Mindy’s Recipe For Disaster

I’ve decided that I need a crazy number letter combo nickname à la swine flu’s H1N1. I’m just as dangerous, so I felt this was justified. Not to mention that I, too, want to be viral and highly contagious!  So please spread the word and share my blog so that you can keep me safely quarantined in my apartment vs. out on the streets, handling your food. No, that’s not a threat…

Henceforth, I want to be known as MR4D – an anacronym for my blog title (and title of my life). Coming from a finance and corporate background, I think anacronyms are great. In my experience, if you fill your brain with anacronyms and spout them regularly, all that pesky “thinking” goes away.  Thinking is so tedious, after all. Just ask any member of the GOP – j/k…

Today’s survival tip: carry Salonpas strips. These analgesic strips make all the pain that comes with being a disaster fade away.  Oh, and they’re CHEAP!  Recurring theme with me:). For about $3+change in chinatown, I get 40 strips that for some reason work better than icy hot, bengay, and tiger balm combined. I use them every Sunday after standing and bumping into things with my knee all day during brunch service.

They also make these giant, perforated strips meant for large, flexible areas like your back and knees.  My mom actually got me some to try as she knows what a klutz I am.  Well, if I were talented enough to use these damn strips, I wouldn’t need them in the first place!  Right before bed, I ripped open the patch and pulled the giant bandage off the plastic backing. First tip: don’t do that. It immediately stuck to itself and bunched into a ball. Damnit. So I tried to pull the edges apart, but ended up making it stick together even more. I kept trying and it kept mocking me by balling up into a wrinkled, mentholy mess.  Eventually, there were no sticky surfaces left and I ran out of curses.  I threw it out and pulled out another one.

This time, I just pulled off the top part of the bandage and then attached it to my leg.  I repeated this method of sticking part of the bandage first, then pulling off more backing, until my knee was covered.  Usually, I can feel the smaller, non-perforated strips working immediately, but I felt nothing at first.  I could smell it, though, and so could my husband.  He hates these strips because he says I smell like an old, Asian man…  I could see how that would be unattractive.  I went to sleep, unconvinced at how effective this larger, hole-punched sheet would be.

Well, I woke up in the middle of the night like someone had stabbed me.  My knee was on FIRE.  I literally shot up from the bed and grabbed at the blankets until I could expose my legs.  I was only half-awake, so my hands were about as effective as if I were wearing oven mitts.  I kept trying to roll up my pant leg, but it kept getting caught on a corner of the sticky bandage on my knee and my mitten-like hand would slip and the pant leg would roll back down.  Finally, I got my opposable thumbs in gear, got to my knee, and ripped off the lava-like strip from my knee.  Um… OUCH.  In my blurry-eyed, basically useless state, I forgot that ripping off something sticky might ALSO burn.  I then tried to pull the strip from my hands, but like a ridiculous cartoon, every time I pulled it off one hand, it would stick to the other.  Finally, I shook it off and laid back down, exhausted.

I might try these strips again when I’m not sleeping so that the burning heat won’t take me by surprise.  And I definitely won’t throw it onto the floor, sticky-side down next time, either.

Here’s a late post to celebrate surviving “hump day,” and what a day it’s been. Long and complicated story short, I had to drive my boss to the Jerz to pick up an old centrifuge that was being donated to us. Why? The simple explanation: 1) It was free and 2) Dave (boss) wanted it.

Well, Dave warned me NOT to rent a truck from U-Haul, but I thought he was just being dramatic. It was a bit more than dramatic – he basically went straight to his dark place and raged about rude service, ridiculous wait time, broken trucks, etc. The last time he was there, he basically told them that he was going to leave their truck abandoned on the side of the road to be stolen.

I didn’t listen and reserved a truck anyway. Well, I should have freaking listened. I got there at 9 and there were only 2 people in front of me. No problem, right? Yeah… Little did I know that even though I could clearly see 4 people behind the counter, that only one of them apparently felt like helping customers.  And then there was one…  Unfortunately, I’m not sure if the gentleman in front of me in line was renting a truck or negotiating world peace, but whatever it was, it… took… for… ever…  An hour later, I finally got my truck!  Unfortunately, I must have forgotten to tell them that I planned on driving the truck off the lot because they couldn’t seem to find the key.  Great – no really, I have all the time in the world, don’t worry about it.  After 1 hour and 20 minutes, I finally had a different truck, with a key, and the urge to egg U-Haul on my way out of the parking lot.  Oh, and they gave me a truck that had a huge dent on the front driver’s side, making it impossible to open the door all the way.  Being me, I kept forgetting that fact and tried to swing open the door every time I got in or out of the truck, meaning that it would open a foot before bouncing against the dent and flying back at me to hit me in the hip, arm, knee, etc.  Know this, U-Haul – you suck.  Big time.

