we had a pot luck get together the other night.  sooooo much food.   We also very carefully had a birthday cake for ben & ryan.

Today is the first monday of the term.  I’ve celebrated it by working the 630a shift at the pool then returning to my apartment to lazily drink a cup of coffee and update my blog.  If only every monday morning this term could be so nice.

true to my nature i gave brett a really lame gift for christmas… a pasta maker.   we tested it out the other day.

did i make this?

Because brett was involved we made garlic rosemary pasta and it was declicious, but food is hard to photograph and make it look appatizing.

oh man, free time rules.

I made muffins, and we wanted to give one to rob.  So we created the EXTEND-o-LENDER.

Diego modeling the extend-o-lender.

Rob’s apartment in comparison to my fire escape.

Extend-o-lender success!!

Then he came over to my apartment to eat it.

i made food for the upcoming week.  What you can’t see in this photo is the classical music that was filling my apartment as i cooked.  the only improvement possible is if my oven pilot light was on, then i could have baked epic amounts of muffins.

yes, that is spinach.  yes, that is bacon.  no, you can’t have any.

I needed to do some doodling… so i decided to leave the labs.  I was planning to sit in starbucks… but on my way there i saw lots of penn students… so i went to wawa bought a coffee then settled in the empty Drexel quad.

it was a pretty good experience.  the fountain masks all other urban noises… and since its drexel… and summer break there was no one there to bother me… except two mcdonald’s employees on segways.

they handed me a coupon booklet full of great deals like this one:  “Buy one get one free Large Sandwich”  or “20-pc chicken McNuggets only $3.49″  Next time we go to mcdonalds for dinner… its my treat.

as lunch rolled around i felt the slight twinge of a caffeine headache.   This combined with the frigid climate of the office and the sleepiness of having nothing to do, i decided to purchase some coffee.

But, where to go?  my last wawa cup was burnt and bitter.  The deli has Buck’s County, but who knows how long it has been there.  I finally decided on mugshots… the organic/hippy/hipster/trendy/possibly evil  coffee shop down the street.

I ordered a coffee and a bagel with hummus.  I had no idea real people ate bagels with hummus, i thought it was just me.  Reluctantly i choose a salt bagel (other choices were onion, blueberry, and cinamon raisin… all of which i thought would be a poor combination with hummus).  It was a delicious decision.  While slightly too salty at times, the warm toasted bagel matched the garlicy hummus quite nicely.

i must say,  mugshots has won my affection with a hummus bagel.  (The coffee was good too).

i ate my sandwich on a stoop watching a man do a very nice paint job on the sills and sashes of new double hung windows.  They were being painted a shocking blue, that worked well with the weathered brick of the building.

i applaud the color selection.

i then traveled back to the boring, meat-locker-temperature building that is the blue design office.  But if that lunch wasn’t nice, what is?

as it is too hot for hot oatmeal and i am still too poor for cereal.  we bring you BREAKFAST MUFFINS

1.  preheat to 450

2.  soak 1 cup instant oats in 1 cup milk for 15 minutes (not really necessary as i’ve found out)

3.  mix one egg + 1/4 cup of veggie oil + splash of vanillia

3.  mix this with the oats

4.  add 1/4 cup of sugar (or more if you like sweet things) + 2 tsp baking powder + cinamon + pinch of salt

5.  add one cup of flour.

6.  mix and then spoon into cupcake liners or a greased pan (i was worried… but i had no trouble getting these guys out of my non stick pan with a touch of oil)

7.  cook until you can stick in a fork and it comes out clean.

Great for mornings when you work the 6:20 am shift at the gym.

variations encoraged.  Bannanas?  nuts?  brown sugar?  molassas?  raisins?  chocolate chips?

somehow, i’ve become busy.

At work we got a job creating animations for a bank.  Its a horrible job, way too much work and super boring.  But, its boring enough that they give me sections to animate.   The client fails to realize that they aren’t paying us enough or have given us enough time to be as picky as they are.
Mostly, i enjoy sitting and listening to people in the office talk about it.  Imitations of what the mascot would sound like (or speculation on what he’s really doing in the animations).  Brainstorming on what tacky animation to put into each frame (“Curt if i count your section and there are any less than 50 sparkles and 2 lens flares you have to re do it!”).  And name calling of the client (too dirty to repeat here).  And yes, i used my first lens flare. (it was a background and i was ordered to.  Did you know after effects has a list of about 15 different lens flares?)

So i stayed late working, went swimming, then found out i needed to bake cookies for tomorrow.   So i some how juggled making 2 types of cookies, washing dishes, and making lunch for tomorrow.

Lunch came out looking so good i hope they don’t offer to buy me lunch again.  (cous cous with veggies and i used gypsy soup-like spices…. mmmm).

Funny how a little bit of shitty work makes me super happy.  :)

i thought i’d share with you what i’ve done with my old oatmeal containers.  Tacky and weird but i was always worried of the rice or beans spilling everywhere.  Problem solved.

the garden at my apartment.  Not looking bad.  The one at brett’s looks good too, although merv keeps eating my plants.

i’m cooking lots of stuff for the rest of the week.  rice and bean, I think some sort of a chinese noodley tofu dish.  Oddly enough i think this is one of my favorite kitchen utensils…  maybe we can get more this time at the farm?