I’m always surprised by how much use the paper dictionaries get. I walk past them several times a day, and there is almost always someone using them. I use Dictionary.com instead, but perhaps some of my coworkers make better use of various excuses to get away from their desks, if only for a few moments?
This cart of microfilm reels has been sitting by a coworker’s desk for most of the week. I was hoping it would still be there on Saturday, so I could get a photo. (I hate trying to take pictures at work during the week, because it’s busy and my camera is noisy.)
Win!
I’m still working out the best white balance settings for my apartment. Since the lighting is a mix of incandescent and compact fluorescent, it’s a little challenging. Usually I end up doing color correction in Photoshop. This is one of the few I haven’t had to fix.
I mentioned that I have a serious love for both broccoli and green beans? And mashed potatoes? Despite the fact that I normally have a food taboo against mixing ingredients, one of my most favorite comfort dishes is mashed potatoes mixed with green beans and/or broccoli (spinach and corn are good additions, too). I especially like it served with a side of stir fried cabbage, onions, and shredded carrots.
Come to find out, as I was trawling Apartment Therapy’s Kitchn blog, there was a link to a recipe for Irio.
Irio is a Kenyan dish made of mashed potatoes and green veggies that’s a lot like Colcannon, which is a lot like my favorite mashed potatoes. I think most cultures that eat potatoes probably have a similar dish, because it’s quick, easy, filling, and emotionally satisfying.
I’m having steamed broccoli and mashed potatoes for supper. And for lunch tomorrow. And probably for supper tomorrow night, too. I have a deep and abiding love of broccoli (it nearly rivals my love of green beans), so there is no such thing as “too much broccoli” in my world.
And speaking of that Outlook calendar training workshop we worker bees had to attend a couple of weeks ago…
I said at the time that it was silly for us to attend, when it was the higher-ups who needed to learn how to use their calendars. Most of the workshop focused on scheduling meetings for lots of people, so of course, we just got an email from the head of cataloging about a training session next week. An email, not a meeting request. Grrr. Which means that we all have to manually add the information to our calendars, instead of clicky-clicking on a single button so that it’s added automagically.
Although the brazillions of emails from people who ignored or didn’t see my “taken” posts was starting to drive me a little nuts (Reading is Fundamental, people!), the woman who received my two lots of stuff showed up when she said she would, and everything went smoothly.
So, all in all, as a way to get rid of crap you no longer want, I give it two thumbs up.
As I’ve decided to embrace the evil that is MS Outlook 2007, in no small part because I need a good, functional calendar, I decided to look around for calendar add-ons. Specifically, I wanted a moon phase calendar. There are a couple of websites selling them, but I found iCalShare, which has free calendars. Obviously, these are only as good as the folks who created them, but you cannot beat the price.
I snagged a moon phase calendar, a Mercury retrograde calendar, a Roman Catholic feasts-n-saints calendar, and wonder of wonders, an academic calendar for IU Bloomington. The last is perplexingly missing from our work calendars. You’d think that official university events would be part of the standard Outlook install for our campus, but I guess not.
I think you can also file this under “spring cleaning.” I’m having some sort of OCD fit and am apparently needing to create order out of chaos.
My oven died. Again. It was the same problem as last time. I didn’t look very closely when the maintenance guy was explaining the problem (the less I know about electricity, the better), but apparently there is some sort of ground wire that keeps shorting out. He swears it’s fixed FOR REALS this time. We’ll see.
In an effort to take it on a test run, I baked a chocolate cake. Mmmm.
What I did not do is finish cleaning out the studio/office. It’s about half done, but the rest will have to wait, I think. I still have to clean the bathroom, and after a weekend of working my ass off, that’s about all I intend to do tonight.
But! I think everything else on my big list is pretty much done. I even cleaned out the bedroom closet and sorted a bunch of junk that had started to procreate in the corner of the living room. Someone is hopefully coming to pick up the stuff I Freecycled, tomorrow night. I hope she brings help, because one of the boxes is kind of heavy. There’s also a contractor bag full of board games that weights a metric buttload. If she doesn’t bring help, I’m going to have to divide the games into two smaller trash bags. Carrying something that heavy across the living room is one thing, but carrying it out to her car might make me cry.
It’s nearly done, and a good thing, because my knee and back are sore. Also my hands, from stapling new covers onto the dining room chair seats. Once the giant mountain of Freecycle stuff is gone from the dining room and I dump the crap in my car at the Mission, all that’s left will be cleaning the bathroom, washing the dog and trimming her nails, and cleaning the studio, which is already half-way clean.
I’m hoping to finish up tonight (well, everything except the trip to the Mission). If so, this will be the first time since moving here that everything has been clean and organized at the same time. I’ve even been dumping and sorting drawers, closets, and boxes as I’ve moved stuff around.
These two may as well be joined at the hip, because they are never more than a fin’s length away from each other.
red paper boat 