Rotate the foodstuffs!

Oh, dear sweet Jesus.  Last time my mom's side of the family got together, we had a brisket, done Texas oven-brisket style.  Basically you trim a brisket, slather it with bbq sauce (or, you know, whatever), wrap it tightly in foil, and leave it to braise in the oven for a long time at low heat.  So, since we're having this big combo back to school/bon voyage (to me) party tomorrow (Saturday) in New Roads, I thought that this would be a GREAT time to pull this one out of my ass.  Well... ok, this is the first time I've done this level of butchery, so I don't really have anything to compare to (Beth Lynn made the brisket over Christmas, and I didn't pay a whole lot of attention), but even given that cows are fatty and brisket isn't the leanest cut... I think I just trimmed the fattiest brisket ever in the history of mankind.  Twelve pound brisket, as packaged?  I swear I ended up with... 6 pounds, maybe 8 after it was trimmed.  And trimming beef fat?  Not simple.  I have sharp knives, y'all.  They're good knives.  It took me the better part of an hour, beginning a little after 2am.  And sure, part of this is that I'm totally inexperienced, but still.  Good thing I'm not looking for a job as a butcher.

Still, I'm really excited.  Mandi and Erin brought me back some Vidalia onion bbq sauce from their jaunt in Tennessee, and after one little taste, I knew it was the sauce to use.  So good!  I can't believe a Tennessee-local product has the right characteristics of a Texas sauce: very smoky, dark, a barely hidden spiciness, a good vinegar tang, and just the barest hint of sweetness (yay Vidalias!).  Add a little liquid smoke to simulate a pit bbq and some Worcestershire sauce just because I like it, and I can't wait for tomorrow morning.  And hey, so what if I had to disinfect an entire counter, since it was, uh, covered in cow juice.

In other news, I am now completely free of all academic and work-related entanglements in Baton Rouge!  Wednesday was my last day at LCA, which makes me happy.  I will miss some of the people (those ladies are crazy), but I will in no way miss the damned charts, especially since, uh, they're out of room.  I seriously have no idea where they will put new charts, because there is zero shelf space left.  Good timing on my part.  The ladies of Med Rec were very sweet: they got me a cake (delicious turtle cake from Ambrosia), a card, and a couple of gifts (throw blanket and a tin of cookies).  Hee.  They tried so hard to be sneaky, and they had the worst luck ever!  I kept running into people carrying random things.  A bunch of people also said they sincerely appreciated the work I did and would miss me, which feels good... more than I expected from a job to earn a little money over the summer.

In terms of academic entanglements, I had my last meeting ever with Sylvie today, regarding the Louisiana French Tourism project.  I worked hard yesterday and today to finish up everything, and presented her with a well-documented CD of all my files, a hard copy of the text documents, and the textbook and accompanying CD.  She didn't seem outwardly displeased, and that's about all I can ask for at this point, really.  Plus when I was there I found an envelope full of money in my mailbox (reimbursement from petty cash that I'd totally forgotten about), so that was a nice surprise -- good thing I happened to glance over at the mailboxes and see that there were things in mine!

So tonight, to celebrate -- well, I was celebrating... I think the others were just having a non-specified good time -- the girls and I had a Spanish-themed night.  Erin and I, with Mandi's help (Katie's a slacker) made four dishes: spicy fried potatoes, lemon-parsley shrimp, eggplant dip, and pisto (like a fast version of ratatouille).  All of them came out of my Spanish cookbook, which I haven't used nearly so much as I should.  It's so gratifying to look through, too, since it's basically food porn.  With our meal, we had three Spanish[-by-heritage] wines (in order of my ascending preference): a Trempanillo from Spain, a Malbec from Argentina, and a Carmenere from Chile.  All three were extraordinarily cheap, since they were (a) Origens brand and (b) marked down at Albertson's to $5.99 a bottle.  Score!  To round it out, we watched Almodóvar's Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother), which is one of my favorite movies, but also one which I haven't seen since... I think the summer of 2000.  I had forgotten a lot of the plot details, so it was almost like seeing it for the first time again.  Plus I appreciated a lot more of the subtext this time around, since I've now read/seen A Streetcar Named Desire (Streetcar plays a big background role).  We closed out the night with coffee/hot chocolate and beignets at Coffee Call, and then I proceeded home to re-slaughter my cow.  Which brings us back to where we started!

