Attempt at Blogging #113384797514

Hey there, dearest Journal!

I'm sorry I've been such a bad friend to you. I haven't written. I confess, sometimes long stretches of time have gone by without even thinking about you. But you don't have feelings, because you're just a website, so I know you'll forgive me.

Where to start? So much has changed since 2009, when last we spoke. I was an office worker back then, filling my days with files and an enormous Google reader list that I never seemed to get through. I've since left behind that cold world of fluorescent lights and business suits (not that I ever wore them, but saw them all the damn time) for the much more glamorous world of professional baking. I filed my taxes for 2010 today and got to adjust my profession from "Executive Assistant" to "Pastry Cook". It was oh-so-fulfilling, especially since my plummet from wealth to near-poverty comes with a massive tax refund, unlike last year when I had to pay the guv'ment a few hundred bucks. I got a lot out of my years as an assistant, but oh boy, was it time for a change. I'm sooo much happier now, wearing my bright bandannas and eye-catching chef pants to work every day. Sometimes, I get to see the pre-dawn hours and walk through the city as it's just starting to wake up. I even got to work a few late night baking shifts, rotating dozens of pies in and out of the ovens while playing loud metal music.

My days are full of hard work, so much learning about food (my very favorite thing) and eating my fill of sugar and flour (sometimes in actual pastry form and sometimes just plain sugar; I have no pride). I fulfilled my recurring daydream of working for Joanne Chang (of Flour Bakery and Myers+Chang). Many a day in the office, I would wish that I had the skill and knowledge to just jump careers, but I never thought it'd be possible. Then, the opportunity arose to radically change careers and I emailed Joanne about the possibility of interning at Flour for a few months to see if I really wanted to do it. She said yes, and I became Flour's first official intern. Naturally, I'm awesome and they decided to keep me when my internship ended. Social media at work, people! Magical. I foresee many delightful years ahead of me, continuing to learn about the things I love, and hopefully getting better at them.

One of my favorite series of fantasy novels is written by the delightful Lynn Flewelling. I always remember first picking up Luck in the Shadows and reading her author blurb, which lists a collection of random jobs she's held, including "necropsy technician". I loved that, because you only get one life and why not fill it learning as much as you possibly can. Not everyone is lucky enough to figure out when they are 18 what they want to do forever and always, so I'm totally fine figuring it out as I go.

So, here I am. That's my work life. I'm also enjoying the most delightful and easy relationship with Cody, a fellow neighborhood wierdo that I have obsessed over since he first came into my life as my coffee shop crush at Ula. My perseverance in wooing him finally yielded fruit after a year or so and here we are, nine months later, a JP fixture that all the lesbians try to emulate.

There's surely more to come as I get back into regaling my dear, sweet Journal with all of the books I'm reading, games I'm playing and food I'm eating. But we'll ease back into it for now. I also made a tumblr, but I'm not sure I'll use it, cause I rather like blogger. I don't know, maybe I can link them?

Love,
Jon

Let Me Pencil That In

Dearest Journalman of My Soul,

In keeping with the trend of confessing my darkest secrets to you, I have another one: Google is taking over my life. It has everything I could ever need to organize my otherwise whirlwind of a life. In fact, the How-To of the Day today on my Google homepage is How To Balance School and Word as an Adult, something that I personally find useful, seeing as I do just that. And it gave me some useful tips, such as opening an online calendar to keep track of tests and work things and to schedule study time. I think this is fantastic, so I went ahead and added my whole life to my calendar. Now, if only I had a blackberry and could check my Google Calendar from anywhere.

(Side note: The best part of my job-- getting called sweetie by giant African men. I don't know if this is just because they want to suck up and think that's the best way into my heart, or whether it's because I'm such a flaming queen that they assume I'm a woman, but...I hope not the latter.)

Well, last night I decided to delve once more into the wonderful world of making Chili. Jenna has this amazing(ly easy) recipe, involving beef/turkey, bell peppers, onions and a crapton of canned beans, tomatoes, tomato sauce and refried beans. It fills a giant soup pot to the rim, which is totally awesome, but since my kitchen stuff is totally disorganized, it led to a lack of tupperware to contain my concoction. I ended up bringing about a gallon of it to work today in the hopes that someone will help me to eat it all. I'm slowly building up a repertoire of foodstuffs that I can cook. This is going against years of being kept out of the kitchen when my mom cooked dinner and only being allowed to assist during cake- or cookie-making. I still have a phobia of baking pies because she couldn't do it. You'd think this would cause me to be more motivated to bake a freaking pie, just to prove that I'm a better baker, but it just makes me nervous. But I'm very much into cooking my own meals right now. I've been spending entirely too much money on eating out and ordering in (not to mention booze and video games...or crack). Last night's bean and beef extravaganza cost me a total of 27 dollars and probably yielded something around 15 servings. Pretty good, I'd say.

In other news, I have some sort of uncontrollable urge to own every edition of every Final Fantasy game, even when one version is fully sufficient. Take Final Fantasy IV. I played it on Super Nintendo, I've played the original SNES version on an emulator, I've played the harder JP version of the SNES game on an emulator, I bought FF IV Advance for the Game Boy Advance, despite having already played and beaten the one Chris owned. Now, to taunt me, they are developing a DS version of Final Fantasy IV, which I imagine will include some touch screen capabilities like the DS version of Final Fantasy III (which I found insanely dull after a while). I am hoping (obviously) that this version of Final Fantasy IV will have some more enhanced touch screen stuff, but it's unlikely, because honestly what would you add to a Final Fantasy game that would require a touch screen. Maybe at least they'll do something with the two screens. FFIII DS just put a stupid world map on the top screen, which made it silly that there was a button to pull up the world map, because it just copied what was on the top screen onto the bottom screen and what's the point of that!? REALLY NOW! At least I completed the GBA version of FFIV before this one is created. It would be sad if they released a DS version of FFVI, because I'd buy it and I haven't even done the extra content on FFVI Advance yet.

Ok, I'm geeked out. I may have just lost some of the few friends I have left.

Love,
Me

Flinging E-Fireballs at Friends

Dear Journalman,

This is the new diversion me and John Barleycorn and I discovered today. The premise is this:

Using only pictures and a brief description of your "turn" in the subject line, you e-mail back a forth a LARP battle. This enables you to use the limitless resources of the internet, tempered only by your imagination and Google-image research skill(z), to send all manner of e-assaults against your e-enemy. (EENEMY?) The true gems of this game come when you acidentally stumble across a website containing a man with a homemade shield whilst searching for "tower shield" on Google.

Honestly, it doesn't get much better than that. Until the next time I play, anyway.