Grandma's Macaroni and Cheese - Val's Galore Style

If you recall, one of my favorite parts of my childhood was fresh home-microwaved macaroni and cheese from Stouffer's. However, even more favorite than that savory ambrosia was the oven-baked macaroni and cheese my grandma used to make.

It was so rich and chewy and hearty, not liquidy like the Stouffer's stuff! Although in my youth, I had a reputation for eating "like a bird," I have recollections of coming back for seconds when Grandma's macaroni and cheese was served.

I have the recipe, but I cannot review Grandma's Macaroni and Cheese in its purest form, because I'm always messing with the recipe.

The original called for 11 oz. of cheese—I'm pretty sure that was American cheese, but since I hate American cheese on its own, I can't seem to bring myself to buy it for a recipe, and I definitely can't get excited about the thought of peeling 16 individual slices of semisolid cow byproducts out of their wasteful plastic shrouds. So I use cheddar or Amish yogurt cheese or a mix of both, and since those do not come in 11-oz packages, I'm always obliged to guess. I suppose I could use a scale, but that's not the Adventure in Cooking way. The "real" cheeses give this recipe a real fat-separation problem, and I'm never sure whether I'm going to end up with too little cheese or too much (OK, honestly, there is no such thing).

Although not explicitly specified in my recipe, I'm sure the original was produced using white flour noodles and real milk with some fat in it. When I make mine, I use whole wheat noodles, because I like to offset my mountain of cholesterol with a little bit of fiber, and powdered nonfat milk.

Lastly, while the recipe says to cook it for an hour at 350°F, I consistently burn the top when I cook it that long. Last time I started it when the oven was still heating up, at around 250 degrees, and cooked it for 50 minutes, which seemed to work.

When Grandma made this recipe, it was happy noodles all across the board, but when I make it, the texture's a little off, it's usually not salty enough, and it's frequently burned, so the low rating here should not surprise anyone.

I estimate this recipe to cost around 6 dollars for all the ingredients, divided by 4 servings – make that 3 restaurant-size servings – and it comes out to 2$ a serving. Definitely a winner when it comes to price.

All in all, I give it one happy noodle for the price, one happy noodle for old-times' sake, and 2 sad noodles for all the things that go wrong.

And here's the recipe, in case you think you can do it better than me:

Grandma's Macaroni and Cheese

Ingredients
1& 1/3 c. uncooked macaroni
1½ Tbsp butter
1½ Tbsp. flour
1 c. milk
11 oz. cheese

Cook noodles.
Melt butter. Stir in flour until bubbly.
Add milk. Stir til flour thickens slightly.
Break up cheese into mix. Stir til melted.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
Pour over noodles in greased casserole dish.
Bake 1 hr. at 350° uncovered.

Carol's Cookies: Toffee Crunch

Carol's Cookies are proof that any cookie, if giant enough, can be good—even if it's crunchy.

I found Carol's Cookies at Whole Foods Market in DC. I suspect, although I am not certain, that they are the same brand of giant cookies I used to find at Whole Foods in Ann Arbor—a brand of giant cookies that I loved so much, they were my favorite thing about Ann Arbor.

The available choices were chocolate chip and toffee crunch. I tried toffee crunch because I wanted something different and new.

The cookie was thicker than your average cookie. It could almost have been mistaken for a scone. It was dense and therefore crunchy, but still good thanks to a rich buttery flavor. Sadly, the toffee pieces, because of heat or maybe just age, had gotten a little soggy by the time I ate them, even though the cookie had been in a sealed bag. This unfortunate circumstance diminished the cookies some in my eyes, and made me wish I had taken chocolate chip instead. Oh, well, maybe next time.

These cookies were $2.49 for an 8-oz cookie, or only 1.1¢ per gram, which I think makes them the cheapest giant cookie I've reviewed so far (at least, out of the cookies I've quantified).

So while they aren't the gooey-chewy champions of my cookie dreams, they are definitely good enough and cheap enough to make me want to grab another one the next time I'm at Whole Foods.

The Bottom Line:
Taste: 4 stars
Texture: 3 stars
Price: 5 stars

The Best Nest

Sometimes, I get discontent and start to passionately hate some aspect of my life. This happens about once every 6 months, and results in fanatical boyfriend searches, job searches, housing searches, and occasionally, drastic haircuts.

The most recent occurred about a month ago, when I suddenly realized I passionately hate sharing a bathroom and kitchen with a male, and decided I need to move out. (This was obviously much more sensible than either confronting him about his hair-shedding habit OR asking him to move out instead).

It was going to be easy. I have another, never-present, housemate who was willing to move anywhere with me, which is great because she helps me with my rent but never makes noise or a mess or even uses up my oxygen!

I had found this adorable old apartment in Old Town College Park with 4 bedrooms plus an attic plus a fireplace, yet it was so cheap that I could afford to rent it on my own with only a little help from my never-present roommate. And then, two weeks ago, disaster struck. My perfect roommate informed me that because of money troubles, she was going to officially move in with her boyfriend rent-free, and would no longer be able to rent with me.

Panic ensued as I frantically listed her room in the classifieds and started looking for one-bedroom locations and weighed the pros and cons of moving to that adorable apartment on my own and hoping to find a decent roommate. I was doing too much at once, and I was so stressed out that I couldn't eat (for like, a whole 6 hours at a time)!

But I am pleased to announce that, in case you were worried, which you were not, because I didn't tell anyone about what was going on, everything is settled and I will be staying where I am, which, I realize, is the best option for me anyway.

My current home is a great bargain. I pay 1700 a month for the whole house, which is about standard for 3 bedrooms, but my home has an added advantage in that one of the three bedrooms is actually a private suite in the basement complete with bathroom and kitchen, which means I can rent it out for a little under half of the total rent. When I first moved in, I was more concerned with getting my friend to move in with me, so I was willing to split the rent equally even though her room was "worth" more. So, thanks, friend—by abandoning me in my time of need, you're actually presenting me with the opportunity to save a few bucks!

Compared to the adorable apartment, my total storage area here is smaller, but I don't need that much space anyway, and I'd rather pay less. Ironically, I have lots of trees (and thus, firewood) in my yard here, but not a fireplace. In the adorable apartment, I would have had a fireplace but nothing to burn in it. In my current home, I'm farther away from work and a more difficult (though not longer) journey to Metro, but I have a sheltered place to store my bike, which the other place lacked. I also have a driveway to park my car and a hose to wash it, which is an almost-negligible consideration, but still a consideration.

Compared to other apartments / rooms in the area, my current situation is significantly better. Just try finding a place within walking distance of Metro and 4 bus lines, full of sun, without having to share with a whole host of other people!

Although I'm going from one housemate to three, the couple I got to rent the basement are people I consider friends. I worked with one of them when I was working at the store, so sharing a house with them will be a heck of a lot better than renting out my basement to a stranger.

But best of all, when the time is right and I feel financially secure, I will be able to afford to rent the entire upper floor on my own, meaning have my own private bathroom and mostly private kitchen, for 300 dollars a month less than I would have been able to do in the adorable apartment. Plus I would not be obligated to perform home improvements, which I offered to do in exchange for the great price I negotiated from the landlord at the apartment (I talked him down by 200 a month).

Of course, all this is contingent on my new housemates actually moving in, which they are supposed to do in June. I may be jinxing myself by posting this good news a little prematurely, so I close with a couple of knocks on wood and a pair of crossed fingers.

Conquering the Learning Curve

You know you've heard it—whenever you're asked to master a challenging new technology or technique, some Joe will blurt it out without restraint—"It has a learning curve," or, "Once you get past the learning curve, it's all gravy."

Let me not digress on how much distaste I feel for the use of the word "gravy" to denote a pleasant experience, since I can think of few things that could be less pleasant than a soup of liquefied lard mixed with meat juices. But I'm not going to digress about that.

In my four years as an education major, I never once was introduced to the phrase "learning curve," and since something about its usage struck me as dubious, I took it upon myself to find out what, exactly, it means.

I imagined, based on context, that the learning curve was some sort of hump one hapless learner would be obliged to scale in order to master a subject. Wikipedia set me straight—and I shall not digress on the ironies of using "set me straight" to describe my education on a matter inherently curved.

A learning curve is not, actually, a metaphor for the various difficulties one passes over whilst learning, but in fact, "a graphical representation of the changing rate of learning (in the average person) for a given activity or tool."

