Procrastinating

I've been doing all sorts of things lately in order to procrastinate.  What am I avoiding?  First: unpacking.  It really didn't take long at all for my apartment to be functional; the kitchen is equipped, my bed is set up, and I can watch tv in the living room.  While I am pleased at how quickly things came together... that's where the progress stopped.  I still have tons of boxes filled with odds and ends that need to be dealt with and all my walls are bare and begging for pictures.  I fear that there is a real danger of having boxes sitting in the living room indefinitely.  Hmmm.... I'll try to get it on it eventually. 

Unfortunately the second thing I've been avoiding is much more important: my interview presentation!  My interview is this Tuesday so I've only got a few more days to work something out, but I've been doing pretty much anything I can to procrastinate.

- This past weekend I went back up to the cabin with Barb and Barnaby for a little more snowmobiling and a lot more hot-tubbing.  Then, yesterday I went over to their house for an early St. Patrick's Day dinner.  Barb took care of the meal (I helped by watching and keeping her company), but we both worked on a very ambitious project for dessert; warm fudgy brownies topped with homemade Guinness ice cream, homemade pecan caramel sauce, and freshly whipped cream!  Things were actually going quite smoothly and I got to show off my egg tempering skills to make the custard base for the ice cream until... we plug in the ice cream maker and-- nothing!  Apparently it had been a wedding present when my aunt got married and hadn't gotten much use in the last 20 years.  When you flipped the switch you could hear a faint whirring noise, but no movement so naturally, Barb decided to take it apart.  After prying off the rusty screws we discovered a nasty surprise, a big brown glob of goo spilling out of the motor.  Uhhh... is that caramel/chocolate sauce or is that motor grease/oil?  So, of course, what does Barb do?  She tastes it!!  The (hilarious) verdict: motor grease.  Despite our best efforts, there was no way to get the motor running, but we'd already made the ice cream base, so now what?  Never fear, Google to the rescue.  We decided to just throw it in the freezer and set a timer to stir it every 20 minutes so by the time we were ready for dessert (3 hours later) we had... Guinness milk slush!  Oh, well.  It probably would've held up better if it weren't for the warm brownie, but it was still delicious and besides if we just call it crème anglaise instead of melted ice cream then we can be super fancy.

- I got my Washington license plates which, thankfully, was much easier than getting my driver's license, which is actually still screwed up.  They sent me my permanent license, but it still has the wrong address on it.  I tried calling their 1-800 number to ask some one about it, but every time I call they say, "we are experiencing a higher than normal call volume, please try calling back later" and then CLICK!  They hang up on you!  Staying on hold isn't even an option and I've tried calling half a dozen times and it's always the same thing.  I think that's a pretty sneaky trick.  As I said, though, getting the license plates was much easier.  The entire endeavour took about 90 minutes of which 85 minutes was spent walking to and from the license office.  Once I walked into the office I was afraid it was closed because I was the only person there.  Well, the only customer that is; there were plenty of workers eager to help.  Why don't they send some of these people to the driver's license office?!?  Anyhow, all I had to do was show them my driver's license and car title and then they handed me plates and a new registration.  Sweet!  I think that makes me an official Washingtonian now :)
 

- I started trying to play the guitar again.  (I told you I was really procrastinating.)  I have owned a very nice guitar for more than decade, but it has pretty much lived it's life locked away in a dusty closet.  Now that I'm unemployed I figured I needed something to prevent idle hands.  The first order of business was getting it restrung.  I'm sure the Guitar Center employee thought I was ridiculous when I walked in and said, "I own a guitar.  It needs strings."  At least I knew I needed acoustic, steel strings.  Hahaha.  The guy was nice enough about it though and didn't seem too judgemental.  When I got back to the house it was YouTube to the rescue for a lesson on how to restring a guitar.  I was really nervous about it and as I tightened the strings it made all sorts of terrible creaking noises, but I eventually got it in tune.  Once upon a time (sophomore year of high school maybe) I took a guitar class and learned to play House of the Rising Sun and Greensleeves.  Barnaby kept insisting that once I picked up the guitar again it would all come back to me, just like riding a bike, but so far that has not been the case.  I feel like I'm pretty much starting from scratch.  In order to assist

with this project while protecting my wallet I decided to see what instruction books were available at the library.  The Seattle Central Library is quite a sight to behold, 11 stories of glass and steel, it was voted  #108 on the American Institute of Architects' list of Americans' 150 favorite structures in the US.  It was a very interesting building both inside and out, but unfortunately they were pretty low on guitar instruction books.  Grrrr, I guess I might have to buy some.

Ok, now that I've spent even more time goofing off by writing this maybe I should finally get working on my presentation (or drink a beer and watch a movie).  :)  I swear I'll get it done by Tuesday.