Humble Pie, Metallic Elements, and Halloween Cookies

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
So I finished up my swim the other morning, showered off, and then hopped into my car, eager, as usual, to get to work (just can’t wait to start another day of educating 150ish eager young middle schoolers). As I started to pull out of my parking space, this guy stopped his car right behind me. Then he opened his door and got out. I was thinking, “What the heck is this guy doing?” in an irritated, I’m-in-a-hurry-here kind of way, so I beeped my horn at him in my irritation. Next, he knocked on my window, and I’m wondering, what the heck is up with this guy, but when I roll down my window, he hands me the water bottle that I had set on my car and forgotten about. “Thanks,” I mumbled sheepishly, feeling like a complete and total jerk. Here’s some random guy who goes out of his way to help me out, and I beep my horn at him. Definitely not my finest moment.

Half an Ironman is Better than None
Anyone who knows my lovely wife, Katie, probably also knows that she’s been working hard for the past few months training for a half ironman. If you’re not “in the know” this event consists of a 1.2-mile swim, followed by a 56-mile bike ride and a 13.1-mile run, which, as you might imagine, presents quite a challenge. Anyway, she was very excited to complete her event last weekend and become an official “Half-Ironman.” I think it’s pretty cool, too, though I have to say that I’m not all that impressed with the title of “Half-Ironman.” After all, when I completed a sprint triathlon (which was essentially ¼ of what she did) I got to be a “Tinfoilman,” which I think is a pretty cool thing to be (as opposed to a “One-Eighth-Ironman, which just sounds kind of lame). Since Katie has now done this event, I’m tempted to sign up for one myself, but I’d like to be known as something better-sounding than a “Half-Ironman” so I come up with a list of possibilities, which include, in no particular order: Leadman (sounds kind of slow and heavy), Nickelman, Manganeseman, Copperman (kind of cool for AZ), Zincman, Molybdenumman (try to say that fast three times in a row), Silverman (too sleek?), Cadmiumman, Tungstenman, Platinumman (probably too much), Mercuryman (definitely too fast for me), Uraniumman (too radioactive), and Plutoniumman (ditto). I’m not sure which one I like the best, but several sound better than “Half-Ironman” – at least to me.

Kitchen Nightmares
Every once in awhile, we have a “staff lunch” at school where one of the teams is supposed to bring in food for everyone else. Personally, I kind of hate the whole idea, because it’s a hassle when I have to bring in food, and when I don’t bring in food, I don’t really like to eat what’s brought in, partly because we don’t eat until 12:45 or so and I can’t make it that long without food, and partly because you never know what’s going to be brought in, and it’s often kind of a mish-mash of random selections, so who knows what you’re going to get, and though I’m not all that particular about what I eat (really, I swear I’m not) I do ride my bike home from work, and eating a bunch of random food right before a workout just isn’t a good idea – for a variety of reasons that I really don’t need to get into. So I generally abstain. Anyway, this week was our team’s assigned week, so I figured I’d pull a fast one by volunteering to bring in the paper plates, bowls, napkins, etc. since all that involves is making some purchases (and as it turned out, it didn’t involve even that since we have a whole bunch of surplus stuff in the office that’s up for grabs, so all I really had to do was go and get it together (although there was some grumbling about the fact that the paper products were plain white and didn’t really have a proper “holiday/Halloween motif” which some people actually care about – not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s so far away from anything remotely important to me that I have a hard time relating) but then that wound up not getting me off the hook after all, because someone decided we didn’t have enough desserts for everyone, so since I wasn’t really bringing anything in, I was “volunteered” to bring in Halloween cookies, and I didn’t really feel like I could refuse, so I agreed to do so. Which left me in a bit of a quandary, because I don’t really like to make cookies (I leave that to Katie and Connor – both of whom enjoy cookie-baking immensely) plus, I really didn’t want to have to make a trip to the store to get cookie ingredients. Which meant that I would need to make sugar cookies, since we had all the ingredients already. Now I don’t particularly like sugar cookies, but I wasn’t going to eat them anyway, so that was acceptable, but who knew making sugar cookies could turn out to be such a hassle? It wasn’t that bad doing the whole “mixing of the ingredients” steps, but when I got to the part where I actually had to make the cookies, the whole rolling out the dough, and using the jack o’lantern cutter-outer, and spatulaing the cookies up and onto the sheet, and cooking the cookies till they were done parts were actually kind of tricky. Yes, I used flour to coat everything (after Katie took pity on my pitiful first attempts at rolling out) but the dough still tended to stick to everything it touched, so I was fuming and complaining, and Katie and the kids were mocking and laughing, and I continued to fume and complain, and it took way too much time and effort to wind up with a couple of batches of pretty pitiful looking pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies that probably won’t even get eaten. And if it turns out that they sit on the table and nobody takes any, I’m going to feel really bad – like really, really bad – like total failure bad - so I’m hoping people take pity on the pitiful pumpkins and eat a few so I don’t feel like a complete and utter failure.

That’s all for this edition, so until next time, may your random acts be kind, may your cookie dough cooperate, and may your mercury remain safely enclosed in whatever thermometer you might have hanging around.