Lesson: when coming back from grocery shopping make sure that you put anything frozen into the freezer right away. I left some ice cream bars out in the open for a few hours. When I realized it I put the box in the freezer to re-firm. Unfortunately the result was little bags of lumpen chocolate and dairy products. What a waste, eh?
Monthly Archive: June 2011
Team player
Being part of team is a wonderful resource. It’s easy to take it for granted though. Being a team player is an active role. Being a team player doesn’t mean giving up personal opinion and following the herd. Part of being a team player means standing up and being supportive when appropriate. There’s no point in trying to isolate yourself because later on when you might actually need the aid of your team they might not be there for you. There’s a lot of give and take.
I’m good at this!
In talking with someone I know, we kind of identified the fact that I like to do awesome stuff to somehow get the approval of other people. ”Oh, I’m good at this! People are going to think I’m awesome!” I know it’s sort of neurotic-sounding when I frame things that way, but it’s sort of true. It’s part of why I coach. It’s part of why I do improv. It’s part of why I bake. It wouldn’t be uncommon of me to really go out of my way to do something to help out even though it would be a big time sucker for me and my personal time.
Over at my not-so-local Running Room they’re having a bit of a Canada Day potluck event on Wednesday. I wanted to contribute! I was thinking about it on my way back home from coaching. I would probably make glazed shortbread cookies, but that would require blocks of butter, which would require me to head to the store. By the time I get back it’d be about 9-ish, which would mean I have a few hours to get it all together. While I’m working on that I could multitask and work on coding a website that I volunteered to do. I could do that all while catching up on PVR’d episodes of shows that I’ve been meaning to catch up on. If I’m lucky I could get to sleep by 1 or 2 a.m. Hurray! Yeah, after outlining things that way, I decided to just let go of baking for the event. There’s just no sense in trying to cram that in. There’s no time! As much as it would be appreciated, it’s not a matter of life or death if I participate. And in not doing so people are not going to judge and say “Oh, Jason is so damn lazy!” There’s no need to kill myself for a bit of approval. If I bake it should be because I genuinely want to do it.
Beer and improvising
Beer makes me a less-sharp improviser.
No talking my way out of that one. Wit just turns sluggish, and I don’t connect as well.
Interesting to experiment with it now in practice, but in a live show? Swearing off it.
So noted.
My personal sandbox
In my last job there was a period of about 3.5 years where I was doing a lot of web development heavy work. As stressful as it was it did me a world of good. I learned so much in terms of design and tech. Prior to that job AJAX was just a scrubbing powder, or a town east of Toronto. It forced me to keep up or get swept aside. Even if I wasn’t in charge of creative bits and pieces, I developed a good appreciation for what good design looks like. The separation was probably for the best. The creative people have a really good eye. If they provided a good mockup with pieces that I can cut up I was a happy guy. These days, that pressure isn’t on me anymore. My job doesn’t require extensive web skills–although the skills are useful when working with interface related tasks. There’s just less incentive to keep my skills sharp. Well, for whatever reason I decided that it’s important for me to stay sharp. I decided to purchase a new personal domain that I’d keep in conjunction with garneteye.com. The big problem with domains is generating content to put on them. I know that that will be my biggest issue. However, there’s a lot of random web stuff that I’ve wanted to try crafting for a while now. My intention is to use the domain as a sandbox. The only way to get better is to just keep creating and experimenting. The intent isn’t to get publicity or anything of the sort; I just need to be able to play around. I suppose I could do it with this current domain, but…part of me wants to keep this random business to its own place. I’m diving right in!
Pie observations
I summarized my findings about my orange meringue pie experiment on Twitter earlier, but I might as well give a short rundown here.
- Orange is tasty, but it’s not strongly acidic or has a strong punch-to-the-face effect. I think it would do better as pie filling if it’s paired with another citrus. I’m sure lemon/orange would be a great combo. I don’t believe it can have a starring role.
- When making the filling, it’s supposed to be a thick goo. Adding too much juice makes it too runny. Better to have it thick and hold its place. Only reason I added more juice was because I didn’t find the juice of one orange that effective. So: point 1 leads to point 2.
- Less water with the dough means that the dough shouldn’t be sticky. Having not-so-sticky dough means using less flour to coat the surface where the dough is rolled. Using less flour means that the crust won’t be that hard. Important!
Yeah, people liked the pie, but I know that I could have done better. I need to up my game! Reputation to maintain!!!
Busy season
Seems that I’m entering a period of being a busy body again. Not that I’m complaining, of course. It’s like I’m a juggler with many balls in the air. One moment of list focus could mean that it all goes to hell, right? This is a good thing because as you all know I’m not the type of person that can be idle for far too long.
All the same, a four hour block of time to do laundry would be nice. Oh, and focus to get my place in order. Too much to ask? Well, I guess something had to give…
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