When working isn't a problem

Things have taken off, and my schedule has stabilized. This may be, in part, due to roommates waking up insanely early even on the weekend to go showshoeing and mountain climbing and other alien pursuits. Also this cold hasn't helped, I've been waking up before my alarm from the sound of my tongue cracking (since my nostrils don't work).

The thing I am still having trouble with is getting things done around the house, and sticking to an exercise schedule. My new thought is that if I have fun new video games to play, it will get me down in the exercise area and function as a non-food reward (those are hard to find). Of course I can't afford to buy new games so instead I made a small investment so I can do a little h4x0ring. Stay tuned.

The other day, when the pantry was a bit bare, I decided to try cooking up some of this grain mix that's been sitting around forever. It's a combination of Trader Joe's harvest grains mix, some buckwheat groats, and assorted unknown dried beans, legumes and grains. Possibly rice? Who knows. Here's what it looks like:

 

So I cooked it up with some Italian spice blend (no salt when cooking lentils) and it came out tasting like mashed ass. After that initial disappointment, I decided it was a perfect time to make some burgers to freeze for quick protein. Lately my joints have been extra achy and my brain malfunctioning what with the cold, so I decided I might be low on Omega fatty acids. Hence this recipe:

Omega Burgers
Makes 10+ burgers depending on how big you make them. 

1 cup walnuts
4 cloves garlic
6 green onions, white parts only
3 cups mixed, cooked grains
1/4 cup ground flax seed
2 TBSP soybean oil (aka vegetable oil)
2 TBSP soy sauce
1/4 can beer
1/2 C chickpea flour (or other flour)
1/2 C cornflake crumbs (or breadcrumbs or panko)
olive or vegetable oil
season salt
black pepper

Combine walnuts and garlic in a food processor and run until fairly well chopped. Add green onions and puree. Scrape the sides and add grains, flax, oil, and soy sauce. Process until it starts to freak out or a large clump starts circling, then slowly pour in beer until it has a paste-like texture. Scrape into a bowl and mix in chickpea flour and cornflake crumbs, adding more beer if it becomes too thick to work, or more flour & crumbs if it's too wet. You're aiming for something that you can shape into a patty in your hand that sticks together, but doesn't stick too badly to your hand. 

It'll look about like this (note I used Busch Lite because it's not like I'm going to be drinking it or anything):

You can either panfry these or bake them. Panfried are squishy in the middle, but have a nicer color and a crisp crunch.

To bake, preheat oven to 400 (or maybe 425, I had them at 375 and it was too low). Brush a baking sheet in olive oil. Shape burgers by about a 1/3 to 1/2 cupful in your hand. You can squash them flatter on the baking sheet. Brush the tops with olive oil and shake on a dash of season salt and grind some fresh pepper on the tops. Mine looked like this:

Bake for at least 20 minutes and keep checking until they're firm, starting to brown on the bottom and hopefully will release easily from the sheet. It might take longer so adjust times/temps accordingly.

For panfrying, cover a plate with paper towels or torn pieces of a paper bag. Heat a skillet on medium heat and add enough vegetable oil to cover the bottom of the pan. Drop in a burger (I did mine one at a time but you can be daring and try more), and cook a few minutes until you can see the bottom edge starting to brown. Flip and cook the other side for a minute or two and cook until it's as brown as you like. Here's about the color after the first flip:

Put the cooked burgers on the paper-covered plate to absorb the extra grease. Use the leftover oil to caramelize onions, if you like.

I had mine with caramelized onions, salsa and avocado, or the next day with some ketchup and mustard on a cracked wheat sourdough roll. Both are good.


If you have a dog that does well with onions and garlic (they can be toxic), or you leave those out, get the dog to clean your hands for you:

Thanks Lulu!

Stress!

Freelance tip #1: Just because your paycheck arrived super-quickly the last time, do NOT budget for that to happen again.

My last mailed paycheck arrived on the same day that I thought it would be mailed, so I assumed it would be that quick again. Not so! Now my rent check was mailed Saturday and is probably in the hands of my landlady already. Will my check arrive tomorrow? Not until Friday? I have no idea. And I have $12 to my name. Bad scene!

