Monday, 11 August 1997:

Cold, and Bread

My development group at work has half-hour meetings Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings from 8:30 to 9:00. These meetings are no big deal, and go quickly, and indeed today's meeting was the same. What was different was that I was quickly scheduled for two more meetings during the course of the day. You can eat up a lot of your day sitting in meetings, no matter how interesting they are!

It was cold today; overcast, and in the 60s. It's mid-August in the Midwest! What is this? Well, I like all the seasons, so I consider this a prelude to fall, albeit a strange one. Also, my folks are doing their annual trip to Cape Cod around now, and there are always a few rainy, cloudy days down there, so this weather brings back good memories of accompanying them.

After work I went to the mall and bought some new polo shirts at The Gap. I commented to the cashier that I don't have much fashion sense, but I do have color sense. I mostly go for dark colors - not black, but dark reds, greens, blues, purples and grays, and very occasionally a bright red. The cashier was wearing a bright orange polo shirt.

I also went to Lechter's Housewares to buy some knives, a new cutting board (my old one is small), and some scented candles. (I'm not a New Age kinda guy, but I like scented candles and incense.) While they were processing my credit card I wondered aloud how they processed credit cards 30 years ago. They couldn't just dial up and run it through a computer. Did they phone them all in verbally? Seems unlikely. Did you just have to be really trustworthy to get a credit card, whereas today they give them to just about anyone? Or did the companies just figure it was worth the risk?

There's so much that under-30 types like myself take for granted that must have been hard-to-impossible to manage before we were born. Imagine what today's kids will take for granted in the year 2020!

On the way home, I had a strange feeling. A craving. I'd felt this before. It was a need... a need to...

...to bake!

Yes, I bake. I cook, too. I haven't done either in a while; too lazy this summer. But I enjoy baking breads and cakes and cookies (I make Nestle Toll House cookies, but I halve the baking soda and double the vanilla), and I have a nice Indian cookbook that I sometimes make dishes from. Indian food has the advantage of being highly reheatable, since much of it is just a pile of glop, albeit very yummy glop. My ex-girlfriend used to cook Indian and Chinese food; I haven't picked up the Chinese angle yet. I'm more inclined to try Thai first.

I knew I needed eggs, so I bought eggs. But when I got home and checked the recipe I discovered that I needed milk, too. I don't drink milk (I'm not much of a dairy person, although I am not lactose-intolerant), so I rarely have it around. So, it being cold, I changed into jeans and went down and bought some milk. And then I made some yummy peanut butter bread, which is especially good since it uses baking powder, not yeast, and therefore doesn't have to rise, and therefore is called a "quick bread".

Well, I think I've used the word "yummy" enough tonight, so I'll sign off for now...


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