Tag Archives: breakfast

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Every year around September I opine that there isn’t anything more useless that a formal performance evaluation. Every spring, though, I’m reminded that I’m wrong, because truly it’s impossible to imagine a more pointless “management tool” than the yearly midpoint assessment. It’s all the aggravation of spending time putting paperwork together and none of the remunitative reward of getting a performance bonus. Midpoints are a 100% paperwork drill out of which there’s no significant accomplishment. If I’ve been a turd for the last six months and management hasn’t said anything, they obviously don’t care. If I’ve been an all star for six months and don’t know it, than that’s 100% my own problem. All the midpoint process does is ensure my copy, paste, and update skills are just as sharp as they were a year ago.

2. Last week included new computer day at work. This week has involved a pretty extensive amount of trying to figure out how my own personal workflows will function in a Windows 11 environment. After two days of hunting and hoping and yelling at this computer, I’m absolutely not loving it. In fact nothing is currently working as seamlessly with this new system as it did with the old one. I’m not saying new tech is necessarily bad, just that when the powers at echelons higher than reality decide it’s time to roll it out, they very rarely consider much beyond “ohhh, new and shiny.” I’m sure this will all be functional at some point in the future, but currently it’s causing no end to aggravation. Truly it’s a death by a thousand cuts.

3. Breakfast. This morning breakfast was a “lower carb” everything bagel and precisely two tablespoons of reduced fat cream cheese. Breakfast used to be a proper bagel, slathered on regular cream cheese, a couple of eggs, cheese, and maybe a bowl of cereal. Sure, that’s the diet that has probably killed me, but for starting the day satiated and relatively happy. Look, I know I can’t go back to eating that way, but it doesn’t mean I’m ever going to be fully satisfied with this “reasonably healthful” approach to food.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Breakfast. Breakfast has historically been one of my favorite meals. I’d often have breakfast for dinner. Something about the combination of sweet and savory in breakfast foods just hits right. That, of course, was only true when breakfast was some combination of bacon, eggs, waffles, buttery toast, pancakes, gravy and biscuits, French toast… well, you get the idea. Breakfast is now the least motivating of my daily meals. I know I have to do this, but there’s not a power in all of creation that can force me to be happy about it. Sure it’s “healthy,” but Jesus what a cost. 

2. Eye exam. My annual eye exam is tomorrow morning. Based on how wonderfully the rest of the doctor’s appointments I’ve had this year have been going, I’m mentally preparing myself for her to tell me that my eyes are 15 minutes away from falling out of my head or some other dire prognosis. But hey, at least I get to gin up the anxiety again next week to check in with my primary care doc. Let me assure you, reader, I’m straight up not having a good time.

3. The word turned upside down. We have a Republican Party that doesn’t hide its support for Russian imperialism in Europe, an obnoxiously vocal minority of Americans who cheerfully side with Hamas and terrorism, and a country that feels increasingly willing to just let the world fly apart at the seams. I know it’s common for the aged to say things like “I don’t recognize this country anymore,” but I’ll confess I can see how it has become a trope. I’ve spent half my life so far in the 20th century and half of it in the 21st… and it’s my considered opinion that the 21st century is just stupid. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The good idea fairy. The GIF is a pernicious feature of life in the bureaucracy. Its mission is to take projects or programs that are perfectly fine, even serviceable, and sprinkle them at the last possible minute with pixie dust and render them stupid, painful to execute, or optimally both. Having great ideas is fine, but when your idea of the week generates a minimum 80-hour per year manpower requirement when you’ve just lost one of three employees, it might not be a particularly good time to launch this new crusade. But hey, if the powers that be want me to spend my time following grown ass adults making sure they’ve cleaned up after themselves, I’ll do it all day long… but they shouldn’t be surprised when a whole laundry list of other “very important activities” just doesn’t get touched.

2. Data mining. My insurance company partnered with a company doing “free” A1C testing at home. Fine. I’ll share a bit of medical privacy for a free test. But dudes you’ve got to make it easy. I walk into the doctor’s office every six months (or more often lately), they jab my finger and my A1C number appears in my online patient portal before the doctor has even walked into the exam room. By contrast you gave me two columns of instructions that included “let the sample air dry for 3 hours before packaging” and then “it must be shipped the same day.” Either make it easy to go along with your data gathering scheme or bugger directly off.

