Economic 180's

I'm a serial temp employee. I figure, I'm young enough not to need the health insurance and old enough to be placed in the long-term contract positions, lazy enough to enjoy the way they just hand me a job and I show up and have a strong enough itch to enjoy changing positions every year or so. Plus, when it comes time for team building exercises that involve trust falls and hug-a-thons, I always get to use the tried and true line of my ancestors - "Dude, I"m a temp."

In any case, over my years of temping, you see that temps are treated a lot of different ways depending on the corporate culture. At some offices, it doesn't matter that you've worked there six months and you'll be there for another 10, they still won't give you a name tag for your desk and half the office calls you "the temp with the glasses." At others, co-workers adopt you into the fold immediately and forget that you're a temp - when the company gives away goodies, they're for everyone, not just the actual employee employees. Either way, it never really mattered to me, but lately, an interesting phenomena has taken hold - Jobloss-itis.

because if you're going to fire someone, you should at least do it with flair.

I temp for one of those really big, international conglomerates that owns a few fistfuls of companies in varying degrees of success and failure. Truth be told, I've never worried about being hired on permanently. M, our brand new student, is set to graduate in a few years, and when he does, we'll be moving. Is it worth it to bust my bosses balls and insist that I get hired on for a few months of health benefits and some paid vacation? To me, not really. If they hire me, yay - i'll be happy to soak up the summer sun on my days off and get my teeth cleaned - but if they don't, I'm not one to feel worried or slighted.

That's how I felt until recently.

Now, if they tried to hire me, I think I might say no.

You see, one of the new fringe benefits of being a temp is that, while once we were the expendible workforce - the people to be cast aside when economic times got tough- now, temps are the lifeblood of a corporation trying to cut costs and stay afloat. They find women and men in their early to mid twenties who don't really care about pension plans because we've already started our own IRA's and who aren't all that concerned with vacation days for sick children because we don't have any. To boot, we're computer savvy, willing to work odd hours and, best of all, we're inexpensive because we don't carry that weighty benfits package. Today, it's the employees that are getting let go and being replaced by temps rather than the other way around.

So, today, when my co-workers fret over layoffs in other branches of the corporation or get nervous when they hear that we might be sold off, it takes everything I have to force myself not to smile and say "Dude, I'm a temp."

Because even if I do get let go from this contract - my temp agency will have me working somewhere in a matter of days. Now that's job security.

The Tricycle

Okay, so that might be the least fair name for this particular post, but it was the best I could do. Apparently, my slang knowing days are over.

Feast your eyes on this.

Because M's teeth have been bothering him, I made some chew-free foods for dinner early in the week - a few soups and a batch of ham and scalloped potatoes (which is possibly his all time favorite food) - which meant that for a few days this week, I got to make a dinner entirely for myself.

I picked two dishes - both from Simply Recipes and the both turned out awesome. The first was the Baked Shrimp in Tomato Feta Sauce.

As we've established, my dedication to recipe following is...not high, so I tend to take the list of ingredients and the general cooking method and just wing it, which is what I did here. Since I was cooking for one, I halved the recipe - a little garlic and roughly chopped onion in the pan, followed by a can of diced tomatoes (damn you off season!) and cooked it for somewhat less time than the recipe called for then buzzed it with the immersion blender because the texture of canned diced tomatoes is weird -then I threw in the shrimp, parsley, feta and dill, gave it a stir and tossed it in the oven as called for. It was awesome. Really, I mean awesome. I didn't take the shells off of the shrimp at all - in fact, I threw them in completely frozen and I liked the really seafoody flavor of the broth because of it.

Somewhat less awesome was the burning sensation as I tried to peel the hot shrimp. Of course, you can ask me if I think it was worth it, but you should know I did the exact same thing the next night, so there you go.

I ate it with some great bread and gobbled it up - of course all day Thursday all I could think about was how oh-my-god-transcendentally-awesome-my-super-fast-easy-to-make-no-fuss dinner had been the previous evening, so when M's teeth still hurt and I discovered that our kitchen was shamefully devoid of any white wine, I opted to postpone the making of recipe number two and go for the repeat. Thus, the tricycle...except it's a bicycle since I only ate it once, but that seemed less entertaining.

