Average Jane

Blog

  • Average Jane Gets All Domestic

    Yesterday I went to my sister’s house for a huge Italian dinner and the premiere of the new season of The Sopranos. I’d baked two loaves of Italian bread which came out quite well, if I do say so myself. I spent the time between rising and baking cycles lying in bed either reading or napping. This was not a productive weekend for me, but I blame my lingering cough. I would say that I’m getting better now, but I’ve been saying that for three weeks and the evidence is still inconclusive.

    I was going to spend this evening figuring out what’s wrong with my computer. I can’t put it off forever – I have deadlines looming. However, since I stayed up until 2 a.m. dealing with it last night, I’m going to get some other things done instead.

    First there’s the baking mess from yesterday. My grandmother always tried to convince me that if I would only clean up the kitchen as I went along, I’d save myself oh so much trouble. I know she’s right, but it’s easy to get lazy when no guests are going to see the aftermath.

    Last night my husband asked me, “How come your sister can cook a big meal like this and not mess up the kitchen nearly as much as you do?” Ha ha! The answer to that question is that my sister and brother-in-law agreed long ago that when she cooks, he cleans up. My husband and I have no such agreement, much to my dismay, but at least I got a chance to press the point a bit. I’m not holding my breath that it will have any effect, but I’ll take any minor coup I can get in the chore wars.

    So, off I go to wash the dishes and do a jeans load so I’ll have something to wear to work tomorrow. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even sort through the teetering stacks of mail on the kitchen counter. Nah, I wouldn’t want to get ahead of myself.

  • Average Jane Experiences Technical Difficulties

    I think my laptop has about had it. It’s a Sony Vaio I’ve had since about 2000, and it’s been experiencing what the vet would call a “failure to thrive” for a while now. First the battery went. That’s not too big of a deal since I keep it forever tethered to my desk by its external monitor, keyboard and mouse, like a brain in a jar.

    Then it was choked with files and the hard drive was heavily fragmented. Well, that happens when you try to keep years’ worth of e-mail and do lots of big, photo-heavy newsletters. I deleted all non-essential e-mail and archived all the previous years’ newsletters to CD. After defragging nightly for about a month, the hard drive is pretty much as unfragmented as you could ask for.

    The last time I did a 20-page newsletter, my desktop publishing program started running so slowly that I began to long for the good old days of a 286 running PageMaker through Windows 3.1. (Now guess how old I am!) Last night I was working on a 4-page newsletter and had such a bad computer hang that I lost an hour of work, much of which should have been saved. Even though I finally recreated everything I’d done and finished the job, the whole process was like wading through molasses. By the end, my computer pretty much said, “You know the version you wanted to create to make into a PDF? Not gonna happen.”

    The last time I had similar problems, I just ran the wonder twins: Spybot Search & Destroy and AdAware. It turned out I had a resources-hogging worm that was throwing a wrench into things. This time, the answer doesn’t seem so simple.

    My husband has offered to build me a desktop PC that’s faster, has more hard drive space, etc. It’s a very reasonable option since I don’t take the laptop anywhere anyway. (Although if the laptop is salvageable, it would be lovely to get a wireless network card for it so I can surf downstairs while I’m watching TV and not have to borrow hubby’s Mac.) Yes, he’s one of those Apple fanatics and has limited sympathy for the evils that befall PCs, despite being our household tech support guy.

    So, that’s my latest tale of woe. I still hold out hope that I can at least get this latest newsletter to the printer today. Luckily, Average Jane can be written anywhere.

  • Average Jane’s Gourmet Palate

    I had the world’s most delicious dinner yesterday. Was it at some trendy independent bistro? A five-star restaurant with linen tablecloths? No indeed! It was at a fabulous hybrid Long John Silver’s/A&W Rootbeer location.

    This is a chain I visit, at most, once a year. Five years can pass without a visit from me. I am well aware that a Long John Silver’s meal contains my recommended monthly allowance of fat. For the most part, I just don’t “do” fast food anymore. However…

    My dinner was perfection at almost every turn. The Chicken Planks? Deliciously crispy and salty on the outside, tender inside. The coleslaw? Tangy with just the right amount of creaminess. My husband gave me his tiny corn on the cob, which was a little bit soggy but sweet and tasty. The fries were unexceptional, but still nicely crispy. The hush puppies, although a bit different than the more cornmeal-heavy ones I remember, were light yet bursting with grease and pleasantly onion-flavored. I had a wonderful, icy-cold glass mug of A&W rootbeer with my dinner, and it was a refreshing beverage and dessert all in one. Best of all, Long John Silver’s has gone back to including “crunchies” with your meal.