Also, I'm making sure we have everything set for our big long meeting next week, and remembered that way back in October before I took time off to finish my thesis, the GIS guru and I had discussed installing HAZUS on one of the computers in the office so that I could run some scenarios and do some analysis. For the most part, I don't need this until next month, but I suddenly realized that actually, having a couple of maps would be useful right now, and I'm kicking myself for not taking care of that earlier.

There's also this bit of imbalance where I'm not sure if I should take the initiative in contacting people or if I'm overstepping my bounds as a contractor. It makes me question my actions in a way I didn't anticipate.

On a more positive note, here are some tips that are helping me get some work done from home, many of which were gathered from Lifehacker:

• Make a schedule that works with your natural schedule
• I found myself only able to get down to work around noon, but then I was able to crank away until dinner time. So I set that as my work schedule, rather than trying to force myself to wake up every morning at 8 or 9 and get right to work. Before I start work that gives me some time to wake up, take care of house chores, cook, work out, etc.
• An aside to this: if I bring my computer up to my room when I go to bed, this schedule will fail. I'll stay up late doing stupid stuff, sleep in through my alarm, then spend hours the next morning in bed doing stupid stuff on the computer. My Precious stays downstairs at night now and I can check e-mail on my blackberry so I don't have to worry about missing a time-sensitive e-mail.
• Set up a work space
• It's not a private room where I can close the door and remove distractions, but our cafe setup is made for working, and not as comfortable for relaxing. It helps to have others working at the same time. I can leave my Wacom tablet and hard drive in the same place, and the printer is there, too.
• The pomodoro method (set a timer for 25 minutes, work until it's done, take a 5 minute break)
• I just started this and today had so much to do that getting myself to focus wasn't an issue, so the jury's still out on this one. I can see how it would work well, though.
•  Task list
• At the beginning of the week, I make a task list with several items, grouped by deadline or project. Throughout the week I cross them off as I go, and if I hit a wall on one item, I check my list and switch to something else. Whatever is left at the end of the week goes on the next week's task list. I e-mail a copy to my client so she knows what I'm working on, and can add items if she thinks of something that would be useful.

I'll add to this list as I discover more or tweak these things. Hopefully I'll also figure out some stress management ideas. I was on the Wii Fit for an hour this morning but I don't feel like that helped.

Stuffs to be working on

Hopefully you'll see blahg posts about all of these exciting things in the next few weeks. By exciting I mean pretty boring.

Painting: I have to finish this one that I started yesterday. At least I finished the fruit bowl so we can use the fruits now, but I'm not sure what I want to do with the background. Ink wash? Pencil or charcoal? The background's mostly black so I hesitate to do more pastels.

Gardening: I'm sure it's just being a tease, but the weather's actually been... sunny? Not raining?! In Seattle, in January, so I should take the opportunity to put down some mulch and maybe a few bulbs, since daffodils are apparently already sprouting. I bet there's a blizzard.

Various restaurant and cafe reviews: How to eat out as a vegan in non-vegan places is always a fun topic. The best coffeeshops to work in, their pros and cons are another useful one.

Debt management: One of these days I should have enough money for both bills and creditors. I may also switch to a credit union so that Bank of America doesn't keep stealing $35 overdraft fees from me every time I'm short a few bucks (AND HAVE PLENTY IN MY SECONDARY ACCOUNT YOU FUCKING BASTARDS). If I have any tips for dealing with collections I'll post my experiences.

My current schedule involves attempting to wake up at or before 9 (today it finally happened!), playing until about lunchtime (should not be on the computer though) and working until dinner or so.

Now... a little Wii and then I get to work!

V-con dinner

This is curry-marinated baked tofu, garlic saffron rice and cornmeal-masala roasted Brussels sprouts from the Veganomicon. 3 mix and matches, all vaguely Indian spices inspired.

Sam, the thieving bastard, has been hoping I forgot about my large glass casserole dish for the past several weeks so I've been going crazy trying to figure out where it was and making things in smaller containers. Tonight it would have helped, but instead I baked the tofu in my George Foreman G-5 for a hella long time on medium-low, which kinda worked.

