It's been a year--A YEAR!--since I've posted anything to LiveJournal. I do read every once in awhile, because I've become interested in my Friends, but it always feels kind of voyeuristic, too.

I am doing contract work from home which I'm liking very much. I have very steady work which I charge handsomely for. I'm working for a smallish oil company, privately held, and ride the corporate jet to such hot spots as Metarie and Bakersfield like I'm someone important, which--really, not so much.

My husband helped me build a treadmill desk which I started using this past week. So far I am up to about 2 hours twice a day and stand the rest of the time, without too many aches or pains. It is a little distracting, but I've heard it can take about a month to get completely used to it, both physically and mentally. My hope is to work my ass off, literally as well as metaphorically.

I just completed and billed for my first real contract job. I've worked contract before, but it was at the client's office and really wasn't much different than being an employee except that I had to pay my own taxes (which is why a few years later they hired almost all their contractors under IRS duress, but that's another story.) This time I'm truly my own employer, leasing the software myself and working at home in my jammies if I so desire. At first I was too easily distracted and it was hard to get started, but after a bit, it was like I was working 24/7. I've taken about 2 full days off in the past month. I feel I'm lacking the balance that I would have if I wasn't working from home.

My old boss still wants me to come work for him, but he hasn't gotten seismic data yet although he calls me regularly with updates. He wants me to go to a meet and greet with potential investors tomorrow. I'm not nearly the shmoozer he is, but he thinks it would be good to trot out the expertise, so here I go.

Asian Lettuce Cups with Spicy Ground Turkey Filling It is: A) delicious, B) fast, C) easy, D) relatively low calorie and E) delicious (doubly). Everyone I've shared this with who has tried it raves about it and says they now make it at least once a week. While I've never been to PF Chang's I'm told one of the favorite things on their menu tastes just like this. I usually add some finely chopped veggies like celery, carrots, and water chestnuts without changing the flavor very much as the recipe as is is rather light on the vegetables. The only ingredient that might be hard to find is the chili garlic sauce, but I found it in the import food section of my local grocery store (in a jar with all Vietnamese writing except 'Chili Garlic Sauce'). There isn't enough of the fish sauce to effect the flavor one way or another, so I wouldn't buy it just for this dish.

I should plug Kaylyn's Kitchen blog while I'm at it. She has a fine collection of no nonsense recipes that are good whether you follow South Beach or not. I would cook a turkey again just so I could make Leftover Turkey and Sweet Potato Soup Recipe with Black Beans and Lime with the leftovers. Next on my list to try is Crockpot (or Stovetop) Recipe for Red Lentil and Sweet Potato Soup with Curry and Coconut Milk.

There is a big ass spider living on my front porch. I first noticed him Labor Day evening. He had built a big web hanging from the eaves and anchored to the porch railing. He is brown and his body alone is almost the size of a quarter. The first time I saw him he was eating a huge beetle that he had caught in his web. The next morning when I let the dog out about 8am he and his web had completely vanished. Then I started to notice that when I let the dog out just before bed, the spider would be back with a completely new web. Once, instead of attaching the web to the eaves and porch railing, he stretched it out at a 45 degree angle, an 8 foot (or more) hypotenuse to the L formed where the porch juts out from the house. It seemed to float out in space. Mostly he makes his web under the protection of the eaves which worked out especially well in that heavy rainstorm we had a few days ago. I looked for him once during the day to see if I could find where he spends the night, but he must find a cool place in a bush or under the house, because he's nowhere I can find him.

This morning I woke up early, at dawn, and he was still outside, eating what looked to be a fly. I got out my magnifying glass to see if I could see any markings on him and there was an hour glass looking marking a darker brown than his overall lighter brown coloring, no stripes on the legs that I could see. I haven't been able to identify what type of spider he is. Any guesses? I forgot about him until I went to take the dog for a walk around 8 and both the spider and his big ass web were gone. How does he get rid of it? What a neat and tidy spider.

How can 5 months have gone by without posting anything? I have been reading others posts, commenting randomly and rarely. I have been feeling ‘weird’.

The weirdness comes from the whole being laid off thing. Since I’ve known it was coming since November of last year, it’s been the longest fucking goodbye which is weirdness all by itself. I’ve been off work for three weeks now. Every day feels like Saturday. I’ve been puttering around the garden. Finished the garden columns (which are awesome Ishouldpostapicture. ) Hosting a garden club meeting. Finally extending the pavers all the way around the pool . (Not a mean feat when it’s 95 outside.) I’ve decided to give myself the summer before I start to look for another job. I’m being paid 10 months worth of severance plus other nice parting gifts so I shouldn’t be feeling as insecure as I am, but that’s me. I worry that because of the oil spill in the Gulf I may never work again. But I probably will.