Rather than describing a mountainous shape, a learning curve more frequently follows the much less picturesque pattern of a mathematical function with a horizontal asymptote.

Observe. If you plot Time (or, to be more precise, Number of Attempts at Learning) on the X axis and Material Learned on the Y axis, you will frequently see an S-curve representing a slow start as the learner struggles to grasp completely foreign material, followed by a steeper upturn as they "get it" and begin absorbing knowledge like a sponge, and culminating in a slow tapering off of learning as the amount of learnable material available decreases.

<-- Sometimes you get a graph shaped like this—more like that mountain you had in your head originally. This happens when a subject is simple and easy to learn.

So, when someone describes something as having a "steep learning curve," they may think they are saying that it's difficult to learn, but from a purist's standpoint, they are actually saying it's quite easy!

That's all Li'l Language Lady has to say for now. Hope you learned something today!

Not Ben & Jerry's Cookies

I'm on a cookie-review roll!

Today's confection comes to you straight from a Ben & Jerry's retail location, although the brand is not actually Ben & Jerry's. And I forget what the brand actually is. Silly me. This is going to be quite a worthless review.

But not a worthless cookie! I tried two cookies of this nameless brand, and they were not bad. A classic chocolate chip cookie was the first, and it satisfied my cookie craving quite adequately. While I don't remember much of the flavor (much as I don't remember much of anything), I found the texture satisfyingly chewy.

The real treat, however, came when I bit into the white chocolate macadamia nut cookie. It had just a hint of coconut in it for an little bit of crunch, and an even better flavor than white chocolate macadamia nut cookies are usually known for!

They came in this odd, flattened-at-the-side shape that I imagine makes them perfect for lining up in a neat row like a stack of compact discs. So buy a bunch! At 130 g and $1.64 each, they are a good price, and definitely worth what you pay for them!

The Bottom Line:
Taste: 4 stars
Texture: 4.5 stars
Price: 4 stars

Larry's White Chocolate Cookies

Sorry to spoil all the suspense, but I'm going to cut right to the chase on this one: I think I have found a new favorite cookie.

I never had heard of Larry's Cookies until I ran across one at the Old Post Office Pavilion in DC (which I also didn't know existed), but oh, I was missing out.

Larry's is a genuine local company, based just a hop, skip, and a jump away from me in Rockville, Maryland. Their website states, "IT IS our plan to expand quietly and to offer the best quality product anywhere and… at realistic prices." And, while I cannot speak to their plan of quiet world domination, I enthusiastically concur with their claim of realistic prices.

Although I was originally thrown off by the per-pound pricing (and the fact that one cookie ended up costing a little over 3 dollars!), a little number crunching (in between bites of cookie) reveals that Larry's Cookies are actually the best-priced giant cookie I've encountered yet! The cost of $8.99 per pound equates to 1.98¢ a gram, which is not the lowest price around, but definitely the most competitive price relative to the taste, which is phenomenal!

Let me say that again—phenomenal!

OK, maybe I was just hungry when I ate it, but the white chocolate cranberry cookie from Larry's Cookies was like cookie perfection. Soft yet substantial on the inside, with just the right amount of crunchy around the edges. It had a nice brown sugar taste for a white cookie, and the dried cranberries were not too tart and not too sweet!

I also ate a white chocolate macadamia cookie, because I  just can't resist me a macadamia cookie, but the cranberry one definitely overshadowed its nutty companion.

Still, even though I think I already know my new go-to cookie, I can't wait to try the other flavors.

If you'd like to try them too, you can order them on the Larry's Cookies website, and have them shipped to your home!

Happy Chomping!

*Author's note: I lost my receipt for these cookies, so I am now doubting whether the price was actually 8.99$ per pound, considering the cookies you can buy in bulk online are closer to 14$ a pound. If I made a memory error (which I do very often) the price rating will have to be reduced, but I can't verify that until the next time I go visit Larry's Cookies. Until then, enjoy this glowing review.

The Bottom Line:
Taste: 5 stars
Texture: 5 stars
Price: 4 stars

Eau de Woe

"You don't wear perfume ever, do you?" my boyfriend asked me.

Well, no, I guessed I didn't, but that doesn't mean I couldn't try. Every lady has her signature scent—maybe it was time for me to find mine. As an experiment, I ordered 12 sample vials of perfume from eBay, and wore a different one every day for two weeks.

I thought I would note my opinions on them all, then read up on their characteristics and see if I could find any patterns that would help me select perfumes in the future. To keep track of what I thought of them, I kept notes, rating each one with "Good," "Bad," or "OK," and writing a short description. Since I am not known for my sophisticated sense of smell or my ability to detect different notes in a mélange (in fact I am frequently known for having no sense of smell at all), my descriptions were sort of simplistic, consisting mostly of associations with other smells.

Here is a sampling:

• Kelly Caleche - Reminds me of B.O.
• Helmut Lang -  I keep smelling mold. Reminds me of perfume.
• Balenciaga - Reminds me of perfume.
• Galanos - Perfumey smell.
• Pure - Reminds me of perfume.
• Kenzo Amour - Reminds me of Car Fresheners.
• Halston Couture - Reminds me of my grandparents' bathroom.

I think it's becoming pretty clear why I don't wear perfume ever. Of the entire lot of 12, I only rated two of the samples "good"—Paris Hilton Passport Paris (which I might have been predisposed to like because of the cartoon illustration on the card, and which was the only one that didn't come in a resealable vial—figures!), and Valentino Valentina, which I probably only liked because it's almost my name.

It looks like being a perfume wearer isn't in my future.
Guess from now on, if I want to smell good, I'm going to stick with my cheap, short-lasting, food-scented body sprays, and the mixes I make myself from essential oils. I've kind of shied away from that lately after my atomizer failed to atomize and instead shot a neverending stream of scented water at my head right before I had to leave for work. I spent the rest of the day smelling like a large, obtrusive fruit salad.

Maybe if I'm brave, I'll continue the search for my signature scent. When convenient, I'll steal little spritzes from department store cosmetics counters...and just cross my fingers that they don't remind me of bathrooms.

Goodbye ________, I hardly knew ya!

The topic of today's post is "farewells." And I will work in every topic remotely related to this subject as well as I can, to cut down on my list of Things to Blog About.

First off, do you remember a time in the distant past when I utterly failed to compile a list of songs with the sound of seagulls in them? Well, I finally found one to bring the list up to a robust two: It's called "Farewell," by Lemongrass.

Second, I shall say "Farewwwell," to the website naming convention that was served us wwwell (or not) over the past few decades. In case you somehow missed the gist of my belabored literary stylings, I am referring to the "WWW" that we commonly placed in front of our website names in the past. When public websites were still a new concept, I remember being appalled at the amount of oral gymnastics required to say those letters out loud. I toyed with trying to bring "tri-double-U" to the main stream, thus shaving 5 syllables off the phrase, but had to abandon the project because of my limited influence in the media. However, today, many newer websites are abandoning this tongue-twisting convention in favor of brevity (e.g. www.valsgalore.com would become simply valsgalore.com). The left-brained part of me says, "Yes!" to this sensible practice (after all, if your entire website faces the World Wide Web, there's no need for an extra subdomain). I have already given up typing the three W's when I type a domain name (my browser, or perhaps the website itself, usually fills it in anyway if needed), but I'm still not sure if I'm ready to give it up on my own website. You see, the right-brained part of me keels over at the loss of harmony when a balanced series of letters and dots suddenly loses its left wing. Howwwever, wwwhether you're an advocate of simplicity or symmetry, all factions agree that you do the Web a favor when you choose one or the other.

Lastly, tonight I bid adieu to my long-lived and much-loved headphones. I had been noticing, lately, the sound coming out of my laptop was absolutely atrocious—all tinny and muddled. I chalked that up to the laptop having a terrible sound card, since I'd had problems with sound quality since I received the machine. But today, I finally embarked on an experiment with multiple sets of headphones and learned that it was indeed my battered old favorite pair that was the culprit. So I will be tossing them in an electronics recycling bin near me soon, and beginning the arduous search for a new pair I actually like. I already have 3—a clip-on pair that's much too quiet and threatens to fall off every time I move my head, a folding travel set that sounds great but pinches my head after too long listening, and the decent pair I've dedicated for work (which is also too tight, but I managed to stretch it out some, and more stretching is in progress). There is also my phone headset, but that's also otherwise occupied, and besides, I'd rather not wear earbuds when I have the space for real 'phones. I have a feeling that finding an acceptable new pair is going to be a painful challenge.

