25 July 2007

May you live in interesting times.

This has definitely been an interesting couple of days. Chigger pox (Non-contagious and fading rapidly, thank goodness), a quasi-promotion, bent glasses, ice cream and a T-shirt craze.

The suspected chicken pox is a thing of the past. Doctor's notes have been obtained and the pox is going down in the medical books as chigger pox. I hate chiggers. They literally suck. Makes me extra glad that God invented tea tree oil. Clever Australians, they have a good thing going with that stuff.

I've been sort of promoted at work. One of the pressmen has been in the hospital for some time, but no one's been told what's wrong with him. Turns out to be something like black lung disease. Not quite, but the results are the same. Coughing, horrible lung goo, and breathing as an endurance sport. They are holding out a good hope for recovery, so that's a plus. In the meantime, I'm taking over aspects of his job. This is good for several reasons. Extra cash and on-the-job training for me, no need to hire an extra person in the mailroom, and M's job is being held for him.

I, erm, sat on Himself's glasses tonight. Bent the arm. "Pliers! Pliers!" came the frantic cry from me. He hands me the set of Captain Queeg folding pliers that he keeps in his pocket to twiddle during downtimes at work. The handles flop at crazy angles and the jaws don't open. "Bring me REAL pliers!" They are produced and the specs are repaired.

You're wanting to hear about the ice cream, aren't you? Today was my day to teach at the preschool. Our tale of the day was "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie", a very cute story. So we made chocolate chip cookie ice cream as our project. We talked about ice and salt and how they interact while the kids crunched up a bunch of cookies. I had the machine loaded with the "secret formula", and away we went! Goooooooooood ice cream, lemme tell you. Lighter than my usual homemade stuff, as I had altered the recipe as follows:

Scald four cups of whole milk, remove from heat. Add one and three-quarters cups of sugar and a teaspoon of salt, then four cups of half-and-half and a tablespoon of vanilla. Stir it all together and refrigerate for half an hour before freezing as directed. Don't forget to throw in a sleeve of crunched-up chocolate chip cookies!

My other big achievement of the day was the T-shirt. Working in the newspaper mailroom has some drawbacks. The biggest is feeling like a mushroom. You know, kept in the dark and fed high-power all-natural Miracle-Gro? Well, I made myself a new uniform shirt. Black to hide the ink, with white lettering and a freehand painting of a mushroom. "MAIL SHROOM" it says across the front. The shirt was so well-received, our department head wants to BUY one for each member of the mailroom staff! Far out.

And now? Now I'm sitting in the coffeehouse. I have new yarn (wool-mohair blend in desert colors), a cup of Kenya, and an escape route in case I need to flee from Captain Oblivious. Life is good.

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