Thursday night, I followed the same basic procedure but this time tried to cook it all on the stovetop. I possibly made this choice because I may or may not have forgotten to preheat the oven... In any case, I way reccomend sticking with the "baked" part of this recipe. It's totally low maintence.

Also, one other thing, if you're making it for company, you might want to consider leaving feta on the side or in a piled on top manner. While Elises's version turned out pretty, mine came out more orange than red (possibly because I buzzed the sauce instead of leaving the tomatoes whole) and it wasn't all together the most appealing look. It was delicious, but I think for presentations sake, I might add the feta at the last minute and let people stir it in themselves....and also possibly make it with fresh tomatoes instead of diced when they're in season...and also possibly skip the whole "shells on" experience, but throw in some concentrated seafood stock or even a bit of anchovy paste for more seafoody flavor......

Yeah, I am so going to have to find someone else to feed this too :P

Living Smaller Part 1 - The Closet

The closet and I have done battle and one of us as emerged victorious. Or something.

When I decided I wanted to this the last time, I made sure all the wash was clean and then set out to do battle with this the most evil of closets. That was great, in so far as I got to dig through every garment I own and decide if i should keep it, donate it, store it or toss it. Except for the part where I had to go through all of the clothes that I own. See, i'm not one of those people who wears that sweater way beyond it's usefulness - I'm one of those people who keeps but never wears that sweater way beyond it's usefulness, so my closet was full of clothes I never wore and everything that was dirty was stuff that should have stayed. It took twice as long as it had to and I didn't want to go through that again, so last night when I decided that there was no time like the present to conquor one's demons, I didn't rush down the hall to start doing laundry first - as such, the closet was relatively empty.

For the number of clothes M and I posess, the closet is really too small. While M wears a regular rotation of 10 t-shirts and 2 pairs of jeans as a newly minted college student, he owns an entire wardrobe of dress pants, suit jackets, ties and dress shirts and they're all hanging limply in the closet. On the shelf above, we store sheets, towels, pj's, M's t-shirts, M's casual pants and my jeans. This seemed like a good idea when we moved it -it bought us more space for things that needed to be hung and it meant that we didn't need a linen closet we don't have. Yay! Except for the part where - uhm, he started doing the laundry and he's not the best folder the world has ever known, so what were neatly organized stacks have become unweildly piles. To boot, instead of taking the whole pile down to get the one item we want, we both tend to pretend we're far more coordinated than we are and just pull. Naturally, this results in the entire stack falling on top of us.

Sometimes, we pick it back up. Other times, we get annoyed and leave it on the closet floor. Problem? Yeah.

I started with the hanging sweater bins and sorted through that, boxing up a lot of things that aren't in the regular rotation. Once those were nearly empty, I moved on to the hanging clothes. Admittedly, I left his alone. There's nothing wrong with what he has hanging, it all fits him fine and none of it is stained or visually questionable, so it stays as is - but my clothes got a significant pruning. I stashed a lot of long sleeved shirts that I won't have much occasion to wear (and, lets be honest, never really did since I'm all about the light layers) as well as a few items that are stylistically questionable at this juncture and some stuff I just no longer find a need for in my wardrobe. They're things that all have their place and time, but right now isn't it. I also hid a lot of things that don't fit anymore, because staring at clothes you love that you can't wear because you look like a stuffed sausage in them does wonders for your self-esteem, let me tell you.

When I went to bed last night, the bedroom was, admittedly, in a state of disarray. There were three - count 'em, three - bags of neatly folded clothes that needed to be stored sitting on the floor upstairs with another one downstairs and a empty hangers everywhere, but the big empty space in the middle of the closet where clothes had once been? Priceless.



