A Good Trade

In an effort to be more fiscally conservative, Chris and I have been doing more grocery shopping and less dining out. Additionally, we've been trying to watch what we eat--and limit our intake of fast food. Being that we both work 40-hour weeks (sometimes more), dinner can sometimes be a big task. But we're slowly getting more creative with our cooking, and learning how to make semi-gourmet meals as fast as possible.

More often than not, I end up bringing leftovers to work for a few days. (This also helps the budget. Eating out at roughly $7/day adds up fast.) However, there are days when I'm just sick of the meal--and can't eat it for a third day in a row.

Today was one such day. We'd made sauteed chicken with pesto bow tie pasta for dinner on Monday. It was great, and we were both thoroughly pleased with how it came out. I brought it for lunch yesterday--and for dinner, we cut up some of the leftover chicken and made quesadillas. But today, I couldn't stomach the possibility of having that chicken for lunch... again.

I shared my dilemma with a coworker who obligingly said,
"How about I give you my lunch money, and I'll take your leftovers."
"Are you serious? That doesn't seem fair."
"It's totally fair. I think that sounds delicious. And I really don't want to eat out."

So, I took my new found $7 and got myself a nice salad.

Who knew that leftovers could be such a hot commodity?

P is for Pointless

I have a confession to make. When I travel, I often like to buy $7.99 mass market paperback mysteries and read them as fast as I can. This weekend, since Chris and I traveled to the Bay Area to visit his folks for Easter, was a perfect opportunity to do just that.

At the airport, I paid my dutiful $8.08 for a novel by Sue Grafton called P is for Peril. It had all the makings of a great vacation read: murder, romance, divorce, mistaken identity, and interior design. To sum up using a perfectly cliche phrase, nothing was as it seemed. But once I got to the end, I never wanted to read another Sue Grafton novel ever again.

I wasn't expecting much; a simple who-done-it was all I wanted. But what good is a who-done-it if you come to the end and still don't know? Thankfully I hadn't invested a lot of time in it, but still. I was seriously annoyed.

Quickly thereafter, I decide to poke around online and see if I was the only one who felt this way. My google searches took me to countless websites where people confessed their disappointment:

• "After reading the last chapter, I actually tried to return this because I thought there were pages missing."
• "I have no idea who murdered Dowan Purcell. HELP!!!!!!"
• "Are Anica and Crystal lovers?"
• "Wait. So there was a hospital cover up, right? Who takes the fall?"
• Was anyone else totally confused at the end?"
• "This book is two revisions and one chapter short of being publishable. Who was the editor?"

Feeling redeemed and much better about my reading comprehension skills, I mentioned the debacle to a friend at work.

"Oh I love Sue Grafton," he said.

He then went searching through his desk and showed me a picture of the two of them at an author signing. "She's a really nice lady."

"Oh, jeez," I said. "I can't hate this woman. She's the real life Jessica Fletcher."

"She totally is! Give the girl another shot," he smiled. "No pun intended."

I now find myself in the midst of another crisis: Do I give her another chance? Or move on to Jonathan Kellerman?

Stranger than Fiction

Today I received an email from our IT Department. I've copied and pasted it in its entirety.

All:

Tough economic times call for tough economic measures.

The cost for keeping our applications running is skyrocketing. In order to offset some of those costs, we will have to start charging all Partner Applications users a small per-use fee whenever logging into the site. You will only be charged once per login regardless of how many applications you run. The fee is $0.22 and will be deducted from your paycheck by-weekly. The new charge will take effect today.

Please let me know if you have any concerns.

Regards,

I'd like to point out a few things:

1. The misspelled "bi-weekly" in the second paragraph
2. There is no name after "Regards,"
3. This is potentially the worst April Fool's Joke ever.