. . . ME!

I won a new job.

Or earned it. Whatever.

I’ll be the new curriculum standards reviewer for Independent Study. A nice step up from my previous job. I applied last week and got the official word on Wednesday. Technically, I’ve already started, payroll-wise, although they still need to find a replacement for my job and I need to train him or her. (Any takers? My job’s posted on yjobs.byu.edu.)

On Saturday John and I ate an official celebratory lunch at Ruby River Steakhouse in Provo. It was nice because the place wasn’t busy at all, so we got fast service, and we ordered anything we wanted. One plus of eating there for lunch is that prices are cheaper than dinner prices. Even so, our meal amounted to $45. But how often do you get to celebrate a new job? We had steak for each of us (him a New York strip and me bacon-wrapped filet mignon), a salad, sourdough bread with butter, and a piece of cheesecake and scoop of ice cream that we split.

Yum. It was good.

Yum. A new job is good.

I had a freak accident the other day where I tried to make up my own recipe and it worked. It started when I discovered that a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Baking Pieces that I had bought at Reams (on sale–saved $1.50!) had fallen out of the plastic grocery bag and had been in the front seat of my car for two hot and sunny days before I found it.

At first I was dismayed. I paid two good, hard-earned dollars for those baking pieces and now they were a molten mess inside the bag.

Then I had an idea. Maybe I could use them to make brownies. Admittedly, brownies aren’t my first choice when I think of dessert. But you’ve met my husband, right? Then you know that the order of important things in his life are

1) me
2) God
3) work
4) hockey
5) chocolate, especially dark

The subcategories of that last item are as follows:

a. brownies
b. chocolate cake
c. chocolate chip cookies
d. chocolate covered nuts
e. anything else chocolate

So I tried my hand at making up a recipe that involved eight ounces of melted Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Baking Pieces.

And guess what? It was a smash success. The brownies turned into the most moist, delectable brownies I think we’ve had in a long time. They’re more milk-chocolatey than dark, but no complaints from either of us. I thought you might like to have the recipe, straight from the test kitchen of Chef Shannon. (The recipe, by the way, is based off of a recipe I got from Ghirardelli. I just adjusted it to inclue the melted PB cups.)

Perfect Brownies
2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup real butter, melted
1 (8 oz) pkg Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Baking Pieces, melted
3/4 cup cocoa
2/3 cup flour (do not sift)
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1 cup chocolate chips

Bake at 350 degrees in a greased 9 x 9 pan for 20 to 30 minutes.

Yum.

Last night we had dinner at Allie’s American Grill in the Provo Marriott. We go there exactly once every year to use our 2-for-1 coupon from our Entertainment book. Every other time we’ve gone the place has been half dead and we had a waiter all to ourselves. But last night a scrapbook convention was in town (hello, Provo) and the place was packed.

With women.

Needless to say we didn’t have a waiter all to ourselves. In fact it was a good thing we decided to try the Friday-night buffet so we didn’t have to rely on a waiter to bring us our food. We helped ourselves to prime rib, chicken, salad, and desserts. It was pretty good. The only thing we had to use our waiter for was our drinks, which were included in the price of the buffet.

You have to understand that when eating out John and I are strictly water drinkers. Water is free, you know. But last night I decided to go all out and order a chocolate milk, and John got OJ.

The trouble was that our waiter was nowhere to be found. We finally asked the hostess to please bring us our drinks. My chocolate milk was divine. I don’t drink the stuff that often, so maybe my taste buds were over-sensitive, but it was so rich and creamy it tasted like dessert. Mmmm. When we wanted refills we asked our hostess again and instead of refilling my glass she brought me a pint of chocolate milk in the original packaging.

It wasn’t low-fat chocolate milk. Oh, no. We’re talking full-fledged-full-fat-full-flavor whole milk chocolate milk. No wonder it had tasted so good.

Well, the problem with suddenly knowing exactly what you’re drinking is you know exactly what you’re drinking. Nine grams of fat and 230 calories per serving, to be exact. I have to admit, it was harder to enjoy that second glass. But I managed to anyway.

Our mailman is great. Whenever he delivers a package to our doorstep, he’s always careful to cover the parcel with our doormat, so it’s less noticeable by passerby’s. We appreciate this since our house is on the corner of a much-traveled street, and we both are gone at work during the day.

This past week we received a rather large package in the mail–a factory refurbished weed wacker that John had bought off ebay for $99. It was packaged in a box about 6 feet long and eighteen inches high. Our dear mailman wasn’t fazed by the box’s size, though; he still did his duty and dragged over our doormat to cover it.

Or, tried to cover it.

Here’s how it actually worked:

You know the mailman’s motto: “Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor wind, nor dead of night, nor huge weed wacker boxes shall deter us from delivering the mail.”

When I went to aerobics at 5:45 this morning I wore a light sweater over my workout clothes. It was maybe 55 degrees, and clear. When I drove home afterward I admired the gorgeous morning sky that was mostly blue with a few scattered clouds. It was so pleasant.

I took my car in to get fixed at 8 a.m. When I left the shop with my now fully functional car at 9:30 it was wet and rainy.

When I drove home today at 5:30, there was an inch of soggy snow on my car.

What’s up with that?

It’s barely 8 a.m. and already my banana is bruised. The entire bottom half of my brand-new banana that I had just purchased last night is now inedible gushiness.

That’s how my day is going so far. I woke up late, and with a headache. One of those annoying ones in the right temple and neck/shoulder area that’s there when you go to sleep at night, is there all night long, and is still lingering when you wake up. And, like I said, I woke up late so I didn’t have time to work out this morning.

But I took a shower and put on makeup and gathered together my lunch like usual. When I opened the garage door to go to work I saw it was raining. Not pleasant spring rain. Cold, icy, it-could-be-February rain.

But at least I had an umbrella, and I went to work. As I tried to get out of the car balancing my umbrella, bag, and plastic lunch sack, my lunch plummeted to the wet pavement with a devastating plop. My first thought was, “The one day I bring a brand-new banana to work in my plastic lunch sack, and look what happens.” As soon as I got inside I pulled out the banana and examined it. The bottom half is inedible gushiness, like I said, but the top half seemed salvageable.

And that’s when I noticed that my plastic container of applesauce had cracked open and spilled everywhere.

Yep, it’s a bruised banana day, all right.