It's All About the Membrane

I don't have that much experience with boiled eggs but I've come to realize no matter how much you claim to know the perfect method for boiling eggs so the shells peel nice, it's all crap unless you can get the membrane.  Who else agrees?  My brother has a spot-on method for boiling eggs.  This comes from months of practice and trying different methods.  After a few month span of me not boiling eggs, I was in the mood to boil some over the weekend so I could eat the whites for my mid-morning snack at work.  I don't eat the yolks because they are just plain chalky and disgusting.  I am surprised my cubicle doesn't smell of stinky farts because I have two yolks in the garbage can as I speak and one of them is from yesterday.
Anyway, I texted Jeff on Sunday and said "what is your preferred method for boiling eggs?".  He called and told me his precise method, down to the second.  He ended the call with "let me know how they turn out".
Who knew boiling eggs could be so exciting that we now need to know how they turn out?!?  I found it quite funny coming from my 28 year old brother.
I brought an egg to work on Tuesday and the thing peeled like a charm.  I swear the shell came off in two large chunks.  I texted Jeff and told him "the eggs turned out perfect!".  Wednesday was a different story, however.  I cracked the egg like normal and proceeded to peel.  "What's this?", I wondered as the shell of the egg was sticking and coming off in mosaic tile style chunks.  This can't be the egg that came from the perfect boiling method of Jeff's!  Say it isn't so!
 About 1/4 of the way through the frustrating peeling process, I noticed that I didn't have the membrane.  The membrane didn't come off with the first chunk of shell so I was therefore screwed.  I would spend the next four minutes chipping away at this egg, trying to get the tiny pieces of shell unstuck from the plastic-like, sticky substance that is the outer membrane of the egg.  Once it was finally time to eat the egg white, it didn't taste nearly as good, either.  Call me crazy, but I swear the membrane latched to the roof of my mouth and made it difficult to chew.
I brought another egg to work today and gave it another go.  I gave it a good whack on my desk and hoped for the best.  As I peeled the first bit of the shell back, I was happy to see that the egg had it's shiny, slippery surface exposed instead of the clouded over, gray look. And with that I knew I had the membrane in hand.  Just like that, the egg was peeled in a few large chunks and I was free to enjoy my perfectly boiled egg like planned!  I tell ya, it's all about the membrane.

Craigslist Finds

I have been a slave to Craigslist lately and it's kind of becoming an issue.  I spend my last waking moments while laying in bed on my tablet in between playing Words with Friends, scouring the furniture section on Craigslist.  I am not really sure what I am looking for, but I know that a gem of a gem is going to pop up one of these days and I am going to have to buy it.  This keeps me up far past my bedtime, but I can't help it.  While many of the things on there are decent but just not my style or are out of my price range, there are those rare finds that make you scratch your head and say 'What the hell?'  I am here today to show you first hand, some of these finds.

Pottery Barn Retro Rockers.  The fact that this person had to add "Pottery Barn" to the post title to boost the possibility of a sale tells you something right there.  What exactly are these things??  It looks like two cushions from a college dorm room couch that had been sitting on a curb for three weeks ended up in someones basement and then were slept and trampled on by large animals for another six years.  If these are in fact from the high and mighty Pottery Barn, they sure as heck don't look like it.  And I am sorry, but I am afraid Pottery Barn and "Retro" don't belong in the same sentence.  Nice try though.

  

JUST Shut UP and Dance Sign on Antique Window.  Can I get a 'huh'??  Who's talking and what music should they be dancing to??  Not to mention that the the title of the post doesn't match what the window actually says.  Who in their right mind would buy this?  And for 48 bucks, you would at least think the person who painted the really tasteful saying on the window would have spaced the words and letters out appropriately.

 

Long & Tall Dressers Antique Shabby Chic.  These next two items I strictly blame Pinterest for.  Pinterest is great but it gets people paint happy.   Got a large dresser that you hate?  Paint it!  Don't want to take the time to prep it and make it look decent?  Distress the shit out of it 'on purpose', call it "Shabby Chic" (because apparently that is cool now) and pretend it looks great!  Don't get me wrong, antiquing something can be great if it's done right but this just looks wrong.  Clearly this dresser is from a decade when the shabby chic term had yet to be Pinned to death and it just looks out of place in my book.

