2 Day Dinner: Day1

Today I embark on a new adventure, an all-out, sweat on the forehead, foray into the world of cooking. We’re not talking about the paltry task of whipping up some Mac ‘N Cheese. No, this adventure will take me to a very different, dangerous place – the land of homemade spinach dumplings and tomato sauce (for some reason, every time I write tomato I want to add an “e” – like I’m about to add Tom’s Toe to the recipe). There will be tears, there will be drama and in the end, if the stars are aligned, and luck lends its hand, there will be an amazing dinner.

With instructions like: simmer for 1 hour, let sit for 24 hours and finely chop the basil (okay, so the last may only be a challenge for me) I bite my lower lip and set out to cook. Let’s see here, let the sauce simmer for an hour… What?! An hour?! Won’t that burn a hole in the pan? Well, we’ll see – the sauce has been under low heat now for… exactly… 10 minutes.

The spinach dumplings have been mixed and are now resting peacefully in the fridge, where they will remain for at least 24 hours.

(just took a taste of the tomato(e) sauce -- Yummy!)

Weekend Guest

Have you ever had a toad wave to you? ... well ... now you have :) My little cousins love to hunt for toads when they visit my parent's house. They gathered up about a dozen in a tiny white bucket and spent the afternoon terorrizing the poor creatures.



A few weeks ago, my mother's little brother (my uncle) flew down from Oregon to spend the weekend with us. We picked him up in San Francisco and spent the day sightseeing. We went to the exploratorium science exhibits and the pier.

My "uncle" should be coming to live with us this Tuesday. It will be a bit of an adventure.

Group Job Interviews: Picture People in Modesto, CA

When you show up for an interview and discover there’ll be 4 other people interviewing for the position at the same time, you know two things right of the bat. 1. You’re pretty much living through the lowest point in your career. 2. These people don’t really need a person, they need about 20 seasonal robots that can form complete sentences and don’t drool excessively.

The interviewer took us to the kid’s section in the middle of the mall and began her interview.

We five sat there, our legs sticking to the plastic, stain resistant couch, with our heads bobbing up and down in time with the interviewer’s questions. I’m quite sure an imaginative passerby would have seen us as a packaged set of bobble head dolls.

“You all know we work with a lot of children.”

From left to right, we all bobbed our heads as she looked our way (like the group interview version of a baseball crowd’s “wave”). I assume this question was meant to illustrate why she chose to interview us in the children’s play section of the mall.

I bobbed along with everyone else, but as I bobbed, I watched a stupid little girl take a nosedive off a big purple dinosaur and only after she got up to try it again, did her overweight, haggard looking mother get up pull the child away.

“Okay, well, I’d like to know if you have any questions.”

“Do your photographers have any artistic control over the portraits?” (I ask this because I want to try different lighting and posing setups)

“Oh, yes!!” Trust me, I think the entire play area heard the second exclamation point. “We have so many different colored backgrounds! Purple and pink and blue, they’re so nice! We get new ones all the time!”

Mentally, I was slamming my head against the giant purple dinosaur and thinking about taking a plunge using the same technique as the crazy little girl.

I know what you’re all thinking – “Amanda! You can’t be thinking things like that during the interview. They’ll see right through you!”

Not to worry, I’ve always imagined my poker face as pretty kick-ass. I think all sorts of horrible, yet honest things while I’m interviewed, yet I still maintain a look of passive interest and intelligence…

Maybe I’m not as good as I though I was….

I didn’t get that job… This might surprise you, but at times, I can be a bit of a smart ass...
:)