fuzzykitty

The weather has been cooler here in Florida so I made some chili non carne topped with cheddar cheese, green onion and plain home made yogurt, from the How to Cook Everything Vegetarian cookbook I recently picked up from Costco. This past weekend I picked up three of Anne Byrn’s cookbooks and then found out that she would be having a book signing and demonstration at Publix. I quickly signed up and was excited to meet her. Unfortunately, yesterday I learned that this stop on her tour had been canceled.

Recently, I have been reading books about chefs and food. I started with Roasting in Hell’s Kitchen by the ever colorful Gordon Ramsey and then moved on to My Life in France by Julia Child and her nephew which was interesting and inspiring. I picked up both volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking around Christmas and found that I still had not gotten my fix of Julia Child. Thats when I discovered a book from secretary by day/blogger by night turned book writer Julie Powell called Jule and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. This book was about Julie Powell’s resolution to cook her way through volume 1 of Mastering the Art of French Cooking during the course of one year and I didn’t like it’s never ending blog style. I didn’t like the weird blog-like way it felt and would have liked to hear even more about the food and her experience cooking it rather than about her day job and couch that needed to be moved. I am finally taking a break from chefs to read an interesting book called In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan but Heat is on deck.

I am having another blood draw. According to the awesome office manager at my doctor’s office Quest Diagnostics wants to apologize for the hassle I had experienced the last time I went to their office when they drew blood and gave me the piece of paper that they needed to process it back to me and have offered to meet me at my doctor’s office to draw me free of charge. I guess the office manager at my doctor’s office went up the chain at Quest and raised hell. She also said that when one if the higher up people at Quest Diagnostics called the Fleming Island Quest Diagnostics office she was also treated rudely until she identified herself on the phone and that I wasn’t the only one this whole mess had happened to. I wasn’t about to go back into that office again. Someone from Quest Diagnostics had left a comment regarding my previous entry saying that I should submit these comments on their web page which I did. I got an automated reply to say that they had received my comments and might reply within 48 hours. It’s been well over a week and I still haven’t heard from them via email or phone. Yeah, they suck but at least one person in this messed up organization is trying to make it right.

I slept through boot camp this morning and went to the house after running a few errands. It looks the he house builder people were plenty busy this week and were able to pour the cement foundation and frame the house. Next week they should be putting the siding and roof on. I wonder if I should start packing now.

On my way home I decided to do my grocery shopping at the Publix nearest to the new place to see what it was like. Oh man, it’s no Whole Foods but that Publix is much nicer than the one we live by now! This was a pleasant surprise. There is also a salon.. but they call themselves a “spalon”, which sounds super cheesy to me, next door so I went in for a price list and ended up making an appointment for a facial next week.   They are making a cookbook for charity and are offering up to $25 off for submitting five recipes to them.  Sounds good to me, count me in!

Today after boot camp I drove out to where our new house will be to check on the progress so far.  It looks like they weren’t able to pour the concrete slab this week but should get to it next week.  They are also supposed to frame the house next week too so next Saturday I should have a better picture and idea of how it is going to look on our land.  It rained a lot today and I am thankful I brought an extra pair of old  shoes to change in to because it was very muddy.  I took a bunch of pictures of the lot and the start of construction, mainly for Darrell since he is currently away on business, so I don’t think they will be of much interest but they are in the gallery anyway.

I am so mad.

Ten days ago I went to the doctor because I wanted antibiotics for my parasite. While I was there my doctor guilted me into a TSH test for my thyroid and sent me to Quest Diagnostics in Fleming Island to get my blood drawn. My doctor made it sound like their office was all high tech and stuff and had sent an electronic lab request to Quest but also handed me a hard copy for my records. I went to the lab with my hard copy, they wrote on it, drew a vial of blood, wrote on it again and gave it back to me because I thought that they had an electronic request.

I called my doctor today in hopes of learning the results of my test but they had not received them from Quest. They then called Quest and found that they had no record of me ever having my blood drawn. I drove to Quest with my hard copy of the lab request to see if that would help them to locate my blood and the woman yelled at me (WTF?!) and told me that they had needed that piece of paper to identify my sample. How can a piece of paper be the whole cause of this? Surely they have a better system, right?! They took my piece of paper and told me they would draw me again but I declined, I don’t want to fall through the cracks again.

I drove to my doctor’s office and met with the woman who had been helping me in the morning to locate my sample and gave her the lab request, she and the office manager couldn’t understand why the lab let me keep the piece of paper in the first place and said they would call the office manager at Quest. All of this trouble over a piece of paper. To be fair I had never had to leave a doctor’s office for a lab before and had no clue that they needed the hard copy of my lab request.  If they had told me that they needed it I would have gladly left it with them. Having my blood drawn once was painful and time consuming, I really don’t want to do this again.

I can not get over how stupid their process seems to me, really, because they let me keep a piece of paper they can not find my blood? I watched the woman write my name on the vial. Did they draw it just to throw it away? Why waste my time and theirs? The people at my doctors office said that Quest is better than LabCorp, which is my other choice on crappy Cigna, and that “Quest is all about customer service”… AH-HA! Thats where I must have been expecting too much; all my years of working for Rackspace have spoiled me. Quest doesn’t know the meaning of customer service.

I have noticed that in general, since moving to Florida, I feel like I am constantly disappointed in the people I have had to do business with. It seems like I make the mistake of expecting them to be the expert. It makes me not want to trust anyone. Doesn’t anyone strive to do their best anymore? Is this their best? Maybe I am expecting far too much, after all we are just human.

