At last work is winding down. My project has been having two manufacturing runs in the pilot plant, which have had more problems than I thought possible, but the last one finished on Wednesday. One way or another it’s out of my hands. If something goes wrong now it’s definitely not my fault, which is very reassuring. I’m supposed to check in with my downstream counterpart on Tuesday that all the post-processing went well, and if it did we’re golden.
I’m taking advantage of things winding down and starting my Christmas break on Tuesday. I’ll just have to do a few emails to take care of some final stuff, but I’d rather do that from home because if that’s a vacation day rather than a work day I can sleep in. That is a deciding factor. Even Monday I won’t have too much to do, a different experiment is starting in pilot plant and I’ll essentially just be waiting for the email that that went okay. It’s really nice for things not to be crazy.
Oh, I weirded out the director again the other day. I’d asked if this project is going badly enough to need a “practice” full-scale manufacturing run (in the real manufacturing facility, not the pilot plant). One option was to start the run at manufacturing scale but do the longest part in the little reactors we use all the time. I pointed out that since the manufacturing is scheduled for our plant near San Diego either we’d have to ask our counterparts down there to run the reactors or the company’d have to pay for me to stay down there for two weeks. I’m actually looking forward to an opportunity to stay in San Diego because the company’s travel guidelines say that no one can stay at a four star hotel because they’re too expensive, unless you go to San Diego because the company has some deal with the Four Seasons such that you have to stay there if you go to San Diego. So being sent there for two weeks kind of sounds like a sweet deal. When I asked if the director would be willing to pay for me to stay down there for two weeks he actually said that if it ensured the success of the manufacturing campaign he’d be happy to, it’d be more of a question of whether I wanted to, some people have personal reasons and commitments yaddah yaddah. So I said, “Nah, I’m single and carefree, I can do it.”
For some reason he actually stepped back from my cube and laughed and said “I’m not going to touch that with a ten foot pole!” so I knew that was not a normal thing to say. And then my boss showed up because someone had seen the director outside my cube and told her. So – awkward.
Bonnie and Allison came out for lunch yesterday. I made turkey, which was quite an involved process. I wanted to try the recipe in my latest Cook’s Illustrated where you drape the turkey with salt pork because A. it sounds really interesting and B. my mom had bought me the salt pork so I was kind of committed. I took the turkey I’d bought on sale before Thanksgiving out of the freezer last Sunday because somehow I distrusted the internet’s assertion that a 12-lb turkey would thaw in two days. Sure enough when I poked it Tuesday it didn’t feel thawed. And went I went to salt it on Thursday (early in the morning, before work) it was still pretty frozen. And it had a lot of organs in it. It was really hard to get the neck out because it was attached by ice. Thursday night I cut up the bread for the stuffing (half store-bought, half Challah I’d made but kind of burnt and didn’t want to eat straight). Friday night I toasted the bread and cooked the vegetables for the stuffing. Saturday morning I rubbed the turkey with salt and baking powder, stuffed it, and draped it with salt pork before putting it in the oven. Then I ran around trying to clean because I’d put that off, and made green bean casserole (from scratch rather than cans, except the french fried onions because those are delicious and you can’t do without those) and mashed potatoes. Then the salt pork came off the turkey, the stuffing came out (which really grossed me out), it was flipped breast-up, and baked more. And it looked like:
Allison brought cute little gingerbread men and Bonnie brought corn in a cream cheese sauce that was very rich and delicious. So we had our mini Thanksgiving and talked and walked around the downtown a little.
Today after church a crowd of people went to lunch at a place in Redwood City that is some sort of venture either by Safeway grocery stores or someone who really, really likes advertising Safeway products. I had my first margherita pizza. All right. I like sausage and pepperoni better. Let’s face it, I’m a carnivore. Then three of the other girls and I went to see Up in the Air. We were supposed to see Precious, but the other girls changed their minds. As enjoyable as it is to watch George Clooney for two hours I think Precious might have been less depressing, and if you know the plot of that movie that’s saying something. I wasn’t really a fan. So watch – it’s going to get a lot of Oscars. That’s how it goes.
Oh, also of note. Thursday was the Christmas party at the 20s group at church. I wore hose and heels and found out that combination makes walking in heels much harder because the hose is slippery (why do I feel as if these are lessons most women learn much earlier?). This became most evident when the main activity of the evening started – ballroom dancing. One of the older church ladies teaches ballroom dancing for a living and taught us a few swing dancing steps. At first she had a system to assign us partners but then it went to junior high style guys pick the girls thing which wasn’t great. But that wasn’t what I meant to talk about. After the official dancing had ended one guy I didn’t know (who was wearing a full tuxedo) kept sweeping girls onto the floor and he actually knew how to ballroom dance. Today one of the girls told me he went to Georgia Tech! From the little information I had (wore a tuxedo, was very confident in his dancing abilities) I correctly guessed he was a computer science major. Do I know my GT nerds or what?!
