Author: Teel

I have a headache again this afternoon. Nothing serious. A far cry from a migraine. Maybe from not enough sleep. Maybe from not enough water or too much salt or … I don’t know what. Probably a combination of not enough sleep and some emotional distress and some old fashioned stress. I don’t know how that self-evaluation I turned in is going to go over. I’m afrain to go back and re-read what I put down, for fear that it was just as bad or worse than what I started with. Because I know I recognized even in an incensed state that what I was putting down the first time was too much.

My headache started before I left work. I guess I was trying to help some difficult customers and humor Sara (even though for reasons I do not wish to discuss right now, I did not want to chat with her today) and ignore a cake that just wouldn’t stop staring at me and… I started to get a painful headache. It had pierced on and off all afternoon, occassionally waking me while I tried to sleep from about 5-6:30 this afternoon. (Of course, interrupted sleep is something I’m pretty used to. I’m pretty sure I have mild sleep apnea. Hooray!)

I’m going to brush my teeth and go to bed now, but I took a couple of these and a few of those about half an hour ago so I could (hopefully) get to sleep now. The headache is nearly numbed. Good night.

We had quite an adventure making Baccala yesterday. The first batch was too light, too fluffy, and had too much egg in the batter. After that, with a little tweaking, we got the dough right. We found that even soaking for 1/2 day left the fish not salty enough. I can’t imagine what the other 1/2 of the fish will be like (we soaked that for two days). Poaching the baccala before frying had little effect on the ones made with the corrected dough. For the others, the effect was that they expanded to the size of basketballs in the water, and then ate Baltimore after frying. You may have heard about it on the news.

Zoe also made an interesting desert that was … like ah…. light and fluffy cheesecake stuffed sopapilla… sorta. Those were delicious and also resulted in a nice cheesecake souffle at the end of the day.

I had Baccala for breakfast, for lunch, and I’ll have a little more when I get home (unless Angela has eaten it all), and then not again for … a long time, probably. One can only take so much of fried foods and salty cod.

Oh, and when I say “final word” I mean it. No comments on this post allowed.

For those of you who care, click “more” to see the list of songs I sent out to five lucky people for the Burn, Baby Burn CD exchange.

Continue reading Burn, Baby Burn Playlist

Hello, and welcome to the last — Ha ha! Do you hear
me? Last! Last! — stop on the “Rainy Day Fun and Games for Toddler and Total Bastard” virtual book tour, the book tour that is about to have its head cut off and be buried at a crossroads. My name is Greg Knauss and I’m here to tell you that nothing could express how I feel about my damned book at this point better than the name of this site. I’m going to go buy another copy of it right now, so that I can torture it to death when it arrives. You should, too. If you do it just right, you can get it to scream.

Here, try this: Take a whim, a thoughtless little trifle, and carry it around on your back for a month. The son of a bitch will weight nine hundred pounds by the time you finish. Over the past four weeks, I’ve written more about the book than is in the book. The thought of writing one more word, one more single word, is enough to make my throat constrict. The copy sitting on my desk — which was once a source of pride — now mocks me, taunts me, makes fun of my haircut. “Ha ha,” it says. “Shill me! You’ve got a schedule to keep. C’mon, tubby, move it!”

Well, not anymore “Rainy Day Fun and Games for Toddler and Total Bastard,” not anymore. I’m through with you. Oh, sure, you only cost six bucks and make a great gift, but you’re dead to me. I don’t care that you’re So New Media‘s best-selling title or that you’ve been roundly praised by people without a financial stake in your success. You’re an oppressive little bastard and I can’t wait until this stop is over so I can never think about you again.

Oh, you think you’re cute, don

So it’s review time where I work, which means that, yes, the entire company gets reviewed at once. This year management has stated outright that there will be zero pay increases at this review, companywide. (COLA in AZ: ~3.78%) Also, as has been true for every company I have worked for, the review is final and goes in your permanent record, whether you feel that it is accurate or not. You just have to be allowed to see it, you’re not allowed to address it. In fact, signing it just means you’ve seen it. Oh, and if management says there is some area where an employee could use improvement, then the company takes no steps to improve the employee in that area, or even to guage the employee’s improvement until the next review a year later. Hooray company!

As part of the review process, employees are asked to write a self-evaluation to hand in before they go over their review with management. I wrote one. Then I remembered that I don’t like trouble, and wrote it again from scratch. Click “more” below to read both copies.

Continue reading What I mean vs What I say