After my crazy, bruise-filled trip to the Jerz, I still had to work my shift in the library.  I needed a coffee fix if I was going to make it through work and then through wine class afterwards.  Kim told me that the best place to get caffeinated in the school was in Student Services, where they take their coffee very seriously.  This posed a little bit of a dilemma for me.  On the one hand, I adore coffee and the chance to drink delicious and FREE coffee appeals to both my palate and cheap-gene.  On the other hand, I’m a little afraid of going one floor down to Student Services.  It’s very quiet and serious there – very adult.  Even though I’m almost 30 (shudder), I’m the type of person who’d rather be seated at the children’s table at Thanksgiving.  If you haven’t met me or already guessed from this blog, I’m a little… boisterous… and clumsy…  Poise is a much enviable, but foreign concept.

I quietly tried to sneak into Student Services.  No luck, I was forced to confront “sophisticates” – well-dressed, quietly-confident, career-oriented coworkers.  I was awkward and uncomfortable, trying to fill every pause with nonsensical words, while they stared at me, praying for silence.  We quickly parted company and I ran into the coffee room, amazed by the room that I never knew existed.  There was not one, but TWO coffee devices in this magical caffeine cave: an illy capsule espresso machine and a drip-coffee machine that grinds beans to order when brewing every insulated carafe.  I love espresso, but most of the time I just want the largest cup of dark coffee that I can find… for free…

So I grabbed the carafe and began to pour, but there was only a small trickle.  Ok, just unscrew the lid a little to allow more flow, right?  Well, that’s what I did, but still, just a trickle.  You know where this is going and so did I, somewhere so deep inside that my natural inclination towards self-destruction suppressed and muffled it.  I put down my ID badge and keys, which also holds my 2G jump drive where I house a lot of photos and posts for Cooking Issues, unscrewed the top a little more and tried to pour again.  Ok, just tilt the pot a little more, right?  Right?  Well, the lid fell off AND landed on my cup, blocking, no DEFLECTING the flow of coffee into it.  Coffee everywhere.  All over the table.  All over my badge.  All over my 2G jump drive.  Flowing right under both of the coffee machines.  I looked down and then just let my head drop down and shake back and forth as I asked the empty room, “Really?  Really?  Come on.”

I took the lid off my cup and noticed it was only half full.  I shrugged, debated whether I should clean up first or fill the cup the rest of the way.  Yup, I filled my cup first, put it to the side, then struggled to quickly pull paper towels off the roll.  Mid-cleanup, a sophisticate walked by and I froze.  He paused, surveying the mess as I looked up guiltily.  I grinned like an idiot and just went back to cleaning as he walked a way, shaking his head.  Some of us are graceful, and then there’s always me…

On the plus-side, the day’s almost over.  Stupid hump day.

When I used to work at Goldman Sachs, an ex-boss told me that I needed to wear more color.  He said that I wore too much black, and sometimes a little gray.  I looked at him, wanted to say that the reason was because working for him was like constantly attending my own funeral, but just swallowed the urge and walked away in silence.  Yeah, that guy was a turd.  Actually, from what I hear, he’s still a turd.  But at least remembering this story gave me a quick idea for a post.

If you are a disaster, maybe you should try wearing LOTS of black.  No, not in the alternative, trench-wearing, angst-filled teenager sort of way.  If you, like me, come home tired, lie down on the couch, and use your stomach as a table on which to rest your plate while eating a reclining dinner, then wearing black will definitely keep you from having to scrub tomato stains out over the sink.  Ditto for most other colored, watery foods.  Unfortunately, as we learned from Sunday’s post, wearing black doesn’t help if you drop chalky, opaque foods on yourself… like liquid nacho cheese.  Added bonus – especially if you like to burn as little calories as possible while eating like I do – black is slimming.

Just remember to dust yourself off after eating.  Black is great to conceal stains, but sadly, crumbs stand out like crazy.  Oh, and after you dust off crumbs from your torso, shake out the cuffs of your pants if they are indeed cuffed.  Cuffed pants are like little depositories for shaken-off torso crumbs, and it’s embarrassing to shake them out in the laundry room in front of people.  Trust me.