"Training"

I got back from my trip to Oregon yesterday afternoon at around 1:00. The training I went for was useless. I knew everything already with the exception of a number of things that didn't apply to me. I took the classes thinking that I could be doing more with the software, and it turns out that the software is really so simple that there isn't more that I can be doing. What a waste.

On the other hand, I got to spend my mom's birthday with her, and we went to see Silent Hill. Very, very strange movie. I won't offer anything but a shallow opinion of it, becuase I am still mulling it over. So here's my opinion - it has some disturbing nightmare-quality visuals. Very cool!

Also on the upside of the trip, I got to miss "Take Your Child To Work Day," which is one of my least favorite days of the year. I find it nearly impossible to be productive with herds of them rampaging about the hallways, squealing and whining the way they do.

And again on the upside of the trip, I got to mess around with my mom's dog for a while. This dog will not sit still for a camera, so this is the best picture I managed to get of her in the entire stay down there. Well, I did want to get one of her interesting facial expressions. I wasn't aiming for this one, but it will do.

I'm prettier than a door stopper! Uh, wait a minute...

Someday I will learn how to take a compliment.

I was walking out to the lobby and there was a kitchen resupply guy with two cartloads of crap trying to get through a door. I held the door open for him while he was dragging the carts through, and I commented that it was too bad we couldn't block the doors open. He said something to the effect that this works better, because I'm prettier than a door stopper.

Hrmph. OK. Now, see, I know that is a compliment, a clumsy one at best, and I'm reasonably certain that he didn't mean it like it could be taken. And yet, after I got over my girlish giggles, I began wondering if he would have said that if we had some really cool door stoppers. If he had said that it was good that we couldn't block open the doors because this way a pretty girl (hee hee!) gets to hold the door open for him, I wouldn't even question it.

Can you see what is wrong with me?

Public nuisances

Have you ever heard anyone say that they just love to get on a plane or train or bus and chat with whomever they are sitting next to, even if that person is trying to read a book or sleep or something? No? Neither have I. Everyone complains about people who want to talk to them when they don't want to talk. And that is why I wonder how it is that no matter where you go on public transportation you end up sitting with someone who wants to chat. I use my commute to do my school reading. I'm sitting there, head down, highlighter and pen in one hand, papers in another, and someone says, "Looks like someone's going to school." I look up at the person sitting at a diagonal from me and reply, "Yep." Then the head goes back down. "What class are you taking?" I flash the title of the chapter at the person. "Oh, yeah, interest rates, I hated that." The chapter was, in fact, not about interest rates at all, but about investment interest in subsidiary companies. "I don't envy you." I looked up from my chapter once again, marking the paragraph with my thumb so as to get back to it easily, and said, "Neither do I. And unfortunately, the only time I have to study is on the train." Head went back down. Do you think that worked? No. Too subtle, apparently. "When do you graduate?" "October." After about another three minutes, they gave up. Finally. And you know what sucks? I don't remember a damn thing I read this morning.

Camera-happy summerlike day

The last two days have been great.

At work: The controller told me I did a great job on the quarter-end packages, and this is not a man to hand out "atta-girl"s on a regular basis. I got all of my "prepared by client" materials together for the first quarter audit. I scheduled a meeting to work out why our SRA list does not tie to our inventory list for evaluation units. I get to run a meeting! Woo hoo for me!

At home: The weather has been fantastic. It is 76 in my house right now, and it is only April! The apple trees are blooming (at left). My creeping myrtle (below) and rosemary are also blooming, and the back yard smells fantastic. I mowed my lawn again, and it is now at a decent depth of 2", but I'll have to mow it next week because I know it will grow two inches over the week. I re-barked the landscaping on the east end of the house. I actually did some landscaping on the west end of the house (that's the picture above), which used to have nothing but grass, moss and the fence, and I'm feeling rather proud of myself for doing something original rather than just perpetuating what previous owners of my house had done. I ripped up all of the turf in a swoopy, curvy line from the property line where the fences meet over to the side of the house, and all of the way up the side of the house to the corner. I planted some cute, colorful shrubberies, and barked the bejesus out of it. It looks pretty good (considering a total amateur did it), particularly when the sun shines on it. Tearing up the turf wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. It was mostly moss, which came up after just running my hand over it. Underneath was nothing but worm castings, apparently. I've never seen so many earthworms in one place that were not for sale as bait. Digging the holes for the shrubs was as difficult as I thought it would be. The ground here is nothing but rocks with dirt filling in the gaps between them. See the rocks in that picture? Those are just some of the rocks I dug up to make room for the shrubs. I took the rest of the rocks elsewhere to use as a drain spout for my rain gutters. My yard is gonna be so nice when all of my little trees and shrubs grow up! I'm amazed at how fast the back yard shrubs are growing. I should have blooming lilacs next year, and my blue holly and variegated holly already get berries each winter. If I ever have to sell, the landscaping alone should help me get a decent price.

