Challenge and update

I have nothing much interesting to report on the food eating front, I guess. I am trying to use up things slowly but surely. No crazy recipes yet! I used more sorbet and frozen fruit for smoothies, and last night I used some of her rice and edamame to go with my stir fry. As I was making the stir fry I noticed that she left a lot more stuff in the spice cabinets than I would have expected given that when I moved in she was clear that we were not sharing olive oil. That just leaves more balsamic vinegar for caprese salad!! There are a lot of pitas in the freezer so I am trying to use those up quickly. I am trying to clean stuff out of the freezer because I want to get the ice bin in there ASAP since it is very hot and it would be nice to have plenty of ice available. There is a lot of stuff in the freezer though, so I have a task ahead of me.

Mostly, recently I have been puzzling about life and particularly the future of my life from the point where I am right now. This has also brought a great deal of attempted analysis of what has happened so far this year in several arenas.

At work, my boss left and told me that I was likely going to get his position. This was a position that I wasn't technically qualified for and one that would come with a great deal more responsibility and stress. I didn't really want the job, per se, but, as most people who know me know, I believe in the mission of the organization and am concerned about us putting out a good product. Given the timing involved, my boss leaving in the middle of gearing up for our next operation, the effort I personally put into the preparation for the operation, and my experience thus far in the operation (previous new employees who have entered our division have taken a whole operation to really understand what is going on) including the fact that my portion of the operation is a check on the work that has been done by the other teams in our department so we have no margin for error, it seemed like I would be a good choice for the position. Of course I didn't get the position. At first it was going to be given to someone who was at the same level as me, but apparently his supervisor threw a fit and she got the position. The problem here is that she had previously made it known that she does not like me and she is kind of the anti-me. In addition she has a very checkered past of decision making since we have all been working there the past year. It is very concerning. Further, her management style is different and my work functions have gone from tasks that required genuine planning and decision making on my part to being kind of a puppet of her (bad) decisions. The rest of the department had the pleasure this last week of sitting in a meeting where we were lectured about doing things that my boss does that we are not supposed to do, of course my boss was not present for this meeting. I have been looking for another job for a while, since this job is temporary and could end at any time really. I am fairly certain that if I stay I will be on until June 2011, but do I want to stay? Not really, I would rather have a job where I am challenged and can use some of the unique skills I have gained from previous education and employment. Before this change in management things were going pretty well at work. I loved my boss, we had a team that worked like a team, I had responsibilities, I worked with other teams, I had good rapport with my field employees, and I got to go observe and assist with training. I felt good about things, now it is a mess.

Couple that with the fact that my best friend tried to break up with me last weekend. Really he was saying that we cause each other a lot of pain and that has to stop, so either we have to part ways or renegotiate the nature of our relationship. We went for the later. Amazingly we were on the same page, for the most part, in understanding the current stage of our relationship. We haven't been on the same page about anything for a while, hence the conversation about the situation.

And I have been giving more thought to some other relationship issues as well. Those thoughts pretty much take me in circles. I like to wear circles, not think in them.

The Clear Out Challenge

It has been a long time, yeah, yeah, yadda yadda. Maybe I will write something serious soon. Have been avoiding it as a lot of things seem to have been going wrong. Trying to move on to more positive things.

My roommate moved to Boston last week. She is working on a PhD in Psychology and has to do an internship and she got one at Harvard, or a hospital affiliated with Harvard. Point is she moved to Boston, she doesn't live here anymore and she left a lot of food. Obviously she couldn't take all the refrigerated and frozen stuff with her so I inherited it. Now I have to figure out what to do with it, and I have decided to embrace it as a challenge and write about what I do with her food. Additionally, I will probably be vacating this dwelling at the end of August so I need to clean out the kitchen as much as possible so I don't have to move too much stuff. Heaven knows the kitchen hardware I own is massive enough! This challenge sounds kinda pointless but amusing too. Getting rid of the roommates food shouldn't be too hard as she and I do have some overlapping food habits, but where we diverge it could get interesting. For example, she is a snacker and I am currently overwhelmed with the amount of snack food in the apartment because I had bought some things recently like vege chips and Ritz pretzel cracker things. Also, there are a lot of frozen vegetables, yikes. And soda. I never saw her drink much soda but there was always a few liters around, probably from or for parties. Now there are at least four partial liters.

Today was pretty much day one of eating any of her food. For breakfast I made a smoothie using some of her mango sorbet. For lunch I defrosted some of the pita triangles she had in the freezer and took them along with me to Montrose Harbor for my tanning session, with some red pepper hummus she left. Pita and hummus is certainly an overlap in our diets. For dinner I used some of her pasta sauce and pasta to make some sausage and penne concoction with some vege protein sausage I bought at Woodman's yesterday and some pasta sauce I had in the fridge. I also cooked some of the mixed frozen vegetables from the freezer. Ick. I think I will make a chicken pot pie to use the rest of those vegetables, I can't eat them straight. I had a glass of wine that she left too. Well that was today. We will see what happens tomorrow! I already made dinner and didn't use anything but my own stuff, maybe a side dish?

Eventually this might get more interesting as I go buy ten ingredients to get rid of one ingredient in a cupboard!! Or if I start making really odd things. I do have some condensed milk, pumpkin, and some coconut milk to get rid of so there is hope.