Another order from KAF

That would be King Arthur Flour....see post below. If I had time to bake, everything would be from scratch. Unfortunately, that is not the case. I still want to bake, though, and I want whatever is baked to taste good. So, I placed another order from KAF. This time, I paid the extra $3 and got fast shipping. So, the shipping was still $15, but the mixes were on sale, so in the end, paying for faster shipping was a wash.

I made the cinnamon buns. From a mix! The dough was beautiful and so easy to work with. And, they were awesome. So awesome, they were better than my homemade cinnamon rolls. How sad. But, since they were easier, I am not going to put up much of a fuss. I would take a picture, but I didn't think of it at the time and they were gone way too fast. I will have to remember when I make the next item. I think that will be the caramel monkey bread.

What a nice Mother's Day

Geez, I am spoiled. Matt and Jamie came by yesterday and gave me some really nice olive oil and jelly bellies. (Plus a gift certificate to one of the coolest stores in Galena!) Then I got some perfume, an awesome new cell phone and a bunch of accessories for the phone. Plus breakfast and roses. Wow!
The perfume wasn't quite what I was looking for, so Gary and I went to the store to return it and get something else. I ended up with a perfume called "Roxy." We also got some clothes, chocolate, lotion and a margarita mixer from Williams Sonoma. Which tasted good in the store, but I really didn't like at home. All in all, an expensive day. Tonight, I get a steak dinner with baked sweet potatoes, crusty bread and asparagus - compliments of Gary and the boys.
And, Luke sent me a Mother's Day email.
What a nice day!

Trip to Florida

What a nice trip. Especially getting to see Luke. I think he is enjoying himself despite his complaints about work. I wish we could have stayed longer, but we sure didn't need to spend more time at the Disney Parks - the four days we were there were great, but I don't think we needed more than that. I did ride on the "Rockin' Roller Coaster" which surprised me - that I had the courage to ride it at all was amazing. But that I actually enjoyed it so much I went twice - well, that is unheard of. We spent a day at Cocoa Beach, and although the water was a bit chilly, it was still great. I really love the beach....
Our hotel (Old Key West resort) was really nice, one of the better hotels that we have stayed at. It had fully equipped kitchen, so we saved some money on food expenses. We also went down at the right time of year, the parks were not that crowded, so we didn't have to spend time waiting in lines. We also got fast passes for the more popular rides, that saved a lot of time as well. I wish we could get there once more before Luke is done - maybe when we go to pick him up!

It's shake day

Last summer, John (one of my co-workers) and I went to lunch at Panera. Right across from Panera there is a Cold Stone. It was hot, so after lunch we decided to take a shake back to work. It was a Thursday - it turns out that shakes are half price on Thursdays at Cold Stone. Awesome! We decided to go the next week, but also got shakes for all the co-workers in the NOC. (Which we expensed.) That was the start of shake Thursday. Every week since then, we have ordered shakes at work on Thursdays, which the company has picked up every week. About three months ago, I looked up the calorie content of the Cold Stone shakes, and I no longer order them - 1700 calories! In one shake!! If I am going to get that many calories in one drink, it better have tequila in it. Anyway, the shake sign up list still goes out every Thursday, and today it went out high tech. Via email. We are a technology company, after all.

They need to come up with the margarita shake. It would make my Thursday afternoons a lot more interesting.

Leaving for Florida

Last week in Wisconsin we were enjoying weather in the mid 70s. It snowed today and it's supposed to be in the 20s tonight. Fortunately, we leave for Florida tomorrow. We are going to see Luke, who is working at Disney World. And, of course, enjoying the parks and at least one day at the beach. We opted for Cocoa Beach rather than Daytona - less crowded plus we will take a look at the space shuttle launch area.
I am looking forward to seeing Luke, warm weather, and time off from work!!

Riding the coasters....

