So imagine my delight at finding a crock pot cream of mushroom soup recipe. Super easy and I don’t have to slave over a hot stove. I made it last week (a half recipe since I only had about a pound of mushroom on hand - they had been sliced and frozen - I put the block of frozen ‘shrooms in the pot at the start) with the following differences:

1. I added splash of Worcestershire sauce. I don’t know why, except that the smell of it demanded the additional ingredient.
2. I used rice milk instead of cow’s milk, natch.
3. I added a flour/water slurry to the soup to thicken it slightly prior to pureeing with my stick blender.

I split the soup into two batches in my vacuum sealed quart bags. One went into the frig, the other went into the freezer.

I finally got around to making the mushroom chicken today. So I took a whole package of mostly thawed chicken thighs (11 thighs), seasoned them all with Poultry Magic, then put them into the pot. A quick snip with scissors opened a corner of the soup bag and I poured that all over the chicken. Set the pot on Low for 8 hours. We’re about 3 hours from done time and it smells delicious.

However, they are entirely mock-able as shown here.

Hilarious. I love the quote from Ike.

Today’s dispute involved the date stamp, which is broken. So we’re using an old date stamp that only goes to 2007. That means we have to hand write an 8 over the 7. A slight hassle, but no big deal. Unless you are UO2.

She let me know that she received the latest packet of medical invoices, but still doesn’t know exactly what she’s supposed to do with them at this stage of the process. Amazing One is out again and not available to coach. So I told her what I get and we figured out what she’s supposed to do. And then I reminded her that the invoice pages from the contractor all need to be date stamped.

UO2: AO didn’t tell me that I had to do that.

Me: Yes, I realize that. I had to remind her about it all the time, too. But they need to be date stamped.

UO2: I don’t have the time to write all those 8s on each invoice. *more whining about how busy she is - blah, blah, blah* I’m not going to do it.

Me: We’re all busy. They need to be stamped. Please, just do it.  *in my head, I’m thinking “just do it and quit wasting your valuable time arguing about it"*

UO2 storms out of my office and straight into my boss’s office. I get up and follow her, to hear her explaining how busy she is and that she doesn’t have time to date stamp these so she isn’t going to do it.

Angels started singing. He backed me up without hesitation, “We got dinged in the audit because these weren’t getting date stamped. You have to date stamp them.”

And then they angels stopped singing because he walked her over to the date stamp to show her how to do it? What? She knows how to date stamp. Stop holding her lazy hand!

Although, part of me thinks he took her over there to have a quiet word where I couldn’t here him? Who knows.

Then the angels started singing again because he then came back to my office and apologized for getting me in the middle of that.

I looked at him like he’s crazy because, “You didn’t get me in the middle of it. And there’s no need for you to apologize.”

It’s time for UO2 and I to have a heart to heart behind closed doors. It has gotten to the point where we cannot have a rational work-related conversation about anything. It’s got to stop. I told my boss that I plan to have this conversation with her next week and he asked if I wanted him there. I declined his presence on the grounds that she and I have to try to work it out first. If I feel that she is still combative then I’ll drag management into it and I’ll ask to include the new Chief. Won’t he love that?

*sigh*

I’m going home now.

For some time many of us have wondered just who is Jack Schitt? We find ourselves at a loss when someone says, ‘You don’t know Jack Schitt!’

Well, thanks to my genealogy efforts, you can now respond in an intellectual way.

Jack Schitt is the only son of Awe Schitt. Awe Schitt, the fertilizer magnate, married O. Schitt, the owner of Needeep N. Schitt, Inc. They had one son, Jack.

In turn, Jack Schitt married Noe Schitt. The deeply religious couple produced six children: Holie Schitt, Giva Schitt, Fulla Schitt, Bull Schitt, and the twins Deep Schitt and Dip Schitt.

Against her parents’ objections, Deep Schitt married Dumb Schitt, a high school dropout. After being married 15 years, Jack and Noe Schitt divorced. Noe Schitt later married Ted Sherlock, and because her kids were living with them, she wanted to keep her previous name. She was then known as Noe Schitt Sherlock.