Two mystery cookies from the Denver Convention Center

Having eaten many pleasant giant chocolate chip cookies, I found this mysterious cookie from an unknown caterer to be an utter disappointment.

While the outside edges bore a crumbly softness that spoke of a chewy delicious center to come, the middle of this cookie was, in fact, pretty much a Keebler cookie on steroids—huge, but crunchy and dry. The predominant flavor in this cookie was sugar, which, while a delight to my tastebuds, left my olfactory receptors somewhat unfulfilled. Since the cookie came as part of my conference admission, I can't really speak to its cost-to-yumminess ratio, but I'm just glad I never tried to rely on it as my end-of-the-day treat.

Taste: 3 stars
Texture: 1 star

Its companion cookie, which was acquired at the same venue on a separate day, did not perform much better. While it had the potential to be a massive fudgy delight, it also seemed too dry for my liking. It passed the crumble test* (although with a little more effort than may be desired), which the chocolate chip cookie failed, but its chewiness came on the dry side - almost tough - and eating it was a mouth exercise I'd just as soon not repeat.

Taste: 3 stars
Texture: 3 stars

*The crumble test was introduced as "the golden standard" in my second Giant Cookie Review as follows: "If you can break off a piece with your hand, without much effort and without propelling cookie crumbs all about the room, then you have a perfect texture."

Decision Fatigue

Yesterday at work, I could only think about one thing—how much I wanted to leave. By the time I got home, I was so crabby, the first thing I did when I walked into my bedroom is have a good cry.

Actually, the first thing I did was curse loudly and clean up the garbage that my housemate's dog had dug out of my trash can and strewn all over the floor, a mess which may have more to do with the cause of my good cry than my day at work. But that is beside the point, because the point is, work is really wearing me down!

I've been kind of distressed about that, because I've always been an enthusiastic and tireless worker (barring heavy labor, because I'm weak). I can plug away at design tweaks for hours without needing a break. I can spend a whole day trying to get a tiny script to work right. I can even commune with various kinds of trail mix for six hours straight without suffering more than a hint of boredom and a sore wrist. And for the most part, I enjoy it! But the work I'm doing now isn't like that.

The work I'm doing mostly consists of questions: Is it better to use these two modules that do just what we want or that one module that does too much? Is it better to use a template to display the whole page or a combination of a template for part of the page and a PHP function for the other part? Is it better to use a text editor with more features but requiring a patch to integrate it, or is it better to use one that works out of the box but requires a bunch of plug-ins to do anything more complex? What is the best way to document our progress? When a module doesn't work the way I want it to, is it better to try to rewrite it, or is it better to try and learn how to patch it? It's very little doing and a lot of deciding.

And deciding is one of my least favorite activities. Another good-cry moment occurred last year - on a vacation - when too much pressure was put on me to choose where to eat for dinner. I burst into tears in a shoe store and refused to have anything more to do with the restaurant selection process. There's a word for this (not the public crying, just the reason for it): decision fatigue. I read about this phenomenon in a news article last year. It causes some people to make bad decisions, and it causes me to become irritable.

So now that I know that I'm just decision fatigued, and I haven't actually become lazy, I can rest my conscience and my mind in the knowledge that this, too, will pass. I just have to wait until we've unveiled the website. Then we will discover all the problems with it and work frantically to fix them. I foresee a whole lot of doing in my future!

Marvelous Market Raspberry White cookie

While I was in Denver, since I couldn't eat enough to take advantage of my food stipend, I spent it mostly on cookies, which I squirreled away for later consumption. So you can expect a goodly number of Giant Cookie Reviews in the near future. But this first review actually comes from the time before I went to Denver.

Whilst knocking about town a fine spring afternoon, my boyfriend and I happened upon a quaint little shop calling itself Marvelous Market. I do believe this is a chain store, but it was cute enough to imagine that this was its sole location.

Big brownies and Giant Cookies lined its shelves beckoningly, and I knew I had to buy one. After all, I have a blog to keep.

I picked the most exotic flavor I could find, Raspberry White, (which I assumed correctly meant white chocolate) and gobbled it the very next day.

It tasted of raspberry, and white chocolate. It had macadamia nuts in it, which are quite my favorite nut to eat in a cookie. It also had that home-baked flavor, which, surprisingly enough, is actually a defect in a giant cookie. The cookies that I bake at home are never very good, and this cookie had that same sort of flavor.

It wasn't bad, but it just didn't have the "Wow, that was so good, I want to buy one every time I pass a Marvelous Market" taste that I was hoping for.

Soft and chewy, yes, soft and chewy and addictive, no.

As for the cost, my 115g cookie cost me $2.25, or almost 2 cents a gram. A decent price for a giant cookie, but not what I'd call a decent price for a "just OK" cookie of any sort.


Bottom Line:
Taste: 3 stars
Texture: 4 stars
Price: 3 stars

Wednesday, from an enteric perspective

This morning, I woke up at 5:00, feeling nervous. I wasn't sweating, my heart wasn't pounding, but I had something like butterflies in my stomach. The butterflies soon turned into pain, and then into, ummm, several trips to the bathroom.

Whether this has something to do with my difficulty eating yesterday, an accidental overdose of fiber yesterday morning, something I ate yesterday evening, or the guy sitting on the plane next to me on Monday, who went to the bathroom 6 times during our 3.5 hour flight, I do not know. But it made me disinclined to go to the conference at 9 and sit through an hourlong keynote speech that will probably not impart any practical skills. 

Fortunately, my traveling companion texted me a little before 8 to say he wanted to skip the keynote and head in around 10. Unlike me, he did go to the party with the open bar last night, so I think his motivations may be related to that.

Since we were in agreement over our truancy, I headed back to bed to recover. I was unable, however, to sleep, which I thought meant I would be just as unsociable tonight as I was yesterday.

However, I managed to put on a decent show of extraversion that almost made me proud. There are about 10 people from our university here at DrupalCon, and we've formed a sort of social group. Tonight, I thought I would just quickly power through the shops I missed yesterday, then top off my evening with some ice cream. I even found this cute deli where I thought I'd pick up some veggies and maybe even a side dish to eat with it. But when The Group notified me they were eating dinner at a Thai restaurant, I didn't even make an excuse--just made my way there and prepared for an evening of being social. 

I of course treated them all to my weird eating habits, refusing to eat anything for dinner but a side of edamame beans, and then, amazingly, roping them into coming with me for frozen yogurt, which was my main course. Sure, after that, they all continued on to some party where there was purported to be free beer while I returned to my room, but for a brief shining moment, the group mindset actually aligned with Valerie's unconventional ideas about how an evening should be spent!

After the frozen yogurt, my stomach ache returned full force. Darn my dysfunctional digestive system. Here the college is reimbursing me for 40 dollars of food purchases a day, and I can't even eat a bowl of soybeans and a small frozen yogurt without getting sick!

Tuesday night in Denver, Colorado

John Denver once sang a song about Toledo, Ohio, In which one of the lyrics was, "they roll back the sidewalks precisely at 10..."

Ironically, I could say the same thing about Denver. The city, not the singer.

Only I'd have to replace the 10 with a 7.

During dull moments in the conference today, I passed my time searching for things in Denver that someone like me (someone with no vices, who would rather wander around a city alone than go to a party with an open bar) could do after 6:00. I was so desperate that I even "asked Denver" on Twitter, when I have an admitted aversion to using Twitter to communicate. Denver didn't reply.

For lack of any better suggestions, I made a beeline for the shopping district, which I figured could keep me occupied for at least one evening. On the map for the Free Mall Shuttle (which is a true piece of public transportation genius, running trolley-like buses up and down the street at what seemed to be two minute intervals!) I saw that there was a river to the north.

Denver is a city best known for its outdoor entertainments, so -- even though those entertainments usually consist of something much more adventurous such as skiing -- I decided I would make do with what I had and go see the natural wonders of downtown.