The cornmeal sprouts really didn't turn out as advertised. Way too much oil, I got a batter rather than crumblies, and it never really toasted up in the oven. This may be because the rack was a bit low, or maybe it would have done better on foil or a cookie sheet. I cooked it for an extra 10 minutes, too.

I used brown jasmine rice instead of white, so I cooked it for 40 minutes instead of 20, and then forgot to move it off the heat and open the lid after 10 minutes so it got a bit squishy.

All in all, though, still yummy, just some things I would change for next time. Like, say, use 3 tablespoons of oil instead of 6 in the sprouts.

Blueberry Almond Scones

Joni accidentally opened an extra box of soymilk, so I thought I'd make some scones. Of course in our house, we call them sconces - back in my Starbucks days there were a few customers who were unaware of the difference between pastries and home decor. I can't find my copy of Vegan with a Vengeance for some odd reason so I had to use my google-fu, and altered this recipe to match my ingredients.

Cherry Almond Scones

1 C. All-Purpose White Flour
1 C. Whole Wheat Flour
1⁄2 C. Turbinado/Raw Sugar
2 t. Baking Powder
1⁄2 t. Baking Soda
1⁄2 t. Kosher Salt
1⁄4 C. Margarine
1⁄2 C. Soymilk (plain or vanilla)
1 t. Vanilla Extract
3⁄4 C. Fresh or Frozen Wild Blueberries
1⁄2 C. Slivered Almonds
Extra Soymilk and Sugar, for topping

1. Preheat the oven to 400º.

2. Mix together the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the margarine and cut into the flour mixture using a pastry cutter (two butter knives held together) or your fingers, until the mixture resembles a coarse, crumbly meal.

3. Add the soymilk, almond extract, blueberries and almonds. Mix well with a wooden spoon or your hands until the mixture comes together to form a dough. You may need to add an extra tablespoon of soymilk if the mixture is too dry.

4. Scoop the scones in approximately half-cup mounds onto a cookie sheet and press the tops flat; round the edges if needed.

5. Brush the tops with a bit of soymilk (I used my fingers) and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, until the edges and bottom are golden. Place scones on a plate to cool.

Makes 9. 

Blogging: Redux

I've been thinking about getting a new blog going for a while. "I have enough content that it can be something other than angry, drunken rambling", I thought: the best cafes in Seattle to work from, how to freelance when you suck at time management, getting along as a professional when still broke... plus fun things, like creative projects, vegan recipes, restaurant reviews, and perhaps the occasional story about crazy friends and family, or tales of living with 4 very distinct personalities, a dog and a cat.

Since I had this and used it for a while, I thought I'd resurrect it rather than taking up yet more space in the tubes. There are some parts about this layout that I really like, and some parts that are really dated and lame. Some of those things are the same, because I'm a little bit dated and lame, myself.

Also, I will attempt to use the labels function effectively for navigational excellence. 

6 Years of Posts

I stopped using this back in 2003 and switched to livejournal and have been posting from there for the past six years. If for some strange reason you feel the need to have a complete picture of my life, go there.

Money Money Money

The past week can be pretty much define as 'money coming in and money going out'. Money going out started while hanging out with Carolyn last week. She took me to Dave and Andy's for celebratory frozen yogurt, then we came back and made spinach-and-artichoke dip and rented Rope and The Shop Around the Corner (which is about 100 times better than You've Got Mail). Money coming in was from Starbucks, of course, where I spent 12 hours on the register last weekend, screwing up a bit now and then but, according to my co-workers, not as badly as they did.

Yesterday, Carolyn, Laura and I hit Kennywood for the first time (for me, anyway), for about 7 hours. We hit all the big coasters and a couple of the smaller rides. I got soaked on the log flume, slightly sunburned and was nauseous by the time we finished the Thunderbolt, as it had been a while since we'd eaten. It was a major boobage day, as well. Laura and I had to make some, ahem, adjustments after a couple of rides, and Carolyn's shirt flew up on the Pitt Fall and she flashed the waiting crowd (I begged off that one - afraid of heights). Quote of the day came from Carolyn - while waiting in line for the Exterminator (awesome ride - slightly painful but totally worth it) - to explain her technique for demolishing a jawbreaker the size of a softball: "You just suck." Stated emphatically and matter-of factly, I might add.

