At Work

I'm back at work today, although I don't know what's worse, work or jury duty. Well, at least at work I can sit in front of the computer. Unfortunately, the heater is broken in our office, and since they keep our buildings so freaking cold, I'm sitting here right now wearing two lab coats desperately trying to stay warm.

Yesterday was our first day of testimony. Man, that is some boring stuff. At least my scientific background was helpful when it came to the forensic evidence. Sometimes it seemed like the defense attorney was trying to cloud the issue a bit, get people confused about the science. I dunno, it'll be interesting to see what the other jurors have to say when we go to deliberate.

I'm riding BART to jury duty, since traffic and parking up in Oakland is hell. It's actually pretty nice for me, because BART is like a 15 minute walk from our house, and the courtyard is only 3 blocks from the BART station up there. So I'm getting some exercise in the meantime.

I wish I had an MP3 player for the trips - I've since lost the Walkman I used back when I commuted in college. Right now I've just been reading my copy of Strangers by Dean Koontz (had this book for years, just never got around to reading it), and magazines (from EW to Dog Fancy). I also picked up a book yesterday, called the curious incident of the dog in the night-time which sounded interesting. It's supposed to be good, so we'll see.

Yesterday I went to the store and bought a bunch of stuff for dinner. It turned out to be horribly expensive. I don't think I'm going to do that anymore. It's just not fiscally reasonable to shop from a recipe list, it's really isn't. I need to learn how to make a bunch of different dishes from more generic ingredients. I really need to learn how to cook Chinese food. Oh yeah, I also need to stop cooking from a Williams and Sonoma cookbook, because they call for really expensive ingredients ($6 for 1 oz of goat cheese???).

So anyways, dinner turned out okay, but I wasn't all that happy with it. I made Pasta with Goat Cheese, Arugula, and Tomatoes, except that I couldn't find Arugula at the store (it's a veggie right?), so I got spinach instead. Which I think worked okay. But I don't think I like goat cheese that much. Oh, I just realized I was supposed to season it with pepper and forgot. Oops.

I also made potatoes au gratin, which was okay, but I think I'd like to find another recipe, cause these didn't have as much flavor as I'd expect. Or maybe I forgot something there too.

I miss my mom's cooking!

I also bought some stuff to make mushroom risotto, and would you believe it, mushrooms are pretty pricey. At least the ones I had to buy were. Also, the rice was expensive. I seriously considered just buying the pre-packaged risotto, the kind you just add water to and heat. It certainly would be cheaper.

I read an article the other day that said that 70% of people, when asked if they had to choose between their spouse and the dog, said that they would choose the dog. I thought that was interesting because lately Marc seems to be jealous of the dog, since I'm always hugging and kissing the dog. Which I've always done, and which I've done to both my dogs, as well as the cats. They just all look huggable and kissable to me. Anyways, I think I'm going to have to make sure I dole out hugs and biscuits to the dog and hubby equally from now on.