    For those of you who do not recall the glory days of Long John Silver’s, crunchies are little fragments of batter that fall off in the deep-fryer and are scooped out with the cooked food and served as a little bonus. When I was in high school, my boyfriend and his friends would stop by Long John Silver’s after school and get a bag of just crunchies (for free, if I recall correctly). Then Long John Silver’s cut way back on the crunchies. Maybe it was during their ill-fated “health conscious” period when they were offering grilled seafood options and steamed vegetables. Anyway, it was a supreme disappointment that has been wisely rectified.

    I should mention that even though Long John Silver’s is mainly known for seafood, I do not like seafood at all. My personal culinary rule is: no bottom feeders and nothing with an exoskeleton. For me, Long John Silver’s is all about the Chicken Planks.

    So that was my wonderful supper yesterday. I was fully prepared to pay a severe gastrointestinal price for my transgression, but weeks of protein shakes, healthy little lunches and sensible dinners must have paved the way for one “get out of jail free” evil meal. Thanks, Long John Silver’s! Until next year, or the year after…

  • Average Jane Overschedules

    I had good intentions this morning. I set my alarm for 6:30 even though I’d gone to bed after midnight. Of course, when 6:30 rolled around I was way too tired to get up so I set the alarm for another hour. My plan to get some things done at home before work (like blogging, for instance) went by the wayside, and I decided I could put my hair in a ponytail and use my hair washing time to make a breakfast shake instead.

    Work was very busy, but I did take time to have a lovely lunch of Chinese dumplings and jasmine tea. I swung by another office after work to try to catch up on a few projects, but I was too hungry and tired to concentrate.

    I went home, cooked chicken fajitas for dinner, and watched “Angel” and the second half of the premiere of “Kingdom Hospital.” (My impression: not quite scary enough, but I’ll watch it again next week since it doesn’t look like there will be a new episode of “Angel.”) The work I meant to do this morning is still waiting, but now it’s 10 p.m. and I really need to get some sleep.

    Now that I’m working normal hours again, I think it’s time to start cutting down on my extracurricular activities a bit. Three club memberships (board seats in two of the organizations), numerous social groups and too many work and volunteer projects are overwhelming me. Considering that I’m a horrible procrastinator, clearly I’m causing myself unnecessary stress.

    Today’s milestone: no cold medicine of any kind! Yes, I’m still coughing a little bit, but I think the end is in sight.

  • Average Jane on Contacts, Children & Cognac

    We usually think of life in terms of the big moments: graduations, weddings, new babies. Once you get to a certain age, though, you’re past all the really big moments. That’s when I think you start to develop more of an appreciation for little moments of happiness that strike you as you go about your life.

    Today, for instance, I had just put in my contact lenses. Here’s what I thought I knew: they were my last pair, I had already worn them longer than I should, they were becoming the broken-glass-studded circles of fire in my eyes, and I still hadn’t gotten around to calling the eye doctor for an appointment to get some more. As my eyes were developing that edge of irritation I’d been experiencing for the past week, some impulse drove me to look in the drawer where I keep the contacts, just in case. Hallelujah! I had one more pair! (And an extra single, thanks to a packaging error that had put two lenses in a single pod, earlier in the year.) Now I have two weeks of comfort in which to get a doctor’s appointment and receive new lenses.

    I would also like to take a moment to recognize the glory and wonder that is Dayquil. I bought some yesterday and experienced an entire evening without the sore throat that had plagued me since Saturday. Flip side: I was up past midnight thanks to whatever ingredient they put in it to counter the Nyquil effect. Also, I coughed all night because I didn’t take any nighttime remedies on top of the overactive Dayquil. To my husband: if you’re reading this, sorry about coughing in your face.

    Just because I’m beyond the major life events doesn’t mean I can’t latch on and enjoy those of my friends. Some close friends of mine welcomed a baby boy yesterday – their first child. I’m very excited about stopping by to see him after work tonight (although I’ll save the holding until I’m certifiably germ-free). Another friend is having a baby in a few more weeks, and yet another friend adopted a baby not long ago, so my social circle is buzzing with babies. That doesn’t count the older children from the last few crops of kiddos, including my niece who will be four next month. I only have cats, so that puts me in the position of surrogate aunt for everyone. I can play with the kids, babysit if you like, then return home and sit on the veranda in cocktail attire, sipping cognac. Or maybe just watch inappropriate cable TV during prime time. One of those.