As the sun started to set we piled back in the car and hit TGI Fridays for some mixed drinks, an appetizer and dessert. After having eaten nothing but a pretzel and a lollipop that turned my lips blue in the last 6 hours, the strawberry daquiri hit me a little harder than normal and I had Carolyn drive just to be safe. We hit Geagle for chips and dip and rented Thoroughly Modern Millie, which we - thoroughly - enjoyed (although I was the only one to stay conscious throughout).

I had another shift at Starbucks today and made plans to work nearly 20 hours this weekend, including almost 12 on Friday alone. It's gonna suck, but I don't work until then so I need the hours. Ran into Samantha H. (of CD 2002 fame) today while working. Chatted briefly - she says her contract at CMU is up soon, she'll probably stick around in Pittsburgh until October or so doing freelance. I should really spend the next few days figuring out another source of income, and getting started on some projects which will justify part-timing it for a while. I would feel a bit better about my current setup if I was knocking out some design stuff in the meantime. Maybe some furniture or art projects, at least.

I also need to decide on a second income. I'm guessing I'll have to just get a second job for at least a while, until I can find some artistic endeavor which provides extra cash every month to balance my budget. I didn't feel like I could concentrate on any design-stuff until I had a steady job, and now that that is off the hook, and I know my schedule at least a few days in advance, I can start to think about these things.

I started keeping a dream diary. We'll see how long it lasts. If nothing else, perhaps I can make some cash in the future as a screenwriter, using the plots from my crazy-wacked out dreams.

I have an appointment with the vet on Thursday to get kitty's stitches removed and ask the doctor a few questions about some things I've found on kitty. I don't expect the news to be good, and it's making me sick to think of it. Since I can't do anything until then, however, I'm trying not to think about it. At least I don't have to worry about the job situation as much as before. It's a comfort, at any rate. I still get a little heartsick at various things, though. Missing my friends who seem to keep getting farther away, missing my cat before he's even gone. Wondering where my life is going, and how far off-track I am.

I have never been so keenly aware that I am the only person currently controlling my life.

Approved!

Finally, the iBOT got the FDA approval it's been seeking for the past few years. I saw this wheelchair on one of its field tests while I was working for the NPS. We took it up to Marin county for testing (well, they did, I tagged along). Rough wooden stairs, gravel paths, black sand beaches (the last one gave them some trouble, and they blew a tire on the bridge over). Raising it up to full height and trying to push him over - all taken in stride, er, so to speak.

Seriously though, this thing is ultra cool. I hope insurance companies cover it like mad, because it solves so many accessibility problems.

Starbucks training is proceeding apace. I found out that in addition to insurance, I get 401K, stock options, paid vacations, personal days and, most importantly, an assload of free coffee. After tasting 6 types of coffee today (including Brand X!!), I was jittery until 7 o'clock, then went over the caffeine cliff and crashed until 9:30. Now it's time to tackle the kitchen. *shudder*

Audial Voyeurism

I can hear a woman crying through my open window. I mean really sobbing her heart out. I think it's coming from one of the apartments in the building next door but with all these windows around it's hard to tell. I really want to go give her a hug or something. It sounds like she's alone, I can't hear any other voices and she's obviously not trying to be quiet. I wonder what happened... sad movie? breakup? bad news?

Just leaving your window open in a city is an interesting social experiment. Especially when you don't really have a view to speak of, except a blinds-covered window across the alley. It leaves you with nothing but sound to interpret what's going on in the outside world. Snippets of conversation. Blaring music from passing cars. Various sound effects. It'd be a cool idea to record them or write a story, based on sound alone.

Kitty's recovering nicely from his surgery. No pain meds, no collar, just a big-ass scar across his *other* shoulder. Now he has 3 different lengths of fur in his head and neck area.

He was also intrigued by the crying woman, if his dash to the window was any indication. I wish I could lend him to her or something, although he'd probably be a shit and not allow himself to be cuddled.

So... any suggestions on how to tell my mom that I spent *another* $400 on my cat?

(By the way, I point my finger and laugh at you Xanga fools. Blogger rules.)