No sense of humor at all

One day last weekend I woke up with a painfully sore throat, and over the course of this week, the sore throat morphed into a deep cough accompanied by phlegm, sinus pressure, runny nose, and headaches. I can usually kick this kind of thing without going to the doctor, so I've been loaded up with vitamins and liquids (and the occasional dose of nyquil).

I was at the grocery store today restocking my stash of generic dayquil/nyquil, and I noticed Aleve Cold & Sinus. I remembered how much I used to swear by that stuff when I was sick, so I went to grab a box. Unfortunately, that's one of the drugs that you now have to get from behind the pharmacy counter, so I headed up there. They entered my driver's license number onto a form and plugged my data into a computer. I get it, I really do. War on drugs and all that. But my nose is all red, I'm hacking stuff up, and I sound like a duck. The pharmacy people could have at least laughed when I made a joke about cooking meth.

It rains here every day

I'm in such a doom-and-gloom mood today that not even looking at recipes on the internet can cheer me up. And looking for new things to cook or bake always cheers me up. Excuse me while I go buy some vitamin D supplements. Sheesh. Winter.

A Piece of Prose

"Why the Last Two Days Have Sucked"

I didn't feel like being nice to anyone yesterday. So they weren't nice back.

I packed a bag to go straight to the gym after work. Right before I left work to go to the gym, I realized that I didn't have my gym ID card. They said I could pay the $6 day pass fee when I called on the phone. I walked home to get the card.

I walked to the gym, and every single cardio machine was occupied and reserved for the next two hours. I walked back home and ran outside.

I needed to go sign my lease today, so I took the bus on my lunch hour. On a normal day, the bus in a college town is filled with greasy undergraduates who stink like last night's booze and cigarettes. On a rainy day, the bus in a college town is filled with greasy undergraduates who don't have umbrellas and so they smell like packs of wild dogs that rolled around in mud and then stood outside in the rain and then rolled around in feet.

The Huz also needed to sign the lease, so we met and had lunch. We tried a restaurant that we'd never been to before, and it was awful. I love ethnic food, and I've had and loved Moroccan food before. But this was not good food. Soup at a restaurant should not come from a can. Maybe that's just my belief, but it's a strong belief. And tahini? At a Moroccan restaurant? It should also not come from a can.

And then I rode the bus back to work. Remember the wild dog smell? It was still there in abundance, and this time they could not comprehend why they should move to the back of the bus. It's been a frustrating couple of days. I'm not really one for a hot and sunny day, but here in the depths of a dreary season, I could use the recommended 20 minutes of sunshine.

Mmmmmmm......butter......

For a coworker's birthday I made croissants. Real ones. I started the dough on Tuesday night, I did four turns yesterday, and I did one turn, proofing, and baking this morning before work. My arms are sore, the palms of my hands are tender, and I never want to see a rolling pin again.

Conclusion #1: I am an awesome coworker.

Conclusion #2: I will probably see a rolling pin again, and I'll probably even use one, since the croissants were so delicious and flaky and layered and spongy that I will inevitably decide that I must make them again. Hopefully I can talk my mom out of her marble rolling pin before that happens.

Time for a list of unrelated items

1. I always think recipes call for too much onion. I always use less than I'm supposed to, and I usually think it's still too much.

2. My lovely in-laws gave me a Kitchenaid stand mixer for Christmas. She is cobalt blue, and she looks like this:


She and I have made four loaves of bread and one two-layer cake. We're still getting to know each other, and I'm taking it slow. But I have to add that bread loaves three and four (half white/half wheat with whole flax seeds) were so delicious that I marvelled at their deliciousness with every bite. It makes the best toast I've ever had, swear to god.

3. I am trying to resist eating the average-tasting chocolate chip cookies glaring at me from the counter next to me. I am the unfortunate owner of a receptionist desk out in the middle of an office, and people always dump food around me since everyone in the office passes by. Not only do I have no privacy, I have to suffer everyone else's "generosity." Why on earth do people still make no-bake cookies? Disgusting.

4. I brought half of a green pepper and a Diet Coke Plus for my afternoon snack. When I picked up the fridge pack of the Diet Coke Plus in the grocery store, The Huz gently questioned my choice by asking, "Why don't you just take a fucking multivitamin?" I gently responded, "I'll do that too."

Okay, maybe he didn't use the word fucking at all, but that's how the memory sounds in my head.

5. Why don't hashbrowns in the skillet ever turn out as brown and crispy as they're supposed to?

6. Do you watch tennis? Can you BELIEVE that hunchy Sharapova beating Henin like that? The nerve.

7. Springform pans do not work as well as I imagined they would.

8. I got my hair cut, but I'm having a hard time committing to the extra primping time shorter hair requires.

Research I can get behind

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-1118edit2nov18,0,580607.story


Ha ha ha. Behind.

I am handing my credit card to the lady across the counter. She announces that the grand total price of my new glasses will be $130. Well that's not actually true, because I'm just replacing the lenses in an old pair, thus saving money. I glance at The Huz, giving him the look of I know you weren't planning to spend this money like this, but I need to see. As we walk out of the store he's being very quiet and so I say, "It needed to happen. Shit's getting blurry. I'm nervous driving."

He replies, "DUDE. One hundred and thirty dollars?!?"

"Is that a lot, or not as much as you thought it would be?"

"That's a fucking ton of money!" he says.

I counter, "Well it would've been more if I'd gotten new frames. I wasn't trying to surprise you. How much did you think it was going to be?"

"Like $20."


If new glasses cost $20, I'd have glasses piled all over my room. There'd be glasses of all different colors stuffed into every drawer and shelf in the bathroom. I'd have a pair of glasses to match every freaking outfit I own. You know how sometimes when you say a word over and over, and it's not a word you say very often, it starts to sound funny? Glasses. Glaaaaasssssses. Glassiz.






Glasses.

phlegm snot hork snot hork phlegm snork

When in a public place, if someone gently responds to your constant horking of snot back up into your cavernous sinuses with "There's a restroom right around the corner if you need to blow your nose," it probably means that you are annoying others with your disgusting habits. "Oh thanks but I'm okay" isn't an appropriate response. Maybe you aren't aware that your sniffles are startlingly loud, but I bet I could give my whole desk a good thick coating with the amount of goo it sounds like you're storing up there. Savin' it up, baby, savin' it up.

my stomach is turning

I never liked running. I've always balked at the prospect of that form of exercise, probably because I was never in good enough shape to enjoy it. A couple of months ago I decided to go for a run with my very athletic husband, and I was surprised that I had fun doing it and felt good after. But I busted something inside my knee and it hurt to walk for about three weeks. My knee is finally back to a dull ache rather than explosions of pain in each step, so I've been experimenting with the running. A couple of runs this week have left me feeling hurt-so-good sore, and I think the knee thing is from landing on that leg while it's overextended.

This morning a coworker of mine thought she might mention, woman-to-woman, that a rape had been reported on campus (I live in a college town and work at the university). At 10:30 on a Thursday night, two men grabbed a woman off the sidewalk, shoved her into their car, drove about 10 minutes to a parking lot where they both raped her, and then drove her back to where they first abducted her. My normal running path goes through a part of campus that's about a block from where they grabbed her. Today I feel incredibly stupid about last night, when I ran alone at 9:30 without a cell phone or anything sharp.