Still unemployed

SH and I finished up our x-mas shopping this morning. It felt so good to have that chore complete! I picked up the mail on our way in and there was a letter from Troy in the stack. Oh goodie!! News about the jobs!!! Wait a minute sister. Not so fast. I had to read the letter twice to make sense of it. The position I interviewed for last week has been filled. SHIT. Oh well, still no word yet about the interview yesterday....until I checked my voicemail. YUP, they filled that job too. DOUBLE SHIT. What gets me is that I had two friends associated with each of these jobs who were pulling for me. I am seriously at my wits end. I had a little mini breakdown after getting the double thumbs down today. Why is it that the only place that was interested in me treated me like crap and paid me even less? Why will nobody hire me? I am at a complete loss.

One month and counting

I have been unemployed for over a month now. I am really getting anxious about finding a new job. I have made several charity blankets and am almost at the end of my rope...no pun intended. I took a trash bag full of blankets to a local charity last week. I am working on another one right now. This one is a round blanket. I have seen several patterns for round blankets and wondered why one would want a round one. It just seems that it wouldn't cover the body well. Anyway, I wanted to give it a try, nothing wrong with learning a new pattern. I had an interview today for a job at the University. I had another interview last week for a different job at the University. Lord knows I have applied for almost every job they have open. Surely something will pan out...right???!!!???

On a positive note, Christmas shopping is almost finished. We managed in record time this year. We started actually purchasing gifts last week and have 2 more small gifts to buy. We also managed to buy while sticking to a budget. We should do it this way every year!! I didn't get to do my usual "home/handmade gifts" this year. I didn't really have the time/money/desire to think about that kind of gift anyway. Maybe next year. I thought about compiling recpies for a cookbook as the homemade gift. When I started looking at publishing, I realized that I should have started a few months ago. I think I am going to do that for next years X-mas. I sent out a mass email entitled "call for recipes" to all my friends and family and have the highest of hopes that they will reply with their family favorite recipes to add. I am pondering the title for the cookbook now. It wouldn't be anything super fancy, just a collection of recipes from people I love. :)

Charity Lapghan Finished!!!

I drove myself crazy with this lapghan. I don't even want to think about how many rows in all I had to frog to get the pattern correct. I think the first frogging was about 7 rows.... eek. It made me so sad when I realized I had to, but to see it finished makes it all worth it. I really like how the edging turned out too. Note to self, don't watch movies while working on this pattern!!!! This lapghan took less than 4 skeins of Simply Soft and is amazingly thick and warm. The original pattern can be found here. I tweaked the pattern for size and added an extra row of edging. The photo in the link above highlights the texture better than my picture.

My lovely assistant always has to be center stage when the camera comes out.

Music is my king sized bed

I cannot get the song from this commercial out of my head. Therefore I am sharing it with all of you. :)

Exploding Pyrex

Since I have been sick, the types of food I am able to eat numbers about 12. I cannot eat anything with a real texture. It bothers my throat and sends me into one of my coughing fits. I have been on a soup/pudding/jello diet since Tuesday. I bought a few acorn squash the other day and decided that would be something that I would be able to tolerate. I decided to prepare them like my mother always did. Baked in the oven, halved with a spoonful brown sugar and a pat of butter in the cored out center. I lovingly prepared the little squash and even made them a little nest of aluminum foil to prevent them from rolling around in the baking dish. They had been in the oven about 20 minutes and I went to check their progress. The oven door was open and I pulled out the rack just a bit so I could see them better. At that point, SH decided to step outside and opened the back door. Our back door is about 10 feet directly behind our oven. I don't remember what the exact temperature was outside, but it was COLD. A few seconds after he opened the door, the pyrex dish shattered. Glass went everywhere. I think I screamed since I was standing about a foot away from the oven. I was standing there dumbfounded. I thought Pyrex was some kind of superhuman material. Then I realized that this was the second piece of Pyrex broken in our house in less than 2 months. The first was a measuring cup that I broke while putting away dishes. Standing there with scalding hot glass fragments melting into the floor, I was at a complete loss. Where on earth do we start this daunting clean-up? SH decided to first be sure the glass didn't stick to the floor and did a preliminary sweep. We waited for the glass and the oven to cool before we started the main clean up. This of course happened at dinnertime and neither of us could use the oven for food prep. SH took out the oven drawer and took it outside to clean up this am. I just now finished cleaning up the interior of the oven. I am still a bit scared to use it for fear of microscopic glass particles getting into my foods. I decided to check the internet to see if this is a regular occurrence. Apparently it is and it mainly happens with the size dish I was using!!! 13x9!! Those of you with older Pyrex dishes, be careful!! I found out that over time, the Pyrex develops tiny cracks and if it experiences an extreme temperature change, it could shatter.

Charity Blankets and a Cold

I finished the Mile A Minute charity blanket late Saturday evening! It turned out so pretty!! I even found a blanket I did earlier in the year that never was sent off to a charity, so I will be delivering two blankets this time.

Mile a Minute Afghan

Rippled lapghan

While at a friend's house Saturday, I ended up smoking several cigarettes while watching the Bama game. I woke up Sunday with a hell of a cough. I was under the assumption that it was just the cigarettes. It wasnt. I coughed all day yesterday, had a runny nose and my throat has been sore to boot. Lucky me! I have a cold! I spent all morning in bed and have been drinking water like it is going out of style. It has been ages since I have been sick so I have forgotten exactly how it feels. I am going to do everything in my power to prevent this cold from turning into a sinus infection. The last one I had was the worst one ever. I remember sitting in the waiting room at the doctors office with a terrible cough. I really thought I was going to cough up a lung. I know everyone else in there was getting p'od because I couldn't stop the coughing, but I was a sick girl. They ended up giving me two shots in the heinie. One was an antibiotic, the other was a steriod. Needless to say I am trying to nip this one in the bud before it turns. I have a dentist appointment AND a job interview Thursday morning, so I need to be as close to 100% as I can by then. SH went and bought me some chicken soup and meds to help me heal. Wierd but I have been craving oodles of noodles soup. mmmmmm. Warm brothy goodness.

Charity blanket and a Chicken

With a week off, I have almost finished the charity blanket. I have 2 more strips to make before I can stitch them all together. Maybe that project will be finished over the weekend. I wanted to share a recipe we made for dinner last night. It was absolutely fabulous. It came from an episode of Good Eats on Food TV. The host, Alton Brown is one of my all time favorite TV chefs. His shows are so informative and his recipes are wonderful. This one is super easy and well worth the hour and a half cooking time. Peeling the garlic takes some effort, but you will enjoy the end result.

40 Cloves and a Chicken
1 whole chicken (broiler/fryer) cut into 8 pieces
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil
10 sprigs fresh thyme
40 peeled cloves garlic
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Season chicken with salt and pepper. Toss with 2 tablespoons olive oil and brown on both sides in a wide fry pan or skillet over high heat. Remove from heat, add oil, thyme, and garlic cloves. Cover and bake for 1 1/2 hours.
Remove chicken from the oven, let rest for 5 to 10 minutes, carve, and serve.

When I started fixing my plate, my chicken fell off the bone it was so tender. The cooked garlic cloves are wonderful smooshed onto bread. This dish is going to be a regular fixture at our dinner table.