Hey, ShikamaruRocks, here. How ya doin'?
I have another world. One called "Shika's Busy-ish Nook" that contains less random stuff than you'll find here. For the most part. I'll leave all the official stuff that's on here though, but all new official stuff will be there.
I AM A GIRL. So many people think I'm a dude, but I'm not. I promise.
Soooo, let's get on with it, shall we?
Most of these are in no particular order...
Favorite Manga: Fruits Basket, Saiyuki, Saiyuki Reload, RurouniKenshin, DNAngel, Prince of Tennis, Trigun, One Piece, KareKano, Lovely Complex, Whistle!, PeaceMaker Kurogane, Fullmetal Alchemist, HanaKimi, Ouran High School Host Club, etc.
Favorite Anime: Hunter x Hunter, Fullmetal Alchemist, Peacemaker Kurogane, DNAngel, Fruits Basket, TekkonKinkreet, Saiyuki, Mushi-shi, BECK, Avatar (it counts!!! grrrr....), Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, RurouniKenshin, etc.
Music Peeps: YellowCard, Death Cab for Cutie, Snowpatrol, A Fire Inside, The Used, Three Days Grace, Seether, Orange Range, My Chemical Romance, Hoobastank, Muse, The Pillows, Plain White T's, Angels and Airwaves, Flaming Lips, Bump of Chicken, and!!! The Jonas Brothers (my guilty pleasure).
I love cooking, drawing, reading (mostly manga but novels are wicked awesome too. I just don't have the time nor stamina for novels as much anymore...though I have been working my way back in. lol), knitting, watching my brother play Zelda/Metroid games (lol), and skateboarding, though I fail epicly at it.
Toodles!!
So.....
Hello, fantastic people of TheO.
It is I. ShikamaruRocks. I won't be posting ever really. A friend just recently found my old account thingy and posted some comments so I felt like saying hi.
I hope you all are doing well. I bought a nice laptop last Thursday and StarCraft II yesterday and I'm enjoying myself. My name for StarCraft is AwesomeFace. XDDD A bit of an inside joke from when my sister, TwistedCyberChick, my brother and I went to Japan 3 years ago.
So, I'll bid you farewell for now. Perhaps some of my old acquaintances will leave me little comments :3
Bye bye! Off to watch MoneyBall, for we have become giant Baseball nerds. I <3 you Hoz!!
So, what's your favorite food? Come on. I wanna know. Please?
Anyway, mine is bread. Basically any kind of bread. Though I love focaccia, especially with rosemary, seasalt, and fresh ground black pepper on it. Mmmmmmm.
The kids in my Culinary Arts class figured that out and would kinda make fun of me about it (which makes zero sense to me, but whatevs). So, I got to eat a lot of tasty breads when I was in the class and I got to bake a bunch, too. Whenever we were assigned some baking thing to do lots of people wanted to be in my group. lol.
That's not the point, though. Point is fresh baked bread really is a comfort food. Also, baking bread is therapeutic.
First, you get to beat something up, which can be very nice.
Second, you get to smell the lovely aroma of the bread as it rises and then while it's baking.
And third, you get to devour it after all your hard work.
I had a yucky day two days ago. Actually, I've had a yucky couple of weeks. So today I decided to cook. All day.
I started out making a huge batch of mashed potatoes (another of my favorite foods and a comfort one. Hm. I wonder why... xP) because we had 7 or so pounds of russet potatoes we simply had to do something with because it is just criminal to let potatoes go to waste.
In the middle of my train of thought I am saying something entirely unrelated.
I am way super dizzy right now. Whoa. Think I need to finish typing soon because I'm about to fall out of my chair. @.@ Not cool.
Anywho, after the potatoes I went to WallMart for some bread flour, yeast and boxed mac and cheese (I'm gonna be lazy later. lol). I made the bread dough which was super fun cuz I got to knead it for 10 minutes. Yay! lol. Then I let it rise for an hour. I just punched it down and put it in the fridge. By the time I'm done typing this (hopefully I won't be dizzy anymore...) I should be able to shape the dough into little blobs to rise a second time which I will then bake into little individual blobular roll things.
