Listen to the Rain

Annual review is coming up at work, and I'm in a bit of a pickle. Years ago, during the days of the old old database, I'd get daily reports back from the system of how many discrepancies I resolved, so I could see how many records I looked through, the subset of those that I fixed, how many records per house, a whole set of statistics so I could tell if I were doing well, if I needed to step it up, if I was on track to finish a project by a particular time, everything was at my fingertips. Then we switched to the old new system and all of that went away and I had to track what I was doing in an Excel spreadsheet so I could report metrics at the end of the year. With the new new system, I don't even have an easy way to do that without manually integrating a counter every time I finish a record, and of course I haven't been doing that because what is this, the stone age? I emailed my boss asking basically "What do I do about this?" and she emailed her boss and I haven't heard back yet, so who knows. Maybe they also don't know how much work I've been doing. System is -1/10, would not be confused once again.

I went to Mishkan's meditation tonight for the first time in a month or two, because one of the long-time facilitators is leaving. She managed to get a post-doc position right after completing her PhD, but it's in Germany, so she's having to upend her entire life and move away from everything she's ever known to do research to write a book. But before this happened she had six months of no leads and was contemplating a non-academic career--everything I've heard from people with PhDs comes down to "Do not get a PhD"--so I'm glad that she managed to find a good way to keep doing what she loves!



Warm soup to match the cold weather! Chicken chorizo from Green Fire Farm, which isn't available for pre-order but which I bought last week when I saw it advertised on the A-frame sign they had, along with pickled onions from Twidley Bits and store-bought red onion, tomato's from Hardin's Family Farm, and kale from Whole Foods that I had to buy at the last moment because I thought I per-ordered it but apparently I didn't? I just used store-bought chicken bouillon because no one at the farmer's market sells any and because I really wanted to buy Osem parve chicken-flavored bouillon but I kept forgetting and now it's sold out. I also bought some pumpkin sourdough from Bennison's Bakery at the last minute for dipping purposes.

I used to eat this all the time during the winter, but I got out of the habit of making it. I wasn't even considering it until last week when I was there with arsduo and britshlez, and since arsduo stopped in at Green Fire for eggs, I had a chance to get out the sign. Once I saw the chorizo, I remembered the veal chorizo that Whole Foods used to carry and the soup I used to make with it, and I decided to give it a try. I threw it all in the pot, left it to simmer for a couple hours while sashagee ordered cheese pizza, and then ate it with some olive oil drizzled over the top and dipped the bread into it. Even though it was pretty warm today--thanks to being on the top floor and it not being that cold outside, it was 22ºC indoors even though the thermostat was set at 16ºC--it was still so comforting. The only thing that would have been better would be if it had been raining outside like it was last night.

The bread didn't really go with it, though. I heard the sourdough and didn't really count the pumpkin, but pumpkin was most of the flavor.


A cinnamon roll from Lost Larson. I'm definitely running out of new dessert options to come up with something different every week, but I haven't had this yet! And I don't really like it--the color is accurate because the dough was crispy on the outside, very unlike the gooeyness of most cinnamon rolls. That part was good, but I wasn't a fan of the frosting. It was almost sour, but in a way I didn't like. I was hoping for a mild sweetness to match the crunchiness of the dough, but it was not to be.


And that's the final farmer's market dinner of the year! Some of the marketers will be coming back piecemeal through November and I'll almost certainly still be buying things, but the market as a whole is done until next summer.

Tomorrow I have a three-hour department meeting that I have to be on camera for the entire time, because this time it's through Zoom, even though I'll have nothing to say and will almost certainly be muted most of the time. Is it going to be a disaster? I sure hope so, because maybe that'll stop them from trying this again!