And since my airport adventures yesterday had set a standard for public humiliation, I also decided I would leave my pride on the bus and play the part of the crazy tourist/photographer, lugging around two huge sacks of stuff, sitting on rocks in the middle of a stream to get the perfect shot of the water running over the rocks (I didn't get it), and leaning over the edge of a bridge for far too long taking shot after shot of a duck, hoping that in one, its head would not be in the water. Alas. that was not to be, either.

Following the photographic tour de something, I returned to the shopping area for dinner and shopping. Unfortunately, by the time I was done with my macaroni and cheese at the Cheesecake Factory at around 7 (I know, you'd think in a new place, I'd want to branch out and try something local, but when you have eating habits like mine, it's best to just stick with what you know), all the stores were closed. I guess they didn't hear that stores are supposed to always stay open until nine.

So I returned to my suite at the ripe old hour of 7:30, to while away the evening blogging, searching for something more gratifying to do with my evening tomorrow, and possibly topping it off with tv. I do have to say that i had been a bit disappointed that our luxury hotel lacked a gym, but with all the walking I did today, I don't think I need one. And at no point did I get any more breathless in the alleged thin air of the Mile High City than I do anywhere else. Except that one time on the stairs in the convention center, which I attribute more to malnourishment than poor respiration--the last few days, I've had the stomach capacity of a hamster.

One last point. I've learned that typing on my iPad results in a lot fewer mistakes if I just use two fingers rather than my whole hand, so it's back to hunt and peck for me!

This is a test.

I'm in sunny Denver, typing this on my iPad in a hitherto untested mode of blogging. I brought a laptop with me, generously lent by my employer, and when I arrived at my hotel room and turned it on, it immediately turned off because the battery was dead. I Plugged in the charger, which failed to perform to expectations. somehow the charger died between my office on friday and denver on monday You'll have to. Excuse a few typos and weird capitalizations because typing on an iPad is only marginally easier than typing on a phone, which I hate. And trying to go back and fix your mistakes is definitely an exercise in maintaining your sanity.

But anyway, I'm here to talk about Denver. When my. Coworker and I arrived late last night, we were dismayed both by the cold and the flat landscape. As we stood jogging in place (ok, only I did that, because I value warmth more than I value my dignity) for thirty minutes while waiting for ouR rental car shuttle, we commented on how we could not see any mountains.

Well, when the morning sun peeped into my (palatial) hotel room this morning, they revealed themselves, majestic and snow-capped, on the horizon! Too bad I can't shoW you, because you can't uPload pictures from an iPad.

You also may be interested in how I nearly missed my flight due to a poor choice of Metro lines on the way to the airport and a poorly laid out airport that failed to indicate that the ticketing area I was in was not the ticketing area I needed to be in. The two mistakes cost me a half hour of traveling out of my way and wandering futilely, but I made it! And was actually the second-to-last person on the plane! I dream of a day when I will not have to beg every person in the security line to let me go ahead of them.

In 10 minutes I must be downstairs for breakfast and a conference, so I shall close now, but you can look forward to more tales of my Denver hijinks--as long as I can overcome my distaste for this keypad enough to write on it again.

Grammar, go back where you belong!

As a person who fills a lot of blog space pondering the right way and wrong way to communicate in English, I often find myself wondering what is the right word to describe all that stuff I ponder about.

I label it in my blog as "language," but that term doesn't adequately indicate all the nitpicking, preaching, and value-judging I do regarding the use of words. "Grammar" is an oft-used catch-all, but even if I don't understand the exact technical definition of grammar (it's apparently even more specific than I imagined), I know that spelling does not fall under it. So what is the word for that mythical all-inclusive English rulebook?

Apparently other English lovers are wondering the same thing, and apparently there isn't an answer.

For example, see "It's All Grammar," a blog post by Arnold Zwicky, who claims that the only thing all these things have in common is that they are cause for annoyance by some people when they are misused. Well, he's the professor of linguistics, not me (OK, OK, "I"), but I daresay that if grammar and syntax and spelling and usage all have rules, and they all have to do with written language, then they have at least two things in common.

So maybe not everyone considers every rule to be hard and fast. And certainly different institutions have different rules (we call those house rules), but that doesn't mean that they don't all apply to the same game.

And if the best term for them proposed so far is garmmra, I feel quite free to invent my own term, which will be suitably pompous and lengthy. When I figure it out, I will let you know....

And I hope I figure it out soon, so I can ease my conscience and stop using the word "grammar" where it doesn't belong!

Stouffer's Macaroni and Cheese

This entree was a staple in my childhood diet. One evening a week, my mother would work late, and that evening, my father would exercise his considerable culinary talents and pop one of these in the microwave for me and my brother.

It was almost always my favorite meal of the week. The glut of carbs! The cheese! The way it caramelized into a brown crust around the edges! I ate it one noodle at a time, savoring each bite.

These days, I've discovered fancier macaroni dishes at restaurants, but for ease of preparation and plain-old comfort-food value, Stouffer's macaroni can't be beat. Now they're even making this Farmer's Harvest variety which is made with whole grain flour (mixed with processed white flour), so it's even marginally better for my health!

One happy noodle for the crispy edges,
One happy noodle for the memories!

Tech Peeves

It doesn't come often, but it's time for one of those posts about "Things that Annoy Me." Today's theme: technology. Those modern conveniences are all well and good...except when they're not. Here are a few examples.

Telephones: My telephone can remember everything for me. Its most useful feature, considering how it's a telephone, is remembering other people's phone numbers. I never need to commit a number to memory any more—all I need do is type it into my phone and forget about it. And I do. If you asked me to tell you the phone number of the one person I call more than any other (my boyfriend), I wouldn't be able to. I would be ashamed, except it's not my fault! My phone not only remembers his phone number, but it blocks me from seeing it! All I can see when I dial is his name. Convenient...and crippling. Come on, Apple, couldn't you at least display the number below the name, so I have the opportunity to try to learn the number?

Email: Along the same lines, Microsoft Outlook, which I started using for work after being a dedicated Thunderbird user for years, blocks me from seeing a sender's email address if they're already in my address book. Great. What if they, like me, have 4 or 5 different email addresses? How do I know which one I've received a message from? And how do I memorize the address (you know, in the event that I'm away from Exchange Server when I need to contact them)? Come on, Microsoft...

No, wait. Let me broaden my complaint.

Come on, software vendors! Give us some options! Let us maintain some semblance of autonomy!

Digital Content: Digital content is grand. Who doesn't love being able to have instant Internet access to their favorite media? But digital media's big, huge, whopping downside is the complete inability to resell it. For this subject, allow me to use as an example two of my favorite things: books, and Doctor Who. I'm kind of a single-use consumer of media. Stories are only good once, and I never watch the same movie twice. So when I read a book, I want to be able to re-sell it. This cannot be done with e-books, so even though you might think I, lover of words and inhaler of books, might be a prime candidate for e-books, I am not. And instead, I can only sadly look at the outrageous prices of e-books, shake my head, and sigh.

The same goes for TV shows, including my favorite TV show, Doctor Who. Since I don't subscribe to cable, my only option for viewing this series is to watch dubiously sourced episodes on the Internet or buy them online. I would be willing to pay a reasonable price to see Doctor Who, but for a single viewing, I consider a reasonable price to be a dollar or less. iTunes, the only legal source of standalone Doctor Who episodes I've found so far, charges $2.99$. I might pay 2.99 if I wanted to keep the show and watch it over and over. But that's not what I'm going to do. So why can't I just pay a lower price for a single viewing? Or barring that, why can't I sell my rights to the content to someone else at a discount? The limitations of digital content seem just built to turn every good citizen into a thief.

Doors: I'll close with something related to closing: the overuse of handicapped doors. I never gave these motorized doors much thought until I started working in an office directly across from one. Now I spend my entire day watching able-bodied people push the handicapped button instead of just pushing open the door. Why? Why wait for a door to slowly swing open when you could just push and walk through? Surely you are not so weak that you need a motor to do what your hands and feet could do! But you choose to let the door do all the work and then stand open long after you've passed through, needlessly gobbling up electricity in its opening and letting cold air to come sweeping into the building. What a waste! For shame!

MacaroniQuest: Cheesecake Factory

This issue of MacaroniQuest, we introduce a new feature--the Mood Noodles rating system! I realized since my first MacaroniQuest post that I can too tell the difference between macaroni dishes, and I can distinguish varying degrees of good. So from now on I'll be giving macaronis a happy noodle for every feature which pleases me and a sad noodle for every feature which lets me down. See how it all pans - or should I say casseroles - out in this review of the macaroni at the Cheesecake Factory!