 

Headboard Bench/Shabby Chic.  Clearly this is the same owner as the long and tall dressers but this may be an even worse offender.  At least the long and tall dressers are consistent with their shabby chic-ness--this one just looks like it has a really bad paint job and someone ran into the bottom with the vacuum cleaner a few hundred times and didn't bother to fix the nicks.

 

Just Another Ordinary Custom Made Barnwood Sign.  Ok, I am sorry but who made this?!?!  And better yet, who would buy this??  Everything from the mis-matched lettering, the weird saying and the fact that just because it's barn wood, they think they can charge thirty two bucks for this sucker (again, I kind of blame Pinterest).  I would love to know what Miracle they are referring to.  Is the miracle that they fit the word 'today' in after mis-spacing the letters in the word Miracle?  Or is it a miracle that whoever made this sign had the guts to actually try to sell this thing?

 and I may have saved the best for last, you be the judge...Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you....

POLAR BEAR COFFEE TABLES.  These remind me of something that would be in a really bad 80's movie.  I know one particular person who loves polar bears and even she wouldn't be caught dead with these tables.  Can you please tell me what is going on with the bear on the right?  Are those supposed to be his legs?  If so, how is one of them behind his head and what is the weird shaped one coming out of his stomach area?  Or are they supposed to be tree trunks and he is inside the cluster of three trees, sliding through the snow?  One may never know.  I may have considered buying these though if the seller would have placed a bottle of Coca-Cola on each one.  ;)

 Cheers to a great weekend!

 

Apparently I am too old.

So yesterday I was stuck behind this guy on my entire 10 mile journey home from work.  No doubt you have seen trucks like this in your lifetime.  And you have probably been stuck behind one at one point or another.  You know the type; lots of reading material on the back, the dual (not to mention massive) antennas sticking out of the bed of the truck...something I have never understood, and the best part of all...the extremely loud exhaust, lack of muffler, or whatever you want to call it.  Now I am not one to get all uptight about things like loud cars or trucks--they can be super fun. BUT when you are behind one for ten miles and you have your windows down and can't even hear your radio without practically blowing out the speakers in your car, it can be a tad annoying.  Also throw in the fact that you at one point have to roll your windows up because of the rancid stench that is coming out of the dual exhaust.  As I got up closer I read a few of the stickers.  A few were military stickers (kudos to them for having a son in the military--I totally respect that), some were weird symbols that I could not even begin to guess at what they stood for, and then I spotted the classic "Loud Pipes Save Lives" sticker.  I am sure this is a true statement in more ways than one...A., even the deafest of deaf could hear this truck coming down the road and would be sure to get the hell out of the way if he or she should happen to be in the middle of the road and B. I would be willing to bet this truck is a gas guzzlin' hog so he is sure doing his part to keep the oil companies in business which in turn keeps their employees employed and thus keeps food on their table to keep them alive! 
That second one was a stretch but you get my point.
And then I spotted another sticker that read "If it's too loud, you're too old".  It kind of made me depressed as I had just been silently ragging on this obnoxious truck, but I soon got over it.  Apparently I don't care if I am too old.

lunch fit for a princess?

My fridge is currently screaming for food to enter it.  Besides a handful of fruit cups, some questionable salad dressings and some milk, it's lacking food big time.  Instead of bringing Ramen noodles for lunch for the second day in a row, I decided to not scrounge for food in the cupboards to bring into work, and just figured I'd pop some popcorn that I have up in my overhead bin at my desk for days like these.  I suppose you would consider this the "for emergencies only" stash.  I was actually kind of looking forward to this pitiful lunch as I made my decision this morning, as popcorn is one of my favorite foods and always has been.  I even debated on grabbing a can of Diet Coke to bring with me but then I thought twice and decided to up the ante a little bit and make my good lunch even better by treating myself to a vending machine Diet Coke with Lime.  I'm livin' high on the hog, I tell ya.

