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Work, Tomatoes, Stuff - R

Tue, 15 May 2012 21:45:10 -0400

The past couple weeks have been pretty eventful. Our anniversary is May 3 (4 years now) so we both took the day off of work to spend it with each other, and made reservations for dinner at Ruth’s Chris. It was great to take a much needed day off of work, and even better that I got to spend it with Sean.
We spent the day being fairly lazy in the morning, then going shopping. So not only did I get to spend what should have been just another Thursday with my husband, but I got to spend it shopping with my husband. He hates shopping, so it was great that he put up with it for me without complaint.
It was time to get our rings cleaned and inspected at Jared, and it seemed pretty anniversary-appropriate, so that was our first stop. Sean surprised me by getting me a Pandora bracelet and necklace while we were there! I am in love with my bracelet, and keep nagging him for more charms.
The next day (Friday, May 4) I learned of a job opening that peaked my interest. I have really wanted to get back to a start-up environment, and this position seemed perfect. The current phase of the project that I am working on is coming to an end, the next phase due to start May 29. I have been saying that I would stay to see it through until then... so the timing was pretty much perfect as well. I immediately got to work updating my resume.
Then, on Saturday (May 5) we went to CompUSA to get some new speakers (mine died) and some replacements for Sean’s ailing case fans. Sean spotted a liquid cooling thingie and got all excited, but was going to go with the cheaper fans... until I encouraged him to get what he really wanted. Mistake! It failed within 24 hours and took his CPU with it. The CPU I just bought him for Christmas! Needless to say Sean was in a foul mood the rest of the weekend. Although his mood did improve once I gave him permission to order a new (and better) CPU as well as some RAM.
Monday (May 7) I heard that the company was interested in talking to me, and set up a phone screening for the next day. The screening went really well and I was invited out for an interview Thursday morning.
Wednesday (May 8) saw the arrival of Sean’s new CPU, which worked without issue... proving we were correct about his other CPU being fried. In the end he was super happy with his new and improved system. I keep teasing him that it was his plan all along to fry the chip so that he could upgrade.
Thursday (May 9) morning I had my interview. Thursday afternoon they called to say they wanted to make me an offer. This meant that on Friday it was very hard to concentrate at my current job, so I was very grateful it was the last day of testing and all my work was done.
Saturday Mom came up for Mother’s Day. We went for massages, followed by manicures and pedicures. I was totally unimpressed with the nail salon we went to... but she still seemed to have a good day. For dinner we took her to Hayashi for sushi to top the day off.
Sunday Mom & I went shopping. We got her a new iPhone 4S as a joint gift from Tressa & us, then wandered around the mall in a vain attempt to find her a new purse before heading out to the farmers market. While walking into the farmers market I was briefly excited to see a box of canning tomatoes, but they looked terrible.
My disappointment grew from there... there were no strawberries left, the carrot cake lady was already gone, and half the stalls were closed early. On my way out I stopped by the place with the canning tomatoes again and managed to strike a deal. They let me pick and choose and make up my own box of tomatoes... and only charged me $9. First tomatoes of the year! They are green house tomatoes, but that’s okay.
We got home just in time. Sean’s mom was already there, and he was starting to cook dinner. He grilled some great steaks for us and we had a nice dinner with the moms.
Monday (May 14) I got my offer letter and put in my notice. Everything became official, and I struggled to stay focused the rest of the day. Then I made my first batch of salsa when I got home!
Right now everything is good. Let’s hope it stays that way!

Strawberries... - R

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 01:20:10 -0400

As mentioned in my previous post, last weekend I made strawberry syrup, strawberry butter, and bread & butter pickles. I should be stocked up on enough pickles to last for quite a while now, although once we hit cucumber season proper I promised Sean we would make dill pickles, so I guess I still have some pickling ahead of me. At least we shouldn’t be making anymore sweet pickles though... what a sticky mess! You would think the syrup would be the sticky one, but no.
The strawberry syrup & butter has a pretty low yield, only about 3 pints of butter and 2 pints of syrup from four pounds of berries. So I obviously had to make it again this weekend! I will probably never use all the syrup, but the butter is just so good I have to stock up. And I need enough to give people as gifts too of course.
This morning the berries looked so good at the farmers market that I bought two flats worth. I still have some of the first flat left after making a batch of syrup and butter, so I will probably be making at least two strawberry recipes tomorrow as well. I just ran out of time today.
This might be my last weekend of strawberries unless I come up with some other must-try recipe. I just need to get a good stock of strawberry butter while I can, but we are both pretty strawberried-out.
But then, we also planted strawberries this week. I know it is pretty late for planting strawberries, but the planter was only $2 and the plants were on clearance for $1 each. We also planted tomatoes, cilantro, basil, and oregano. With luck we will be able to actually succeed in growing something edible. And with a lot of luck and good fortune we might even produce enough to actually can some stuff we grew ourselves.

