Life of Wry

A bunch of unrelated Monday kinds of things.

I’ve taken to pouring my smoothies into a bowl and eating them like ice cream, mostly because they’ve gotten so thick it’s easier that way. I was so hungry when I got home from a long, lunchless work day, I made a supersized smoothie **… and filled three large bowls…and ate all of them.

I was so cold by the time I finished the third bowl, and my mouth so numb and frozen, I decided to take a hot bath. And had a very hard time warming up.. in fact I was still on the edge of my thaw when the dinner bell rang (so to speak).. had to abandon the effort.

It was worth it…

Here’s something else I’ve been loving lately… Jim’s roasted cauliflower:

I know it looks weird, but it is so good it’ll make you cry. Sweet, too, if you can believe it. The best pieces are the ones crispied and slightly burnt. They crunch and ooze a little bit from the olive oil. I’m telling you…heaven.

I had no room for a baked potato, weird for me as it’s the ultimate comfort food…

…so just watched Jim eat.  I’m still waiting for all that smoothie to go down a couple of hours later…

** 1 banana, about 2/3 cup of Strassburg’s organic nonfat vanilla yogurt, about 1/2 cup of milk, about 1/2 cup of OJ, about 2 cups of ice, 2 meyer lemon cubes, a couple TB of frozen cranberry juice concentrate, about 1/3 cup of frozen blueberries, about 1/2 cup of frozen mixed berries/cherries, about 1/2 cup of frozen mangos and, the best part: 1 TB of frozen dark chocolate chips, which mince down to little bits that find their way into every spoonful and provide the most satisfying chocolaty crunch. Killer.

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Speaking of asterisks, looking at the above two reminds me that for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been very buried in a project at work… work you will see if you’re registered to vote in the state of California (well, if English is not your preferred language, that is)! Been proofreading election materials for the Secretary of State’s office…those materials the company I’ve been working for has translated into nine languages: the Voter Guide, the lists of candidates and their designations, and a couple other related items. Perfection is required for this particular client on this particular job, so we precision-minded proofreaders (3 of us) have had to step up our already laser-sharp game.

Back to the asterisks… among a billion things one carefully scans for, if one is a [glutton for punishment, or a] professional proofreader, is the type of asterisk used. I see that my WordPress font above uses the 6-sided star. The SOS favors a 5-sided star. I’m sure I’ll be seeing asterisks dancing across the skies of my nightmares for some time to come, at least until the election season is over.

So that bath did double duty… I needed something following six straight hours hunched over some incredibly tedious work (I did candidate designations in Thai, Korean, Tagalog and Khmer today)… a hot bath seemed like the perfect antidote.

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In other extremely disturbing news, Peter’s bike was stolen sometime over the weekend–the new (and fairly pricy) one we got him for his birthday last summer, after the one before that was stolen a year before! I’m going to forgo the story and its pathetic details, but I’m just overwhelmed with a sour range of emotions from anger and frustration over the carelessness, senselessness and waste, to a sense of violation. And feel incredibly inconvenienced, and supremely annoyed… UGH!

Perhaps a[nuther] hot bath…