Productive Friday evenings go like this:

[camwyn]

1. Get out of office around 5:10 instead of the usual 4:30.
2. Drive to Best Buy, look for digital camera, report price to sister's celphone. Spend next 15 min. trying to find car charger for Audiovox phones, sighing mentally 'cos 9/10 of the shelf is Nokia & the rest is Ericsson.
3. Leave Best Buy w/no digicam, no Die Another Day sdtk, no celphonefoo, but w/Antek Easy USB device.
4. Drive to Whole Foods Market. Buy organic cake mix, 1/2 lb. flank steak, garlic cheese spread, phyllo dough.
5. Go home. Verify Dad already ate. Preheat oven to 325 F. Begin mixing cake mix, use up milk entirely, mutter to self, put on boiling water, spray cupcake pans w/PAM, finish mixing cake mix, put in pasta, pour out 18 cupcakes.
6. Put cupcakes in. Run upstairs, read instructions on Antec package, run downstairs, stir pasta, run upstairs, clear off computer case. Run downstairs, pull pasta off stove, drain, add butter and cheese.
7. Run upstairs w/pasta. Look at room. Run downstairs w/The Best of Bizarro 'cos you shouldn't eat pasta while working on computer. Eat pasta.
8. Run upstairs. Open computer. Wonder where the !*&() the USB pins are.
9. Run downstairs. Take cupcakes out. Run upstairs. Find USB pins, pop face off last remaining 5.25" bay, slide in Antec device.
10. Screw in Antec device. Scrabble around inside computer until cable from USB ports is found. Figure out which set of wires goes to which set of USB pins and hook them up.
11. Reconnect everything else. Power up computer & plug cable modem into new USB port to verify it works. Plug cable modem into back USB port 'cos front USB port is no place for long ugly cable.
12. Plug Kanguru MicroDrive into front USB port. Open the outline of the webcomic script you were killing time with between reconfiguration sessions of old machines to use new servers at the office today. Smile, for lo, you have Triumphed With Technology. If you were born thirty years earlier you'd be doing this in a garage and you'd have motor oil in all your major upper-body crevices.

Oh, and when the phone rings at 7:45, assume it's a telemarketer and merrily sing out "Nihao!" as your greeting, only to have cadhla inform you that the San Francisco library has a HUGE-ASS display of stuff about Chinese opera...

Life is good. I must get milk.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

So, what did you do with the 1/2 pound flank steak??

[camwyn]

First I read the side of the phyllo dough box and said bad words, because phyllo has to thaw for 7-8 hours, then sit at room temp for 2-3 hours. I don't spend that much time on a dough product unless there's yeast involved. Then I bought a box of puff pastry instead, which I should have done in the first place, and let it thaw; then I did this.

1. Cut flank steak up into 1-inch-long by 1-cm-wide pieces, of whatever thickness that part of the steak happened to have. I tried to do this in such a manner that the pieces would be relatively tender.
2. Browned them in a frying pan with a little oil and garlic powder.
3. Put a bit of the garlic cheese spread on each one and wrapped it in a small square of puff pastry.
4. Baked the lot at 400 degrees for 15-20 min- I'd forgotten to look at the clock when I started, so I pulled 'em out when they were golden brown.

Miniature beef Wellingtons, the most popular thing I learned to make in Foods Prep and Hospitality Management.