What Was I Saying...?

The first half of the month has been pleasantly busy. Our very good international friend has been visiting since the end of July, so we've been pretending to be good hosts. Honestly, it's been a great time. I got to bake a batch of key lime cookies, found a decent recipe for strawberry icebox pie, helped Good Dog with a coffee walnut cake and Three Cup Chicken, a Taiwanese dish that might be the best chicken thigh dish I've ever had. 

We've also been making dinners for the household through Blue Apron, though our recent experience with those deliveries have convinced me to finally shop elsewhere for a meal-kit home. Two of the dishes came without the knick-knack bags, which contains most of the fiddly bits of the dish (and incidentally, most of the things that make them special -- like spice blends, specialty ingredients and the like), so we had to improvise. The pulled-pork enchiladas didn't need that many substitutions, but the chicken shwarma quesadillas couldn't be prepared as the recipe envisioned. Instead, I used a quick spice blend I found online for both the quesadilla filling (chicken and onions) and the roasted carrots that came with them. The quesadilla spice blend was a total hit, and I'll definitely have to keep that in my back pocket for later. 

Honestly the best part of my time off last week was getting to spend so much time in the kitchen. With the Blue Apron substitutions and the non-Blue Apron dinners we made, I really got to learn about spices and step outside of my comfort zone with them. It makes me realize how important they are to the success of the dish -- especially getting them in the right proportions. 

I experimented with baked salmon last night using a simple blend of lime juice, lime zest, honey, crushed red pepper, garlic powder, salt and pepper all mixed with olive oil. It came out more like a marinade than a glaze though, so I think I should have poured the concoction into a bag and left the salmon fillets in the fridge for a couple of hours. The flavor that came through was mostly red pepper and garlic, so I'm guessing that the lime juice and honey cooked off in the oven. Still, folks seemed to dig it quite a bit so no complaints there. 

The more time I spend in the kitchen, the more time I *want* to spend there. I'd love to learn how to make simple things well (and quickly!), just to see if I can improve the quality of the household diet with fewer prepared foods and more whole, raw ingredients processed at home. >.>

I've been back at work since Tuesday and playing catch-up all this week. Our IT department decided to update our database software without telling anyone, so the technicians in the field ran into a hose of version-mismatch errors trying to upload their reports. When that happens, the QC department gets to transcribe these reports manually. Work's been swamped with these requests since my vacation last week and we're still trying to dig our way out. 

At least this time, we have a way of determining the impact of this issue by pointing to the decision-maker who caused the kerfluffle to begin with. If all of the QCAs are following proper procedure, we should have...thousands of logged errors under the IT manager's name. It'll be interesting to see the data that comes out of it.

It's taken a couple of days to get back into the swing of things, but it's like falling off a bike, right? Two positions within the company opened up at last, so I've applied for both and gotten two interview requests! One is for a Metrology Technician job -- basically, I'd be calibrating, maintaining, and logging the instruments our field technicians use in their daily work and certifying client instruments that make their way to the lab. Since I'm dealing with real equipment, I'd have to go to the Sunnyvale office every day -- but the pay is a lot higher than I get now, so hopefully that would offset some of the wear and tear on the car. 

The other position is for a Field Services Coordinator job, where I'd be managing the schedules of technicians and working with clients to schedule whatever work they need. "Schedulers", as we call them, would also be in charge of making sure client protocol is followed and any special instructions were given to the techs. It's a MUCH more social job than what I'm doing now, but it's also fully remote and a bit closer to what I'm doing now. Alas, the pay is lower than the Metrology job and, well, it's possible that the position could be eliminated and off-shored to Mexico -- which would leave me exactly where I am now. 

Still, these are the first interviews I've gotten in this year's job search so I'd be a fool not to go for both of them. The Metrology Technician job would be a real stretch for me, but the things I'd learn there would definitely set me up for future success. The pay and potential career path are a lot higher, too, so I can't sniff at that. And if that falls through or they find a much more qualified candidate, I can fall back on the Scheduler position. 

At any rate, I'll definitely be looking elsewhere. It's...not a great idea to stop looking for opportunities after you've found the first one, right? :P