This morning, I finished things up and I'm glad that I did. As you can see, the stuff on top of the shelves has now been contained into bins. (The bins that used to store my shoes in the living room, in fact. Now, the shoes are in a pile, but mark my words, they're on the list.) Sheets and towels are in the bins on the short wall, with PJ's, M's t-shirts and (soon - the last bin is currently being used to store bunny paraphernalia, but i'm working on it) M's casual pants. The look, while more than a little "check out my college dorm room" is at least more organized and now he can stop pretending he can fold. The extra hangers are stored on the short wall, for now, but I intend to hang my ever-growing collection of skirts there since they're so easy to lose in the midst of everything on the long wall. As you can see, I didn't ever do much with the sweater keeper beyond take out that which I have no need for. Truth be told, the prospect of folding dozens of cardigans doesn't appeal to me, and since this inexpensive hanging shelf doesn't have hard bottoms, it sags and sweaters get lost. One day I will buy bins or baskets to put in it - or maybe even just cut cardboard inserts for the bottom but, in the mean time, my morning routine is quite happy with the ball-and-shove method I've been using.

To me, though, you can't even see the biggest difference - because it happened inside of one of those plastic drawer units that we use to store little things... Mine stores socks and skivvies in one drawer, nylons and tights in another and t-shirts/tank-tops in the top. Oh-My-God do I have a lot of tights :P Once upon a time I had a regular use for pink and black striped nylons...and white and black striped nylons and three kinds of fishnet in three different colors (that's nine pairs for those of you math wizards out there) Now, not so much. So I beat back that collection as well, stashing the stuff that i'll use, just not often enough to justify digging around it every day and what a difference that made to the sheer volume of stuff in that drawer.

It's not actually completely done yet. M has been suffering with some dental woes this week and hasn't been able to sleep much, so I can't enact the final phase until he gets out of bed, but once he does - I need to put a few nails into the wall for hanging belts and ties.

TIME SPENT: 3 hours
MONEY SPENT: $0
FAVORS BARTRED AGAINST: 0
MATERIALS USED:
- 5 plastic bins
- 4 nails
- 1 hammer
- 4 garbage bags
- a few cubic feet of storage space under the bed.

WORST PART: Knowing that it will be a mess again in a few weeks because that's just the kind of people we are.

BEST PART: Finding almost a half dozen scarves and belts that I forgot I had in a bag behind my metal boots...






As for part two, i'm not really sure. There are a lot of options :P Maybe i'll tackle the bathroom...

Living Smaller

M and I live in a two story, one bedroom apartment. We have a completely open floor plan, three closets, one pantry, and a small cupboard under the bathroom cabinet - and that's it. Due to the two-story layout (the bedroom is upstairs) we don't have any real walls or doors - and we also have great 20 foot ceilings.

I love our apartment. Almost.

The carpet is old and stained and gross - but at least it's grey, not beige. The wood is medium toned and very grainy...yuck, and the walls are the hideous shade heretofore known as taupe and all of these things, they are a problem for me :P To boot, the open floor plan means that anything we have is in plain sight all of the time. I don't have any pictures of the unit - and the reason for that is really just all of our problems with the decor - and thus comes the title of this post..

First, while this apartment got great light in the summer, in the off months, the skylight and the door do a lot less for light than I wish they did - and, as you can see, there are no fixtures for lights on the ceiling fan. The only lights in the unit are the hanging lamp (UGLY!) over the kitchen table, the light fixture in the kitchen, the one above the bed upstairs and the sconce above the stairs. All of these output a very yellow light that seems to combine with the taupe walls to form the most obnoxious yellow orange light that the world has ever known and I hate it.

The second big issue that I have with taking pictures of the apartment right now is the "crap dusting" that we seem to be suffering from. When we moved, we moved with a set amount of objects and they all had a place to be stored - it was grrreat. Except that since we moved, we've gotten more stuff :P M went back to school, which means school books and notebooks everywhere. We also brought a pet into our lives and, with her cage and her stuff -she takes up a large amount of space. I picked up a sewing hobby, which means a machine, notions and a fabric stash, as well as a dress form and - of course, the new clothes in the closet :)

So - until the landlord goes out of town long enough for us to paint, we're working on one simple goal - LIVE SMALLER.