Spring! - R

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 17:49:18 -0400

It’s that time of the year again... where the flowers and blooming, the birds are singing, and our bank account just seems to funnel directly into Lowes and any number of other garden centers. But I love it.
Last Sunday we made good use of Sean’s new truck by bringing home 60 cubic feet worth of mulch for the flower bed in the back yard. While splitting the bags open I managed to stab myself (thanks to gloves it was only a knick) with a utility knife, which reminded me I hadn’t had a tetanus shot in 10 years... so got one of those Wednesday and have had a very sore arm ever since. It is better now though.
Today the spring time fun continued. We started out the day with a trip to the opening day of the North Hills market, where we picked up some shishito and tomato plants as well as some other goodies. Then we went to check out the crawfish boil at Lafayette Village before heading to the state farmers market.
The state farmers market is running over with strawberries. This week they were all dark red and sweet, unlike the past couple weeks where they were bright and tart. So I picked up two buckets of those and plan on doing some more canning tonight or tomorrow. I have three new canning recipe books that I am dying to try out. One of the recipes at the top of my list is strawberry syrup, from which I can use the pulp to make strawberry butter.
I also found some good looking cucumbers, which will soon be bread and butter pickles. And we spotted some bigger tomato plants out there, so I might have to pick some up of those next weekend.
After our farmers market visit it was back to Lowes for some soil, tomato cages, and flowers for the deck. Of course I got the wrong size planters for the holes in the deck, so I get to go hunt for some square 15” planters tomorrow. They are surprisingly hard to find, and the ones we have are starting to fall apart.
Once we returned home we sawed the legs off a long raised planter that the bottom had fallen out of, and put it on the ground for our tomatoes and shishito peppers. Of course there is a chance Eddie will munch on them there, but we will see how it goes. I had already ordered some of the Topsy Turvy (they were on sale super cheap) hanging tomato planters and one strawberry planter from Ace last week, so they should be here soon. So next weekend means another trip out to a garden center for soil and plants... although it will probably be Logans this time.
I really hope our tomatoes and peppers grow, and don’t end up being bug food. Fingers crossed! Guess I had better start reading up on tomato growing and pest control. The last time we tried growing things it ended up infested with green caterpillar-like worm things, and the strawberries became bird food. This will be my first attempt at tomatoes and shishito. The most I have to go on is a very vague memory of my great grandmother growing tomatoes in the back yard.

It’s Canning Season! -R

Mon, 2 Apr 2012 00:15:45 -0400

I got into canning pretty late last summer, so I completely missed the majority of the berry season. The only jam I was able to make last year was raspberry, which is tasty... but I have been eagerly awaiting spring so that I could start making other jams.
Today I decided to try the farmer’s market for the first time since last fall to see what was available. I was a bit surprised to already see a lot of strawberries, as well as a variety of other things. I knew strawberry season was coming early, but I expected to wait a couple more weeks. They weren’t the prettiest strawberries I have ever seen, but who cares if you are smashing them all up?
The berries will probably taste better in a few more weeks, but I was too impatient. I picked up a bucket of them! I now have nine 8oz jars of strawberry jam. I am eager to crack open a jar in a few days and see how it tastes. All I have had so far was a taste of the little that was leftover in the pot. It tasted good, but was really sweet. I don’t mind though, it is just an excuse to get more berries in a couple weeks and try another recipe!
We also picked up some fresh apple cider at the market. I have a recipe for spiced apple cider jelly, which seems like a good way to use up 5 cups of that cider. There is no way the two of us will drink a whole gallon of cider. I just need to pick up a couple ingredients tomorrow!
I am so happy it is canning season again! I missed my weekend hobby. I just can’t wait for the boxes of canning tomatoes to pop up, so I can make salsa and sauces... it seems those are a hit with lots of people. And half the fun of canning is sharing!

Work & SWTOR - R

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:47:46 -0500

It is hard to believe February is already nearly gone. It seems like Christmas was just a couple weeks ago! Things have been crazy at work for a while now, so I have been working a lot and the weeks just seem to melt together.
I am working on a project that has required me to learn new things, like running batch jobs on the mainframe. At first I was somewhat intimidated by it, but glad for the challenge and the addition to my resume. The first couple months I was working on this project I only had to dabble with it, but about mid-January I was switched to assignments that meant I really had to learn it.
After a few weeks of feeling like an idiot, I really started to catch on. Now I am at the point where I can actually help other people do things, which is cool. I have also gone beyond simply learning to run things and now know a little about editing the JCLs (scripting language used to run batch jobs on IBM mainframe) and reading the programs themselves (written in COBOL) to see what the program is doing. Reading the programs has also helped me improve my SQL skills, as the programs have some pretty crazy queries.
Everyone on the team having to learn about working with the mainframe and about testing the batch jobs really slowed us down, so our testing fell way behind. Plus testing batch jobs simply takes more time than our usual testing. It quickly became apparent that our deadline was unrealistic. And this company does not like moving dates... so the stress of that combined with feeling like an idiot when first working with mainframe made for a very unpleasant time at work. Just trying to get things done meant I have been working every weekend lately.
Thankfully they have a plan in place to help us now, so I shouldn’t have to work 50 hours a week anymore! Only 44-46. Although I will probably still be working more than that. But at least I can work from home now, which makes it easier. The company doesn’t really want us to work from home, but given the amount of work yet to be done they have acquiesced. Now that there is a light at the end of the tunnel I am starting to enjoy work again. The mainframe stuff is actually fun in a geeky way.
So if I have fallen off the earth for the past couple months, or constantly made excuses of “I have to work” ... I really have been busy! I most likely wasn’t avoiding you.
Other than working A LOT the only new thing really going on over here is that I started playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. Which means I have a PC again. No, I haven’t given up on Macs... I just slid it over and have two systems crowding my desk. If I could have played SWTOR on my Mac, I would! But the new PC means I can work from home too... the work VPN simply refused to play nicely with my Mac.
I am really enjoying the game, although I have only been playing a couple weeks. I guess you could call it my Valentine’s present from Sean. If you are playing on The Cosair (server) look me up. I have a level 21 Imperial Agent named Jaida.
-Robyn