  • Average Jane vs. Laziness

    At least for a month, I’m back to work full-time as of today. That means less time for Average Jane, but better cashflow, which will be INCREDIBLY important once I get find out how much I owe in taxes this year. (It won’t be pretty.)

    I meant to accomplish lots of stuff around the house this weekend, but I can’t seem to shake this cold/bronchitis/sinus infection/whatever I have. It’s looped back around to the sore throat stage in the last couple of days, so I’m making a point of disinfecting my toothbrush before each use, just in case. I apologize if you feel that’s TMI, but I come from a family where we played the “grossout game” at the dinner table. It’s made me a trifle less sensitive to the grossout threshholds of others.

    Anyway, I didn’t clean up my office, which means I still have to hop over piles of papers to get to my desk. A big pile of junk slid off the desktop onto the floor behind my desk yesterday, so that’s one more incentive to get going. The other incentive is that every receipt and tax-related piece of paper I need to sort out for my accountant is buried in the explosion of paperwork that engulfs my workspace. At this point, it’s pure insanity that I haven’t gotten around to remedying the situation, but what can I say?

    My sister believes that everyone in our family displays classic ADHD symptoms, and after taking a couple of diagnostic quizzes, I’ve come to believe she’s onto something. It’s nice to know that there may be a reason I’m such a scatterbrained procrastinator. Maybe it’s even fixable! I’ll be reading up on it when I get some projects out of the way.

    Anyway, I’m almost through with my cup o’ soup, so I need to move on to my real work.

  • Average Jane on Landscaping

    Now that I have a glimmer of evidence that spring may someday arrive, my thoughts are turning to the large areas of my yard that are bereft of decorative vegetation. Last year we had a new sidewalk installed to replace the 70s-o-rama brick and railroad tie marvel that we’d been tripping over (what do you know? – literally and figuratively) since we moved in. As part of that process, I removed a couple dozen mini rose bushes from the flower bed nearby and moved them to the back yard, to a bed that was more to their proper scale. Now their former bed is an expanse of mud and old cypress mulch. Not pretty.

    Over the winter, my husband bought me some software called Instant Landscaping. It has a lot of cool features, but my favorite is one that lets you load photos of your house and yard and play with different plants and other yard features until you’ve developed the perfect plan. I’m looking forward to trying it out as soon as I get this year’s tax issues out of the way.

    I’m a lousy gardener, incidentally. Even my indoor plants are chosen for their ability to go long periods of time without water. Of the things I’ve planted outside since I moved here more than eight years ago, only a handful are still thriving. I lucked out in purchasing several perennial purple geranium plants. They come back every year and keep getting fuller and prettier. I planted some Stark Bros. colonnade apple trees a long time ago, but every year they produce only a few blossoms and never any apples, except for the crabapple tree. Since I don’t know what to do with crabapples, the squirrels are pretty much the only beneficiaries of my “orchard.”

    The first spring after we bought this house, I spied an area of the back yard that had clearly been used as a garden. I tilled it, added manure and peat and everything else you’re supposed to, and planted every kind of vegetable I could think of. The tomatoes did okay, but everything else either failed to come up or quickly languished. I tried again the next year with even worse results and that was the end of that. I don’t know why, but that area of the yard is so sterile that I’ve been trying for the last six years to grow grass there, but to no avail. The nearby fence line is the best place in the yard to pick up a nice case of poison ivy, though. Yay.

    So that’s my tale of incompetent gardening. I’ll try again this year with the big, empty flower bed, but I’m already envisioning a carefully-sculpted application of sod that will make it about half its current size before I begin. It’s best to keep everyone’s expectations realistic, I find!

  • Average Jane Goes Out to Breakfast

    I am not a huge fan of many breakfast foods. I’ve given up on cereal for the most part, and menu items in the “syrup-covered” family (pancakes, waffles, french toast) just aren’t filling enough. However, the best-case breakfast scenario for me is a restaurant breakfast.

    One of the things that makes breakfast preparation such a huge pain is that each item must be cooked separately. The eggs go in one pan, the bacon in another, the toast goes in the toaster, and any potatoes go in yet a third pan. If you happen to want biscuits instead of toast, that’s another five dirtied utensils.

