I like this quote...

The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours -- it is an amazing journey -- and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins."

-- Bob Moawad,

I got that in one of my emails today.  It speaks to me.

Going to bed, I'll be doing either sewing or cooking tonight, so check back.

Ciao

SheWhoMustWearHats 

Patience, my young grasshopper....all shall come in time..soon...

Sorry I haven't written lately.  Been working.  My next nights off are tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday, so I'll try to do some cooking, sewing, or gaming, and blog a bit about whichever I do.

Unfortunately, I do have to work tonight because of a strange situation, so I have to go to bed.

More soon.

Ciao

Shewhomustwearhats 

I didn't forget.

I've been working, I haven't forgotten about this.  I got vto tonight, going to the Renaissance fair tomorrow, but I will probably be doing some hobby on my nights off, I'll blog more then.

Here's for now, though.  My nerve wracking adventure today was that I was almost hit by a car that was backing up.  I was walking through the parking lot, on a pedestrian crossing, into work.  It was about a half hour before the start of my shift, and right around the time that the previous shift was ending, so there were a lot of people leaving.  The parking lot right in front of the building can get a little backed up with people, and it was like that tonight.  There was a line of cars to the exit.  The one that almost backed into me was parked slightly on the crosswalk, so I went to go around behind him.  I don't know if he tried to go over the speed bumps and failed, or if he was just backing up, but he backed up about five feet, pretty quickly, and if I hadn't hurriedly done a few side/back steps, he would have hit me.  I hurried the rest of the way across.  There was a guy sitting in one of the cars parked neaby who saw, I don't know if he was just getting off, or waiting to start, but when he saw he said to me as I passed, "man, I would have kicked his car! You should kick his car!" 

I kind of ducked my head, muttered "I'm not that kind of person" and hurried the rest of the way in.

It's an interesting thing to see happen, though.  I always look before I cross, this guy was at a complete stop, with his break light on, when I started walking.  I have to wonder what line of events caused him to back up.  The guy in front of him was also at a complete stand still, and he was in the middle of a full parking lot.  There was literally no where to go.  There were cars in front of him, cars behind him, and cars parked on both sides.

Food for thought.

Maybe he just didn't like how I was walking.

Anywho, I've got to break my usual schedule and go to bed.  Getting up at a normal hour tomorrow to go to the Renaissance fair.

Ciao

SheWhoMustWearHats

Nighttime adventures in baking

I made cookies!  Huzzah!  Here's the recipe.

I have no idea when or where we got this recipe, or if the story is true, but we've had it for my entire extended life of 20 years.

It's really, really easy to follow, and plays in with my not loving to meticulously measure things.  You can put a little more or less of pretty much any of these ingredients and they'll still turn out delicious.

So, for the sake of having a few more words, I'll describe the process.  

I usually half the recipe.  Cause I don't know about you, but I do not need 112 cookies.

That is far too much temptation, right there.  

Maybe if you're having a party, or giving the away as gifts.

Start out by getting two large mixing bowls.  One for dry ingredients, one for wet.  

Grab your oatmeal and blend it up to really small, basically powderifying it.  It calls for 5 cups, so I make 3 1/2.  

It has to be 3 1/2 of blended oatmeal, not just normal oatmeal.  That's important.

Once that's blended and the correct amount is in your dry mixing bowl, put in the rest of the dry ingredients.

Halfing it, so 2 cups of flour, half a tsp of salt, and one tsp each of baking powder and baking soda.

Have all those?  great.  Now grab a spoon and roughly stir those together.  And no, I do not mean be really rough (as in violent), I mean you don't have to stir so perfectly that every single thing is mixed to amazing perfection..  Not a huge deal if it gets perfectly mixed, you just want them mostly mixed.

Now on to the wet ingredients bowl.  Toss in your butter, Halfing would be 1 cup, which is usually two sticks of butter.  16 oz.

I suppose if you're trying to be healthy you could sort of skimp on that, but if you're trying to be healthy, why are you making cookies?

Halfing it, add one cup each of brown and normal white sugar.  Grab your mixer, and start mixing!

Got that pretty well mixed?

What's half of 2 tsp's vanilla extract?  1 tsp?  Good job!  Add that.

And grab two chicken babies to put in, too.  Again, if you want to be healthier you could take out the yolks, but this is seriously not a healthy recipe, so why are you here?

Got that all mixed up?  Now slowly add some dry mix into your wet mix, half a cup at a time is easiest, if you put more than that it tends to puff up in your face and you're breathing flour/oatmeal/baking soda/powder/salt air.  Less pleasant than normal air, so I'd avoid that.  Small amounts at a time.

Now just mix all that up until you've combined both of them.  

Once it's all mixed, toss in your chocolate chips and ground up Hershey bar.  I don't usually add nuts, but that's up to you, you nutty people.

Preheat your oven, that helps speed things up a bit.  It's easiest to have two cookie sheets, that way you can be rolling cookie balls while the others are cooking.  It says 6 minutes, and that is usually what I start at, but in order to get that slightly crunchy crust and soft gooey inside, I usually have to cook it for 2-4 more minutes.  Depends on how you like your cookies, though.  You could do more, you could do less.

Now take'em out, let'em cool, put'em away, and eat'em!  Not all at the same time, though.  That might be unhealthy.

This is one out of four plates of cookies, all equally as full.  I didn't count, but even halfing the recipe, you end up with a lot of cookies.

Congratulations!  You now have cookies!  Share them with your friends, for they are amazing and delicious, and your friends will love you forever.

Or at least, until you run out of cookies.  Then you're no your own.

