These are time elapse photos from the brownie making last weekend. I intended to take more but my hands were sticky and I forgot and we had already eaten half of them before I thought about it again.

I wanted to share some of my high tech kitchen gadgets. That's my double-boiler. It's a saucepan with an inch or two of water and my favorite bowl a Capri Bake Serve'n Store Stoneware. It's microwave, freezer and dishwasher safe. I don't know how old there are. My mother-in-law gave it to me with a smaller one that matches. I think she has a third one at her house. I love them and use them all the time. I bet women riot over these in the second hand store.

Watch and learn kids: this is how the masters melt chocolate and butter together.



I don't usually link to other posts like this but I feel like mixing it up today.

I think this is probably in the top 3 best blog posts I've ever read. I'm not sure what the other two are. The Dooce post about the Big Bad Mother Effing Poop would probably make the list. We still talk about this at the office and laugh so hard we wipe tears from our eyes.

This is another great post about visiting a shipwreck in Coos Bay.



One thing about going to Clarion West that I didn't mention yesterday is that I haven't had 6 weeks off from work since the nineties. The early nineties.

I've had a job of one kind or another pretty steadily since about 13 when I started babysitting. At 16 I got a job at Jack-in-the-Box and worked on weekends and after school until I went to college. After my freshman year I worked part time during the school year at the Santa Barbara Zoo and part time at the University library. A few months after college graduation I got my first real job at the license exam school. When that fell apart I got a job at Panavision.

(Additional jobs not mentioned: waiting tables at a Chinese restaurant, teaching gymnastics to little kids, Psychic hotline.)

Panavision is the job I quit (Dec 1990) to get my paralegal certificate.

The next series of events is documented in my first holiday newsletter.

From the time I quit Panavision to the time I got my legal assistant job was 14 months and an incredible low point in my life. The program was 6 months and then I could not find a job and ended up doing odd jobs for family and friends of family. Cleaning house. Gardening. Washing cars. So while technically there was an extended amount of time where I didn't have a regular job, I was too stressed out and miserable to enjoy the time.

The whole idea of not going into the office for 6 weeks is hard to imagine. And really cool.