I'm quite tired, so... to bed.

PS: Am I going to hell for my subject?  Or at least to the limbo for culturally insensitive bastards?

Ye gods.  I am so out-of-date in the updating.  It's unforgivable, it really is.  So I guess you'll be getting random bullet points, because I know if I tried to do a full-fleshed narrative I'd be here 'til next week.  So in the order they first crop up in my brain:
( List! )

And that about does it.

At work, I was pretty sure that there was nothing I hated worse than a duplicate chart, because when you've got a dupe chart you have to look at them both and combine the bits to make a single chart that has every single thing, but only once, and then discard the rest of the mess.  It's a stupid thing.  Today, though, I found a more annoying thing: a triplicate chart.  I was filing in X-Ray (arg), and I came across a dupe chart. I grumbled, dealt with it, picked up the next chart.  Another dupe!  I grumbled more thoroughly, combined, went to file the resultant chart, only to find ANOTHER ONE JUST LIKE IT.  Huh?  OK, fine, dupe charts happen I guess (although they really shouldn't), but really, people: this means that somebody had shelved a dupe right next to an original and either never noticed or never cared.  Whichever it was, doesn't matter: let the beatings commence.

Whiskey and I are friends again!  A while back (can't find it) I'd poured myself some Bushmill's and it just tasted like ass, and I was very sad indeed.  I was a sad panda.  I finally braved the bottle again tonight, though, and it was very tasty!  I blame a dirty glass last time, or something.  Oh Bushmill's, my friend.

Speaking of alcohol, who bought a six-pack of Mackeson's Triple Stout at Matherne's the other day?  That's right, me.  Mmm, chocolatey stout goodness.  It was even worth them giving me flack about my out-of-state license. (Silly me, I thought they were valid ID in Louisiana.  Guess Louisiana's a sovereign nation now.)

And speaking of Louisiana: after the Terrible Twins, Blue Cross Blue Shield Louisiana started this whole slew of commercials all about "Our Home, Louisiana."  There's actually a whole music video on the BCBS-LA site.  It makes me sad and proud of my adopted state all at the same time.  YMMV, but I think at least for people around here it's touching.

La la la boy.

Work today was ridiculously slow.  Work is very bad when it's too busy, you understand, so I'm not really wishing, per se, that it were busier, but it's quite dull when it's slow.  It was slow enough today that Mandi and I actually reorganized and redecorated the pod.  Yikes.

Despite the dullness of work, today was really quite good.  Before I even left for work, I found out that I don't, in fact, have to appear in court!  The cop had said I would (since there was a collision), but he was apparently mistaken; good thing I called.  I mailed in my fine, and I also mailed in a written request to take the next defensive driving course and keep this violation off my record.  Combined with setting up my insurance on the new car and making sure I get a dealer tag from Huffines Chevy-Subaru mailed to me to bridge the gap between the end of the current registration period and whenever I get my new registration (I somehow never got one day of), this means that my car is completely dealt with, insured, covered, registered, etc.  What a relief!

Following work, the day only improved.  Rebecca had called me earlier in the day to tell me she had bought new patio furniture, and needed to have it christened by the friendly consumption of beers.  I also brought Chinese food (Mongolian Chicken!  Who ever heard of that?!), so that was very nice.  But I had forgotten, just plumb forgotten, that Jackie had bought a big wading pool at Target.  Well, the mosquitoes kept biting our ankles, so we waded.  And then it seemed feasible to just sit down in our clothes, and thus there was an impromptu pool party!

( Pictures follow )

I felt very summery tonight.  I like pools, even shallow inflatable ones.

