ah...freedom

My boss/father-in-law just left the other day for a nice 10 or 11 day vacation.  The reason that is so great is that we normally share an office (which is roughly 11' x 23') and I get that all to myself for 8 (possibly 9) business days.   It is so frustrating having to share that size of an office with someone.  Granted it could be a lot smaller, but when you cram a normal desk, my big desk, three filing cabinets, a table for the copier/printer and then shelves for supplies along with two theatre seats, there really isn't that much extra room.  The other part that is great is not having to hear the ring tones on his cell phone.  If he didn't get so many calls and text messages it wouldn't be so bad.  But I get really tired of hearing the Buffy theme song, and "I am the god of hellfire..." and his other ones (One other is "Hot for Teacher" for his daughter's ring tone since she is a teacher).  And of course like everything else he has to have the volume maxed out on those so he can hear them.  Another bad part about working with my father-in-law is his inability to separate work life from personal life.  I can be sitting at my desk and doing my work, concentrating hard and all of a sudden he'll launch into some story about dinner he's making for friends, or the trips he and his girlfriend are taking, or things like that.  But on the upside if I don't want to work I can ask him something about any of those things and not have to work for an hour or two.

I do like working for him though since it is the family business and he and I are the only family working here now.  His grandfather opened their first theatre on this very lot in 1949.  I think it is great to be a part of something like that.

So for now, I'm just going to sit, back, relax and do my work in some peace and quiet.  Granted I have to do his work in addition to mine while he's gone, but I'll trade one extra morning of work for 9 days to myself anytime. :-)

You don't always have to make fancy things

My sister-in-law's birthday is tomorrow.  She was in town last week and I figured that was the last time I'd see her before her birthday so I made cupcakes.  Yes I could have made it into a cake, but by doing the cupcakes it is easier for Isaac to take some into work.  Anyways, I shared them with the staff that was working that day and they raved about them and asked for the recipe.  I told them it was really hard.  Go down the cake aisle and find the box marked Cinnamon Streusel cake mix.  In their defense they might have been asking about the frosting which was homemade buttercream frosting.  It just amazes me how long I can spend making something from scratch and then the things that come from a box are the ones that get rave reviews.

summer. ick.

Don't get me wrong, I like summer.  At least I don't dislike it.  I like it better than winter that is for sure!  What I don't like though is being comfortable if not a little warm outside with just a shirt on and no coat and then coming inside and needing to wear a coat or sweater or something else of that type if I'm inside for more than 5 minutes.  I like the weather that I can be comfortable inside and out without having to add a layer or two.  You can't dress for work with a long sleeve shirt on because you'll sweat to death when you are outside, but if you dress for outside you freeze to death inside.  

This post is brought on by the fact that I am sitting at my desk, with a zip up fleece thing on (I don't know really what to call it, but it is big and bulky and gets in my way when I am doing paperwork at my desk.)  I leave it at work so that I can put it on whenever I get cold and I don't have to plan ahead for that.  It does however make me feel a little bit like Mr. Rogers.  Walk in the door, change into a sweater, maybe I should leave a different pair of shoes here and change shoes and sweater when I get to work....

OK, I'm done whining now.  If you made it this far thanks for listening.  ;-)

Apple Blondies

Isaac had an all day meeting today so I made goodies for him to take in to butter everyone up.  These went over extremely well.  (It makes a 9x13 pan and we had two little blondies left at the end of the day.)  I got this off of recipezaar.com.

Fresh Apple Blondies

15 servings (Those would be big servings, I do smaller than that, I probably made about 24)

1 hour 15 minutes

2 1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs 

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 cups chopped apples (no need to peel unless you want to)

1 cup chopped nuts (I omitted)

2 cups butterscotch chips

Sift the flour baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together.  Combine the sugar and oil in a mixing bowl and beat until smooth.  Add the dry ingredients and vanilla and mix well.  Fold in the apples and nuts.

Spoon into a 9x13 pan sprayed with nonstick cooking spray.  Sprinkle with the butterscotch chips and press the chips down lightly with the spatula.  Bake at 350 degrees F for 50-60 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted into the center comes out clean.  Cool on a wire rack and cut into squares.

*I only baked it for 50 minutes and then I tested and it was done.  There were a few spots that looked gooey, but when I stuck a toothpick in those spot it still came out clean.

MTV Movie Awards

I always enjoy watching these awards.  There just fun, especially compared to other awards.  I always like to see what spoofs, etc they come up with.  This is just a complete and utter mishmash of things as I think of them during the show. 

Yay, Ellen Page won for best Female performance.

Best Summer Movie so far, I really would have thought that Indiana Jones would have won.  I am really surprised that Iron Man won.  I guess I really have to watch it now.   I don't know why, I'm just not really interested in it.  

Best Male Performance...I'm surprised Johnny Depp was actually there, it seems like he is never at the award shows.  Looking good though :-) I had never thought about it, but when I saw Tom Cruise I wondered how close in age those two were.  It is hard to believe that they are in their mid 40s (and Johnny is about 11 months younger than Tom in case you were wondering..  They both just seem younger than that.  

I was rather surprised to see Zaq Efron win for breakthrough performance.  I figured with all the people listed there that one of the Superbad guys would have won because of the audience.

Wow, Wayne and Garth were on.  I really didn't think that would be something I would see live again.

Adam Sandler's song was rather interesting.  I think I like his performance better than Coldplay's or the Pussycat Dolls'.

Well, those are all my thoughts from tonight's show.  

movies a.k.a. the $100 million list

A few years ago (I'm not sure exactly when) Isaac and I decided to start watching all the movies that have ever made $100 million.  We started this when looking at www.imdb.com and saw the all-time box office list.  This first list we looked at was the all-time USA list, which only had about 350 on it.  We thought oh that's not bad, let's look at some other lists, like the worldwide and adjusted for inflation.  We added in the adjusted for inflation list because we realized that there were a lot of other movies that should be on a "bestseller" kind of list, but were not on the US list.  For example:  Pinocchio only grossed $84.3 million.  On the adjusted for inflation list though it is the number five movie for all-time gross.  Titanic has the all-time highest gross, but when adjusted for inflation it is actually #13 on the list.  Interesting.  The adjusted for inflation list currently has 571 movies to the 352 on the US list.

It is a lot harder than we thought it would be to watch all of those movies, considering the amount of movies we had both already watched.  It turns out we have watched about 550 out of about 680 movies.

We still have a long way to go!