The Cheesecake Factory has many things going for it—not least of which is the awe-inspiring selection of cheesecakes that gives it its name. But even more importantly, there are several things on its regular menu that I can and want to eat.

Go back and read that again. I said "several." That never happens. As the Queen of Picky Eaters, I am lucky if I can find one thing on any given menu that meets my exacting tastes. But the Cheesecake Factory has several!

And one of them is macaroni and cheese. This hearty entree is listed on their menu as a "side dish," but it is so big, I was able to save half of it to eat later.

As with all of my favorite macaroni dishes, this one featured a breadcrumb topping. The noodles were an extra-large variety of elbows, which were quite tasty. These two features earned the dish a happy noodle.

However, the cheese had a kind of gooey, Velveeta-like texture that I did not really appreciate, earning the dish its one sad noodle.

It came in a small cast-iron dish, to assure me that it was indeed baked in a real oven. The breadcrumbs on top were a delicious and attractive touch. Presentation value: thumbs up!

Rating

Starbucks Chocolate Chunk Cookies

There was once a time when I was a Starbucks cookie junkie. Their chocolate chunk cookies were second only to the cookies I could get at Cosi, and since they were several cents cheaper, they were often my first choice to buy.

And then things changed. Starbucks changed their recipe and raised their price, and I started working from home rather than a block from their shop, and I stopped buying their cookies.

But for old times' sake, let me review these classic confections.

They measure 11 centimeters in diameter, putting them squarely in the realm of giant cookies, and an informal weighing on my postal scale puts one at 90 grams. They cost 2.07$ each (or 2.3¢ a gram), including tax, so they are not what I'd call cheap.

But are they worth the price?

Well, they are sweet, and the big chunks of chocolate definitely have their appeal. They were deliciously soft around the center; however - and it may just be the batch I tested - they were a little overcooked around the edges, giving them an unappealing chewy/crunchy texture and unpleasant aftertaste.

All in all, they're better than most retail-packaged cookies at your nearest supermarket, but I wouldn't go any farther than my nearest supermarket to procure them.

The bottom line:
Taste: 3 stars
Texture: 3 stars
Price: 3 stars

Tea for Me ... And other work related topics

Chick Pea Mystery Solved

I spoke too soon when condemning my colleagues for being fridge-raiders. On Thursday, one of my coworkers walked into my office with a sheepish expression and asked, "Were you missing some chick peas?" It turns out that one of my other coworkers had invited him to eat some of his hummus. Second coworker, not being indoctrinated into vegetarian/Mediterranean eating, had to be told that hummus was made of chick peas. When he later went into the fridge looking for it, he found my chick peas and ate them, only realizing his folly when talking to the first coworker a few days later.

Less than a month after posting my scathing comments on coffee, I am changing my tune.

Well, sort of.

As my dad commented, "Coffee is the programmer's wonder drink. I don't see how you can hold out on the nectar of the cyber gods."

And heck, I'm a programmer! At least, that's what my friend told me, though I'm technically still more of a designer.

In any case, I seem to have a developed a legitimate need for caffeine. Every day, about 45 minutes after I finish my lunch, I am overcome with an overwhelming need to sleep. No matter what I eat, be it a bowl of edamame or a cheese sandwich with all the fixins, come about 1:30, it becomes an epic battle to keep my eyes open. This doesn't happen after breakfast. I would consider skipping lunch entirely, but then I just get sleepy from lack of food instead.

So my solution? Iced tea. After deep deliberation, I concluded that despite my health reasons, I still couldn't stand the taste of coffee. And the hassle of making it (since I work in one of the few offices I've ever seen where the coffee isn't free—or even available at all!) wouldn't be worth the returns. But powdered iced tea would put me at zero risk of burning my tongue, still impart some caffeine into my tired bloodstream, provide the added benefits of antioxidants, and be quick and easy to prepare.

So I invested a couple of bucks in calorie-free mango green tea packets and let the experiment begin. It was more successful than I ever dreamed.

My iced tea packets, I discovered after buying them, only contain about 25 mg of caffeine per cup, while real tea boasts around 50, and coffee is known to contain around 120 or more. I thought for sure that my purchase was a complete waste, until I ingested my first packet and discovered that even 25 milligrams of caffeine is quite enough to wake me up, and then some.

Within a few minutes of having a few sips of my tea, I am so ready to work, I jump from task to task like a jumping bean. I find myself inappropriately euphoric, thinking thoughts like, "I'm so excited it's Wednesday!"

I'm a little high-strung by nature and it's not uncommon for me to have to forcibly reign myself in, but when I'm caffeinated, my stern self-reminders that "It's OK," and I should "Calm down!" are delivered with excessive enthusiasm, before I have even begun to panic.

I'm sure that this extreme result only comes from the fact that caffeine is such a foreign substance to my system, and I'm sure I won't have quite such a response after a few weeks of being a tea drinker, but in the meantime, it sure feels better than slogging my way through a dreamworld every afternoon.

Valentinezilla

Ever since elementary school ended and the golden days of egalitarian, teacher-enforced Valentine's Day school parties drew to a close, I have not had much luck with Valentine's Days. Probably the worst was the one when, after I had spent hours preparing a special V-day treasure hunt for him, my Valentine came home late from work and promptly locked himself in his room. When he emerged nearly an hour later, he threw a box of candy hearts and a bouquet of sickly flower buds (they never did bloom) on my bed before passing out in a drunken stupor. Upon awakening, he informed me that he had driven my car up onto the curb and blown out the tire.

Most of my other Valentine's Days, I was single, and celebrated by indulging in varying degrees of bitterness.

This year marks the very first that I had the opportunity to celebrate Valentine's Day in the traditional manner – you know, by going out on a real date with my real significant other – and I aimed to make the most of it. No one was going to stand in my way!

When my procrastinating boyfriend failed to secure reservations for the restaurant he's been promising to take me to since our few-month anniversary, he transferred the restaurant selection to me (fair enough, since I'm such a picky eater) and suggested that if it was too much hassle, we might just make lasagna and stay in. I let him have it.

And by that, I mean I said "darn it."

You might think I'm being a little Type-A about it all, but I've been waiting 28 years for this, and it's my special day! I will have a restaurant! I will wear a pink dress! I will show off my relationship status for the whole world to see! These were the firm pronouncements that I made in my head.

Of course, my special day was not without its share of bumps. Since my plans were to head to dinner immediately after work without heading home in the interval, several challenges arose.

• I chose to shower in the morning rather than at night so I could blow-dry my hair. Unfortunately, my housemate also changed his shower schedule, so I got a late start while waiting for him.
• In the rush to get out the door, I forgot my earrings and perfume, which were going to be essential parts of my personal decor. I did, however, remember the dress, the shoes, and the makeup, which I consider even more essential elements of my decor, and my boyfriend actually complimented me at dinner, which he never does.
• After the sudden realization that the bus was coming in two minutes, I ran to the stop at top speed...and made it, but not without a respiratory price: I spent the rest of the morning trying to clear the resultant scratchy throat.

And then there were the gustatory woes.

• When I pulled my lunch out of the refrigerator, I found my little container of chick pea salad in my lunch bag, empty! At first I thought it might have been a packing error, but when I got home, it was clear that it had not been, and someone had eaten my lunch! I thought I could trust my office mates, but apparently we have one of those mythical lunch thieves that I never believed existed. My faith in humanity has taken something of a blow. Not to mention, I had nothing for lunch but half a cucumber, so was hypoglycemic and none too genial when we ran into traffic on the way to dinner.
• The restaurant that I had picked out had a price fixe Valentine's Day dinner. I figure "fixe" must be some synonym for "exorbitant," because I was appalled by the sum. When I chose the place, I had mistakenly believed their regular menu would be available. It was not, and I was obliged to eat a 60-dollar meal that was less appetizing than, say, a 6-dollar burrito. On the plus side, the meal came with "a rose for the ladies," and since my gift-challenged boyfriend (I could write a whole entry on that topic alone) certainly wasn't giving me one, I had to take what I could get.

Sigh. It looks like, even though my hopes were high for things to be different, I have nonetheless kept my tradition of the Bitter Valentine Blog. Looks like great expectations lead to great disappointments, so next year, I'll return to the regular old low-maintenance me. Or maybe I'll hold out for dinner and a present.

