Oh Fair New Mexico

Dander in a Full Upright and Locked Position

After suffering the slings and arrows of my eye checkup yesterday, I drove home in the pouring rain and freezing wind, then decided to stop off at my local Safeway to pick up a few items.

After a long and cranky week, I decided to whip up a batch of my homemade caramel sauce and I needed ingredients along with ice cream, whipped cream and lovely salty chopped nuts to complete the sundae I had in mind.

Over in the ice cream section, I looked (through dilated eyes) at the topping choices, and selected chopped almonds and pecans (my two favorites in the nut kingdom) in a can with a photo of Paula Deen. They were a little gourmet, but on sale and seemed like a nice treat.

Yum!

Later that evening, as my caramel bubbled on the stove, I popped open the can of nuts to find one large clump of nuts stuck together. I broke off a pecan and tasted it. It was stale and rubbery.

I turned the can over and discovered that the contents had expired in September 2010.

I’d bought this item five months past the expiration date. FIVE months.

Then I sighed. This has become an epidemic in my area. It doesn’t matter what grocery store I visit, including Safeway, Trader Joe’s or Lucky, I *always* find expired items on the shelves.

Sure, we all dutifully check expiration dates on meat and dairy products, but do you ever bother to look at the expiration date on prepackaged food? I never did, but now I’m a bit of fanatic about it.

The worst, by far, was when I bought a brick of the “processed cheese food” known as Velveeta. I was making a party dip and nothing else will do.

When I opened the foil covering, the brick of cheese was dry and had turned a gross dark orange. I looked at the expiration date, and the block had expired over a year prior. A YEAR!

I took that freaking thing back to the store and demanded that the clerk look at the cheesy abomination. He was as horrified as I was, and promptly gave me my money back.

Here’s my theory…

I suspect that given the tougher economic times, people aren’t buying as much as they once did, so inventory isn’t naturally turning.

Add to that, grocery stories are trying to keep their doors open and have reduced their staff, trying to get by with as few people as possible on the payroll.

What that means is the staff in place can’t be as diligent about freshening inventory as they should be.

It’s a reasonable explanation but doesn’t make me any happier.

So, friends and dear readers, a reminder…check the expiration dates on EVERY item you lift from the shelves of your local grocer. Every item.

I’m pretty diligent about this, and even I forget sometimes (like yesterday).

Just, ew.

Photo from WikiMedia username Mattes and used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Why yes…

….as a matter of fact, I have been to the eye doctor. Why do you ask?

I’m one schoolgirl outfit away from being a character in a manga comic.

Meanwhile, I can’t see so well. Good thing it’s cloudy today.

What’s The Point?

It’s a cold rainy day in the Bay Area today and the ubiquitous “they” seem to think we’re going to have snow today, maybe even in the middle of San Francisco.

Snow? Here? Gah! The Bay Area will lose its ever loving mind.

But that’s not the point.

Today I’m angry, pissy, hostile and downright grumpy. My right wrist still hurts so much it wakes me up at night. I took my gimp to the doctor lady and she fitted me into a wrist brace. This @$%#ing thing limits my movement (doing its job, I suppose) and it is frustrating!

When I rip the thing off then my wrist hurts double. And I get angrier.

I don’t like being weak and showing my weakness. I’m the gazelle that the lions will go for first! The limping one!

But really, neither my gimpy wrist nor my offbeat psychosis are the point.

Apparently I’m a brute when I write. I love using felt tip pens but mush them to nothingness within a week or two. All of my Sharpies are not a bit sharp. I just threw out a whole handful.

I am anal about only using pencils that have a very sharp point, but they either break or go nubby within a few sentences. And mechanical pencils! Sheesh. Anything less than a sturdy .5 size and I’m snapping the lead off left and right!

My kingdom for a good sturdy point!

But the point isn’t really the point either.

I’ve been watching the complete Boston Legal series lately. The Good Man got the set for Christmas and we both adore the show.

I love when Alan Shore goes on a riff and a judge cuts him off with a “you’ve made your point, counselor.”

