain wanted to pick apart The Bread Issues.
It's ok, I can sleep all day if I like (which I won't but the option is there).

I ate breakfast first and was surprised to find an offer for an interview in my inbox!
NOT surprisingly, it was from the ABC liquor store, one of the few actual retail jobs I've applied for.
I have a very strong background in retail, which is unfortunate because NO ONE wants to work in retail.
But, the store is right down the street, so if they pay similar to what CapTel would pay I'm more inclined to save ten hours per week no matter how much I'd rather be captioning. Also since it's a state store I'm assuming it's less like a corner liquor store and more like a Total Wine. I agreed to the interview which will be by phone next week.

Now I'm going to get started on my second attempt at this rye bread.

Tomorrow I ahve a meeting with my bank and supposedly I get to seal the deck with the polymeric sand and plate compactor. Neato!

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goofball on a train

(adventures of a touring musician)

Entries tagged with jobs

Tootsie Yr2: Madison, WI part 2

Tootsie Yr2: Milwaukee, WI part 2

Tootsie Yr2: Milwaukee, WI part 1

May Layoff part 2

May Layoff part 1

Tootsie Yr2: Kansas City, MO (KCMO)

Po-tay-toh

The Prep for the Prep

Actual Work

Pulled Pork

Visit "home"

Look Ma, I'm Splitting My Posts

I Guess It's July Now

Jobby Job Jobs

Orlando Things

Tootsie on Tour: Las Vegas, NV

'rona life, Day 2

Tootsie on Tour: Sacramento, CA

Orlando Layoff Week 2

Orlando Layoff Week 1