On Arrival

In English class once in high school, we had a discussion about what it means to have arrived. You have to say it like that, with the italics. I can't remember which literary character or author had done the arriving in our discussion, but I never forgot the phrase. To "have arrived" means something along the lines of  having "achieved the ultimate success."

A few days ago, sitting at the office reading Web development blogs, it occurred to me that I am an IT professional. And the thought immediately followed: "I have arrived!"

I was going to blather on about how cool it is to be an official computer geek, and how I like design but am not always as fond of designers, but it wasn't coming out well...

So instead, I'll talk about arrival of another sort: the sort that you do in an automobile.

After 6 weeks of employment at the university, I think I've finally got a handle on bus transportation.

There are six different buses that can transport me a reasonable distance to and from work and home. These six buses serve three different stops that are close to my house, and 3 different stops close to work. It took me quite a while to figure out which ones were going to get me to my destination most efficiently. This was especially difficult since the buses with the most direct route home also only service the stops that take the longest to get to.

The campus shuttle is an obvious first choice, since it's free, and drops me just a 2-minute walk from my office. It also arrives at the closest of the three stops near my home. The problem with the shuttle is its roundabout path to my house, which takes 20 minutes to traverse (for a total time of 28 minutes, including walking and waiting at the stop).

There are 2 Metrobuses that travel between my neighborhood and the campus area. Unfortunately, the stops near campus require an 8 minute walk to the office and a 10 minute walk from the office (different stops inbound and outbound), and Metrobuses make a lot of stops and don't follow the schedule very strictly. To catch either of these buses, I have to leave the office around 4:35, and I get home just about 5:00. It's a 25-to-30-minute trip—potentially shorter than the campus shuttle, but higher stress because of the unpredictable schedule, and it costs $1.50 each way.

My most recent discovery, which really puts an interesting twist on things, is that the county bus 17, which costs only a dollar to begin with, is free for University affiliates! It runs the same route as one of the MetroBuses, but it's usually less crowded and makes fewer stops. Leaving the office at 4:32, I have made it home by 4:56 taking this bus. 24 minutes! But I really have to book it to the stop, since my workday ends at 4:30. Its real benefit comes in the morning, since it arrives in my neighborhood about 10 minutes after the campus shuttle does, and gets me to the office 5 minutes before! The catch is that I have to cross a busy street to get to the stop, and yesterday, the bus actually came while I was still waiting at the crosswalk. I had to dash across the street, blocking traffic, in order to make it onto the bus.

So my conclusion after all this transit research, is that the 7-minute variation in transit times is negligible, and I should choose my routes based on cost and convenience. In the morning, that means shooting for the early campus shuttle, but on those days when I'm having trouble with my hair or clothes or alarm clock, I know I can fall back on the county bus, or if I'm really running late, the MetroBus.

In the afternoon, I also choose the campus shuttle, but if the weather's nice and I've got my walking shoes on and I want some exercise, I can hike on over to the public bus stop and take the county bus home. But even this plan presents a dilemma, as this afternoon, I walked to the public stop, intending to take the county bus, but a Metrobus came first! Should I wait the two minutes for the free bus, or save 2 minutes and lose $1.50? I chose to lose the 1.50, because I started to fear that maybe this was the day the county bus would never come.

I guess I still don't have a handle on any of it.

MacaroniQuest

Is it just me, or is macaroni and cheese getting a lot of attention in the media these days? Every time I check out at the grocery store, I see some other cooking magazine touting its unbeatable macaroni recipe. Maybe it is just me, because macaroni and cheese is probably one of my favorite foods, and when macaroni is mentioned, I am bound to take notice.

And lately, I've been trying a lot of macaroni. When I went to visit my friend in New York City and was asked what I wanted to eat (because that's basically what people go to New York City to do: sightsee and eat), I said "cookie dough. And macaroni and cheese." So we tried several macaroni-serving establishments (we failed to find many cookie-dough-serving establishments, but did locate some cheesecake, which was an acceptable substitute). When I go out to eat, and macaroni is available, it's almost always what I order.

Since I have become such a macaroni connoisseur, it is time that I add "Macaroni Reviewer" to my list of accomplishments. From now on, whenever I try a macaroni and cheese dish – be it homemade, frozen, or served fresh from a restaurant menu – I will share my opinions here on this blog. I'll even include photos—though since I'm not in the habit of carrying my bulky camera everywhere I go, you'll have to settle for out-of-focus cell phone pictures.

Let the MacaroniQuest begin!

With the restaurant I visited yesterday: Eatonville, in Washington DC.

As you can see from the photo, my macaroni had to share a plate with my boyfriend's nasty fried chicken and collard greens (one thing you learn quickly as a Macaroni Reviewer is that your favorite entree is rarely ever presented as an entree, but rather a very costly side dish), but the delicious biscuit serving as a divider between them made up for it.

The macaroni and cheese was a delight as well, with nice chewy spiral noodles and a coating of melted cheese on top. Since (even though I claim to be a connoisseur) I can't really tell one good macaroni from another, I will only rate them as Siskel and Ebert (used to) do: Thumbs up or thumbs down.

I give this one Thumbs Up.

And since that's such a lame rating system, I'll add a factor: Presentation Value. Since I didn't order this side a la carte, I don't know how it looks when it comes a la carte. But I have to say the cheese topping and the spiral noodles were a good choice. So I would probably rate it highly.

As an added bonus, the ambience inside Eatonville was kind of fun. Though it took me a while to realize the restaurant was inspired by Zora Neale Hurston, it was easy to pick up on the Old South vibe, what with the leaf-shaped fans on the ceiling, and the fact that all the waitresses wore little hats! I think, now, that that was some special event they were holding, and not a regular thing. But cute anyway!

WhyNot?

When you have worked the last six years in a beverage-focused field and also magically start receiving Shape magazine in the mail without ever subscribing, you end up reading a lot of things about the health benefits of various drinks. Things like:

• Mystery coffee ingredient boosts protection against Alzheimer’s 
• Coffee lowers depression risk in women up to 20%: 10-year study
• Coffee consumption may lower endometrial cancer risk, study
• Why Coffee May Lower Diabetes Risk 
• Study Shows That Alcohol Drinkers May Exercise Up to 10 Percent Longer Than Non-Drinkers
• Women who consume one alcoholic drink a day at mid-life may be healthier when older when compared to those who don’t drink at all.
• Why Nondrinkers May Be More Depressed

With all this compelling evidence, it's hard to justify my abstinence from these popular legal drugs.

I have tried them both, so I can't say I'm a "substance virgin," (and therefore don't have anything to protect) but I can say (with pride, I'll add), that I don't have to drink to have fun, and I can wake up in the morning without my cup of joe. But does personal pride outweigh the potential for a greater quality of life? Is it time to hop off the wagon?

Here is an in-depth analysis of the issue.

Coffee

...Is probably one of the most disgusting food-like substances that exists. It tastes ghastly, it stains your mouth, it aggravates stomach problems, and it turns otherwise sane people into savage beasts when it is not available.

I don't think there is any health benefit short of immediate prevention of acute death that could turn me into a coffee drinker. The only way to make coffee palatable is to heavily infuse it with sugar, which I daresay negates its positive effects.  Perhaps if I could take it as a supplement (say, in one massive dose that I could quickly down with a cup of good old water), then I'd be willing to give it a try, putting it on the same schedule as my almost-daily-except-when-I-forget-which-is-sometimes-days-in-a-row multivitamin and calcium tablet. But to actually drink it--especially the 4 cups a day required to prevent diabetes? No way!

Alcohol

I have avoided alcohol on principle since I was a proud underage goody-goody, and on basically the same principle after I crossed that magical 21-year mark. My ostensible reasons are:

• It tastes bad
• It's expensive
• I don't want to get addicted

But I think, deep down, my real reason is just vanity. I am so above all those corporeal pleasures. Look at me with my little halo. Tra la la la la.

Anyway, isn't the whole point of drinking to get drunk? If you have to stop at one glass, why bother in the first place? All one serving does for you is fill your mouth with a terrible taste, add a lot of calories to your diet, and subtract a lot of dollars from your wallet. Is a daily shot of fattening, expensive, unappetizing alcohol worth the reduced risk of depression? Gosh, just the thought depresses me.
Besides, the same article that says that alcohol drinkers seem healthier in their old age also says that alcohol drinkers have a 30 percent higher risk of dying of breast cancer. Case closed.