Once, in the middle of a somewhat terse discussion with The Good Man, when he was Alan Shore-ing me, I dropped that phrase on him. In a snotty tone.

Needless to say, that didn’t go well.

I’ve not used it since.

My “you’ve made your point” isn’t really the point, either.

“It’s rude to point” you hear, ad nauseum, when you are a kid. I mean, when you are pre-verbal isn’t pointing sort of the only way you can get your meaning across?

Besides, is there anything cuter than a little baby exploring the world and pointing one chubby hand at something fascinating and looking to you for your response?

I think not. So I think it should be amended to “it’s rude to point, unless you are under two and awfully adorable, then it’s all good.”

Rules: made to be flexed!

But talking about pointing isn’t really the point.

So, what exactly IS the point?

Today’s Theme Thursday is point, and while I’ve got a lot of quick thoughts, none of them are very coherent.

I guess my point is…this is an entire blog post that doesn’t really have a point.

Cheers to my pointlessness! For the vague shall inherit the Earth.

Photo found several places on the net but unable to find attribution. Will include attribution or remove at the request of the owner.

Paging Mr. Hitchcock

Another amazing bird Photo of the Day from the National Geographic site.

There is very little description with the photo, just that the photo is of crows and the shot was taken in Northern California.

Click photo for larger size and to be massively creeped out

Photo by Jamie Zarza.

The Break Is Broken

Back in my college days at NMSU, I was a good student with aspirations of graduating and getting a good job.

Round about my junior year, the business college started talking to the students about considering going on a co-op. This meant taking a semester off from school to take a job in a real office environment.

The goal was to get college students a more substantial experience than just a summer internship along with providing great fodder for our resumes upon graduation.

It seemed like a good idea to me, so I applied.

With my business background, I was picked up by a bank in Albuquerque.

I left Las Cruces and moved into an efficiency apartment in the downtown area. I started my first grown up job in January and worked through July of that year. The pay was terrible but the job was kind of interesting. I was an internal auditor for the then thriving bank (that no longer exists).

I got to travel with my team on the company jet to branches all over New Mexico to look at loans, review the criteria for lending, assess the borrower, check financials, and assign grades to the various loans. Based on the loan grades, the bank would be able to better value their portfolio. I’m sure they were also packaging and selling off loans too.

As a twenty year old, I got to delve into the financials of some of the most well known names in Albuquerque and the state. I learned how to value cattle and farm equipment, oil wells and drilling tools, and the inventory of various well known businesses in the area.

My desk was located near the small loan collections department, so I also learned a whole lot while listening to those verbally nasty collections agents all day long.

That gig at the bank was the first and only time I worked a job where I was required to take breaks during the work day.

I’d come in at 8:00, work until 10:00 then we’d all go upstairs to the break room to drink terrible coffee and cuss and discuss for fifteen minutes.

Back to work around 10:15, I’d work until noon then took one hour for lunch. It was expected we’d leave our desks for that hour, so we’d head back upstairs to the break room or on sunny days we’d all go outside on the plaza.

Back at work at 1:00, we’d take another break from 3:00 to 3:15, then leave the office by 5:00. No one stayed late. We all actually left at 5:00

I’d often thought, in my youthful exuberance, that I could have worked during that half hour of break time I took each day. I thought I could get more work done without that time. I mean heck! I can eat a sandwich at my desk and get even MORE work done!

Yeah. I know….

Today, I miss the lunch break. I miss enforced coffee breaks. When did we all start to think it extra moral or totally essential to work straight through the day and extra hours too and never leave the desk?

This is not good for our collective mental health.

Plus, if you must know, lately my right wrist hurts a lot. It aches all day and keeps me awake at night.

This is not a good sign. I’ve called in the ergo team at work to evaluate my workspace and my doctor is sending me to be fit for a wrist brace.

Also, my coworkers and I rarely get the chance to just sit back for fifteen minutes, sip some bad coffee and cuss and discuss something other than work.

Sort of a tragedy, really.