I decided that since (1) the weather was perfect and (2) my car is black but looked grey that today would be a good day to wash the car. I whipped the garden hose out of my Mexican hose pot and was startled by a very large, fast-moving spider. I was expecting a much smaller crop of spiders, but certainly nothing this large. I threw a quarter into the pot to give a vague idea of the size of the thing. I have no idea what kind of spider this is, but I see them outside pretty frequently. This isn't even the biggest one I've seen. I'm going to send the picture to this guy who runs a website from the UW to see if he can identify it, or at least give me an idea of what it might be.

I also baked chocolate chip cookies and ate about six of them for dinner. How much better can a day actually get without winning a lottery?

Yes, Chewing!

Lately, I've become rather enamored of chewing gum. It is a little weird to suddenly decide I like gum at my advanced age, because it makes my jaw hurt to chew it. On the other hand, it eliminates the perpetual coffee breath and makes me less hungry. Every now and then, I wander over to Uwajimaya to buy their Japanese gum. They've got some great flavors. Today, I'm working on Cool Mint.
It is very strong mint, and it lasts forever. More importantly, the package has penguins on it, and you can't go far wrong with penguins. Even better, it has cryptic English translations of something from Japanese on it. Some of the wrappers on the sticks say "Yes, Chewing!", and others say "Cool Mint, Enjoy the Delight Only From Lotte" (which you can almost see in the picture). That little red blurb in the picture says "Long Live!" Still, they translate better from Japanese to English than I ever will from English to Japanese, so I won't pretend to feel superior about my mad skillz in English.

So much for originality...

I registered yesterday for online access to my phone account. I hate trying to think up user IDs so I generally use the same one for everything, but I decided to take a stab at improvisational thinking and decided to try a user ID of "jenhatesphones". Someone else already has it.

I got home from work yesterday and my cat was not acting normally. She wasn't standing at the door yelling at me when I unlocked it, and she looked like she had just woken up. I fed her, and she didn't eat all of her food, which is very rare indeed. After she ate, she went into my office and went to sleep on the chair I sit in to read. Normally, she hovers around under my feet and yells at me for attention while I'm trying to cook dinner. There was none of that. She did come out of the office to sit with me while I ate my dinner and watched "Scrubs" and "Teachers," taped from the night before. This morning, after eating and napping while I got ready for work, she seemed to come back to herself. She is 14, and changes in behavior worry me. I may haul her off to the vet if she isn't back to normal when I get home.

If my calendar, computer, and cell phone are all correct, today is Thursday. I have only two more work days, a day of school, a day of yard work, and another work day before I bugger off to Oregon for three days. I was originally taking three days of software training down there with a day off in the middle to spend with my mom, but one of the classes was cancelled and I'm coming back earlier than expected. In light of the fact that I have five very hungry fish and a possibly sick cat, that is probably for the best. Even better, payday is next week right after I get back, and everybody loves payday.

Accountability: Look it up!

I got to spend three and a half hours yesterday in a meeting reviewing the capabilities of a new software that I will never, ever use. I was there solely because I used to use the old version of the software, and my replacement in that position is not learning the job or showing any interest in learning more or upgrading the software.

As I learn more about this particular co-worker, I have less appreciation for her. I have to teach her certain aspects of the job, and the converstations usually follow the same pattern.

Me: "To find this information, you have to look it up in the customer
listing in SmartList."
Her: No response. No acknowledgement, no nod, no eye
contact, no breathing.
Me: "Do you know how to look up the customer listing
in SmartList?"
Her: "No."
Me: Pause for five beats, then, "Would you like
me to show you how to do it?"