While they are baking I'm going to slice, season and sautee some beef which I will then mix into some mac and cheese that has been doctored with a little extra milk and some Velveeta to make it semi soupy. Then I'm going to empty out the little loaves into bread bowls and serve the mac and cheese in it to my family for dinner with some corn or green beans. Haven't decided.
I haven't baked bread in a while so I'm really happy right now.
Maybe you can tell me what your favorite food is after the room stops spinning.
Yesterday I had to go to work in the morning. I wasn't overly happy about this, yet I also wasn't super annoyed. I was only going to be at work from 8 to noon. I just didn't want to get out of bed at 6:30.
So, I take a shower, make breakfast, take my prednisone (I have psoriasis and the steroid is part of the treatment. I'm almost done with it o(^-^)o ) and leave at 7:30. I get to work by 7:50. Though I'm early and it is technically not so legal for me to work when I haven't clocked in yet I start turning on the oven and filling the sink with sanitizer and stuff. I go and clock in, get a walkie and come back to get the food all situated in the display case and put the chairs down off the tables and whatnot.
I brew the two kinds of iced tea and am actively putting the coffee beans in the espresso hoppers when I notice a funny little reading on the screen of the machine. Remember the evil screen of death that said "Powder/Piston Error" that I wanted to murder? Well, now it said "Heating".
At first I was like, "Ok. It says that for like 4 seconds when you turn the machine on. Big whoop." But I hadn't turned the machine on. It hadn't been off. It had just been saying "Heating" for who knows how long. It won't let me pull shots.
Great.
It was 8:25 and I was finished with everything else early. The espresso machine was all that was left and it normally only took about 7 minutes.
35 minutes till open.
I pulled out the manual for it and looked up "Troubleshooting". Nothing about a heating problem.
Crap.
I was going to have to call the stupid manufacturing/ maintenance people.
One of the store managers (one of my favorites) came up with my cash drawer and I told her what was up. I said I'd be calling the company and she asked me to keep her posted.
So, I call the stupid people. The lady asks me some basic questions like my store number. She confirms the stores address. She makes sure I understand that I'm at a Seattle's Best not a Starbucks (which I told her when I was saying why I was calling, but whatever) and doesn't even really ask what's wrong. She just tells me she's calling in a work order for me which will go through somewhere between 4 and 24 hours. Yeah. 24 hours would be reeeally helpful. Uh-huh.
Crap.
After about 10 minutes the store's phone rings. I don't answer phones at work because I can't answer the questions most people have (they ask about books and what we have in stock and things. I only work with the coffee, so yeah) so I don't answer the phone. Duh. About one minute later an employee walks up and asks me to get line one. So I do.
It's a guy from the matenance company for our area. He asks me some questions that actually seem to mater like it there's water in the grind tray (there was) or if the water that comes out when I press the rinse button is hot or not (it wasn't). He tells me that someone should be there to help in about half an hour. By this time it's 8:50. Half an hour. Let's see....That would be, say, 20 minutes after we open?
Yay!! -_-
So, I brew coffee and wait.
I also draw this. To, you know, illustrate my current state of mind.
Now might be a good time to mention that it had been raining since the night before and we were absolutely dead. I had like 3 customers in the first 30 minutes, two of which were employees and one was a regular who always gets a medium mug of medium roast with no room for cream.
So, I wander into Paperchase (the section of Borders that has cute notebooks and markers and stuffed animals and things. In our store it also just so happens to be right by the cafe) and start organizing it. By this point the rain had turned into really huge snowflakes.
At 9:30 the guy shows up. He takes the machine apart (completely) and looks at it for a while. Apparently it has two leaks which caused electrodes (or something) to fritz (or something) which wasn't allowing the water to heat up.
