Changes and More Changes

I'm sure most of u have heard me whine and complain about this already, but too bad.

I don't do well with change. Never have. Never will. And you can't change that.

We are "temporarily" (2 years) moving to the project office next week for this big design build.
1 - There will be 3 people to an office (a little crowded.. where will I put my stuff?).
2 - I was originally told I'd still have my cubicle here but apparently that is no longer the case.
3 - There is not enough parking at the new office for everyone and they have no plans to fix it.
4 - We won't have access to my companies servers anymore.
5 - I just burned my mouth on chicken pizza I had for lunch.
6 - We have to go to 8-5's.
7 - One of the lady Engineers told us to be careful leaving at night cuz the new office is in a seedy area.

#6 is what chaps my hide. I have always had Friday afternoon off (9 hour days, half day on Fridays). Now I can't talk 2 Bethanie for 3 hours and have lunch with Melissa and go to the library.

And what will I do with my sticker collection? I already started afresh when we moved HERE.
Don't explain that Melissa and Bethanie still exist at other times during the week or that the company is paying me so they get to decide or that I should be grateful to even HAVE a job. I am complaining here!

When I whined one more time to Arvid "I don't wanna move!", He responded with "Do you want to keep ur job?"

At that point I almost said NO. Instead I said "Yes, but I wanna whine!". Then I didn't whine at him anymore, just my family and friends. It takes a lot of work to be my friend.

Then, to top it all off.... On Sunday, this man-- (the Bishop) decided to change things up on me even more and take my Mia Maid advisor away. The most loving and competent Sis. Senecal.

And to think, just last week I was happily hiking with him and the rest of the crew.Shore, he gave an excellent lesson on Sunday and a great spiritual thought up on the mountain, but he's not on my good side right now. Happy carefree days of yore collecting branches, sticks, and pine cones... Will it ever be so again?

Cooking Experiment

I read somewhere about a lady cooking cookies on her electric skillet rather than cooking them in the oven.

That sounds like fun! I wanna try it!

So I whipped up a batch of snickerdoodles, minus the sugar and cinnamon coated outside.

Here they are cooking on the griddle (already flipped).

Unfortunately, they took a while to cook and you couldn't put very many on at one time. The cookies are soft and melty so you need plenty of room to scoop under and flip. And guess what? They taste exactly the same-minus the cinnamon and sugar outside coating.

Whoda thunk?

Then I did a couple in my Toaster Oven while waiting for the ones in the skillet to cook... which didn't take as long but I could only do 4-6 at a time.

Then if you can't find the kitchen timer and put the last two in the oven and run upstairs to rip a CD on the computer and forget about the cookies cuz ur playing solitaire frenzy... breathe.... You get this.

Well.. at least the smell was outside. I decided to share with Spree. Birds like carbon, right? One smell and he backed WAY off. And yelled. Ungrateful swine turkey.

In order to get rid of them all (for some reason I've never figured out how to HALVE a recipe), you take them with you to Mt Charleston for all the hungry YW/YM to eat brownies instead of ur cookies. Oops.

But I showed them. I left them in the back of the YW presidents car so HER kids had to eat them. HA!

All in all it was a fun experiment. If I had the time and patience I could probably find a higher temperature on the griddle where they wouldn't scortch (I had it too high at first), but still cooked in a reasonable time. And, I probably didn't really need to flip them, but I was trying to hurry up the process.

Sad Tube Story (in Pictures)

Saturday Morning 5:30am-6:30am

Slow Leak. Twisted = POP! Valve patcheS (multiple) fail.

Its a sad day when you run out of tubes. U'd think 5 would be enough.

Hair Care

One of the problems of living alone is the absence of the free trim.

So I decided to cut my hair myself.

OK, so I do have visitors every once in a while and I meant to ask them to help me out, but I was too busy talking about other aspects of my their lives.

I finally got tired of it the night before Stake Conference.

Here is my hair in all its glory in the downstairs bathroom.

Oops.. forgot to take out the bun. Pretty good job for a couple of mirrors and a pair of scissors, eh? I bet you got a little worried with the "before Stake Conference" statement.

I still need to take some more off (I cut about 3 inches) if I want to get all the split ends, but I wanted to start small. Baby steps. Especially with Stake Conference the next day and I was gonna be on TV!

Yup, after much whining and complaining about not getting my original seat, I ended up smack dab behind the podium. Brother Thomas told me I could only be there if I didn't pick my nose.

I told him I had already gotten all my picking out before I came.

Bikers Can Be Friendly

Its true. Then again, sometimes they are not.

Lets give a hypothetical situation.

Lets say someone goes out on their bike early in the morning before Stake Choir Practice. This someone rides around a bit all the while thinking about the intimating Red Rock Loop.

There is something I need to explain about Red Rock Loop. Every true Bicycler in all of Las Vegas does the Red Rock Loop every Saturday and Sunday morning and at random times during the week in groups of 1-30. This is why it is so daunting.... Some bikers like to trek slowly along without being passed, thus stoking any unmerited competitive fire (focus on the word "unmerited"). The fact that it takes a bit to get out to and is a many mile loop doesn't help either.

So.. Lets say this hypothetical biker decides to see exactly how long it takes to get out to Red Rock. By this time she (we are assuming the biker is of the female persuasion) doesn't have enough time to do the loop, but since she is already in the area she might go see. Plus, she has already been passed by many bikers who didn't respond to her "morning" or even lift their fingers in a wave if they were on the other side of the road meaning she could safely label them as losers. Who cares what losers think of slowness?