She will not say that she doesn't understand something, she will not ask questions. She doesn't want to learn anything new, she resists change automatically. She is crippling herself with her attitude. They pulled me into the meeting (while I'm working on quarter-end inventory accounting reports that the freakin' SEC is waiting on) to guide the software vendors regarding her upcoming software implementation because she won't step up and deal with it. She has a very "I don't know how to do this so I don't want to do it" way about her. For what they're paying her, she should be able to be involved in the implementation of her software. As much as she whines about how the current version doesn't work (which is odd, because it always worked fine for me), she should at least be able to describe what she'd like to see work differently in the new system, but she had nothing to say.

If you haven't worked it out yet, I am NOT the hand-holding type.

Is it just me?

I went down to Starbucks for my second cup of coffee just a short while ago and ran into one of the local... uh, I don't know what to call him. But there are a lot of them here.

I work in Seattle in a building near Pioneer Square, Union Station, and the stadiums. I know this area is known for its drug and prostitution traffic, but what draws the mentally unstable people? In the mornings, Starbucks has its share of the methadone clinic regulars, loading up on sugar with coffee in it until they get kicked out. They generally aren't a problem, but they can get a little raucous. The ones that worry me are the ones that walk around talking or shouting at people who aren't there. Sometimes the bystanders will just look at them and look away, other times they watch them until they're out of sight. Today, the guy in Starbucks was walking back and forth, going on and on, mumbling things I couldn't for my life make out except for the dates. It was as though he was reciting a time line, but I couldn't understand anything but the dates he was throwing out. The weird thing was that nobody seemed to notice he was doing it, or maybe we were all just automatically pretending not to notice it. La la la, this is me getting my coffee and ignoring the elephant in the room. He seemed harmless enough, but I generally tend to assume that if they are unbalanced enough to talk to people who aren't there, they may also be unbalanced enough to stab me in the neck and not know they're doing it. Seattle is generally a fairly polite city, and it isn't polite to stab people in the neck while they're just trying to get a cup of coffee.

Incidentally, I usually order a triple tall Americano. Today I ordered a drip coffee because I wanted to get out of the store faster than normal because I was vaguely uncomfortable with the crazy orator there. Just as one person handed me the drip, the other brought me the Americano that she assumed I would order. So I had to pay only for the drip! Woo hoo! Two fisted drinking! Luckily, I switched to decaf a couple of months ago. Otherwise, this would have done me in.

And yes, I know it is mean to call people crazy. It isn't politically correct. Well, I call people retarded and fat too, and I know they aren't PC either. The fact is, they are catch-all terms that everyone understands and can spell. When I know a more specific term, I use it. The dishwasher at the sandwich shop, for example, is not retarded. He has Downs Syndrome. The guy who shouts obscenities nonstop and kicks over the trash cans is schizophrenic, not crazy. The guy who spits big gobs of mucous into the fountain and throws his garbage on the ground near the trash can is an asshole, not a man. You get the gist. I calls 'em like I sees 'em.

More on the joys of homeownership

Rather than wasting my time this weekend on, say, housework or homework, I decided to work on my yard. After breakfast, I went to the gas station to get gas for the lawn mower. At that point, it was a little foggy, but you could see the sun breaking through. I got home with the gas can and filled up the mower and tried to start it. No go. I think last time I mowed was in August, so the mower was a little stiff. I wandered around the yard picking up branches from the last windstorm. Tried again. Still no go. Picked up more branches, weeded a little, tried the mower again. Still no go. Three more times, I picked up branches and weeded, then tried the mower, but it wouldn't start. Then it started to rain. I put the mower away.

A smart person would have given up right there.

I have a little island in the middle of my front yard. It has trees, rhodies, Oregon grapes, salal, heather, and a number of other autochthonous flora. When I bought the house, the spaces between the shrubs was beauty-barked. I hate beauty bark, but I totally see the practicality of it. I can't get much else to grow in there. Believe me, I've tried. The bark had deteriorated into moldy mulch, and weeds were growing freely out of it. While I was weeding the island, I basically removed the entire top layer of decaying bark. I knew that the weeds would just come back, so I broke down and bought more bark. I spent a fair portion of the day, in the pouring rain, spreading new bark. I finally gave up on yardwork at about 1:00.

