As the Days Run Together

So.. my typical day:

• Get up between 9:30 and 11:00.  Grumble about how unfair it is…
• Make a ‘poor girls’ latte (sugar free vanilla syrup, strong coffee, heated milk that is ‘foamed’ by heating it in the microwave and whipping it with the magic bullet)  and some Pop Tarts
• Fire up laptop
• Log into Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo Finance, Jobs Central (unemployment job posting site), and Google Reader
• Pull up spreadsheet of pending application, ‘to apply’ list, and contacts
• Stare blankly.. wondering how exactly I’m going to get us out of this mess
• Pull up e-mail
• Pray someone has responded to an application or request.  Usually get only junk mail from shopping sites I was formerly able to afford.
• Glance at clock: It usually reads between 2:30 and 4:00
• Wonder where the day went.
• Decided to have ‘lunch’ before deciding what to make husband for dinner
• Take a quick ‘Trashy Romance Novel” break during lunch
• Glance at clock:  Holy Shit.. how did it get to be 7 pm??
• Make quick dinner
• Feed Husband
• Run through the DVR to free up space for the next days recordings
• Return to laptop to read about the market closings, job conditions, and finish any necessary job application.  Document on “Open Job Aps” spreadsheet
• Make list of applications to follow up on the following day.
• See Husband off to bed around 11 pm
• Play about 60 minutes of Dance Dance Revolution to fulfil Lent promise
• Cool down from DDR with another round of Trashy Romance
• Quietly sneak into bed between 2:30 and 4 am.
• As I’m drifting off to sleep… vaguely make the promise to get back on a regular schedule

It’s like the movie Groundhog’s Day .. no matter what I do differently… the day is always the same.   ALWAYS.

I need something to get me out of the house, so this week, I’m cleaning (In-laws are coming for a visit this weekend), baking (which is really not needed in this house right now), and looking into volunteer work around the community.  Anything to get me out of the house, but preferably something I’d like to do (like volunteer with the Girl Scouts or the Humane society).

Lent update:  The first week of Lent I missed the Friday and Sunday.  Same for last week:  I missed Friday and Sunday.   So this week.. the goal is to not miss a day.  Hopefully.

Just Call Me Betty Crocker….

I got the baking bug this weekend.  I originally thought that being unemployed would mean that I would have a ton of time to bake, try new and exotic recipes, and test out the legs on my KitchenAid mixer.

I’ll pause to wait for you to stop laughing.

Anyway, this weekend was cold, gray, rainy/snowy, and overall just bleh!  And what better to do on a Bleh kinda day than bake?  Plus I need to change to my daily “wake at noon, look for job, play a little Wii, bore myself silly until dinner, read trashy romance novels, force myself to fall asleep by 3 am” routine.

Round 1:  Fudgie Wudgies.

I got the recipe for these out of one of my many (and I mean.. many) cookie cook books.   Think brownie with chocolate chip pieces, only in cookie form.  They have a nice crunch edge with a chewy middle.  The Engineer loves all things chocolate and I figured these would do.   He agrees that they are fabulous.   Next time though, I’ll make a double batch, as one batch only made 2 dozen cookies.

Round 2:  The Piece de Resistance — my very first Butternut Cake!!!

This cake has a story all it’s own, and I’m sure I’ll butcher it.    This cake is a family tradition for my husband.   His paternal grandmother made this cake and the Engineer’s father fell in love with it.  So she  passed the recipe to my Mother-In-Law.   My MIL has made the cake for pretty much every family event that I’ve been to in the last 6 years.  There is rarely much cake left over by the end of the weekend, and as a matter of fact, in 6+ years I’ve been around, I’ve never had a full piece of butternut cake to myself.    For as long as I’ve known the Engineer, he’s spoken nothing but praise and adoration for this cake.   One of the his first requests, once we finally tied the knot, was to get the recipe for this cake.   I had made a mental note to do it, but kept forgetting to ask my MIL for it.  Plus, to save my life, I couldn’t find the special extract needed to make the cake.   As luck would have it, the last time we were visiting the Inlaws, my MIL gave me a bottle of the extract and the recipe!  Because she’s that awesome.

See what a pretty yellow the cake is!   It’s too bad I think the icing (made with pecan pieces) isn’t as pretty.   Good thing it tastes delicious.

The recipe is pretty basic: butter, sugar, eggs, flour.  What makes this cake special is the flavoring.  Instead of a vanilla flavoring , the cake uses a butternut flavoring (Side note:  if vanilla were used as the flavoring, this would make one killer white cake… note to self.. must try).   The butternut flavoring is a bright orange color but mellows to a soft chickadee yellow once incorporated into the batter.