Meanwhile, Dip Schitt married Loda Schitt, and they produced a son with a rather nervous disposition nam ed Chicken Schitt. Two of the other six children, Fulla Schitt and Giva Schitt, were inseparable throughout childhood and subsequently married the Happens brothers in a dual ceremony. The wedding announcement in the newspaper announced the Schitt-Happens nuptials. The Schitt-Happens children were Dawg, Byrd, and Horse.

Bull Schitt, the prodigal son, left home to tour the world. He recently returned from Italy with his new Italian bride, Pisa Schitt.

NOW when someone says, ‘You don’t know Jack Schitt,’ you can correct them.

Sincerely,
Crock O. Schitt

I’ve still got tears of mirth in my eyes.

I’m already in great shape work-wise. I do need to take my laptop with me to do the monthly close out tasks, but I can get them done in the evening easily. In fact, I’m so caught up on work that I think I might be able to take next Thursday off as well, which I think I’ll need in order to get us all packed and ready to hit the road on Friday morning. I’m already starting to gather the things we need to take for Jesse - for such a small person he’ll have the most crap to take.

The dog’s stay at her kennel is booked and they are eagerly awaiting her arrival. A friend from small group has agreed to stop by the house a couple of times to check on the cat. I still need to put a hold on our mail for that week.

In other news, there’s nothing to report really. Things are pretty much the same at home - we’re still looking at house listings, but not actively looking at houses again until we get back from vacation. Also we’re thinking we’ll hear about the Dallas job by mid-June, one way or another. On the other government job that Beau put in for, he did see that he was not selected for the next steps on that one, so that is another disappointment. There is a possible job prospect for him locally that would allow for him to take Jesse with him - but I’ll post more about that if he decides to pursue it. At this point, he’s unsure he wants to and he’s trying to finish up the paper grading for the PHC students before moving on to other things. He’s also considering being a stay at home Dad full time and not bothering with a job at all for the forseeable future. He’s really good at that job, so I’m fine with that, too.

[via thinkling bill]

OK, so from The Bureaucracy Files, we’re working on our response to the audit we endured before Christmas last year. Yes, it’s May. The deadline is next week so we’re not late! I had no quibble with most of the findings in the finance area. However, I have a large quibble with one particular item and I have been tasked to write the response.

In a nutshell, the auditors said we were not compliant in one certain area when it comes to obligating funds. We were told that we needed to obligate the funds at the time the service (emergency medical) was authorized by us. We were not doing this. Instead we were waiting to obligate the funds when we got an actual invoice. While this isn’t how it is supposed to be done technically, we didn’t see any other way to be compliant with other policies that contradict the obligation policy. So now we’re obligating at the time the service is authorized and I think we’re now non-compliant with about 3 or 4 other policies.

Apparently, the powers that be in procurement and finance have, for years, debated how to handle emergency medical and have never come to any conclusion when reading the FAR.

The other wrinkle is that we don’t pay full rates for most medical services. The amounts we obligate are no where near the amounts we pay. And we pay out of three computer systems right now (check, ACH, and credit card), all of which have different use requirements. It’s a complete mess and only getting more messy with the switch to ACH from checks - these two systems are vastly different.

There is no good solution because of the FAR. The FAR dictates all and it doesn’t cover emergencies of this nature or of this scale.

*sigh*

They have several lovely single family homes in our price range.

I could definitely live in this house.

Or this one.

Or many of these, really.

Since it was 4:30am, I opted to wait until Beau woke up to tell him about it. Then we had to wait for Jesse to wake up before we made the trip up to the attic. Sure enough, there are actually three places in the roof that are wet, but only one that is obviously dripping. Fortunately, it’s in a part of the attic where we’re not storing anything so it’s just insulation getting wet. We put a bucket under the drip and called our landlord to report the bad news.

We have had a lot of rain and it rained hard last night. But I noticed the toilet seat felt damp a couple of days ago, so I think we’ve had the leak for a while. I didn’t see an obvious place where the damp could have come from then and figured I imagined it.

Anyway, I feel for the landlord having to deal with this. And maybe us, if it turns out to be a bigger deal than we think.