Day 42 of 56: The Answer to The Ultimate Question

To Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Only fitting title for today. The other options were “Sausage” or “BLOCKS!” so I’m glad I realized what day it was. AND it’s a Thursday! WHAAAAT!!!!

I just fell down a quick Wikipedia hole trying to verify the Thursday reference. Thought it was either that or Tuesday, it’s been a long time since I’ve read the books.

Blocks

Since the corporate wellness app was cancelled today I got to use an alarm app that I actually like. It gives so much more data than the one that we had to use (to get points for tracking sleep, they only integrated with one). That has nothing to do with the heading for this section, I’m just stoked that my Apple Health app will show actual correct data. Or close enough. I listen to podcasts as I fall asleep and I think the app thinks I’m awake until they’re over and then I’m just completely out cold.

Anyway, blocks! I woke up this morning, went to the living room, turned on YouTube on the TV so I could hang on Facebook for a while, and somehow ended up watching a streamer play Minecraft on hardcore mode for 100 game days. And then his 200 days. 300 days. Culminating in his 1000 days playing hardcore mode, and still going.

I was inspired. Moved that computer I set up yesterday to the desk so I could use my good keyboard that isn’t allowed at work (so of course I use it on my home work computer). Made a big latte and just went to town. I played for a few hours, so about two weeks in-game.

The turtles are almost hatched. I found a village near my temporary base so I locked the villagers in their homes until I can secure the perimeter, build a villager spawner, and build some cartography tables because according to this streamer that’s the way to make profit.

Side note: Every time he said something about making profit I couldn’t help but imagine him as a Ferengi. Nothing is more important than profit, gotta check those stonks.

Sausage

When I went to the store last week I bought stuff for chili and bangers and mash. I’ve had chili for almost every meal since then. I needed a break. I decided today to do the dishes so that I could make some bangers and mash!

The potatoes I bought already started sprouting. After a week. Okay, that’s fine, I can cut those out, no big deal. Go to pick up the onion so I could start the gravy first, the onion started molding. Uh oh. Are you not supposed to keep onions on the counter? It was still in the plastic bag, could that have done it?

Thank goodness I thought ahead and bought green onions to top the chili with. Here is the recipe for onion gravy I used, and I borrowed the instructions from this recipe to help me adapt to using green onions. I also forgot to get beef stock, but also thank goodness I got a bunch of ramen. Flavor pack dissolved in 2 cups of water = instant broth/stock.

As per usual, I wasn’t very hungry so I only cooked one sausage. After everything was done cooking and assembled and eaten, I wish I had cooked two. Best part of this meal is that it’s stupid easy to make mashed potatoes, I just need to cook a sausage, and reheat the gravy. 15 minutes to Flavor Town.

My go-to during the work week is steak and mashed potatoes because from start to finish is 20 minutes. I go for cuts that aren’t very fatty (in that I can just cut the fat away) so that works for me. If I could find not very fatty sausages then this will definitely make its way into the rota. I probably won’t be so lucky, so this might be a once-a-month dish.

But yeah, I can see why this is British/Irish comfort food.

Next time, I won’t forget vegetables. Briefly thought about steaming some carrots (or if I hadn’t forgot the wilted spinach like my friend said), but once the sausage was cooking and the gravy was being dramatic, just keeping everything from exploding was all I could think about.

Daily Reflections

The guilt from not working on classwork started hitting pretty hard today. “Okay, I’ll only play Minecraft for an hour, then I can work on that study guide, then do some light show stuff, and then I can play again.” HA. WRONG, MISTER! Six hours later, “I’m hungry. OH CRAP. It’s 7. Food, blog about the food, and then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ “

Informed Delivery says my ballot was delivered today. Also have a letter from ODOT. If it weren’t currently 10 at night I’d go for a drive to get it. That’s fine, I need to go to the store tomorrow, I can pick them up then. Might also get a pizza since it’s Pizza Friday tomorrow. Not Payday Pizza Friday, but since I’ve gotten one pizza in the last six weeks, I have at least two saved up so I can have this. Or I won’t. I don’t know, things are weird right now.

I worked from home for two weeks before operations were suspended, meaning it’s been 8 weeks since I last shaved. Two months in, still patchy. Been thinking about cleaning it up a little bit; get rid of the neck beard, trim the rest to a uniform length… I may never be able to participate in No-Shave November, but maybe I can find something that works for me. I have two more weeks to find something or else just gotta get rid of it all. However, the danger of having clippers in-hand may tempt me to give myself a haircut.

My stylist may actually kill me if I cut my own hair. Maybe I can video chat with her and she can tell me what to do. I can deal with the top doing whatever, maybe I go full mohawk, idk, but it’s slowly driving me insane with the hair around my ears making my glasses fit loose.

Okay, I’m real anxious to get those baby turtles hatched. So I’m going to do that.

Don’t forget your towel! And remember:

Don’t Panic.