Ciao

SheWhoMustWearHats

Adventures with portals

So, I finally convinced my boyfriend to play portal, and it's killing me not to help.  The only thing I try to allow myself to say is "you're not thinking with portals". 

It's really fun watching the things he thinks of.  I've been playing portal so long that I just look around and think "oh, I could put a portal there and there, and do a long fall jump to get there" and so forth and so on.  It's fun to see the way his mind works.

Cooking adventures

So, in my cooking adventures tonight, I made Orange chicken!  Sort of.

Ingredients

Three skinless, boneless chicken breasts

Probably three or four oranges worth of freshly squeezed orange juice

A dash of powdered ginger

A glop of honey

Some oil

A sprinkle of flour

A little bit of soy sauce

So I started by thawing the chicken, cause it was really, really solid.  Took like, fifteen minutes.  

Then my boyfriend and I cut it up all neat and nice.  

He's very particular about food.  

He cut off all the "bad" parts, fat, whiteish parts, reddish parts, all that jazz, off of all three breasts, and it ended up being about the equivalent of one small chicken breast.  

Anywho, cut it into bite sized pieces, toss it in a pan with the oil, to make sure the chicken doesn't stick or anything, and cook that with much stirring until the chicken is all cooked.  

Then put your glop of honey, your soy sauce, your orange juice, your dash of powdered ginger, and your sprinkle of flour into a bowl and mix it up.  Now add dashes and globs of all these ingredients until it's the saucy consistency you want, and the flavor you want, and mix it all in with your chicken.  

Congratulations!  You now have sort-of orange chicken!  Is it delicious?  Good job.  Mine turned out pretty well, but I think I'm going to make it again on another night off and do some experimenting.  

Lemme know how it turns out if you try it!

Just warning, this is very much my style of cooking.  

I don't usually do a ton of measuring, so when I write things down they're going to be in estimated amounts, not actual measurements.

Have fun deciphering!

Maybe cookies tomorrow night?  Or I guess tonight...being on nights is confusing sometimes.

Anywho, goodnight for now!  

Ciao

SheWhoMustWearHats

Interesting developments

Good morning my lovelies.
So, a very interesting thing happened today. 
I work for a company, but am actually employed with a staffing company.
I worked with them seasonal last year, and was rehired a few weeks ago. 
Now, I got an email from the company, to schedule a time to convert from working for the staffing company, to actually working for the company. 

My problem is, I don't really like the job.  Yesterday I decided I'd start looking for work elsewhere, and today I get this email and schedule the appointment.
I mean, I didn't even think I was doing well enough for them to consider converting me.
I guess I am, though...
It's not like it's a contract job, so I can still look for a different job, but this is a pretty good first non-seasonal job.  They have good benefits, it's not minimum wage..
I suppose I'll just live with it unless I find something that's actually better.

Well, thanks for listening.  That's it for right now.  Gonna do some cooking tonight, so I'll post again later.

Ciao
SheWhoMustWearHats

Introductions again? A look back on the past...

I'm home from orchestra, so here's that re-introduction I promised.

Now, again, keeping with the fact that I don't really love the idea of giving hugely personal information, I'm not going to go to detailed.

I'm an avid hobbyist, with everything ranging from drawing, to chainmaille, to writing calligraphy, with crochetting, carving, sewing, paper craft, and many, many more thrown in between.  I'm sure I'll get to those later.  I'd rather like to try candle making.  And rapier fighting.  Ah, I also do leather crafting.

In my family I have my father, mother, older sister, and younger brother.  So I am the wild middle child, and that will probably come through in my writing whenever I complain about any of them.  Which I probably will do.

Also included in my family that I will probably talk about are our animals.  We have two cats, A female, short haired orange lioness (she likes to sit on our shoulders.  And chase crinkled paper balls.  Best cat ever.) named Artemis, and a male, long haired fuzzy orange puffball (he is the very definition of a scaredy cat.  I swear, if you breath in his general direction, he disappears to the safe upstairs land.) named Cicero.  

Yes, Cicero was named after the mad jester in Skyrim, in case you were wondering.  My dad thought it was splendid, we wanted to name him after a Greek (or was it Roman?) scholar.  I let him keep thinking that.  *cough* mad jester *cough*

My hobbies are what I'll write about.  

Hobbies and experiments.  I'll post all the strange new things I'm trying out to try to get my hair to grow faster.  

I'll put recipes for food I make, though I'm not a very good cook.  Working on leveling that particular skill up.  

Projects I'm working on, or want to work on.  Things I'm thinking about that I'm comfortable sharing.  

And on and on and on.  I'm sure I'm not covering everything I hope to write about, but that's fine.  

I'll just cover those things when they come up.

I'm currently working night shift, so I'll be posting at night most of the time.  Especially on my nights off.  

Gotta do something to kill those hours until I can go to bed.

It is time for me to go to bed now, though.  So I will bid you goodnight, Internet.  It was lovely chatting with you.

Ciao,

SheWhoMustWearHats 

Auditions? Fun?

Turns out it's actually really fun doing the behind the scenes orchestration of auditions.  Previously I've always been the one being auditioned. 
I know the anxiety and nervousness of being auditioned.  My sister and I were in charge of getting the kids from the orchestra to the auditioners.
So now all I have to do to be a week rounded orchestra goer is try my hand at auditioning people.

Or not. 

Ciao
SheWhoMustWearHats

I'm back again!

I got the blog app on my phone, so hopefully I'll remember to write more. 
I've always wanted to have a blog. 
Just gotta get around to writing.
So, I'll do some re-introductions once I have more time, but currently I am at orchestra, assisting with the auditions of the symphonette orchestra.

Ciao
SheWhoMustWearHats