Sunday, I went out to the garage to try the mower again. It started right up. Whew! I was hoping not to have a repeat of last year's brush-cutter-rental episode. I got the front yard mowed without any drama, but the back yard was quite a chore. I set the wheels at the highest setting and still bogged down the mower in the deepest spots. Then, just to show the neighborhood what a masochist I am, I lowered the wheels to the half-way point and I mowed the entire back yard again to get it down to a reasonable depth. Even after mowing it once, the second time was still a bit too much for my mower, and it stalled a few times in the heavier, wetter areas. It took me half an hour to do the entire front yard and 3 and 1/2 hours to do the back yard. I have only a quarter acre! Going forward, it shouldn't be as bad if I can keep up with it. I just need to make a point of mowing it regardless of whether it has rained. After all, I would never mow it at all if I wait for it to dry out. They don't call this place the Pacific North Wet for nothing.

The unfortunate bit is that now I have to buy more bark to cover all of the areas that I haven't done already. I have a feeling I know how I'll be spending next weekend.

Holy crap. (No pun intended.)

This is one of the more frightening news items to reach me in recent memory. Iran's president is vowing 'Rotten Israel will be annihilated'. Soon. This, on the heels of their announcement that they have managed to sucessfully enrich uranium, a necessary component of nukes.

My assessment? This is an extreme example of the swinging dick syndrome. In most cases, it is harmless. Body building, Trans Ams, and power tool envy leap to mind. This is common across all species. Male peacocks and their feathers, male gorillas and their chest beating, elks and their racks, and so on. Most men can't compete with each other in any extremely physical way with the exception of things like rugby, boxing, and the Ultimate Fighting Championship. What makes this so much worse, in my estimation, is that so many people have so much to lose over what amounts to an argument that simplifies down to "My imaginary friend is bigger than your imaginary friend and we're gonna kick yer ass." This is not an argument that I can respect.

Why can't everyone grow up? I've gone my whole life without killing anyone over religious or philosophical differences (not that I haven't been tempted...), and considering my temperment I don't know why everyone else can't do the same. And believe me, if I was the type to try to kill people off over religious or philosophical differences, about 99.999999999984% (I did the math) of our species would be wiped out. I prefer to take a more relaxed attitude, a "live and let live" attitude, and just try to mind my own business and try not have any adverse affect on anyone. Do you know how much happier we could all be if we just lived our own lives rather than trying to justify our own existence by either forcing everyone to comply with us so that we don't have to question our own beliefs or killing them off if they don't agree with us?

I say we put the Iranian president in the ultimate fighter ring with a challenger from Israel and see how long his god protects him. The winner gets a really big belt buckle and a victory lap around the ring on the arm of a bimbo in a bikini. The loser gets free medical care.

You can find it on eBay

My ISP is Comcast. I've been with Comcast since I switched in desperation in an effort to keep up with my homework, which includes email, newsgroups, and downloadable music and video. Every day that I log into their home page at Comcast.net, they have a bunch of news stories, entertainment, and so on. They have one section called "Fact or Fiction?" Today, one of the questions was, "Babies have more bones than adults?" Ignoring the lack of sentence structure, I clicked on the question to see the answer, which I knew was correct but I couldn't remember exact figures. It took me to a Google search page. What do you suppose was the top search result?



Morbid, no?

Life is an adventure

Doug Savage doesn't know it, but in his daily comic "Savage Chickens," he routinely parodies my life.

<--Vis, exhibit 1.

In other news, I managed to wrangle myself a three-day July 4th weekend. Most of the office will have the standard Saturday-Sunday weekend combo, a day at work, then the 4th off. In case you haven't checked your calendar this year, the 4th is a Tuesday. I, in my uniqueness, have managed to get that Monday off, in exchange for working on the 4th. Sure, I'll be working for no extra pay on a holiday, but there are multiple bonuses to this. I get a three day weekend, which is important enough to me that I feel that I should reiterate it. I also get to work uninterrupted for an entire day at my busiest time (quarter end) without having to sacrifice a weekend day just to be productive. I haven't done anything on the 4th in several years becuase I just don't care enough to bother with the staying up too late, the driving in late-night drunken traffic, and trying to drag myself in to work the next day. Parking is free on holidays, so I can come in at some absolutely ungodly hour (I'm thinking 3:30 or 4 am) and leaving at noon to avoid the traffic problems. It will seriously rock, as far as days in the office can rock.

So what am I going to do with a three-day weekend? I can sum it up in three words. Hiking hiking hiking! I'm thinking the goats at Tuck and Robin have been without me long enough, and by July I'll be in good enough condition to brave the so-called trail to one of my favorite little wonderlands. It is going to be SO HOT up there in July. But hey, that's what alpine lakes are all about!