3. Breakfast on office days. On days I’m stuck going into the office, I used to just swing through McDonald’s and grab an egg McMuffin. It was the definition of quick, easy, and simple. Now I’m making breakfast at home. It’s not that I don’t make a tasty breakfast so much as the process is a massive time suck. Instead of scarfing down my egg sandwich at my desk or in the car, I’ve got a full meal to prep and clean up before I’ve even left the house for the day. It’s reduced my morning reading time on office days to practically nothing. That makes it a pain in the ass with very little ROI besides a vague “healthiness” that doesn’t do much to improve my general mood in the mornings.

Pondering on an Egg McMuffin…

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Most mornings when I’m due in the office, I stop by McDonalds for an egg sandwich. I know, I know. Health implications aside, I’ve made a decision that I’d rather read a chapter or two before schlepping down Route 40 than spend that limited time making breakfast.

This morning I found the drive through inexplicably vacant. Pulling in to order, I wasn’t greeted with “May I help you,” but rather “Just so you know we can only do exact cash right now.” I’m assuming it meant I’d need exact change because their electronic payment systems (credit card, Apple Pay, etc.) were down. Networked payment systems go down, I totally get that, but as a matter of principle I wasn’t going to just round up the cost to the nearest dollar or worse, since the only paper money I had in my wallet was a $20 bill. Their prices are near piratical levels already and I can’t remember the last time they didn’t have a “We have no change” sign in the window.

I pulled away without my Egg McMuffin secure in the thought that there’s a Burger King not quite on my route, but close enough to not make a difference in the morning’s timing. Burger King, however, was closed this morning during what should have been about the peak of their breakfast rush. Lights off, drive through barricaded, and not a car to be seen in the parking lot. Looks like I wasn’t going to be getting a bacon, egg, and cheese Croissanwich, either.

After two strikes, the clock had run out on me, which meant heading directly to the office sans breakfast. It’s hardly the worst thing in the world, but it feels like part of the wider trend where everyone seems to be throwing up their hands, giving a shrug, and muttering “Eh, COVID.”

A year ago, I was pretty tolerant of stutter stepping and odd moments that went with figuring out how to live in a plague year. Here we are nearly two years in, though, and I’m not in any way convinced we’ve collectively learned anything. I mean how is there still a change shortage? How have nationally branded businesses not figured out how to, you know, do business… or at least keep the doors open during business hours?

The more gentle-minded among you will be tempted to tell me that everyone is “trying their best during this difficult time” or some other platitude. Based on my observation, I’m not in any way convinced that’s true… and even if it was, it just seems to me that after eighteen months of practice, everyone’s best should be a little better than it is currently.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Oat meal. I’ll admit it. I’m a fan of hot breakfast cereals as a group. Oatmeal, cream of wheat, grits, corn meal are all perfectly pleasing breakfast foods in my kitchen. Running unnaturally late one morning this week, I opted to try breakfast in the little coffee shop / doughnut place in the office. That was a mistake. I saw oatmeal on their menu and thought to myself “self, how badly could a place screw up oatmeal?” The answer to that was a watery mess that had far more in common with the average soup than any kind of oatmeal one might expect to be served. That’s going to be a hard no from me, thanks. When the response from the manager is “yeah, that’s the new recipe we’re supposed to use. Nobody likes it,” I feel like you could have warned a guy ahead of time. Personally I’m 100% open to employee recommendations that warn me not to order something on the menu because it sucks. Not great business perhaps, but it would have been top notch customer service.

2. Telling me to smile more. Mostly I smile when I’m happy… not when I’m focusing in on the 13th revision of a PowerPoint slide or enduring the 3rd hour of a meeting that should have been an email. The fact that my face tends to go rather blank and the corners of my mouth draw towards a scowl in front of my computer terminal aren’t necessarily a commentary on anyone… Though I suppose it could be if it’s someone who tells me to “just smile” one more time. I’ll reserve those clear eyed, happy looks for times that don’t involve spending eight hour clips tethered to a cubicle. Otherwise I just end up walking around with a fake smile plastered right below my dead eyes like so many other drones who don’t seem to know what a smile is actually meant to convey.