The last two days I have spent online planning my family’s trip to Montreal and Quebec City next month. It is going to be so much fun. A vacation that doesn’t involve visiting family! I haven’t been out of the US for almost 20 years. They speak French! It’s like a foreign country! 12 days! We’re going to spend more than someone who is unemployed has a right to but I DON’T CARE. Who knows when I’ll get a chance again, especially with my daughters who are 17 and 20. Montreal has an outdoors techno concert series this summer. They are all psyched about that. Meanwhile, my husband and I will have a nice dinner at a jazz bar. I can hardly wait!

I'm losing my job. My company announced a few months ago that they were going to sell all of their offshore and international oil and gas properties and just remain onshore North America. That means they won't need the people that work those properties either. Of which I am one. I guess it's the equivalent of a plant closing. But we have to sell the properties first and that's what we're in the process of doing, trying to get the best deal possible for the company that is going to boot us out. Oh well, we must be professional about it.

I haven't mentioned it as I know there are a lot of people on LJ in much worse shape. As long as I stick around until they release me, they will send me off with a pile of money, enough to live on for a couple of years if necessary, but I doubt it will take very long to find another job. Whatever. Been there, done that.

For the first couple months after the announcement, I was very busy as we actually got money to drill a few wells, proven reserves being much more valuable than 'probable' reserves. But now I have nothing to do until the data rooms open to the potential buyers in a couple of weeks, and even then I may not be very busy, I just need to be 'available'. In the meantime I've been playing around with programs that I always wanted to try, but never found the time to. And I volunteered to be a tutor in a program sponsored by my employer at a local elementary school.

Today I met the 2nd grade girl that I will be working with for the next couple of months. She was quite the chatterbox once she got going. I found out her favorite color (red), favorite activity (basketball), and that she lived with her mother and siblings in a shelter. She readily gossiped about the people at the shelter, and recited the shelter rules to me. Between stories of the Superbowl party and playing basketball on Saturdays, she told me about the cockroaches in the food, that a friend of hers was hit so hard by her mother that she lost a tooth and had to go to the hospital to get stitches, and that her 16 year old brother was killed by some people who beat him up, robbed him, and shot him in the head.

Perspective, I haz it.

I've just gotten caught up with Dollhouse and I must say that I am loving it very hard, something I never would have guessed after the first few episodes. Too bad that it's been canceled just as it's getting good. Or is that why it's getting good? Most of the best series have planned expiration dates.

We just got back from a week at Big Bend Ranch State Park. Four families stayed in the Big House with overflow in the bunk house and we had the place virtually to ourselves. I hiked in the desert everyday except my day for KP duty where I made my mother's spareribs which are always a big hit. I made 8 racks of pork ribs, but the original recipe is for 2 racks which should feed a family of four quite well. Mom never measured so the amounts are estimates. These come out gooey and sweet and melt in your mouth.

Mom's Spareribs

Cut pork ribs into pieces of 2 or 3 bones. Place in a big roaster and bake, covered for 1 hour at 375. Drain accumulated grease and fluids.

Pour BBQ sauce over ribs and bake for at least another hour or so uncovered, turning the ribs every 10-15 minutes to baste with sauce. Cook until the sauce is thick and the ribs are sticky and starting to blacken in spots.

BBQ sauce, mix together:
1 onion, chopped
2-4 cloves of chopped garlic
8 oz can tomato sauce
can of water (the tomato sauce can)
1/4 cup cider vinager
2 handfuls brown sugar
salt & pepper
2 tbsp. chili powder
Worcestershire (couple of dollops)

We have been friends with our next door neighbors for 30 years. They are a couple (couple A) with no children and most holidays they rent a house in or near Big Bend. We've gone with them a few times and we plan on going this Christmas, too. There is another couple (couple B), mutual friends of ours for as long, who live just a few blocks away and want to come along, too. I also work with the wife of couple B. Today she confided to me that she hasn't been spending as much time with couple A over the last few years because when the husband of couple A gets drunk he starts getting handsy with her and tries to kiss her. The ironic part is that I haven't been spending as much time with couple B because *her* husband was getting handsy with me when he got drunk.

Luckily, my husband doesn't drink. ;)

I'm back at home again. I've shipped about 7 large boxes of the family relics to my house and they are starting to dribble in. I have no idea where I'm going to put the stuff. My brother and his wife had no interest, so I am the defacto keeper of the family archives. Nothing much of any monetary value except possibly the two double string of pearls I found in an aunt's jewelry box--the aunt who passed away the year before Mom. I have my grandmother's Kitchen Aid mixer which is at least 60 years old and looks it. She made thousands of really good loaves of bread with that mixer. Maybe I will too.

At work there has been an initiative to clean up and reduce the size of our email boxes. My inbox contains hundreds of email letters from my mother from over just the last couple of years. I bought her her first computer 11 years ago just after she had her cancerous larynx removed. I thought it would help her feel connected especially before she got her voice prosthetic. Little did I realize how much our email letters would become such a part of my life. Our letters were very chatty, full of shared interests about plants and cooking, family moments, little things mostly. Not a day goes by that I don't see something or something will happen that I want to tell Mom about. But there won't be anymore email. I miss that the most.