Vindication n ... 2: the justification for some act or belief

Back about a thousand years ago - early July 2005 - the person who occupied my current post at work served up her two weeks' notice. My current boss suggested to the controller that they offer me the position. He rejected it out of hand. He later rethought his position, and here I am. There were doubts about whether I could handle the job and whether they should allow me to leave my previous position in light of the fact that the department would (and did, I might add) fall apart without me there because of the total incompetence of the other half of the personnel over there.

I've now been in the position for 9 months, and I believe that I have more than proven myself. Not only am I doing the work correctly and in some cases better than my predecessors, I have caught the mistakes that others were making - often the same mistakes over and over by different people over the years - and I have taken on more work and done it without the difficulties they professed to have suffered.

That's cuz I'm smart. :)

Ironically, I still can't make my quarter-end deadlines, but it is because marketing and supply chain consistently miss their deadlines to provide information to me that I need to reach my deadlines. That's corporate life for you. They don't need to give me the information, therefore it is my problem if they don't get it to me on time and in turn it isn't their priority. Luckily, upper management doesn't blame me, the person at the bottom of the food chain. When the controller starts in on them, it will become their problem.

My year in this position is almost up. If I get past August, I will be the longest-running employee in this position in 6 years. Most other employees lasted less than a year. I don't know why, exactly, other than that we have to rely on unreliable people at quarter-end to get our information. The tasks that they complained so loudly about are actually my favorite things to do. We have these massive spreadsheets for the inventory reserve analysis and the quarterly inventory report, not to mention the cutoff documentation. It is all like a big puzzle. What can I say, I'm a geek who likes to play with spreadsheets. It has paid off for me so far. Let's see how much more it pays off after I get my degree and the merit raises go out at year end.

Save early and save often!

Yesterday turned out to be another fantastic waste of what little non-office-bound time I have these days. It started out with school, which was the high point of the day. I left there to go to REI in Tukwila to buy a new battery for my altimeter, but they didn't have what I needed. I went next door into Bed, Bath & Beyond to see if they carry teapots, and they don't. I went across the street to Target and they didn't have teapots either. So I gave up on the teapot idea and went to Best Buy to pick up a couple of new CDs (Pink and Depeche Mode) with my gift cards that I've been hauling around for months.

Did I fail to mention that I left home without an umbrella and it was pouring down rain?

I got home and ate lunch, then started on my homework, which was due by midnight yesterday. Right after I started it, I heard a noise outside. I think I also saw a flash, but maybe not. Anyway, it sounded like a car accident. Then the power flashed off and on a few times, and I lost all of my work because I hadn't saved it.

After about 10 minutes (rebooting the computer, getting a snack and a glass of water), I started on my homework again. Half an hour later the power went out again.

And I hadn't saved anything. Again.

And the power did not come back on. That was at about 3:30.

Needless to say, there was a lot of mumbling and stomping around going on after that. I ended up doing all of my homework on paper, then calling my professor to tell him that the power was out and had been out for hours, and I didn't know that I would be able to submit it on time. Luckily, he said I could just submit it this morning instead for full credit.

I don't know what time the power came back on, but it was after I went to bed.

Lessons learned?

1. Save every time you finish a line of data entry or the answer to a question.
2. Do homework before the deadline day instead of waiting until the last minute.
3. The Consolidation Entry *G is for the subsequent year of acquisition, not for the current year.
   
   

Oh, the irony.

There's a church on Kent-Kangley Road that I drive past every morning on my way to the train. It has a readerboard. I don't generally pay attention to what it has to say because church readerboards generally have stupid, meaningless sayings that are meant to be pithy and thought-provoking for the sheep - err, I mean, the flock - that attend services there. They are meant to make the flock nod knowingly and say "praise Jesus," smug in the satisfaction that they are going to heaven when they die, and that the all-powerful creator of the universe loves them and values them above all others, no matter how much porn they surf for on the Internet, no matter how they abuse their children or pets, no matter how they steal from the office and justify it in their belief that they deserve it because they are underpaid and they work so hard.

But I digress.

Today I accidentally noticed the board. It says, "Truth is not relative." (Insert wry grin here.) It seems to me that the truth is nothing but relative where religion is concerned. Truth is what appeals to you. Truth is the agenda set forth by those in charge in order to serve some end. If truth was not relative, there wouldn't be several thousand "official" churches and innumerable smaller churches run out of people's homes.

