Thursday, August 15 2019

salad, turnovers, youtube, and catch-up



Dear Journal,

Last night may have been the quickest I've ever fell asleep. Marissa and I turned in around 11:40, and I faded away very shortly after that. I didn't even check my phone or chat for a few minutes. I was pretty exhausted from the full mid week day. Yesterday was a cooking heavy day. For dinner, I made a Caesar salad, which was surprisingly involved. I was following a recipe that instructed me to make the sauce from scratch, and - most curiously - grill the lettuce. I had some close calls with a few romaine leaves catching on fire and wilting into unappealing strands, but the moist hearts actually looked pretty good with a bit of char, and once mixed into the rest of the salad, it was easier to see what they were contributing. The recipe also had instructions of how to make your own croutons, but I punted on that front and just bought a bag of good 'ol Hy-Vee brand. And I'm glad I did, otherwise me may have been eating dinner sometime around when I went to bed.

After cleaning up all the smoldering lettuce left over from dinner, we put Rod to bed. Marissa worked on some tasks for the upcoming bridal shower this weekend while I made a little batch of faux meat saucijzenbroodjes for a friend. I had some left over puff pastry, and running with a tip I got from my little sister I decided to bide my time by making some turnovers. I didn't have any apples on hand, but bananas did fine. There's very few things that don't work in hot butter and sugar. The turnovers puffed up really nicely - if I had known how easy these were, I would have bought a whole extra sleeve of puff pastry and made a proper batch!

We wrapped up chores and kitchen shenanigans some time around 11:00. I had a beer and watched some youtube videos with Marissa on our fancy new dining room computer. The playlist included Anthony Fantano's review of the new Bon Iver album as well as a special Editor Edition Dude Perfect, which honestly was so entertaining it left us speechless. Marissa and I used to watch Dude Perfect sort of ironically, but now the irony is lost and we just actually enjoy them, despite the fact that it's pretty much targeted at 12 year old boys.

I see today as the final hurdle before getting to the weekend. I'm running a bit behind in ticket duty, so I'll have to block off some time and catch up on support tickets & questions. I try not to finish the week with any loose threads. Tomorrow is our end of the week demo, retro, and company picnic, leaving today as pretty much the last day to get any real work done.

So let's hit it hard today. Let's squeeze as many work hours out of this uncharacteristically chilly Thursday as we can. A thorough Thursday makes for a fun Friday - alliteration intended. Hope you have a great day today.