Contender for Best Dinner Ever

I just spent the last 3 hours making and then devouring... well, I was about to say "the best dinner EVER," but apparently I say that too much. But let me just say that it kicked ass. Chicken taquitos (one of the few Mexican dishes I do really well--diced chicken in seasoning rolled up in tortillas and fried) with sour cream and cotija cheese (the only way to eat them), beans (yes, from scratch, quite good this time...the trick is lots of garlic), Mexican yellow rice (from a mix--I gave up trying to make this... something about it just eludes me), and fresh avocado slices. Uuuuuhhh. Dude. There are no words.

Sorry if you didn't care about that whole last paragraph, but I was really proud of myself.

Of course, as usual when I make taquitos, I burned myself. Dag-nrbit! At least this time it was on the tortilla pan and not on the oil pan, so hopefully it wasn't as hot. That's the price to be paid, apparently, for such awe-inspiring little rolled-up treasures.

Hey, speaking of burns, I have knowledge to impart about them (prob'ly 'cause I get so many lately). Wanna hear? Okay/too bad, depending on your answer.

So since a burn is just your cells cooking (which, obviously is not good for them; thus with the pain), you can compare it to a pot of spaghetti. If you read the box of spaghetti, it usually has you rinse the noodles in cold water right after you drain them, while they're still hot. Why? So you can bring the temperature of the noodles down immediately and stop them from cooking even a tiny bit more. You gotta do the same thing with your burned skin--bring the temperature down as quickly as possible so your skin spends less time overheated. The best thing is cold water, but if you can't get to the sink right away, you can minimize the damage by starting to cool the burn off ahead of time. Touch your finger (or whatever) to something solid and cool and you’ll feel the heat pulled away from it. (Someone told me once that your earlobes absorb the most heat out of any part of your body because there’s little bloodflow to them and they’re mostly cartilage. So if you can’t find anything cold to touch, touch your earlobe.) And then, obviously, still run your burn under cold water as soon as you can.

Some college friends and I are planning a get-together this fall. People are e-mailing back and forth with their work e-mails, which means their official job titles and contact info are at the bottom of each e-mail. Executive director, so-and-so State University School of Law; Advanced Medical Research Consultant, University of blah-blah Medical Center…. Interesting to find out what they’ve done with their lives. Not surprising the direction, but surprising the speed and prestige obtained.. Although I guess if I’d stayed in one career for 5 years I’d have a big fancy title by now, too. Well, except for if I stayed a teacher. My e-mail’d still just say, "Teacher." Which is crap. You should get awards for staying with it. Today the bus was crowded and I was standing next to/over the shoulder of a woman (thin, looked energetic but had gray hair) who was grading papers. Had her pile of tests on her lap—looked like English literature, about 30 of them, each one about 6 pages long—with a red pen at the ready. On the bus on the way to work, grading. The same way we’d frantically rush to do our homework on the bus before junior high school. Only she was a grownup, and she was destined to be doing this for the rest of her working life. You can always tell a teacher by that kind of thing. Work just follows you around day and night like a bad rash you can’t shake. I see images like that and even though lately I’ve been noticing how much I miss being with kids, I say to myself, MAN, I’m glad that’s not me. I know how much that sucks.

My great aunt passed away yesterday. I didn’t know her very well, but still, it makes you stop and think. I was looking out at the window at it raining tonight (and hailing! Hail is cool when you’re not out in it) and I thought, This is the first day she hasn’t been here for. She’s seen all the others the rest of us have, and even ones from before we were born. But this one she hasn’t seen. She doesn’t know what happens today. FYI, Mary Elizabeth, it hailed today. Stuff you missed. I bet she would’ve liked to have been here for that. Just to be surprised one more time.

I like surprises…. Well, good surprises, anyway. No "Surprise! You’re being audited!" or "Surprise! You have an incurable disease!" But nice ones.

Big Event of the Day: Today's over. Who cares?
Percent Chance: 100%