As I was making the cakes, the Engineer kept coming into the kitchen to ’supervise’.  Supervise what exactly, I don’t know.  He tasted the icing (a traditional cream cheese icing with butternut flavoring and pecan pieces) and slowly grinned.   I think his words were “you’ve done well grasshopper”.   In the picture above, there should be a distinct icing band between the layers.  Only problem was that I ran a little low on icing.  My MIL makes 3 8-inch cakes and I made 3 9-inch cakes (like the recipe called for.. plus, I don’t have 8 inch cake pans), so there wasn’t as much icing to go around as I had hoped.   Next time, I’ll make more icing.

Oh.. I wanted to mention that I used this cake as an excuse to buy some European-style butter.     I’ve used it before on chocolate chip cookies but never in cakes.   Holy Shit:  never again will I make a cake from scratch without using European-style butter.   It’s got a bit more butterfat in it that gives it a richer flavor.  The butter is not that much more expensive than regular butter, and my only complaint is that I can’t find it in sticks (I can only find it in 8 ounce blocks).  Please note:  the cake would be great with any ol butter (as long as it’s fresh), but OMFG… the European-style stuff is fantastic.

Now, the Engineer and Lux will tell you that this cake is best after it has time to ‘mellow’.  So on day 2,3 or 4 the cake is at it’s prime.   The Engineer did cut a piece today (as you can see from the above picture).  I eagle-eyes him the entire time he ate that little piece of cake. You see, since I’ve known my husband, I’ve used his sweet tooth to my advantage.  I’ve baked him everything under the sun: cakes, cookies, candies, pies.   But things get a little fuzzy in our house when I attempt to make something that his mother always makes.

You know the age old dilemma: “will it be as good as his Mom’s?”.  In my case, the one thing that I keep trying to make better than my MIL is chocolate chip cookies.   I’ve probably tried 10-15 different recipes and while my husband will concede that they are good phenomenal tasty delicious righteous out-of-this-world, when I ask if they’re better than his Mom’s.. I always get the same response:

“They’re different than my mom’s.  I really can’t compare the two”

Which really means “FAIL”.

Lately, I’ve given up on chocolate chip cookies and moved on to other kinds, hence the Fudgie Wudgies from above.

With the butternut cake, I tired to put my need to be ‘as good as’ behind me.  My MIL has been making this cake for more than 30 years, so I can’t be expected to knock it out of the park on my first try.  But I was pleased when he admitted that the cake was really good.  Although, he did stated that he couldn’t make a fair comparison to his mother’s until the cake had had proper ‘mellowing’ time.   So for now, the verdict is that I made an acceptable ‘replica’ of a butternut cake.

I’ll take the win for now.

Confucius Says…

From my fortune cooking Friday night.

I kinda wish it had said something more about the timeline of the difficult times.. but I wasn’t going to push it.  I mean.. it is just a cookie.  Let’s hope that I can keep the laughs coming because it’s the only think keeping me from sleeping 12 hours a day and giving myself an ulcer the other 12.

The job market sucks.   Being unemployed sucks.   Living on one income (and unemployment) sucks. Not being able to shop (especially now that all the stores finally have the cutest flats in the world in stock) sucks.  Not having anyone to talk to during the day but the cats and a husband (who gets a little irritated when you keep talking to him while he’s trying to work) sucks.

Being able to stay up until 3 am playing the Wii, sleeping until 11:30 the following morning with no guilt, eat gummy bears and Pop Tarts for breakfast (at 12:30 pm) and being able to wear yoga pants and t-shirts 24-7…..well.. that doesn’t suck.

Our Trash The Dress Book and a Lent Update

So I wrote in the last post about how our wedding photographers had called us to let us know our Trash The Dress book was in.

The book is just fantastic.   It’s around  5″ x 7″ and the pages are a nice photo quality matte finish on a thick stock paper.   I love that the pictures are matte because we’re planning to use this book as a coffee table book and I hate to think about people getting finger prints on my pictures.  I mean… I’m not horribly anal about people touching my pictures.. but then.. this IS one of my wedding books and I’d like it to stay in good condition for … well… a while.

Here is our lovely cover.

This is the front and back spine of the book.   I love that on the back of the book, we’re still fairly dry, but we choose a really wet picture for the cover.

Man.. I love this book.

One of the best parts about of these types of wedding albums is that you can have some of your pictures span the entire width of album.

