How To Be Bad At Baking

I woke up a few minutes before my alarm this morning, so I was browsing Facebook and there was an ad from King Arthur Flour for springerle molds. (They also had a recipe for anise drops, another cookie I've never seen referenced elsewhere.)

If you don't know what a springerle is, it's a German anise cookie that has a picture embossed on it. I've never seen the molds advertised anywhere before, but apparently Facebook and King Arthur Flour know me well.

I'm not really good at following directions (yes, this is an understatement) which makes me a pretty terrible baker. Baking requires precision. What I do is more... hand wavey. Sure, that's a good amount of flour. Yeah, I like vanilla, so I'll dump in a bit extra. Well, the yeast might be a little bit old, so I'll just bump up the amount. This is not the way to get consistent results when baking.

(I've also had the occasional complete disaster, like the time I made my first cake from scratch and missed the line for flour, but in my defense I was young at the time.)

I made springerles just once, many years ago. After a huge amount of effort I ended up with thin wafers that you could break a tooth on. That's why my mom has the springerle board now. She can follow directions. She also claims that the weather makes a big difference on how they turn out, but I can't remember if it's supposed to be humid or dry for the best results. Either way, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't end up with the same thing no matter what the weather.

Maybe when (if) I remodel my kitchen I'll make an area suitable for rolling out dough and I'll force myself to follow directions and get better at baking...

 This was the last thing I baked. It tasted fine but looked nothing like it was supposed to.

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Sick Day

Woke up this morning feeling like crap with a bunch of weird dreams that suggested I had a fever, so I stayed home and went back to bed. (It also made me re-evaluate why I wimped out on yesterday's run at the two mile mark -- I thought at the time it was because it was hotter than I'd expected, but now I think maybe I was starting to feel bad because of whatever this is.)

After another ten hours of sleep I felt better, so I spent the afternoon reading the archives on Query Shark, which is a blog where writers send book queries to be critiqued. At some point in the upcoming year I'm going to start sending queries for my first novel to agents. A lot of people recommend getting 100 rejections before retiring the novel and moving on to the next one. Still, there's no point if having the query be the reason for the rejection -- if they hate my novel, that's one thing, but if I can't even get them to look at it, that's a completely different problem.

Anyhow, mostly what I've learned is:

• use present tense
• make it clear who the main character is right in the first sentence
• make the main character's problem clear right away

That seems pretty basic, but you'd be surprised how many people can't get even that bit straight. And these are people who are looking for help on their queries -- I can't imagine how many queries go to agents where the author doesn't realize what's important.
 

I also listened to a couple of podcasts and knitted yet another Yeti hat. This time I went with a boxy hat instead of a round one. Maybe someday soon I'll even look up how to purl...

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Best Ever!

Remember how I said I was going to get a bunch of necessary things done this weekend? Clearly I meant next weekend, because today I made this:

And this:

I have to say, I'm kind of impressed with how they turned out since I was just making it up as I went along. I'm fairly certain that's not how you're supposed to use two colors together, but I'm lazy and tying a bunch of knots held no appeal

Also, the big dog tried to walk off with an entire ball of yarn. I'm not sure what that was about. He won't even play with dog toys.

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Don't Ask

I went to the craft store today to get a couple of things, including yarn for the project discussed yesterday. I got a lot of yarn, in all kinds of colors. But it's not like it's going to go bad, right?

It wasn't until I headed for the checkout desk that I considered how friendly people in craft stores are. Inevitably I'll buy a bunch of random stuff and when they're ringing it up they'll ask what I'm making. This time I was sort of hoping we wouldn't have that conversation because "knitting hats for my Yeti lawn ornament" makes me sound kind of weird. The good news is that this store is on the other end of town from my house, so I hardly ever run into anyone I know there.  But the really good news was that it was eight at night and the cashiers were too tired to care, so I didn't have to say anything.

Anyhow, I came home and tried to remember how to cast on. It's been a while. I did finally figure it out, and then I cast on a bunch of stitches and started knitting.

When I say "started knitting" I mean just that. If I need to purl I'm going to have to go watch a video or something because I can't remember how and even when I knew how it was a pain. So I'm just knitting. Since I'm completely winging it, this works out just fine. I figure I'm good for a while although eventually I'm going to have to figure out how to decrease. Also, after going a few rows it turns out I might be making a poncho instead of a hat because I fear that I got a little too excited about casting on. Whatever. I'll figure it out.

Guido finds my knitting an excellent meditation aid. He watched me the entire time. I don't think he wants the yarn as much as he really, really wants the knitting needles. They are now safely locked in a drawer that (I think) he can't open.

So yeah... I spent the evening knitting a hat for my lawn ornament. How about you?

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Distractions

It's holiday season again, and if you're me that means the following:

• avoiding all stores because they will be playing horrible Christmas music
• cleaning the house before the pet sitter arrives (and yes, this is a month-long project)
• watching horrible holiday movies

Holiday movies are a really weird thing. They're all just awful, but awful in a way that must have required some real effort to get balanced. The writing is bad, the acting is bad, the directing is bad, the cinematography...yeah, it's not like I have any idea what that is but I'm sure it's bad -- everything, just everything, is bad. If any one piece were competently done, they wouldn't be as fun to watch.

