I fell asleep with the heating pad on last night, which means it warmed my back all night long. To my astonishment, my back felt pretty much back to normal this morning. Yay!
I met Kevin (av8rdude) at Fred Anderson Toyota this morning, where he dropped off his car for service at 7:30.
We had planned to workout from there, and to his credit, Kevin was all dressed to go. However, having been there less than 12 hours ago—and having had way too short a night’s sleep—I derailed our plans, and just took him home.
Then, back at my place, I jumped back in the bed, since I don’t work on Wednesdays. Yay!
I tried a Glazed Pork Chops recipe from that Dozens of Dishes, Replacements, Ltd. Employees Share Their Favorite Recipes cookbook, and once again I was disappointed.
Though, once again (and this is so unlike me—not quite sure why I’m doing it lately), I made some substitutions: 1) I used Lite Soy Sauce (mostly because it’s the only kind I had), and 2) I used malt vinegar instead of cider vinegar.
To tell you the truth, I’m not exactly sure what “cider” vinegar is. Is that different from the regular white vinegar that says distilled on it? At any rate, I love malt vinegar, especially on French fries, and thought it might add a nice touch.
So, of course, now the problem is that I don’t know if it would have been better with the called for cider vinegar instead of the malt I used. Oh well, it wasn’t horrible or anything, it just wasn’t as tasty as I’d imagined (i.e., hoped) it would be.
Kevin (av8rdude) had an offer from his former roommate Eric to go to lunch, after which he volunteered to take him to pick up his car. Yay, again!
I spent a few minutes preparing for my 3:00 meeting with Dr. Jason Swarts, the professor with whom I’ll be presenting at the IPCC conference in July in Montreal.
The new parking system across from the Tompkins building at State that replaced the meters frustrated me today. I charged the whole $.50 to my credit card (What a waste! That’s got to cost more to process through the credit card company than the city or university gets from it!), and after waiting for about 30 seconds for the receipt to print to put in my car window, the girl behind me in line, said, “I think it’s out of paper.”
She went on, “I’ve gotten a ticket before, because of it. You just write them a letter and they forgive it.” Grrrrrrr!
Jason and I had a short, albeit productive, meeting today, with some thanks to my prepared agenda. (At least I like to think so.) Bottom line: since the paper deadline is so much closer than Jason had imagined, there’s no way we can have it ready by March 15th, so we’re going to withdraw from the conference, and look for a couple of other venues at which to present the project.
I had blood drawn today, and after no luck in the crook of my left arm, she tried a bulging vein on the back of my left hand, and after failing at that one, she asked a different person who was nearby to try—who made a direct hit a little left to the hole already in the crook of my left arm. <singing>To the left; to the left. All the blood you’re gonna get is to the left, to the left.</singing>
I stopped by the Cameron Village library on the way home, where the book I requested on the shelf was not the right one. After some quick detective work, the person working there located my book—The Shipping News.
I ran into The Fresh Market next door, where I picked up some Jalapeño & Cheese Cornbread to go with dinner, and a Pumpkin Praline Scotchie Coffee Cake for dessert. I couldn’t resist that cake, because I love all of the adjectives in the name. Technically, I guess I should say, “I love all of the flavors described by the adjectives in the name.”
After a dinner of the final two servings of my shrimp salad, whose taste had been transformed by cocktail sauce, I made Robert taste the cake and try to discern all of the flavors.
After dinner, we made a quick run to Big Lots, where I returned that hair dryer I bought earlier in the week (since Robert brought me one that he had, but wasn’t using), and I bought a Get Well card for Rick, who had a stroke this past week.
I brought the card to dancing for the dancers to sign, and Van had brought one, too. So everyone signed both of them.
Dancing was a lot of fun tonight.