Ways in which today was verifiably Monday:

• I searched and searched and searched for Ms. G's chart today.  I mean tore the place apart.  I finally had to make a duplicate chart with what little bits I could come up with, plus old scans, etc.  Three or so hours later, I found the original chart -- sitting on my table, where it had been the whole time.
  
• At the same time, I was looking for Ms. F's chart.  Equally tore the place up over this one.  At one point Ashley mentioned to me that Ms. F's had an earlier appt in Nuclear Medicine.  The chart was, of course, there.  Where it should be.
  
• And how about Mrs. M's chart?  I double-, maybe triple-checked the schedule on Friday, confirming that I had all the charts pulled for Monday.  Except, apparently, Mrs. M's, since she had no markings by her name whatsoever.  So then I went off to go find it STAT, and about pulled out all my hair.  I eventually came back to the pod to tell Larrell that I was having trouble finding it, but still looking, and she tells me: "Oh, honey, don't worry about it, she's in a room now, with a chart." *beat* "A chart?  Is it her chart?"  "I guess so!"
  
• Last week there were these problem charts (tests without EKG tracings, or without actual values on the printout, or what have you), and they weren't findable last week.  The missing bits appeared in a stack of processing today.  So, good, I guess, but still: where did you come from?!?!
  
• Lastly, I got lunch from Subway today.  I had bills and coins back.  The coins totaled $0.91; how many coins did I get back?  Answer: 10 coins -- 9 dimes and a penny.  Seriously?
  

Monday.  I tell you what.

Just purging myself of some of the random crap that's been in my head.  If you're referenced, realize that this isn't personal, it's just the semi-rational rantings of my brain.

Nurse D: I swear to God.  You can either have a messy desk or you can be inaccurate about what you have on that desk.  Pick one.  If I ask you if you have a chart, you need to be able to tell me.

MJ: No, I'm not going to "I dunno, rock the machine" to get your skittles out for you after they got stuck.  What do I look like, the vending machine juggler?

MJ again: Figure it out.  All of it.

Miss C: Look, I know I've got a Y chromosome, but I'm actually quite ept in the ways of food service/storage/whatever.  The only reason I was doing so many weird things was because you insisted I do them, then forgot about them, only to insist on  something entirely different two seconds later.  I was trying to go along with your bizarre suggestions the better to shut you up.  Obviously unsuccessful.

Dr. H: Yes, the current system is indeed terminally wacked.  Surely someone else sees this, we can't be the only sane people around.  That would be a 600k well spent.

K: Thanks.  You're not spastic.  It makes my life simpler.

A: Will I be coming in at 8 or 8:30 tomorrow?!  I did not sign on as full-time, dammit.

Me: Stop being a moron.  S, of all people, should not walk over to file and find the chart you've been looking for just sitting there; it's embarrassing.

Well.  Mandi wasn't able to make it to work today, due to her car trying to kill itself, so I had a lot more interesting work than I usually do.  It was made more interesting by the fact that Antoinette swept in immediately after she canceled the early morning meeting (that made a lot of people happy) and turned the pod upside down like an avenging wind.  I think in the long run it means less work for Mandi and for me, but it was quite confusing to try and figure out what in the bleeding fuck was going on today: where is this?  what is that?  is this the stack that used to be over there?  no?  well what happened to that stack?  Still, we got it all dealt with.  I got things picked up and processed (and made sense of the carnage leftover from the Great Upheaval), Angel and Sharon jointly dealt with no-finds and add-ons. 