Yesterday I had to opportunity to vote early. It took all of 10 minutes, including drive time. This was a very high tech process but required me to do something odd to pick my candidate and to vote no on Amendment 1 (I would much rather the fire and police departments have money to continue providing help to people who need it rather than save me $200 a year in property taxes) I was asked to complete the middle of the arrow, like draw a line from the head to the tail to connect them. This was even stranger than when in Texas we voted by black sharpie! Anyway, I was glad to get that over with.

I also made cookie crack. I have been baking a lot since I got my SideSwipe spatula mixer blade for my Kitchen Aid mixer. I am not sure how i like it. The mixer paddle has rubber blades on the outside of it to scrape down the outside of the bowl, in theory this is an awesome idea but in practice it didn’t seem to work well when I made brownies and only slightly better when I made my cookies.

I had a massage and the lady talked a lot – I guess she left the father of her child, and the father of child got a young girl pregnant and now misses the life he had. What a mess. I would really like a full relaxing day at Isabelle’s in San Antonio with a no-talk massage.

I went to Home Depot to buy the thing that tells you something is level and has a bubble in it, I think its called a leveller. While I was looking at these items a very nice employee named Wayne (I have yet to meet a Wayne I didn’t like), who used to build houses for a living, asked if I needed any help. I needed so much more help than I knew I needed! Wayne helped me pick out a 48″ leveller ($20) to ensure all of the areas of our new house would be correct and even drew pictures of where to measure and told me how far apart studs should be. He said I shouldn’t need anything else but he wished that I knew someone with some experience to watch over the process and would not comment on builders in cahoots with city inspectors. I think I might take this man some cookies!

Purchasing this tool was convenient because today the builder called to say that they started framing for the concrete slab of our new house and if all goes well the basic plumbing and slab should be there when I drive out to the site this weekend.

It’s getting cooler here but nothing compared to the snow Darrell is getting! Sometimes I miss snow, I miss the dizzy way it makes me feel when I stare up into it and watch the flakes and the way it seems to muffle the sound of everything around it.

Yesterday I made snickerdoodles for my friend Wayne!  Yum yum nothing like warm cookies on a cold day!

Also, my 2005 Scion tC just turned over 15,000 miles on the odometer.   My little blue car is growing up!

After boot camp on Saturday I had a great shopping day! I had set out to find a long shot back issue of a magazine but instead found two prized items before 11AM.

The recent issue of Cooks Illustrated has an article on no-knead bread. I have tried to make this bread twice before and failed miserably. The first batch was far to wobbly and was like working with snot, the second was baked but did not taste good at all. I also did not have the right sort of pot to cook the bread in and was afraid that I might have to spend the big bucks to get an enamel cast iron piece from Le Creuset. Thankfully, this article mentions two more realistically priced dutch ovens (Tramontina & Lodge) which can both be purchased from Walmart of all places! As soon as I discovered this I went to Walmart’s website to order the Tramontina but it was not available so I ordered the Lodge. Also, both were out of stock in any nearby store according to their website. So about a month ago I placed this order and to save on shipping I had the pot shipped to the store… I am still waiting for it to arrive. Just for fun late last week I checked on the status of my order and also to see if any of the Tramontina dutch oven was in stock at my Walmart and found that there was a “Limited stock”. Once I got to Walmart I found two Tramontina pots and several Lodge pots. I bought a dark green Tramontina for under $40 and will return the Lodge once it comes in. Now to try this recipe!

Since I was on a roll, I decided to continue shopping. I went to Sam’s club to get gas ($3.04 oof!)  and look at their magazines. I got a stack of home design magazines and found a comfy spot to sit. I ended up buying a few magazines and driving to Books A Million to see if they had any others I wanted.

I was getting pretty hungry so I decided to stop across the street at Super Target to buy some fake bacon so I could make myself a BLT at home. I got my bacon and decided to look for the steam mop I have been wanting. I could not believe my eyes when I saw two mops just sitting there waiting for me to take one home. I quickly took my bounty to the register and headed out.

The only bad thing about being so fruitful in my shopping luck was that I had to carry all of my items up three flights of stairs.

Permits have been acquired for our new home and building is supposed to start this week.  On the weekends I will take my leveler and camera out to the site to document the process.

Yesterday I did something I had never done before.  I made oatmeal raisin cookies.  I didn’t think that I liked these kind of cookies because the ones I had had previously were hard and tasted too healthy to be a cookie.  Well these are different, they are soft, buttery, sweet and yummy.  Luckily I know a cookie expert who had posted an excellent recipe for these cookies on her blog.

We had a great anniversary dinner at a great little place called bb’s.   Darrell also surprised me with a nice card and bouquet of flowers!

I haven’t been feeling well since we got back from Mexico so today I went to the doctor and found out that I have a parasite.  This is not my first parasite.  I also got a parasite last time we went to Mexico.  I am always very careful about what I eat and drink and never use tap water when brushing my teeth but I always seem to be the one who gets sick.  Darrell always feels great!  The doctor made me pee in a cup (I guess to rule out other infections) and  gave me a prescription for one super pill to make me feel better, I hope that it kicks in soon.  He also made me feel guilty because I was overdue for a TSH test to see how my thyroid was doing.  So I drove across the highway and had blood drawn.  Our insurance sucks so the visit and medicine weren’t cheap, but at least we do have insurance!