Author Archives: Pamela

It fulfilled urban but not Indian.

Believe it or not, I actually have notes for writing posts and intended to write more frequently than I have this month. I just can’t seem to get to it. I realized over the weekend that I’ve voluntarily made my life much tougher than it has to be (the writing thing) but I want to do this for now so here we are.

One item I have been sitting on is that as of October I have been in the workforce for thirty years.

Sheesh, that’s a long time. My social security thing shows taxable income for every year since 1980 except for 1985 which has to be a mistake because I was in college and at one point had 3 jobs. In 1980 I started working at Jack-in-the-Box. In college I worked at the campus library and the city zoo. I graduated in 1986 and started my first real job which I wrote about here: part 1 and part 2.

I have no major insights about this. I wouldn’t say it’s gone by quick. I always found things that I liked about my jobs even when they weren’t wonderful or I wasn’t a good fit for them. I love my job now but the commute wears me down. I don’t want to look forward to retiring – I feel like that’s wishing my life away. Lots of work to come. I just hope it’s always something I like.

I swear I read in Cook’s Illustrated magazine that a good way to open a winter squash is to put them into a plastic bag and drop onto the floor from chest height.

I can’t have made that up, can I? But I checked the last few issues and didn’t see that particular tip.

Either I saw the tip somewhere else or my CI filing system (jammed into a drawer with an occasional stickie note to remind me which recipes I wanted to try) is failing me.

I bought this beautiful Blue Ballet squash so I could try the tip.

When I was standing there I felt like I was being mean to it.

I dropped it and it made the same sound a flat basketball makes when you try to bounce it. It bounced a couple inches off the ground.

I tried again and the same thing happened.

The first photo is what it looked like after I dropped it.

I took the squash back inside and used the old giant knife and mallet trick.

This thing is delicious.

I made a typo on the photo and couldn’t figure out why I was getting an error message. Easier to leave it like it is.

Salmon River in Siskiyou County, CA. This is an older photo. I didn’t make it swimming one time this summer.