    At a restaurant, someone else coordinates all of the cooking and gets your food to you quickly, and at a reasonable price. What could be better?

    The biggest restaurant breakfast rip-off is oatmeal. $4 for a cup of cooked oatmeal, an ounce or two of milk and 10x the amount of brown sugar you need? I don’t think so.

  • Average Jane Stages A Comeback

    Yes, I know I haven’t posted anything for a couple of days. I won’t run through my list of excuses except to say, remember last week when I said I was sick? Well, I’m still sick. But I’ll soldier on for the good of the site.

    Today I looked around at the squalor that has overtaken my house while I’ve been feeling poorly, and it occurred to me that I must somehow address it. I believe that every drinking glass in our entire house is now dirty, so it’s time for one of those top-heavy dishwasher loads that has nothing in it but a full rack of cups and glasses, one dessert plate and five peanut butter-coated knives. I just ran a load of laundry through for the THIRD time after days of neglect. It’s finally made it to the dryer, so its ordeal is now over. Then there’s a nice stack of overdue bills, but then that’s par for the course.

    This weekend I’m hosting a baby shower at my house, so I’ll have to do a more thorough cleaning job between now and then. Even though the house should still be fairly clean, it’s amazing what four oft-puking cats can do to bring down the level of sanitation.

    Tonight I need to grocery shop to get the ingredients for the cheesecake, blueberry scones and Devonshire cream I’ll be making for the shower. I was fortunate enough to be on some kind of high-level, “we love you and your money” mailing list for either our local grocery store or Starbucks which resulted in my receiving a good-sized sample packet of Starbucks coffee in the mail yesterday, just in time for the party. It’ll be a midday shower, so we’re concentrating on desserts, tea and coffee.

    Obviously I’m rambling today, so I’ll quit before I get off on another tangent. Tomorrow: Something more interesting, I promise!

  • Average Jane Talks Cars & Movies

    I’ll start by saying that I know the average woman isn’t really into cars. I was never really into cars myself until recently, except as a means to get from Point A to Point B, preferably very, very quickly. However, I absolutely love my current car even though it’s old, things are constantly breaking on it, and it has the potential to be a bottomless money pit.

    To establish some kind of limit to the money pit, I’ve been trying to learn how to do minor repairs and maintenance on the car. Yesterday I got together with my wrenching club (all guys so far, although I’m trying to rope in one more girl), and replaced my shifter. I’d had the new shifter for about a month, but I hadn’t gotten around to installing it. As it turned out, the repair took LITERALLY five minutes (sorry, I’ve been watching MadTV a lot), plus a trip to Advance Auto to get a 41-cent clip I needed to hold the parts together. All those weeks that I’d been driving around with the shifter all loosey-goosey and wrapped in duct tape seemed especially ridiculous once I had the nice, new shifter in place. I did need help from one the guys to pull the old shifter out of its cradle. It was one of those brute force, “can you open this jar for me” things that sometimes we gals just can’t do by ourselves. It was still satisfying to do the rest of the job myself, though.

    Yesterday night, the car-a-palooza continued with a trip to the theater to see a preview showing of Starsky and Hutch, starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. (What does that have to do with cars? Their distinctive Ford Gran Torino, of course.)

    I thought the movie was everything you could ask for in a throwaway comedy. In addition to Stiller and Wilson, it featured Vince Vaughan, Will Ferrell and Snoop Dogg, all of whom were hilariously perfect in their roles. The movie is set in the 1970s (no specific year, just “the seventies”), and the one detail I kept noticing in various scenes was the seemingly unending selection of 70s-era coffee cups. From the shiny, bumpy pottery kind, to the plastic-footed type, to the ever-popular “happy face” cup, every 70s coffee cup I remembered from childhood appeared at one time or another.

    Granted, the movie is pretty lightweight, but I found myself laughing throughout. It wasn’t quite the triumph of the first Charlie’s Angels movie, but then again it was way better than the second Charlie’s Angels movie (which is pretty safe to say in that the latter was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Except Batman and Robin – now that was two hours of my life that I wish I could get back). Just for the casting alone, I’ll want the Starsky and Hutch DVD when it comes out.

    Have you seen any good movies lately? Have any thoughts to share about your car? I’ve been doing this blog for more than a week now and nobody has left a single comment. Feel free to participate!