Five hours later, here I sit.  I have just polished off my bag of mediocre popcorn and am still working on the 20 ounces of pop.  The popcorn was this new kind--which is supposed to have less calories and it sure tasted like it too.  I only save microwave popcorn for work (all popcorn at home is done via the old fashioned way, which in my opinion, is the only way to make it) and I know why.  It's bland, it burns because the high powered steel-cased microwaves in commercial buildings don't have a "popcorn" button and you have to listen for the kernels to stop popping and it can be hard to tell at times so the bag comes out half burned and you drag the smell back to your cubicle and fill up the entire department with the stench while you're at it.  You then have people stopping by wondering if it's you that's the culprit who burned the popcorn and you don't really know if they are judging you or are just curious.  You also get the occasional remark from across three cubicle walls "who burned the popcorn?"  All and all, it's not a good situation unless you really hit a home run with your work popcorn meal and it smells better than it tastes and looks like it came from a movie theater.
Anyway, as I was finishing up my bag, I thought to myself..."I wonder if Kate Middleton ever has popcorn and diet coke for lunch".  Can you imagine??  Can you imagine her all dressed up and ready for her day of visiting local charities and the last thing she has to do is grab something to eat to satisfy her pregnant cravings between charity visits.  She goes around slamming cupboards and looking into the bare fridge in the morning, finally hollering to William as she prepares for her days events "Will, we have no damn food  in this castle!!!"  Then he gets pissed too and says "That's not my problem!  I have to play Polo today--we'll go to Kowalski's (becasue they no way shop at Rainbow or Cub)  tomorrow.  Just eat some popcorn for lunch and be done with it!  And there should be some diet coke out in the garage."
Will is obviously oblivious to Kate's schedule and knows that she won't be anywhere near a microwave today to be able to pop the bag.  He is also oblivious to the fact that that the diet coke has exploded all over the garage because he neglected to bring it in from the freezing cold and put it into the castle fridge.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure Kate's days of eating popcorn and diet coke for lunch are far behind her.  I bet she is the kind of person who looks forward to having it at the movie theater, though.

Do You Hear What I Hear...

A hum, a hum, ringing in ear, let me bring it Q-Tips and Peroxide.  Let me bring it Q-Tips and Peroxide.

So late last week I got what I thought to be water stuck way in my right ear.  It hung around for a few days and by day three I figured it must be wax build up.  I self-diagnosed and poked, paraded and finally did a hydrogen peroxide flush to try to get that waxy bugger out.  No luck.  I couldn't hear and had this irritating hollow sound in my head for days.  Can you say annoying?  I also started "hearing things" too.  While at work, between my heater being on and having only one good ear, I kept thinking I was hearing the Phil Phillips song playing all day long...you know the part where he sings (actually now that I think of it, is he singing or is it some sort of instrument?) all those "dooos"?.... :  "dooooo do do do do do doooo" That's what I was "hearing" with the combination of the heater and the muffled hollow sound in my head.  Low and behold when my feet were cooked to medium rare, I shut my heater off only to hear the complete opposite of Phil Phillips serenading the office on the Blend XM.
Thursday night I was at my breaking point.  I was annoyed that I had to say "what" five thousand times a day and my ear actually hurt to sleep on it.  I slept on my opposite side and ended up not hearing my alarm in the morning because my bad ear was up.  It was time to see a doctor to get this thing out.
I was actually excited to go in.  I had heard stories of people going in to get wax build up flushed out and all this wax comes flooding out like Niagara Falls and I couldn't wait to see that sight.  I know it's gross, but admit it, it's kind of cool.  After the doctor put stool softener (weird, no?) in my ear and streamed water into my canal, out popped this chunk of wax.  It was over in seconds.  To quote my doctor: "Well that's no fun".  A chunk of wax about half the size of my pinky nail came out.  Insert disappointment here.  So much for the river of wax that I secretly hoped would exit my head.  Oh well...at least I know I keep a somewhat clean ear canal.
I also had a small infection so now I am on that Amox (I am not going to spell it out because A., I don't know the spelling and B., I don't care enough to look it up) drug for 10 days. 
Onward and Upward!

Lost.

I've been searching high and low for the past two days for something and I cannot for the life of me, find it.  It's so strange to think of it just sitting somewhere, waiting to be found.  Like it's a little small person just shouting with the smallest voice "I'm right here!  Look right here!  Here I am!".  While looking for this particular item last night in my  basement, I randomly looked over by my water heater and there, sitting happy as can be on the water heater was a flashlight that is usually upstairs in the cupboard above the fridge.  I know the last time the flashlight was used was about two months ago when Jeff was working on some pipes in the basement.  Had I gone to use the flashlight since then, I would have searched all over trying to find that thing.  While the entire time, it has been patiently sitting on the water heater for the last two months, just waiting to be found and put back in its proper place.  When I saw it I actually pictured a little voice saying "you found me!"  I didn't have the heart to tell him I wasn't actually looking for him, but I did put him back in its proper place so I know where to look when I need him again.  OK, now I sound crazy because you think I'm actually talking to my flashlight!
And why is it that the thing you are looking for always ends up in the place you thought you'd put it so you "wouldn't forget it was there".  That's why I say it's better to have an organized mess than to be organized.  At least if you have a mess, you can see everything out in the open.  I work for a company that makes organizing products for offices but I hardly use any of the products.  My projects are always scattered across my desk so I can see everything I have going on at a glance.  If it's tucked away and "organized" somewhere, I forget about it and when it's time to find it, I don't know where it is!
OK, enough of the mindless chatter.  Send that chant my way...how does it go...?  "Mary Mary, look around, something's lost and can't be found..."??  I don't know if that's right, but either way, send vibes my way that the item (along with another item that's been missing for about 2 years) will show up unexpectedly!

