Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Hurry up and wait

Happy Wednesday, y'all.

Let's play a game today, OK?  It'll be fun!  It doesn't involve any kind of physical exertion either, which is great when you're a desk-chair-bound sloth like myself.  Perhaps you are too, and worry that playing a game might be too much for your sluggish systems, so fear not!  The only thing you have to do is answer a few simple questions that anyone with a speck of logic will find easy.

Ready?

Here goes!

We're going to make a cake, two ways, you tell me which one makes more sense.  We'll use a box mix to make it easy.

Way One

  • Preheat oven to called-for temperature
  • Empty the bag of mix into a bowl
  • Add eggs, oil, and water as called for on the box
  • Mix either by hand or with a mixer according to the directions
  • Prepare pan(s) according to the directions
  • Pour batter into pan(s) and place in preheated oven
  • Bake for the specified amount of time and until tester comes out clean
  • Cool 
  • Frost
  • Take to neighbor's house for dinner party.


Way Two

  • Put eggs, oil, and water into bowl
  • Walk away for a week
  • Panic when you see the dinner party invite on the fridge and realize it starts in an hour
  • Dump cake mix in bowl
  • Stir a couple of times
  • Pour batter into a pan slightly larger than called for so the cake will cook faster
  • Put in cold oven you've set to a slighty higher temp than called for so the cake will cook faster
  • Take a quick shower
  • Remove cake from oven at specified time, remove from oven.  Don't bother testing, there's no time.
  • Place cake directly in freezer, go get dressed
  • Hear can pan shatter from the hot-to-cold transition
  • Remove from freezer, pick out large shards of glass, run vacuum over the cake to get the remaining pieces.
  • Dust with confectioner's sugar (who has TIME for frosting?)
  • Take to neighbor's house for dinner party, arrive 15 minutes late.


Question: Which method do you think would yield the better result?

Think long and hard on this.  Don't feel like you need to rush to decide.

Ready for the answer?

It's Number TWO!!!

Or it is if you're me, and a work project is all 'cart before the horse and we have three minutes to go 12 miles.'  I'm working on the most upside-down kind of project ever, and it's a challenge staying ahead of things and not falling into a panic.  Like, seriously.  Not linear at all.  Not even 2-dimensional.  This thing is all arms and legs and tentacles.

Currently the situation is such that I'm waiting for finalization of 2 things that in normal circumstances would have been done and dusted BEFORE I start my chunk of work, and the thing that would normally start AFTER I'm nearly done is beating my stuff to the finish line, which is coming up fast in the ol' rear-view mirror.  That of course means that all the folks working on this stuff have to keep an eye on everyone else's stuff so that nothing that gets packaged together argues with whatever else might be in there and everything is presented the same and contains the same info.

Not really the calm cool method normally used, and is proven to get a reasonably good result.  Nope, we're smashing eggs and getting confectioner's sugar all over the place in our metaphorical kitchen, hoping that everything will turn out in the end.

I mean, it'll still be a CAKE, it just might not be as nicely frosted as it might have been.  Or even  frosted at all, like poor 'nailed it' Barbie's picture up there.  STILL CAKE!

So, right - good job on playing along with me!  Hope you learned something!

Have a slice of this cake.  Oh, it might be a little crunchy, so don't bite down too hard.

Tiff out.


4 comments:

Anne Athema said...

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww....

kenju said...

Walk away for a week? Even I am not that bad.

Middle Girl said...

Yummy. :-)

oldfriend said...

Oh, I gotta know - did you really make the second cake or is that an analogy only?

And, what is driving the upsidedownedness (it is too a word) of the project?