3. Responsibility. I want another dog. I also want another cat. I also want to go to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer convention in London this fall. I want a new truck and maybe a plunge pool in the back yard. I want a remodeled master bathroom and new kitchen countertops too. I am, however, not currently getting any of these things because I’m making at least a passing effort at behaving responsibly and in a mostly adult manner. This leads me to believe that responsibility and behaving in an adult manner is stupid, largely unfulfilling, and generally annoying. In a world where the penalty for behaving utterly irresponsibly seems fairly low, I feel like I’m getting the worst end of this bargain.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Breakfast options. I already get up between 4:30 and 5:00 most mornings. Although it’s the most likely real solution to this issue, I don’t want to get up earlier and cook a meal. Still, I’d really like a breakfast option that wasn’t an egg on a English muffin or similar concoction wrapped in paper and passed out a window for people who are up and out before the crack of dawn and don’t laze away the morning before showing up at the office around 9:00.

2. Not asking how high. Jumping on command is all well and good. It’s sometimes a necessary evil, but honest to God, not knowing how high, or which direction, or for how long you’re supposed to do it just leads to and exhausted jumper who’s engaged in a whole lot of activity without much to show for it when the poor bastard finally falls over.

3. Know what you want. I’d hate to even estimate how many times a day someone asks me for something. I’m going to to my level best to deliver exactly what you ask for – unless whatever it was is patently stupid in which case I may ask for clarification or make an alternate recommendation. Still, if you insist, I will cheerfully deliver the product as requested. Here’s the thing, though… If what you ask for and what I deliver turns out to be not what you actually wanted, well, I’m sorry but I’m not feeling any guilt about it.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. If you’re going to run a restaurant equipped with a drive through, I’m going to go ahead and recommend that you not post a sign on the speaker box that says anything like “D-T is closed, please visit the lobby”. Umm… no. I don’t think I will. I wouldn’t have been in the drive through for breakfast if I weren’t already in a hurry to get somewhere else. Let’s face it, if I wanted to get out of the truck, walk inside, and have a meal, I wouldn’t be looking at fast food options. This is America, by God and if I can’t get food through the window of my truck from you, I’m going to drive my lazy ass next door to Burger King. Next time. Because if I don’t have the time to visit your lobby, I definitely don’t have time to sit in two drive through lines in the same morning. I didn’t want your tasty cheese filled McBreakfast Burrito anyway.

2. I know weather prediction is something akin to turning base metal into gold, but when you spend the better part of a day talking about the impending impact of “an Alberta clipper overlaying the area and bringing 1-2 inches of snow,” it only stands to reason that at some point during the night some actual snow might fall at some point during your forecast window. Here’s a helpful hint from your kindly Uncle Jeff… if you walk outside after sunset, look up, and see starts twinkling in the interstellar distance, it’s bloody well not snowing.

3. Picture it, Friday, 3:51 PM. At what point does it go through your head that “hey, this would be a great time to try to get something done.” Here’s a news flash Poindexter, it isn’t. Everyone’s brain is disengaged and they’ve already got one foot out the door. Sure, no one will say that out loud, but that’s what everyone whose inbox “pings” at 3:51 on a Friday is thinking to themselves when it happens. Actually, what they’re thinking isn’t fit to print in this nice, family oriented part of the internet. Rest assured, though Mr. Wants to Get One Last Thing Done on Friday, everyone thinks you’re an asshat.

First love…

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I spend alot of time here writing about politics, technology, and pretty much anything that strikes my interest. It occurs to me that I’ve never really spent any time at all dealing with my first love – food. Some of the best is now verboten since all things starchy and sugar-filled are no mostly off limits to me, but from time to time I do manage to come across a recipe that’s worth hanging on to. I find one of those this morning and in the spirit of the internet being built for sharing information, I thought I’d pass it along as an homage to the humble casserole.

The ingredients are as follows:
– 1 lb breakfast sausage
– 3 cups shredded/cubed potato (frozen should work just as well)
– 1/4 cup butter – melted (because everything’s better with butter)
– 16 oz shredded cheddar a/o whatever other cheese you’ve got handy
– 1/2 an onion diced/chopped
– 16 oz small curd cottage cheese
– 8 jumbo eggs
– salt, pepper, etc.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees and grease a large baking dish (I used a 9×13). Brown the sausage and drain before setting aside. Combine potatoes and butter, spreading the mixture in the bottom of your baking dish. Combine eggs, cottage cheese, onion, cheese, and sausage. Pour mixture over the potato base. Bake for 1 hour. Mine came out at 55 minutes with a nice crust and done completely through.

A word of warning. This makes alot of casserole so if you’re not cooking for at least 4 people, you might consider using half portions on the ingredients. In any case, easy to make and quite tasty – though probably not recommended if you happen to give a damn about cholesterol. I’ll make it again, but would probably kick up the pepper and add some tabasco or ground red pepper next time to bring on a little bite.