Step One: The Closet
My portion of the closet is possibly a little excessive. There are clothes in there that I don't wear. As long as we have some viable long-term storage space under the bed, I think i'm going to make good use of it, wash, fold and box some of my disused clothing and stash it - while getting rid of that which I no longer need. That will free up some space both in the upstairs walk-in and the downstairs coat closet which is all positive.

In the future, there are a lot more things on the list - I need another place to store the rabbit's belongings, and possibly the rabbit herself...

For this weekend, the closet.

Jack Dalton

My brief and truncated internet research says that MacGyver had a lot of sidekicks over the years, but Jack Dalton seems to have been the most popular.

Thursday's, meet Jack Dalton.


Okay, so maybe not exactly Thursday. Maybe it was Tuesday, but anyway....The saga of the car that is out to get us continues this week in a few minor and mostly amusing tales. The first of which involves the worlds fastest installation of a spare tire and the second of which apparently involves some drafting tape.

Go figure.

In the words of Dennis Leary - "See, some people laugh, and the others need an explanation"

I do, Flickr. I do.

See, and you thought she was sad in that picture.

Just wait until I tell her about this, internet. Just you wait.

Sewing Patterns

I like to sew.

I'm not particularly great at it, but I enjoy doing it and I enjoy the results. Still, I most certainly still need patterns for a lot of things. Not only do they make the act of the sewing a lot quicker, they make the garment turn out better. Sure, sometimes I can still whip something out using a piece of clothing as a guide, but with patterns, it's kind of a no-brainer.

The thing is, patterns for simple things that I could figure out if I try always seem like such a huge expense. Call me cheap, cuz I am, but the notion of spending $10 for a pattern - on top of fabric, notions and the commitment of my time, plus a few needle sticks doesn't always seem like the best idea anyone ever had. When I add it all up, sometimes it just seems easier to wait until that dress is on sale.

I've ordered two patterns from McCalls/Butterick/Vouge before - two dresses. I've only made one so far - it's a little cotton number, loose fitting, easy to belt at the waist and throw on with tights. It's light weight, perfect for spring or fall and still something that I could be comfortable wearing to the office. The other dress is a cute little thing with an adorable bodice but it's cut is slightly more formal, and since I haven't had a great need for it, I haven't made it yet. (I'm trying to tackle the fabric in my drawers before I buy anything new.)

Anyway, today I opened my e-mail to find a 75% off a total order offer from the pattern company and, cheap as I am, I was naturally drawn to the sale. The fact is, I've been shopping for patterns since I bought the first few, I've just held off on buying because the price seems so prohibitive. (It seems that as soon as I open the pattern envelope, I find a garment that fits great at the store on sale for a few dollars that I can tear apart and use as a pattern or I land a free one online.) Today, I went crazy. I picked up nine patterns for &30 w/shipping. I can't say that I've picked a favorite yet. Though, I'm pretty sure B5217 is the most practical addition to my collection. Most of the shirts I tend to buy to wear to the office are a very simmilar shape to those - with embelishments and little adjustments that I can make myself. Sometimes I belt them, sometimes I dont - they're easy and forgiving to wear, and they still look nice enough for me to get away wtih it. (Though, to be honest, people in my office wear clothes that have paint stains on them all the time, so who am I kidding - as long as I throw a cardigan over a t-shirt these people are happy.) M5586 is very simmilar, but I bought it as well because this really is the kind of thing I wear all the time, so I know they'll both get used. I also picked up V1051, a pant pattern. I don't have a pant pattern and my life would certainly benefit from one. I grabbed V8553 which looks super cute for summer and M5703 which is a super cute little jumper that I love in an irrational way and am completely obessed with having even though I will probably look retarded in it. Oh, and of course V1086 which is slightly more grown up than the skull t-shirt I made this weekend and wore underneath my pink argyle polo...

because everyone needs a little dork in their life - and, yes, i so totally wore it with my nerd glasses and a little white cardigan. my grandma would be so proud...