Why?

While browsing online for shower curtains today, I came across this:

It wasn't my first sighting of this design or something very similar during my hunt for the perfect shower curtain over the past few weeks, but today was the first time I realized one important detail that made me go: "Why?"
I get the whole "Psycho"-ness behind the shower curtain/knife/blood scene and to some, it's probably really funny and appropriate if you are into that sorta thing.  The one thing I don't get though...the added "with sound" bonus.  I didn't capture the full description in the shown screen shot, but it goes on to tell you that the shower curtain basically has some shrieks and shrills from the movie Psycho in a special sealed, water proof pouch and goes off with either the touch of a button or you can have it be motion activated.  Is it really necessary to add the sound??  Why don't they throw a camera on it and a speaker so it can double as an video camera too?  And really, how many times is that shriek actually going to scare you when you know it's there??  The people who buy this curtain must only take showers once a month or something or they save it and hang it up only when company comes over.  Between the putrid, over-powering, can-smell-it-through-the-entire-house, vinyl smell that the reviewers wrote about and the stupid sound machine built into the curtain, your guests will probably never come back!
Needless to say, this curtain will not be on my new bathroom wish list.

Pot luck

Why is the term Pot Luck so weird? Since when does "Pot" and "Luck" mean "let's bring in food and pig out"? A good coworker and even better friend of mine left our company yesterday to move onto greener pastures. He will be missed to say the least. He is also an avid STBA reader and claims to be the biggest fan--hopefully my blog address will follow him to his next company and I will be the first "favorite" he puts on his new web browser :)

Back to the subject at hand....Pot Lucks... we had a good bye Pot Luck yesterday at work for my friend and it was great. It's so funny though to me that no matter what the time of day, if there is a pot luck at work, anything goes. Meatballs and little wieners in BBQ sauce at 8:30 in the morning, why not?! Do you want some of this olive oil based pasta salad?..It's really good, you should try it. ..... Sure, just cram it onto my small paper plate next to the watermelon who's juice has run into my chocolate brownie, which has already been saturated in ranch flavored veggie dip.
And why is it you get so excited to see something at the pot luck that you see almost every single time you walk down the junk food isle at Cub or could possibly already have sitting stale and half-gone in your cupboard at home? The thoughts run through your head....oh my gosh!, I didn't see those Sour Cream & Onion chips sitting there at the end of the counter.... hmm....my plate is already full but I really want the chips....I will just take a few and sprinkle them on top of everything else already covering every single inch of my 8 inch plate.
Maybe the "luck" part of it means that if you are lucky, you will leave the pot luck without any BBQ sauce on your shirt and you will go back to your desk, look into your little mirror and realize you were successful at frantically (and discreetly) trying to get all of the debris out of your teeth with that tongue/sucking method while making small talk with unfamiliar coworkers.

Got Food?

You know you desperately need to go to the grocery store when your work lunch consists of this: 

Notice how there is no bread for the turkey and Kraft single to sit between and the Hillshire Farm container for the turkey sits empty in the upper left.
The beans are cold and leftover from last night's dinner (I had them with a brat).
And it's pretty sad that you have to rely on an Almond Bar that was brought in for a birthday party to have for dessert!
This is not a pitty post, I just thought it was quite funny.
Instead of using my plastic spoon for the beans, I used the fork which was a mistake--I dropped some brown sugar bean sauce mix in between the Tab and squiggle line ( ~ ) keys.  Let's hope I got it all out using the "put a napkin over an unbent paperclip and stick it in between the keys" method.  If it works as good as the folded Post-it to fling the cracker crumbs out when your space bar starts to stick, we'll be good to go!