I think it would be more accurate for the readerboard to say, "Our truth is not relative to us." But I doubt anyone would get it.

Just for the record, this is my truth. I don't expect it to be yours.

No good turn in the kitchen goes unpunished.

I was so excited to have a food processor, and I wanted to make chicken vindaloo so that I could eat leftovers all week and not take the time to cook. The first week of every quarter is a nightmare of sorts at work. Every minute counts, and I have to take the first train in and the last train out every day. I'd rather use my time at home to exercise than to cook, so today I made up enough leftovers to last most of the week. This advance planning was not without its hitches. I went to the grocery store this morning, finding once again that the 24/7 Safeway was closed, and I resorted to QFC. I got home, ate breakfast, puttered around, did some housework, and started cooking. I found that I have not just one, but two food processors. One is a mini Cuisinart, the other is an attachment for my blender. A wealth of food processors, when I thought I had none just a week ago! I was almost done with the vindaloo. I peeled and sliced the potatoes and ran the skins down the garbage disposal.

And the garbage disposal fell off of the bottom of the sink. No joke. See below. What you see is the neck of the disposal, corroded all the way through the metal. You can even see the soap suds inside from my attempt to clean out the sink while the disposal ran. Now, if you look very closely above and to the right of the disposal, you can see a spot of rust under the cabinet. Wanna guess what that is? That is from the cold water intake, which was also rusted through. As a matter of fact, it was so clogged with rust, you could almost not see light through it.

I was drinking water that came through that.

Sigh...

So between the replacement disposal, the labor to install, and the new faucets and labor to install the new pipes that weren't filled with rust, I spent a fortune today, and I didn't even get anything really cool, other than a very pretty new faucet and cleaner water and a disposal that doesn't make a death rattle every time I try to use it.

Well, I suppose that's nice too, but I'd rather just not have that much debt on my credit card. Or for that kind of money, I'd rather have a new wardrobe, which would include that lovely pair of brown suede Italian ankle boots at Nordstrom. Actually, if I had that kind of cash to burn, I would have bought the rest of the lumber that I need to finish building my fence and maybe hired a guy with a pickup truck to haul away some of my yard waste. Where the hell am I going to wear Italian ankle boots? I'm practical, but a girl can occasionally dream of splurging on pretty things. Though I doubt you can reasonably deny how pretty my new shiny things are. Look! A sprayer that actually sprays water, rather than dripping it! How novel! And handles with all of the little shiny arms intact! And they turn the same direction! And no leaks! Mmm... Wolverine Brass...

So, take a guess at what my day at home cost me on my credit card. Let's just call it a whole paycheck. I think that paints a pretty clear picture.

I think plumbers must make a pretty good living.

Its like Christmas every day!

I found something in my kitchen today that I did not know that I had.

When I bought my house, the kitchen cabinets were painted a Kelly green. As you can see in the picture at left, they are no longer green. Now, I like green, but you have to consider something here. The entire front of my house is essentially one room - kitchen, dining room, living room. The dining room and the living room were the color scheme you see above, while the kitchen cabinets were green. It clashed horribly. My first weekend in the house, I stripped and repainted all of the cabinets. I added the molding later.

However, the previous owners had done more than paint the kitchen cabinets green. They also painted over the copper hardware (Criminals! Blasphemers! You never paint copper hardware! That's like carpeting over hardwood!) and put some contact paper inside the kitchen cabinets that was essentially a mixed fruit tapestry print. Every now and then, I get a bee in my bonnet and clean out a cabinet and rip out the contact paper. It isn't easy - I think the stuff was in there for years - so I'm never in a hurry to spend time on that. I can't see it all of the time, so I ignore it.

For some reason, today I decided it was a good day to rip all of the contact paper out of the big cabinet over the stove. I've been in and out of that cabinet a lot lately because I cook so much, and I think I was seeing too much of that crap. I got a chair and got up there and started ripping things out.

And I found...

A food processor! Woo hoo! Now I don't have to buy one!

The question is this: how did I not know I had a food processor? And why did I not see it sooner? I think it was on the top shelf behind some other things. It is amazing what you can find when you go through your cabinets.

Now I just need to find a crock pot and a million dollars.