The day wasn't too crazed, really, once I managed to make sense of what the world was doing.  The only truly weird part was, of all things, lunch.  I had brought my lunch, as I often do, and it consisted of a Spanish tortilla (thick potato and onion omelet) and pa amb tomàquet (Spanish tomato bread).  The tortilla I just ate, but the tomato bread has to be constructed on site.  The simplest version of it, which I was doing, is to take a half-tomato and rub it all over the bread, thus soaking it with tomato juice.  Mmm.  So I prepared this morning by halving a tomato and bringing it along with some ciabatta bread.  I do the tomato thing, and I get these looks from Tanis and Antoinette like I have grown another head.  I then had to listen to "Woo, he's not from Louisiana!" and "Guess what he did!" for the next 20 minutes.  I get it.  I eat things that aren't traditional American fare.  I know.  Now shut up, because you're making me annoyed and ruining my very bloody tasty and healthy simultaneously lunch.  Meh.  Next week I'm going to bring in... I dunno.  Anchovy-onion salad.  Pickled mackerel.  Leche frita.  Some sort of fucked-up calamari ceviche, little tentacles everywhere.  Best random comment of the whole affair?  "Our condiments come in jars here!"  Brava, Tanis.  Brava.

On the plus side, I was told I could probably work just a half-day Friday, which means I won't have to get up at 4:30 and drive to Austin!  I can just drive there Friday afternoon and get to see the family for a longer time without being road-drunk.

Yar.  Sunday was actually not at all a bad day.  I did some light reading (by which I mean I read 225 magazine mostly), and then... then it was time to meet the new roommate, and her dog.  Yes, that's right folks, there's a new Kregg!  Erin (this will become confusing) is a 29-yr-old woman who's been doing computer work with Rite-Aid for a while now, and who now wishes to get her Pharm.D.  More power to her.  Frankly, I was most concerned about the dog, since I'm hardly a dog person.  Sammy is an American Eskimo Dog, and I have to say... I kinda fell in love with her.  She's rather agèd (15 years), so she's not too manic, but she's very loving.  Phoebe wasn't pleased about the intrusion, obviously, but she handles dogs somewhat better than cats.  She mostly lay in the doorway to the hall and flicked the tip of her tail.

Erin seems nice, although... this meeting lasted 2.5 hours.  Two and one-half hours, people.  That is a Long Damn Time for what Shane, Rebecca, and I all thought was going to be maybe a 20 minute thing.  Unfortunately, we're all too nice to bluntly say "well, I guess it's time for you to be going," so it just... endured.  I started baking in the middle of it, just for want of something to do. (Financiers again.  Passable.  Made them a bit too thick, so they came out somewhat less fluffy than I'd like -- I think next time, in addition to using less batter per mold, I'll probably whip the egg whites until at least foamy, maybe soft-peak.  Anyway.)  Eventually she and Sammy went on their way, though, in time for Rebecca and I to meet up with some of her TFA folk and see The Breakup.

You see, I love a good romantic comedy.  And I don't necessarily mean a well-scripted, non-generic, masterpiece of the genre, although those are appreciated; Love Actually comes to mind.  All I mean is a solid romantic comedy that doesn't stretch, doesn't make me guffaw, and in the end let's me go "Aww.  That's nice."  It's cheap, escapist entertainment at its finest, and despite my intellectual leanings, I'm a sucker for it.  I pretty much always tear up when s/he gets hir (wo)man [anthro, eat your heart out].  So I went into this with fairly low expectations.  I mean, Jennifer Aniston?  Vince Vaughn?  I'm not expecting Truffaut here.  I was pleasantly surprised -- it's certainly no cinematic tour de force, but they hit a lot of notes right on key, and the script didn't end like I would have expected it to, in true Hollywood conformance. 

Sunday night I spent a lot of time online, chatting.  It was rather nice.

Work today... Bah.  I really didn't have enough food in my system at any point, so I was often hungry and less than on my game.  Mandi was in the same boat, so it got weird at times.  The constant contact with her is starting to worry me... Mandi, lass, you're a very good friend, and I don't want us working so closely to fuck that up.  Boo to that.  So, ah, yes.  Not much to say there, really.  Let's not kill each other.  We may have to continue to relax at Erin's by watching Buffy so as not to kill... quel dommage.

Shane and Rebecca leave on Wednesday for Italy.  Erin-the-roommate won't move in until late June, probably, so do you know what that means?  House to myself for weeks.  And what does *that* mean?  Nakee time!  Nothing really planned for that time of nudity, just a lot of walking around unclothed.  Is that so wrong?

