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.

Rumble rumble

The very one!

Lord y'all.  Or you, or whomever might be reading this.

It's been a hot minute since I last wrote.  A New York Minute, one might say, or perhaps a cotton-pickin' one, as if there's any difference amongst things that are all 60 seconds long, which there isn't, but must be, if at least three varieties, aside from a regular minute, can be offered up.

Meaning to say, it's has, once again, been a while since I popped in to say anything atall.

However, with the way things are going over on social media and in the world at large, it might just be that the number of whatever type of minute you might choose is likely to be shrinking between entries here at NAY, because the world is just a little too much for me right now and escaping the din of politics on Facebook and the endless slaughter of innocents on the news seems the right medicine to choose right now.  I've been negative for way too long, and need to rise above the smoke and mirrors to peek a little more clearly about what's going on in my life and brain.

You are invited  along to the peep show.

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Spent a lovely Saturday with Biff after having a tiny spa getaway Friday night.  Biff was having some back pain, which cried out for a hot tub treatment, so we snagged a room at a local hotel that has such a thing (see pic above for a nearly live-action shot!) and soaked and lazed around and watched 'regular' teevee on a king-sized bed (the luxury!) and soaked some more in the morning.  I do love me a hot tub, so am inching ever closer to spending some savings on one for our very own.  Surely spending a few thousand is better than spending increments of cash on a hotel room 3 miles from home, right? (Someone set me straight on that logic, please.  Has to be along the lines of 'let's buy a jet ski and pay for maintenance and insurance and a trailer instead of renting one for a fraction of the cost for the week a year we use one.' (note: we have not yet bought a jet ski, chiefly because we have no place to store one for 51 weeks a year)).

We spent Saturday, well, SPENDING.  Sam's Club got some slice of dough, with a real impulse purchase thrown on top of the regular heap: a 'cooling' memory foam mattress topper (only $139!) with (of course) new sheets also because our old ones won't fit the height our mattress + topper will be.

If we ever get the topper on the mattress, that is.  The hurdle we're currently attempting to leap is the SMELL of all those terrific chemicals that are used to create the 'cooling' effect, which smell like a headache a-coming.  Takes 24 to 72 hours to air that thing out, so the labels and instructions say.  We are on Day 3 of airing, and that sucker still smells like disinfecting day at the Shady Acres Boarding Kennel n' Rest Home. 'Oh, but the treatment is harmless!' says the label, to which I reply - well so is perfume, but given the 'right' type and amount it can still give folks a powerful migraine.  So, out over the porch rail it sits, baking in the sun and degassing.  Biff is all excited to put it on the bed and revel in its therapeuticness (remember that back pain thing), but I am less so (dat smell tho).  Fingers crossed it's non-offensive by suppertime, 'cuz we really have followed instructions and don't want to have to shove that monster back in the box and return it.

Then we bought a new storm door for the front door.  The old one had a sprung hinge, and kept unlatching in a stiff breeze, breaking the closer thingie, and rendering the whole notion of a storm door pointless.

Also, groceries.

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Then on Sunday, at 1:41 a.m., I lurched out of bed knowing something was the matter, and barfed.  Spent the rest of the wee hours changing it up between barfing, resting fitfully on a recliner, running to the potty for 'other' reasons, and having the worstest of dreams.

Good ol' times.

Was better enough to have a wee dinner last night, and hoped for the best for today, but I was kidding myself and so am here, typing this, nursing a cup of cream with coffee in it and slugging down water.  Canceled my meetings for today and will shortly lose myself in updating a document for a quick review meeting tomorrow.  Things could be worse though, so one must keep plugging along.

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I'll wrap this up with this: the daffodils on North Main are abloom.  The 'Purple Queen' plants are emerging in the front garden, and forsythia are popping out like lil' weasels.  I do believe that this means Spring has arrived in the 27587, and that is a happy thought.

Tiff out.