dianaschnuth

…of Diana’s cooking.

Tomorrow is the First Annual Building-Wide Potluck at the Sky Service Center in BG. It’s a fundraiser for the Relay For Life team—they’re participating in the upcoming relay at BG City Park to fight cancer. The organizers had wanted everybody to sign up for the potluck last week, so they’d know how many participants there would be, but only four people signed up by the deadline. So, to keep the thing alive (hey, I like food, even if I can’t eat half of it), I asked Aaron what I could make, and he came up with crock-pot chicken wings with low-carb BBQ sauce. Good idea! So, I signed up.

Of course, as soon as I signed up, the event organizers took the list around to all the departments and specifically asked if anyone was planning to bring food to the potluck. Turns out that half the building actually was planning to bring something, but didn’t want to commit to a specific dish a week in advance. Now there’s something like thirty different dishes in the potluck. Hey, that’s cool.

So, I just got done browning the wings, and they’re now sitting in my spiffy crock-pot with the removable crock, waiting to be smothered in Carb Well BBQ and put on to cook overnight. I really hope they turn out OK.

I always have a “thing” about my cooking not being very good, even though most of the time whatever I make turns out just fine. I had a couple mishaps in high school (how was I to know the pasta pizza would keep cooking if I turned off the heat and left it in the oven to keep warm?) and during the beginnings of my relationship with Aaron (mental note: corn starch only thickens if the heat is turned on; and upon turning the heat on, all the extra corn starch you put into the sauce in your confusion will create a fascinating tumor in your chicken paprikash). But, for the most part, I do OK when I cook. I leave most of the cooking to Aaron, though, and he seems to be fine with that. For now, anyway. 🙂

I will return tomorrow with a report on the success of my crock-pot chicken wings.

Remember Loni from Lockbox, the nice God-loving woman who’s my Mom’s age (almost exactly) and has been trying to get a new job for a couple years now? Well, she finally made a jailbreak, and will be working in Deposit Support, which is my department. Not Quality Control, our… sub-department, I guess, but still in the same realm. She’s supposed to be moving to her new job in two weeks or less.

Having been there, wanting to leave the crazy hours and moderate stress of Lockbox, I feel so happy for her. She’s getting ready to move to an 8-to-5, ultra-low-stress position, which may not pay her more money but will still be infinitely worth it.

We’re all going to lunch tomorrow—current employees of Lockbox, and former (myself included). It’ll be fun to get together with everyone again… and Loni and I will try not to rub it in how much better off we are (or will be).

Step one of the website overhaul is accomplished: I have changed the color palette for the entire damn site. It doesn’t have as much contrast as the last version, and I may have to do something about that. The dynamic contrast was what kept the site visually interesting for me, despite some sub-par header graphics from time to time, and I’ll miss that if I don’t re-implement it somehow.

My Mom always used to say to me, before I would go out with my friends, “Just remember who you are and where you come from.” At the time, it was a pleasantly sappy way for Mom to remind me to be good, and I took it as such. Remember, people know you’re a Mormon, and are watching you, so don’t mess up. That sort of thing. But recently, I find I’ve forgotten Mom’s advice (which, incidentally, was given to her as a youth by Memaw). I frequently forget who I am: web designer, amateur photographer, et cetera, and how I got to be where (and who) I am today. It’s not until I get into conversations with people who don’t know who I really am that I remind myself.

There’s a guy at work, name’s Mike, newest member of our department (about a month newer than me, though he’s worked for Sky longer). I think some people think him simplistic or goofy or whatnot, but I find him pleasant and honest and funny and forthright, which is refreshing in the corporate environment. He’s maybe a couple few years younger than me, I’d guess. Anyway, we always end up taking our morning break at the same time: around 9:45am, I’ll go into the break room to read whatever book I’ve brought with me that day—and shortly thereafter, Mike will come in to buy his can of Mountain Dew. We don’t plan it that way, and it doesn’t always coincide like that… but when it does, Mike’s quite the talker. 🙂

Today, through a series of random topic changes, we managed to start talking about my time at BGSU. I’d mentioned that I had supervisory experience, but that I was no good at disciplining employees (Sheryl… ahem). He asked about my job there, and I explained how I moved up through the ranks of RCC, from peon to supervisor, but had to leave when I graduated. Mike was surprized and amused that I knew more about computers than I’d let on. (When at Sky did I have the opportunity to flaunt my computer skills, I wonder?) He wanted to know why I never tried to get into the techie programming section of Sky, and I had to explain that I’m more of a designer than a programmer. I ticked off the media qualifications I got with my VCT degree: web design, photography, multimedia, video, print…

And I remembered who I was and where I came from. And I was ashamed that I had forgotten.