Last Sunday was my company's free day at Great America in Gurney, IL. The park is closed to the public and we rent it for the day. There is no charge for entrance or the rides, and a lunch is provided. It's not a great lunch (fried chicken, hot dogs, salads, chips, drinks.) but it is somewhat edible. The longest wait for a ride was about 20 minutes. (The company is pretty large.) I didn't ride on any of the huge roller coasters, but my husband and the kids sure like them. (My oldest son's girlfriend, Jamie, went too, she kept me company while they all went on the rides.) They had a pretty good time, they rode almost every coaster in the park. We did a lot of walking and then Jamie and I did a lot of waiting, but it was still fun. We did go on one fairly tame coaster, bumper cars and the carousel. That was enough for me. I don't get the thrill from those rides, I only feel the fear. It's not comfortable. Why would anyone willingly sit in a rickety cart screaming at 75 mph down a vertical drop of something like 150 feet? YIKES!
I like the carousel - it had dragons. And cats!

That flour company...

I miss my dog.....

A couple posts below, I was complaining about a certain company, their shipping charges and being partially reimbursed for those charges. Today, I received an email from a person in that company. The subject line of the email was "your blog posting".... I thought that a little strange.

Most of the email was thanking me for the order I placed, apologies for the reply to my email concerning shipping, and then went on to explain their shipping policy. Which, apparently, they think is "higher than both our customers and we would like them to be."

They are obviously using a search function to scan the blog sites for their name. And it would seem that they would like me to take the name off the posting. I'm considering it, I mean, they did reimburse me for half the cost.

However, I placed two orders that day, one for me and one for my son. Neither box was large, and the cost of shipping both was $24. That's extreme. Otherwise I was pretty happy with the order, they have good quality stuff and the item pricing is decent. I just don't want to pay that much in shipping.

I'll think about it.

ITIL Certified

I passed the exam to become ITIL® certified. ITIL® is an acroynym for the "Information Technology Infrastructure Library." It is the best accepted approach to IT service management and IT Governance. Yeah, I know......zzzzzzzzzzzzz
But, it was an expectation of my job, and the company paid the fee to take the exam. I would have felt pretty bad if I failed. It's a relief to be done. Now I will promptly forget everything that I have studied for the last few weeks!
Here is the interesting part......I took the exam at one of those testing centers. A room full of small cubicles with a monitor and a keyboard in each. Lots of other people in the room taking who knows what kind of exam. The range of people taking tests was amazing. I think there was a woman from a prison there. (If she wasn't from prison, she has really BAD TASTE in clothing!) Someone next to me was typing like crazy the whole time I was taking my 40 question multiple choice test. Had to wonder what was up with that. Maybe it was the "type as fast as you can while annoying the heck out of the person next to you" test.
I am just happy to be done. Oh, and happy I passed. I got an 82!

So long Kenai

Kenai is 14 years old. She is making her final trip to the vet on Saturday, where she will go to sleep for the last time. Kenai has tumors, arthritis and she is deaf. She has a lot of trouble getting around and the quality of her life is diminished. We think we are doing the right thing, but it's still hard to do. Poor old doggie, she is a sweetie.

How long does it take to add an entry?

It's been almost a year since I said I was going to add new entries to the blog. I knew I would get around to it sooner or later. Anyway, I am thinking of using this for food related stories, recipes, etc. Here's the first one:

I ordered a bunch of stuff from King Arthur Flour a couple weeks ago. The order took 10 days to arrive and it cost me $14 for shipping. So, I complained. This was the reply I got:

"Our shipping rates have recently changed. In an effort to be as FAIR as possible to ALL our customers, no matter which part of the country we are shipping to, our shipping is now based on the dollar amount of your order. We do not inflate shipping rates to make a profit nor do we add bogus handling fees. We simply try to break even."

huh...I thought the reply sounded a little, shall we say, snotty. So, I wrote back and told them so. Guess what? They reimbursed half of the shipping cost! Pays to complain.

Out with the old, in with the new

I deleted all the old posts. They were, um, old....and boring. Not that I have anything really
interesting to put in the new posts.....

When I do, I'll write it down. Really.

I am editing my blog - taking out all of the old
stuff and updating with new. I am keeping this
picture in because I like it! This was at a fun
wedding reception....we had been there a while.