But what am I going to do with that bottle of wine I got as a Christmas present?

7-Layer Bars, Improv Style

This is the tale of the confluence of a series of events leading to another Adventure in Cooking! 

I love sweetened condensed milk. I eat it straight out of the can because I do not love my arteries nearly as much. Recently, I bought a can of the stuff and discovered, upon reaching home, that it was dented at the rim. I am OK with a dent anywhere else on a can, but if it's on the rim, I worry that the integrity of the can may have been compromised and germs have scurried their way inside. I prefer that my death by sweetened condensed milk occur gradually, rather than in one bacterial showdown, so I put it back in the car to return to the store and left it there for several weeks. During those several weeks, we had a few warm spells which heated my car to tropical levels, and when I found the can again, I decided it would be too hazardous to return it to the store, lest they restock it and unwittingly infect someone with salmonella. But I couldn't let it go to waste, so I decided to heat it for a short time in a double boiler to sort of pasteurize it. This is normally how you make dulce de leche, but I figured if I just didn't heat it as long as they recommend for making dulce de leche, then it wouldn't caramelize.

Alas, when I opened it, it had turned a light caramel color, and no longer tasted quite like sweetened condensed milk. And while caramel is good for many things, it is not good for eating straight out of the can, so I put it in the fridge and let it sit.

Enter Event #2. I also love 7-layer bars. I first discovered them at Firehook Bakery in DC and promptly decided they were my new favorite cookie. Assuming they were some proprietary recipe of the local establishment, I made a point of picking up one of the delectable bars every time I passed by. Later, I encountered them at Bob Evans in Sylvania under the pseudonym of 7th heaven bars (ironically, right after having brought one of the DC bars to Ohio so I would not go dessertless in a potential time of need).

The availability of 7-layer bars in multiple locations made me believe that the recipe may not be such a closely kept secret after all, and with a going rate of $2.25 a cookie, being able to prepare them myself could be quite a financial boon. So I searched the Internet and found the recipe with embarrassing ease. Immediately I noticed that one of the ingredients was sweetened condensed milk, and I thought of my lonely caramelized can sitting in the fridge.

Here are the ingredients, and how to prepare them with Val's Galorious panache.

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup butterscotch chips
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 1/3 cups shredded coconut

Preheat oven to 350°F and get out a 13x9-inch pan.

Make the graham cracker crumbs first. Assume that one plastic-wrapped package of graham crackers equals 1½ cups, and crush them in the package by banging them against the countertop. When that fails, step on them. When that is not wholly effective either, transfer them to a colander over the 13x9 inch pan and shake them until all that remains in the colander are the big bits. Crush them with a ladle.

Then read the recipe, which tells you that you are supposed to melt the butter in the pan first. Transfer the cracker crumbs to a plate and melt the butter in the pan. Go ahead and use salted margarine—who actually has unsalted butter just lying around? When it is melted, slosh it around all over the pan and replace the graham cracker crumbs. Follow them with the chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, walnuts, sweetened condensed milk (this will be quite a challenge, because the milk has thickened in the heating process and has subsequently been stored in the refrigerator, and your fingers are already occupied, being crossed in the hope that your modified milk will not ruin the recipe), and finally the coconut.

Bake for 25 minutes, until golden brown around the edges.

The result of my Adventure in Cooking? Pretty good. The modified sweetened condensed milk didn't seem to have any detrimental effect on the overall taste. They were a little gooier than the bars I buy in stores, but I like gooey, so they were perfect for me! And the salted margarine was actually a nice counterpoint to the outrageous sweetness of the rest of the ingredients. But the graham crackers were not uniformly mixed with the margarine. Next time I think I'll stir it up and pat it in.

One more thought: Since the object of making these at home was to save myself a bit of dough, it's only sensible to calculate the total cost of this endeavor:
Butter--25¢,
crackers--1.20$,
chocolate chips--1.70$,
butterscotch--1.70$,
walnuts--2$,
milk--$1.70,
coconut--1$
(I don't have my original receipts, so most of these prices are just guesses, and it bears saying that I usually don't buy candy chips unless they are discounted to less than the standard price that I used in the calculation.)
Total price for the recipe: about 9.55$.
Divided into a minimum of 9 bars (and those would be pretty hefty bars), that's a dollar a bar--a significant savings over the store-bought ones. Guess I know how I'll be getting my 7-layer bar fix from now on.

Week 2 (and 2 thoughts on grammar)

As my second week as a real office employee was passing by, I gathered my thoughts for future blogging and tried to put them into words. This proved to be difficult. Not because I didn't have the words, but I didn't have anywhere to put them.

When I was working at home, I had a text file where I stored all my thoughts and blog topics. When I worked at MOM, I just never had thoughts. On the rare occasion when an idea surfaced, I typed it into my phone, which was quite a hassle, for my fingers just can't seem to get the hang of a phone keyboard, and my phone just can't seem to get the hang of loading apps efficiently.

Now that I'm working in the office, I'm having thoughts galore! I can't stop to blog about them, and a text file will be useless to me as soon as I leave for home.

I tried using Google Docs, but that was a pain because I have three Google accounts and the one I use for my blog is not the one I use for my Gmail, and multiple sign-in is not working smoothly. Plus, the one time I pasted text from a Google Doc, it went into my blog with all sorts of undesired formatting. I tried storing all my ideas in an email to send to myself at the end of the day, but after three days of forgetting to send the email, I knew that would not be a viable option. I then tried Microsoft Office on SkyDrive, which seemed like it was going to be a hit, until I noticed how slow it took to load. Only a few seconds, but when you're used to the instantaneous nature of a local text file, a few seconds is far too long. Especially when you have to go through this process every time you want to make a new note.

I started looking into other online storage options. I'm still looking into them. I don't know why I even told you about this, since it wasn't going to be the topic of this post, but if any of you are having similar idea-storage problems, maybe you will be interested in my reviews of the different options.

Anyway, the real reason that I'm writing is threefold:

This is a pixelated pixie.

1) Immediately after my last post, I noticed another linguistic phenomenon that I just had to complain about—the spelling of "pixelated." Yes, pixilated (with an i) is a real word. But unless you're using it to describe something that's slightly demented, you're using it wrong. If you want to talk about low-resolution computer graphics, you had better be using pixelated (with an e).

2) I thought of another mnemonic to help you remember how to use "diamond in the rough." It is actually what introduced me to the phrase: the Mary Poppins lyric, "Though you're just a diamond in the rough, Bert, underneath, your blood is blue!" Well, for this sentence to make sense, you must first understand that having blue blood is a good thing. But once you realize it is, then you'll know she wasn't going to preface "diamond in the rough" with a "though" unless she wanted to contrast it with the second phrase. Thus, if blue blood is unquestionably refined, a diamond in the rough must be unrefined.

3) I wanted to share a few tidbits about my new job. Now that the work has begun, it's kind of overwhelming! We have to redesign the site from scratch and learn a content management system that no one in the department is familiar with! Sometimes I think about all the stuff we have to accomplish and I get a little freaked out and start trying to do everything at once! Since no one has any specific role in the project at this point, we're all (3 of us, mainly) just messing around to find out what works, and I keep worrying if I try this thing, I'll end up spending a lot of time doing something someone else is already working on. Once we have established a direction, I'm sure it will be easier. But then I think about how I'm supposed to eventually train people to do this stuff that I don't understand myself, and I get all freaked out all over again. On the plus side, the department will buy me any training materials and software I think I need, which is a pretty great deal for someone who has always avoided learning out of books because it costs too much.

Usage and Abusage

So, since I first proposed making a name for myself in the grammar world, some research has revealed that, as far as catchy pen names go, "Language Lady" is just as already-taken as "Grammar Girl," but "Li'l Language Lady" isn't! So guess how I hereby christen myself!

The beautiful irony of this moniker is that li'l is probably one of the world's best examples of the worst grammar one could possibly use, and – here's the beautiful irony part – I am using it as a key element of my identity as a grammarian! Ha ha ha!

Today, Li'l Language Lady's lesson is not directly related to grammar, but instead to other ways that people can use the English language to torture poor souls such as me.