By 10:30 (AAAAAAUGH!!!) he had the machine put back together after having to go out in the rain countless times to get parts and call people and ask questions and such. He said it should be working fine but he'd wait around a second to make sure.
It's only supposed to take 4 or 5 seconds for the machine to heat up (which it said it was doing now that it was put back together).
After 12 minutes of it continuing to say "Heating" the poor guy groaned and took it apart again.
And what did he find?
Another leak! Yay! D<
Now, you must remember that I am on a steroid and thus much more touchy and annoyed than usual. I was having to hold back. A lot.
So, I chat with him about how annoying it must be to have to be at our cafe for so long.
The business starts picking up and now I'm having to apologize to people who are going to simply die if they can't get their small, double, skinny, extra-hot, sugar-free vanilla latte with a packet of Splenda. Ugh.
At 11:55 the machine is finally pulling shots.
The girl who is coming in to replace me won't have to mess when any of the horrible crap I had to go through and I'm happy for her.
So, I have to go to work in one hour.
I hope nothing breaks.
I want to kill something. Lots of somethings, in fact. Maybe an entire room of somethings. Don't worry, though. You probably aren't one of them.
I went to work at noon today. I worked until 9 pm.
At around, hm, 3:30ish the stupid espresso machine decided to act up. I was trying to make a mocha or something with 3 shots. After pulling the first two a little noticed popped up on the screen. "Powder Error" it said.
What the crap? This machine has powder in it somewhere?
So, I pushed continue. The screen then displayed "Ready" and I was like, "Ya, whutevar" and then pushed the button for one shot. Then the screen said "Piston Error".
Da crap?? Where the crumdiddlies is the piston in this thing? Does it even havea piston?
This continued for a while then suddenly it started working. Thank goodness, right?
WRONG.
The freezer in the back, full of rottable food, was at 50 degrees.
Craaaaaap.
Then, at 6:45ish, the espresso machine did the whole "piston-powder" thing. I wanted to scream bloody-flapping-murder.
We couldn't fix anything. We called people to come and fix them. Nobody came. They might not come until tomorrow.
AAAAAAARRRGGGGGGGGG!!!!!
The girl I was working with said this to me and a customer.
"We should be called 'Seattle's Best Anything-But-Coffee'".
Kinda made me laugh. Ya know, even though I wanted to kill something(s).
So, I just needed to let that out.
The espresso machine still isn't working. The freezer is at least down to 42 degrees so the food is safe, but it's not frozen anymore which means we'll have to throw all of it out in just a couple days or it will get stale.
Crap.
Due to the rather extreme temperatures, I'm using today as a free day. A cuddle-up-and-read day. A knit-a-blanket day. An I'm-stinkin-lazy day.
Twisted must hate me xP
I've worked everyday for an entire week. I think I'm entitled to one lazy day, don't you?
So, when I got to work yesterday, Amanda (a very nice girl who will be moving to Seattle in July) had drawn something on the daily schedule thing. When she left (I came in at 3 and that's when she got off) I cut it out and kept it. Then, at 6:30 (I was going to be getting off at 7 but was sick and tired of working already. It had only been 3 and a half hours. lol) I drew something which I took a picture of and sent to Twisted, Tofu-chan, and my Mum and Pops.
Here are those little doodles. The one on the left is Amanda's, and the right one is mine.
Cute, ain't it? I really love that mouse. I showed Devon (another coworker in the cafe) and he said, "That is adorable". Made me happy. lol. It's always nice when a guy is willing to use words like "adorable". I dunno why they wouldn't but maybe they think it's emasculating.
And the little guy I drew? I just wanted to draw a screaming/complaining chibi to vent my desire to go home. heh.
So, now I'm off to do all those things I mentioned earlier. Oh, and perhaps I will post a quick one about our next day in Japan later. w00t.
Byezzzzzzzzz. (I slept until 11:30 today xD)