Or.. you can set the pictures up like you would a traditional album.

We also love how the album lays flat.   The pages sit pretty flush and the spine of the book is constructed so that the album could be opened and will stay that way without any damage.

Our next project (and last…at least until the B-A-B-I-E-S come) with the Hopes will be to construct our wedding album.  That’s is going to be much harder that the TTD album because we have 800 wonderful and amazing pictures to  choose from and we can only use 10% of them in the album.   Boo!

It still shocks me that it’s been almost a year since we got married and my wedding album still isn’t done.  Time really does get away from you.  I guess that’s what I get for telling Wes and Danielle that I wasn’t going to be one of those brides… oh no.. I wanted my pictures done as soon as possible and that I would never wait for a full year before my album was finished.  Humph…lesson learned: never say never.

Finally, an update about Lent: Day 2 was good.  I woke up  with a horrible migraine and instead of going to the gym, I decided that I would instead do another round of DDR.  So 45 minutes of DDR later, I had fulfilled my 30 minute quota.   Day 3:  FAIL   It wasn’t until around 12:30 Saturday morning that I realized that I had just gotten so busy with job hunting, resume writing, networking, and errands (plus trying to remember that it was the first Friday in Lent, so no meat eating).. that I completely forgot to workout.   So to make up for it (besides money in the rice bowl), I’ll be doing an hour of working out today (and again.. more likely going to be 60 minutes of DDR.   What can I say.. I love me some Dance Dance Revolution.   I’m going to totally be sad when our friends, The Former Roommates, ask for their DDR stuff back. ).

Lent: Day 1 Check In

I know.. I totally said I was going to go to the gym, but then our wedding photographers called to say that our Trash the Dress book was in (it’s sooo freakin awesome.. I’ll share pictures of it in another post) and they wanted to meet today to give us the book (they live about 45 minutes from us.. ).  Anyway.. so instead of going to the grocery store, then home, then to the gym… well… I had to go meet the photographers.  AND since it was Ash Wednesday, it just made since to take the Husband with me so we could grab a quick bite to eat and then stop at Sam’s Club for some toilet paper.

I know right… way way WAY too much information.

Anyway.. so today’s “30 minutes” of “lazi-less-ness” consisted of 45 minutes of Dance Dance Revolution (on the Wii) and 15 minutes of Wii Tennis/Baseball.

Day One:  Success.

Lent

Yeah… that’s the best title I could come up with.  I suck as a blogger.

So .. let’s talk about Lent.   Preempt:  I’m going to talk about Lent from a Catholic point of view, because I am Catholic.  If you celebrate Lent and you are not Catholic.. please ignore most of what I say.  Thank you!

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and thus the beginning of  Lent. What is Lent (say you non-Lent celebrating readers?)?  (OMG.. I’m going to do my best to not totally butcher this)

Well.. Lent is the 40 day liturgical season between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday.   In the Catholic faith, it’s suppose to symbolize the 40 days that Jesus took when he went into the desert to pray and fast, and was forced to endured temptations by Satan.

During the Lenten season, those crazy Catholics (hey.. I am one.. so I can say that) will have 2 days of fasting.  Catholic fasting is where you’re only allowed to eat one full meal that day, and no meat products.  You are permitted to have two small snacks that together do equal the one full meal (the elderly and small children do not have to fast).  Tomorrow (Ash Wednesday) is one of those fasting days.  Good Friday is the other.   In addition to the two fasting days, Catholics abstain from eating meat each Friday during Lent.    Meat, as defined by the Catholic church is anything BUT fish… I know I know.. how is a fish not meat?   Don’t ask me.. ask a priest.   I will tell you that last year my at-the-time, soon-to-be husband asked why Catholics didn’t eat meat on Fridays and why was fish not considered meat.   I, having no idea (I’m a cradle Catholic and I went to public school… why would I know this??), decided that I would ask a priest the next time I saw one.   So I did, and the answer (or story) I got was interesting.

You see… in the day of the early Vatican, the idea was that, Jesus had fasted and gone without and so should good pious Catholics.  At the time, meat (beef, pork, poultry) was considered an extravagant luxury.   Only the very wealthy or well-to-do could afford ‘meat’.  But anyone could fish and fish was considered the ‘poorer man’s food’.  (I know I have to be butchering this …. ).  Anyway, so the Vatican thought that by abstaining from meat (read: Luxury) on all Fridays, it would remind Catholics of what Jesus had endured in the desert (and of the solemness of the Lenten time).  Over time, it evolved to be abstinence of meat during Lenten Fridays only (although, according to the Vatican, abstaining from eating meat on Fridays year round is still an option.  Apparently, the Vatican rule is that if you choose to eat meat on Fridays outside of Lent, you are do something to ‘offset’ that luxury during the remainder of the year).   What interested me the most in the story was that the idea was to have Catholics eat a low cost, basic meal…to go without a luxury.    But what has happened is that people now use Lenten Fridays as an excuse to go out and have a lobster and crab leg dinner.  This, people, defeats the purpose of going without a luxury. So.. no lobster during Lent alright?