1. A diamond in the rough is not a good thing!

Certainly, it is better than, say, a lump of coal, or a maggot in a rotting banana, but it has a long way to go before it can be considered to outshine its competition. Sadly, most people use "a diamond in the rough" to refer to something marvelous in a sea of things not so marvelous. This is not the proper usage of the phrase! We are not talking about a gemstone that ended up in the un-manicured part of a golf course—we are talking about a gemstone that has just been blasted out of a mine and is all lumpy and covered with dirt. "In the rough" is used in much the same way as "in the nude," and, in fact, if you replace the one phrase with the other, you will come approximately close to the exact meaning. Or, if you need further help remembering the proper usage of the phrase, you may use this handy rhyme:

A diamond that is in the rough

Is a diamond that's not up to snuff!

2. Look it up!

If you did not know how to fly a plane, would you still attempt to take one for a spin? That would only be slightly more stupid than this practice that I am now going to call "speeing," because it sounds ridiculous and that's exactly what it is! Speeing is the act, while writing something for public consumption, of attempting to write a word that you don't know how to spell, and marking it with an "(sp?)" rather than checking how to spell it. Everyone knows that the mutilation of the English tongue is rampant on the Internet and subject to great scorn by those who love their language. You might think that by acknowledging your ignorance, you are thereby shielding yourself from the disdain of linguists, but really, you're just making yourself a bigger target. This is what linguists think when they see a spee: "So, now you're not only admitting you're stupid, but you're lazy too?" If you have access to the Internet to post whatever horrible, misspelled drivel you're posting, then you have access to a dictionary. Use it. It's a heck of a lot easier than earning a pilot's license.

3. Go ahead, make a grammarian laugh

We language purists are an uptight group, liable to boil over with rage at the slightest misplaced adverb (have you seen the controversy over "only"?). When you forget your adverb (or noun, verb, etc.) entirely, though, and completely change the meaning of your sentence, it fills us with an effervescent mirth that is entirely unlike boiling. As a quick example, see how news headline writing (which values succinctness and deadlines to an incomplete, poorly edited fault) resulted in the loss of an important section of these sentence.

"Republic Invests $20 to Modernize Country's Largest Recycling Facility" (Well, that budget explains a lot about why our recycling rates are so abysmal)

I had two examples, but the second example lost all its humor once I reconsidered its morbid subject matter, so you'll have to content yourself with just one. Never fear—I'm sure there will be many more where this came from!

Week 1

I can confidently say, after 1 week (4-day) of work at my new job, that I know everything there is to know about the University of Maryland.

But I would be telling a big fat lie.

I don't even know about my department! I think it will be weeks before I fully understand the nature of my job, but at least, on Monday, I will get schooled in the basics of life at the University. Monday is an all-day new employee orientation class put on by Human Resources. And, oh, boy, do I have questions!

I need to ask about how to get SmartBenefits, since I'm burning 3 dollars a day on transportation! I need to find out how I go about getting an ID card, since it seems obvious by now that it's not going to happen automatically. I would love a campus map and a commuter guide and information on filling out my timesheet and getting paid, and when my health benefits go into effect. And where to find that ice cream I’ve heard about!

I'm not too concerned about my actual job duties. Although to date, I haven't had much to do but clean my office and explore the website, I'm sure things will pick up on their own as the days go by. The biggest challenge that I have encountered thus far is catching the bus. My day is supposed to end at 4:30, and the bus home arrives around 4:35. Which means I'm usually running frantically in my dress shoes to the bus stop that's across the street from campus and down the road a bit. In fact, twice now,  in my mad rush to reach the stop, I've actually passed my bus sitting at a traffic light. You'd think, if I begged, they would let me on before the stop, but I'm afraid to ask because the drivers can be pretty crabby. If I miss the bus, the next one doesn't come for a half an hour, meaning a huge waste of my time and a long wait out in the cold. Note to self: get some running shoes to keep at the office.

Riding the bus has become such a source of stress to me that I actually had a nightmare this morning about being back at high school and missing the bus. Actually I have lots of dreams about high school and the bus for some reason, so it may just be coincidence.

Day 1

My first day at work was much like my first day at the last and only other desk job I ever started. It was spent "setting up:" waiting for my network ID to be established, waiting for my voicemail password to be reset, waiting for my email address to become active, waiting for my email inbox to become active, and cleaning the office. Lots of cleaning the office.

I am pleased to report that I have a spacious office – complete with its own thermostat (hooray! No freezing to death at work!) – all to myself. I only feel slightly like a pariah for having my office on the outside of the cluster where everyone else's offices are. On the plus side, this means I can watch everybody coming and going, which will make it much less likely for me to be completely out of the loop, which is my default state.

This office, however, is not exactly the paragon of offices, as the carpet is stained, and it apparently had a bug problem, judging from the three baits and multitudinous insect carcasses littering the windowsill. It also looked like it had been unoccupied for quite a while, judging from the dust and spiderwebs that also graced the window. Fortunately, I had come equipped with a rag, and I found 409 in the filing cabinet, so I engaged in a thorough cleaning and organizing session that got me through most of the day.

The rest of the day was spent meeting other people in the building (I met 2 Elizabeths and a Tim before I lost track), familiarizing myself with the website and the website redesign plan, and repeatedly testing my email account (it still wasn't working by the time I left).

Tomorrow my goal is to take a later bus and see if I still arrive on time, and to actually start doing work that's relevant to my job description.

Honorable Unmentionables

Yesterday's post introduced you to my favorite songs of 2011. Today's post will introduce you to the songs that didn't quite make the list, mainly because there were significant things about them that I just didn't like—to wit, the words.

Now, everyone knows I'm a lover of words. I blog compulsively, Scrabble is my favorite game, and I relish in inserting repartees in conversation (bonus if it's a text-based conversation!).

I love music, too, but I love it in a different way. And when my two loves come together, it rarely makes for a good experience. Kind of like when your old flame meets your current boyfriend.

Thus, while music this past year (and occasionally the year before) has been full of glorious sounds, it has almost always been spoiled by the inclusion of gratuitous verbiage.

In the Dark by Dev
This is the second song that prominently features a saxophone to positive effect. It's a catchy melody, but what is this girl singing (uhh...droning?) about? Ew! I'd rather listen to the instrumental version, even though it gets a little tedious. Someone get me the vocal track to this song—DJ Valsgalore will turn it inside out, put it back together, and create the masterpiece that this song has the potential to be!

Cooler than Me by Mike Posner
This song holds sentimental value to me, because it was playing at the ice skating rink where my boyfriend and I had our third date (awww). There is one lyric that I enjoy in this song. At 1:48, the "highbrow shoes" make their appearance: "You don't know...the way that you look, when your steps make that much noise! [silence.] Shh!" Now I do enjoy a good pair of ostentatious heels – and the clopping sound they make when you wear 'em around like it ain't — so even though Mr. Posner seems to think this is a bad thing, I enjoyed hearing about it in the song. However, most of the rest of the lyrics are dumb, made worse by the fact that they almost sound like they're going to rhyme and then don't. Of course, it was the instrumentals that originally drew me to this song. The bridges are pretty cool; however, its crowning glory comes around 4:00, when all pretense of singing stops and you hear the music the way it was meant to be heard!

Tonight (I'm loving you) by Enrique Iglesias
No matter which 4-letter verb you choose to employ in this song's title, it's still inappropriate for radio. Plus, it starts off with yodeling. Some credit must be given to Enrique for using the sentence "Let's remove the space between me and you," and thus being one of the few artists in 2011 not to incur my subject/object wrath. But really, the best part about this song is the 15-second stretch starting at 1:00, when words give way to exciting electronic sounds (and a little vocal wailing which is fortunately pretty easy to ignore).

Without You [XS remix] by R3hab, originally by David Guetta
David Guetta didn't quite land himself in the grammar doghouse with the technically correct, though awkward, "All I need is you and I." But he did then proceed to surround the questionable lyric with sentimental mush and a pretty un-catchy tune. Fortunately R3hab did indeed rehab the song, setting it to a much more interesting beat and replacing the unexceptional background music in the chorus with something veritably spectacular (check out 1:30). Unfortunately, they kept the singing.

My wish for the music world is that they will come to realize what they should have been taught in kindergarten: if you don't have anything nice (i.e. really wise, clever, and totally harmonious with the music) to say, don't say anything at all.