This year, though, I'm not watching any holiday movies because I cancelled my Netflix subscription last month. It's been a rough year in general, and it seemed like every new show was just one more F*@&$% white man whining about how rough he had it or saving all the helpless women-folk or just generally being the savior because he was the only one qualified merely by being 1) white and 2) male.

(I mentioned it's been a rough year, right? I'm aware there may be some selection bias in my overall view of the television and film industry. But still.)

In any case, I cancelled my Netflix subscription so now I have a chunk of time to do something useful.

Or at least now I have a chunk of time...

Jennifer pointed out that my Yeti with gnomes could really use a bunch of little hats, and I feel like my knitting skills might be up to something like that. Granted, it definitely won't be a hat that a person would be willing to wear, but lawn ornaments can just take their damn chances.

I think I'll have to go get some festive yarn tomorrow.

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Forests of Christmas Past

 "I don't care, just give me the cookie."

I don't decorate much at all for the holiday season. I think the last time I really got into it was when I was living in the dorms in Germany. I was downtown and I decided to get a live tree in a five gallon pot. Then I had to lug it home (a couple of miles), back aching and needles poking me in the face. Yes, there were many strange looks as I walked. I was almost home when I realized the store at the end of the street was selling the same tree.

Anyhow, these days I've given up on decorating completely. Even through the cats have gotten older and more sedate and would probably leave a tree alone, now I have the dogs. The little dog would be okay with the whole thing, but the big dog would undoubtedly take it as a sign that I'd set up indoor plumbing for him (hey, it's cold outside!) and my living room does not need that. Maybe I could hang a six inch rosemary tree from the ceiling or something, but at some point it just gets ridiculous and you need to give up.

 This is probably not what they mean by an action shot.

I still have time to change my mind though. In my family a tree bought more than a week before Christmas is... I don't know what it is because it never happened. We always waited until the last possible moment to buy a tree. In fact, I think my family's appearance on the Christmas tree lot was the official sign that it was time to close for the season.

As you can imagine, we always got a great deal on a tree that was... a great deal. It might have been a tad crooked or have some other minor defects, but overall it was fine. Besides, why would you pay a bunch of money for something you're going to toss out in the street in a couple weeks? And by the time you put on lights, garland, decades of mismatched ornaments, and some tinsel, nobody can even see the tree underneath. So if there was a big bare spot in the back, or a branch had to be moved to a different part of the tree, eh, not a problem.

All those perfectly decorated, perfectly symmetric trees make me think that whoever put them up never had a family tree.

A less temperamental model

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The Latest Conference I Didn't Attend

About a month ago my boss called me on my day off and when I answered the phone with "Gosh, this must be really important", he told me he wasn't sure. That's always a good start to a conversation. Turns out that the gigantic dinosaur that my gigantic company had recently purchased was having some sort of conference in early December and my boss' boss' boss (there might be one more level in there but I can't be bothered to learn the company hierarchy -- I shall hereafter refer to him as my great grand-boss) wanted me, specifically, to attend.

When I say "some sort of conference" I'm not being deliberately vague to avoid giving details that would get me fired. Literally all my boss knew about this conference was that

• it was two days (starting on a Tuesday) and
• it was in Santa Clara.

 We googled the crap out of the name and came up with one web page that just had some pictures of people in a hallway. But he thought maybe there might be some sort of hackathon involved. Or maybe not. There was also no indication of what subjects the conference might cover. Or even what audience it was suitable for.

At this point I should have just said no, but the only way to get off the phone (on my day off, mind you) was a weak "okay, I guess".

Then I spent the next two weeks complaining about it. Nobody had any information about the damn thing and on a good day it would take about three hours to get there from my house. That would mean leaving my house at 5am and not falling asleep in stop-and-go traffic, spending all day learning... something.... and then driving back home again. And then doing the same thing the next day. They did offer to pay for a hotel room, but then I would have had to set up pet care. As it was I'd almost certainly be missing agility, and that would not have gone over well with the little people in the house of the dog variety.

Anyhow, I finally told my boss that I wasn't going to some conference that didn't have an agenda, and besides, I'd probably fall asleep and crash my car and it would be all the company's fault.

That's when the guilt-tripping started. "But [great grand-boss] requested you by name!" And then grand-boss told me that great grand-boss had requested that I go.

Finally I did what any mature career-oriented person would do -- I made plans to go.

Just kidding. I sent mail directly to great grand-boss. This is pretty much verbatim what it said [with additional explanations]:

Dude, [I know it was a business email, but we're both from California so this is a completely appropriate salutation.]

If you want me to quit, just tell me that. Don't make everyone in the chain of command try to convince me that I want to go to some random conference without an agenda in the bowels of Santa Clara.

Best wishes, [I probably didn't add this]
Theresa

About five minutes later I got a reply:

LOL. You don't have to go if you don't want to. [Grand-boss] had suggested your name.

And then suddenly I was no longer on the list.

I mean, there's probably a reason I have a job instead of a career, but at least I didn't have to drive to Santa Clara at 5am yesterday and today...

Yep, it's a totally unrelated picture of cats and tea. 

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