Less Hustle More Coffee

Hey guys! Mid week update here! Sunday I was able to get the chicken salad made that has been on my list for some time. I’m going to share the recipe with you.

How to Feed a Loon’s Chicken Salad <— Click here

It has grapes, almond slivers, celery, and you DO NOT use canned chicken (well you can if you want to, but I used a rotisserie chicken). It was very good. You use fresh dill and fresh parsley. I recommend using the fresh. I used dried dill and I was sorry. I think we missed out on that flavor.

That said, we enjoyed it much! I love grapes in my chicken salad too. I think next time I may do it with cranberries and try it that way and I may use poppy seed dressing in it too. I kinda added that to my kale salad today with cranberries in it (added the green salad and my chicken salad together and it was good). Poppy seed dressing really gave it an extra zing!

You can see the fridge where I made George and I some servings to take to work. You can see the 3 containers. That is how much it made. And we had plenty of grapes left over.

George made a really good “pho” the other night or a ramen bowl – whatever you want to call it. It was good with pork, shrimp, carrots, parsley, scallions, peas. Yum.

So we have on the agenda this week:

• Mom’s eye appt coming up this Friday
• I bought some buddigs meat to get to Mom for Fancy
• We are picking a steak house to go to for our anniversary (more on that coming)
• Completing application for birth certificate from Vital Records and getting that notarized
• Becoming members of our church on Sunday after our 2nd talk with the minister
• Starting my Christmas book this week – (Christmas list but it’s a little notebook of ideas and gifts so I can keep up with it). We have already starting buying and are about to dig in.
• Looking at PTO time and seeing if I can come up with an extra day to myself. I need one so badly.
• Getting the shingle shot scheduled.
• All this is on top of the other stuff I’ve been trying to get to.

Picking out our Anniversary Dinner:

So George has put together a nice spreadsheet for our anniversary dinner – b/c that is how he rolls. We have taken turns marking one off or as we call it “playing the game”. We are down to SEVEN steak places. Most of which are kinda pricey. George shared some feelings via email about not wanting to shed a lot of dough toward a $$$$ restaurant unless it was going to be a really special experience and one we’d not forget (in a good way).

I reminded back – also via email -that he was getting off easy as a husband. Normally by 25 to 30+ years of marriage there are additional diamonds, fabulous special anniversary travels, not to mention renewal of vows, etc. I noticed he failed to answer me back, LOL LOL! He is lucky that I don’t ask or push for these things. And no, this was not a hinting. But it was truly meant as a reminding that he gets off EASY over just a really nice anniversary steak dinner. Many couples at this point would have done a trip AND a nice steak dinner, plus a nice upgrade to the ring.

My ring is not even the one George gave me, but his Mom did, when my original wedding ring broke, she opened the safe and let me pick between a couple to use as a wedding ring. Am I complaining? No! I might like to have it in a different setting though. I’ve thought about doing that for myself, lol. I will say that sometimes it does bother me that it wasn’t especially picked out for me, but there is so many other things to worry about that it quickly passes, lol. The ring has a long history anyway, more than I care to admit, as it was a canary diamond and was swapped out on us by a man who worked for his Mom as her jewelry business shut down and he started his own, but we realized it much too late and George didn’t want to do anything about it. I really think it might be bad luck to tell you the truth. So maybe it’s good I don’t have the canary anymore but a bright shiny new one that looks prettier. But it was worth thousands more. Some man was able to start his business with the exchange of diamonds when I had it cleaned. I should have been suspicious when he said the ring was not yet ready and I’d have to come back over just a cleaning. I know who the man is and what his name is. We didn’t press charges and couldn’t prove it. But that is ok. Karma will bite his butt if it hasn’t already. God saw. I was never a fan of the yellowing color in the ring anyway even though it was worth more.

But yeah, he gets off good with just an extravagant steak dinner! :-). It could be more costly to keep me. And that is about all I have to report for today.

I’ll share some pics of the inside of my desk though. lol. I bought some Starbucks Pike Place. Work used to provide some good French Roast k-cups for us but they started ordering a bunch of really dark coffee that is bitter and the light stuff that is not good either – not many of us like the choices. I hear a lot of complaints on the French Roast no longer there. The kind we all liked they quit ordering. I guess we used too much of it —because we liked it. It’s much cheaper to have coffee we don’t like and won’t use? That is several’s theory. So I bring my own now so I can actually enjoy my afternoon coffee.

We also noticed they changed out the forks and knives and spoons to a cheaper plastic. The knives won’t cut and melt in your hot food, the forks break and are itty bitty, and the spoons are a lot smaller too and won’t hold much. lol One has to laugh. It’s like toddler ware. A lot of us have started bringing our own plasticware so we would have something usable. Will I complain? No I get it. Times are tough and the company is not responsible for my coffee, nor my plasticware. I don’t mind bringing my own needs from home when it comes to food, drink, utensils. It was nice perk in the past for them to provide those things. We still have water provided but it’s down stairs and I usually just bring my own of that too.

The phase down is just like everything else in life – everything dwindling down and life costing more for getting less, and becoming rare. So we’ll buy our own and just use those others provided in a pinch. Better than eating with fingers if you forget. I guess 1 ply toilet paper is next. lol One does what they can to do to survive and hope no one notices. And everyone is raiding one another for office supplies. lol This is not a whining entry. I’m just amused and kinda laughing at our new bartering system in the office – I’ll trade our paperclips for your staples! ha. No one likes to ask for anything so we all borrow from one another. And I truly enjoy my Pike Place coffee, forks that work, I think I might draw the line at office supplies. I don’t believe I’ll be bringing my own from home. Although I’ve done it before. I know people are kinda scared to ask for things. It’s important to have green tea, Dentyne gum (if you can find it in the stores) and peppermints in your drawers, lol. My staples are almost out though. But I managed to secure the one box of binder clips found down stairs, lol! I can’t exist without those two things. I have aspirin, Advil, and Icy Hot and eye glass cleaner. All the necessaries. I rotate the color pens each month to do the PTO vacation coding (listing the average rate with incentive and checking off the temp is eligible and verifying their PTO totals enough to cover).

I have my little system and it works. And I’m not supposed to blog this morning. I started this last night but needed to finish.

I’m happy to say that as long as all goes well and no surprises, there WILL be a video this Saturday. I’m calling this one a fun one. I didn’t have a lot of coverage in February but needed to tell a story there of what it was like, so I gathered some Instagram stories and created a background for it – then I discovered I had more footage than I thought. I think you will like it. It’s going to be live Saturday at 7:00 for viewing. I worked on thumbnail last night and it’s 90 something percent loaded. So I will schedule it tonight and then start working on the next one.

Gotta go work this early schedule! Running late.