Anyway… I’m off topic.. kinda.   I really wanted to talk about the act of  ‘giving something up’ during Lent.  It’s traditional for Catholics, during the Lenten season, to give something up besides meat on Fridays.  Over the years, I’ve given up the following:

• Soda:  It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.  I was in high school and I substituted sodas with Gatorade or Sweet Tea.   I probably shouldn’t have found a ’soda substitutes’ but I was in high school… cut me some slack
• Chocolate:  For several years I gave up chocolate.  It was hard when I was in middle/high school, but once I got into college, it was easier.
• Candy:  This one was always hard.    I would try to rationalize things that weren’t ‘candy’ like mints, gum, marshmallows, etc.   I always have problems when I give up candy.
• Alcohol:  I don’t really drink alot, and I never really did, even in college.   So the year I gave up alcohol was really cheating.  You can’t give something up that you don’t really do.
• Swearing:  Yeaaaaahhhhhh… so I never really got through this one.  I can’t help it.  I really like to swear.   I promised that I could do it.  I could go 40 days without saying a swear word.     I didn’t make it out of the church parking lot on Ash Wednesday before I was swearing at a man who cut me off as I was trying to pull onto a busy downtown street to get back to school before I missed class.    FAIL

So this year, I thought long and hard about what I was going to ‘give up’ for Lent, and I just couldn’t thinking of anything.   In my last post, I mentioned having  over 700 entries to read in my Google Reader.  I thought for a moment about giving up Google Reader, but that seemed so trite.   As I was reading some of the backlogs  of one of my favorite, beautiful bloggers, Fat Bridesmaid, I discovered that she had come up with the most perfect thing to give up for Lent.

She’s giving up laziness for Lent!!!    Her promise is to work out at least 30 minutes a day for the next 40 days!

I think it’s GENIUS!!!   I mean.. it’s so easy to be lazy.  So convenient and comfortable… even tempting.      It’s just what I need to get myself motivated and to get out of my rut, while giving up something that I love (lazy couch time).

So I’m stealing her idea joining her party!  Click here, here, here and here to see her posts (and ‘rules’ if you will) about giving up laziness for Lent, and if you feel so inclined…join the party.

For now, I’m off to figure out when what time I’m going to the gym tomorrow.   I’m totally going to Kill Laziness!

Um…. do you think it’s wrong to kill something for Lent?!?!

This is Why I Don’t Blog More..

Do you know how long it takes to read 709 Google Reader entries?

A little more than 5 hours.. if you count potty breaks.

Well.. That Was Anticlimactic

My 100 post… FINALLY.  And it’s really not about much.  I’ve got no grand party planned.  No big announcement.  Nothing.

Le sigh….

So on Monday, I went on a job interview… in my new navy suit… to discuss a job… with my former employer.   Yeah.. like the one who laid me off a short 26 days ago.   What can I say.. I’m a glutton for punishment.  The suit was great (man.. I knew that navy suit would work well), and the interview went well.   They said that I should know something, one way or another, by the end of next week.   My personal gut feeling is that I didn’t get the job.  There really is nothing to prove that or to substantiate the claim.. just my gut.   But 29 years of gut feelings has to count for something.

Oh.. yeah.  Before the interview, I realized I needed some darker brown shoes to go with my suit (only after hours and hours — I kid you not, of Google research on what color shoes one should wear with a medium navy colored suit, did I decide that black wouldn’t work (the suit wasn’t dark enough) and navy was too .. well… navy.  Again.. 2-3 hours of Google research to find out what color to wear as to not commit some sort of fashion faux pas.  No one ever said I wasn’t thorough).    Where was I.  Oh.. shoes.   So, being on the budget that I’m on, I headed to Marshalls to find some shoes, and a ‘work tote’ that matched. I found both for a great price.  I did NOT, however; expect to find this

Of course, for the life of me, I can’t find any information about the bag online.   I can only tell you it’s a BCBG and it’s a DELIGHTFUL plum color.