Before she is hypothetically barely out of the city, scores of bikers have passed her in the unfriendly way she has already hypothetically observed.

Halfway up the first hill, something hypothetically shifts wrong and she hears hissing air as the valve on her back tire hypothetically gives out.

Sigh. Poor Hypothetical rider. At least she didn't fall over in front of a car full of ward members.

She hypothetically pulls off down into the rocks to change her flat tire.

For the next 15 minutes she hypothetically hears a mixture of "Are you OK?" and "Do you have everything you need?" every few seconds. She responds with "Yes, thank you" or "Yes, thank you" to every inquiry. What a friendly hypothetical rider.

The moral of this story? In a crisis, bikers are willing to help u out. Just don't expect them to say "Good Morning".

I Survived

Yes, I survived Girls Camp up at Mount Charleston.

OK, so I just went up Friday afternoon and left early Saturday morning to ride my bike down the mountain but I can still say I did it.

Its my blog, and I set the rules.

Sitting up late after testimony meeting avoiding hugs, singing "Bill Groghans Goat", "I had a Rooster", "My Countries Sick of Me", "Alice, where are you Going?", and telling all my (VERY FUNNY) elephant jokes COUNTS.. even if it is just for one night and you don't stick around to help clean up the next day.

In fact... I'd say its the best way to experience Girls Camp.

That, and the fact that I had Sister Holly Steed there to talk to all afternoon about books, songs, and generally anything that came into my head as well as drive my car back so I could ride my bike. I must say, that's true friendship.

Oh yes, and getting to celebrate loudly in the dining pavilion after winning an arm wrestling match. True, my YW president pointed out that my opponent was only 13, but I take my wins as I can get them. Generally if someone is willing to arm wrestle, it means I'm gonna lose.

I like elephant jokes.

Unfortunately earplugs don't drown out hyper screaming girls... or the bishop sawing away at LARGE logs in his tent. I am also getting old and don't recover as quickly as I used to from lying all night on a skinny little camping pad... in the cold... with at most 2 hours of sleep (see above sentence regarding hyper girls and sawing bishops). The half an hour walk packing my bike out to the paved road didn't help much either.

My whole body was still sore on Monday.

It couldn't have been the 2 hour bike ride to my house cuz I've been doing that much every Saturday morning with Melissa for the last couple months.

And to top it off, I never pulled out my camera! Yes, Girls Camp was that memorable.

So you get a picture of my tomatoes. I finally decided they weren't going to get any redder on dead plants so I picked them all and will make spaghetti sauce.
So, to bring this random post all together: I survived, unlike the poor dead plants these tomatoes came off of.

3 things I learned at the Swimming Pool Last Night

1. A Speedo is not appropriate swimwear for a guy at a public pool.

2. A Speedo is NEVER appropriate swimwear for an older man at a public pool.

3. A Speedo is NEVER EVER appropriate swimwear for a heavyset man at a public pool.

The only appropriate time for a speedo is at a swim meet or the Olympics. And even then its questionable cuz they have those cool jammers (long leggings) that make you go way fast.

A final question: Why oh why do the speedo wearers pick the lanes on either side of ME?!?!?

No Brilliance Here

Bethanie wrote a post about being brilliant in the cooking department.

Well... all I ever claimed was smart, but that might be a bit of a hard sell after this post.

This is what happens when you try and make rice crispy treats with old, hard marshmallows. No matter how much I stirred and added water, it just wasn't happening.

Mom said all old, hard marshmallows are good for is hot chocolate.

Too bad there isn't really a good time for hot chocolate here in Vegas except when sitting in the ice box they call the office (it is always SO COLD there! All the girls have sweaters and Akiko even has a Hello Kitty blanket she wraps herself in).

I did make some killer rice crispy treats from newer marshmallows but didn't take a picture because after spending so much time on that glop, I was in a rush to get them done. I smooshed them into whatever cookie cutters I had that would work. A star (Christmas), a bunny and a flower (Easter), a pumpkin (Halloween), and a heart (valentines Day). I did quite a few hearts at the end cuz it was big, quick, and easy. I think they were a big hit at Melissa's house Saterday night where I had been invited to play Aquire.

On the way back from Melissa's, I gave into hours spent price matching, coveting, waiting to receive as a present, and bought a toaster oven. Here it is, full of beans (that eventually burned and I had to throw away).I was pretty proud of myself for using both my toaster oven AND my skillet Sunday night. It was fast Sunday and I was hungry... even though I actually did this after I had already broken my fast and eaten dinner. Perhaps that's why the beans burned. Why do I always feel like cooking around 8 or 9pm?

OK, so really they burned because after soaking, I put them straight into the oven. For some reason I thought 10 hours in a crockpot would be similar to 2 hours in an oven. Sike!

After 3 hours in the oven they were still crunchy and a little black. It was pretty late, so I took them out and put them in the crockpot with what I thought was enough water to finish cooking over night. In the morning my house STUNK and I had to throw the whole mess out.

Brilliant.

As for the electric skillet, I substituted soy sauce for salt in a vegetable casserole using a cream of soup as it's base. Don't do it... even if the recipe is titled "Oriental vegetables".

Just Brilliant.