Well, the driving experiment was a success.  The drive to work (pretty much no traffic) took me about 8 minutes; the drive back from work (rush hour) took me about 11.  Woohoo!  I think even after stupid bloody Staring is re-opened, I'm not going to drive on it, because it's pretty much wretched.  The only tricky part is that my method has me turning onto Staring off of Menlo, where it will likely be bumper-to-bumper, but I guess we'll figure that out when the situation presents itself.

Also, my cat?  Ew.  I'm sitting here at the kitchen table just reading my email quietly, and suddenly I hear this wet HORRRK from near my feet.  Phoebe hacks up a nasty thing halfway between hairball and vomit, then calmly goes over to the food bowl to eat.  When I gave her a look intended to mean "what the fuck." she countered with one that clearly stated, "well, I'm not full anymore."  Which, fair enough.

I'm off to the store to go buy some sour cream.  I'm in the midst of making a barbecue sauce, and I can already tell that I may have overdone it a bit with the smoked, dried chili puree.  I honestly don't even know what those peppers are (celticmll brought them back for me from Oaxaca), but I clearly should have been more cautious: this sauce is gonna be a scorcher.

It's about work, which has been amusing me in so many ways, some of them sarcastic.

First off is the filing system, which is hilarious.  Even setting aside the range of shelves that reads right-to-left (yes.), it has some issues.  I know that electronic records are very hard for most medical practices to manage.  The only practice I personally have seen go all paperless is my glaucoma specialist's, and I think they just started out like that, without any prior records to convert -- LCA has the conversion problem.  So, yes, I get that, I do.  I realize that suddenly up and going electronic requires a massive amount of human and monetary resources, all at once.  But still, there's just no call for there to be at least four separate, non-intercommunicating records programs that I can think of off the top of my head.  Not to mention a desperate need for some standardization of file handling practices for the paper files, so you don't have to learn each area's separate quirks and madnesses.  Shelves would help too, I think.  Also helpful would be if people didn't misfile charts; there are only ten digits to work with, and it's a sequential system.  Quite simple.  If beginning student workers in libraries can file LC classification properly, this should really not be hard.  I mean, it's color-coded.  If it doesn't match, it's wrong.

Conversations have been interesting too.  I had not one but two funny ones in the last fifteen minutes of work, in fact.  I'll just recount the last one, since the first is probably one of those "you had to be there" things, where 'there' is defined as 'in my head and with my thoughts'.

Conversation 2, the one which is actually overtly funny: Mike and an unidentified nurse.

Mike: (walks over to collect some charts)
Nurse: Boy, you are H-O-T, where you been all my life!  What's your name what'chou do?
Mike: Heh.  I'm Mike, and I'm just here filing charts.
Nurse: How old are you?
A different nurse: Too young for you!
Nurse: Shut up.
Mike: 23.
Nurse: Well, 23 plus 23 makes 46, and I was born in 1960!  I'll take two of you for my birthday.
Mike: They sell us in pairs at Kmart.

The other amusing thing is coworkers.  My speech (syntax, prosody, accent) gets truly bizarre at work, because my brain likes to accommodate linguistically, and I've got at least two major dialects to deal with, plus a number of personal variations.  Coworkers also happen to include a cute boy, D, who is causing me to be crazy.  I know D is cute.  I know D is gay.  I'm pretty sure from conversation and judicious web research that D is interesting and fun.  The only problem is that he is not generally forthcoming with the random conversation.  This wouldn't be a problem, except that I'm the exact same way, so... nada.  I can't even manage to tell if he has any latent interest in me whatsoever.  I keep meaning to ask him out (just for, say, coffee -- the traditional opening gambit), and I had a perfect opportunity this afternoon.  It was VERY quiet toward the end of the workday, and in the last few minutes of my shift it was just me and him, all alone in the file room.  So what did I do?  Wimped out.  Instead of asking him for coffee, I asked him if he knew the password to the corner computer, so I could clock out.  Lame.  Hélas.  Tomorrow is another day.