I didn’t go out looking for a new purse, I mean.. I know that I’m keeping money tight in case that I’m not working for longer than I anticipated, but I just couldn’t pass it up.  It was original priced at $99 (which means it was retail $200) and it was marked down to $79.  And I knew that the bag wouldn’t stick around for long.   So..I bought it.   But with contingencies.   If I’m not working within the next 30 days (the time limit on returns for full refunds at Marshalls), the bag goes back.  Until then… I’m not even ‘unstuffing’ it.   It just sits there, staring at me with very sad designer purse eyes, wondering why I don’t love it.   It’s killing me.

Tuesday, I got up ‘early’ if you will (hey… 10 am is early if you’re staying up until 3 am every day) to get ready for a job fair.   Again, I suited up and headed out.   O.M.G what a horrible waste of time.   The job fair was held at a local expo center.  You know the place.. where they hold gun shows, RV shows, boat shows, etc.   The job fair was a teeeee-tiny room.  There were only 10 tables set up and 4 of them were for extended education opportunities (like online universities).  2 were for companies that didn’t have any openings (WTF??).  That left 4 tables for companies that would have jobs.   2 companies were only hiring for commission only sales (no thanks), one I was very much over qualified for, and the final turned out to be a temp agency with a line an hour long.  I figured that I could just submit my resume to their website and forgo the hour long wait to say hello.

So I left the job fair… a mere 15 minutes after arriving.    Thankfully, the library was just across the street, so I hopped over to return the trashy romance novels that I had checked out (3 novels in less than a week is NOT A HABIT) and picked up the 5 they had on hold for me a few more.

When I got home, I was bummed about the job fair and needed to work out some extra energy.  I know what you’re thinking.. I went to the gym right??  Nope.

I did our taxes.   =)

At least we’re getting a good chunk of money back.  WooHoo Money!!!

And now.. I’m off to read some trashy romance while my husband plays “Need for Speed” on the Wii.    Ahh… the life of newlyweds.

Still here… for now

I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth.. I’ve just spent the week working.

I’ve been working:

• On my resume.  Sweet Jesus it shouldn’t be this hard to figure out how to take two years of work  and boil it down to 3-5 bullet points that make you look like the super star that you really are.   I mean.. SERIOUSLY!! A.WHOLE.WEEK.OF.UPDATING!  Thankfully, I have people who are willing to help me or I’d go insane (and have a horrible resume)
• On my Wii-ness.  Teeehheeeheee (Wiiness rhymes with …) Sorry.. got distracted there.  Yeah.. so what. I’ve been playing the Wii.
• On cleaning my house.  There is nothing worse than knowing that I have been out of work for 20 days and my house looks like crap.   I mean… 20-30 minutes a day would take care of that… UGH
• On my ‘healthy’ resolution.  Yeah… I   still haven’t been to the gym.  But.. at least I’m not staying up until 3 am and sleeping until noon.   As soon as I get back on a regular sleep schedule.. I’m totally get back to the gym.
• On my daily reading.   So.. I have a small confession to make.  I mean.. it’s just a small… little bitty…habit if you will.   I luuuuuvvvve to read …. super trashy romance novels.  You know the kind.. that you buy at the grocery store.  All paperback with 1/2 naked men on the cover and trashy.   It was a habit I started as a teenager and I mostly got out of it in college (to much technical reading to do). The problem is that once I start one of these books… I CAN.NOT.PUT.IT.DOWN.  I mean.. I’ll refuse to stop reading.  It’s baaaaaadddd.   I hadn’t picked up a book until the weekend the husband broke his knee.   And since then, I’ve been fairly good about reading here and there.   Well.. the other day, I was bored out of my mind and wanted to read some trash -thing entertaining but didn’t think that spending $10-20 in housewife romance smut (can you say smut on your blog??) was a good idea.   So….
• I got a library card.   Woot!!   FREE Housewife Romance Smut.  (Stop judging… we all have a vice)

And now my parents have come to visit until Saturday.  Mom and I will be attending the Lady Vol basketball game tonight and then just hanging out tomorrow.  Fun

That’s all I’ve got for now.  Next week, I’m back on blogging track.   More than one post a week.  P.R.O.M.I.S.E

It’s All About Priorities…

Apply to more jobs or play Super Mario Galaxy?

I mean really… was there any question?

Oh.. calm down people.. I’ve already applied to three jobs today, written two cover letters and contacted two hopeful connections for potential leads.  It’s not like all I’ve done is play Super Mario Galaxy.   Sheeeessss..