Day Three Hundred Forty-Four

I have, admittedly, become obsessed with the concept of time ever since COVID decided to smach clocks and make calendars obsolete. Like, I know all minutes are created equal, but at the same time a March 2020 minute IS NOT THE SAME as a February 2021 minute.

It's not. I'll fight you about it.

Part of what has my attention is the fact that we apparently treat time differently now. I mean that in some very specific ways. One is that we seemingly schedule interactions in advance WAY more than ever. Now that it's not possible to hang out at the water cooler and chat with co-workers, we've devolved to setting up 30 minute meetings for EVERY FREAKIN LITTLE CONVERSATION. I am as guilty as anybody at this - you basically have to block someone's calendar if you want to speak with them for a few minutes. I don't know that it's bad, necessarily, but it does mean that I have a lot more 30-minute meetings with just one person on my calendar. The thing that isn't talked about is how many of those water cooler chats just don't happen. Some of it was meaningless banter, but some of it is people solving problems without talking to anyone just because they don't want to schedule a meeting. Which, yay!

The other very specific thing is that I'm finding is that some aspects of life are doing more to be respectful of our time, albeit a side effect of other priorities. The very best example I can give has to do with dance competitions. We're still doing them, by the way. They look remarkably different than they did last year at this time, but part of that difference is much better scheduling.

In the past, a dance competition would have been an erasure of three solid days. Alexis would have had a dance or two each day, spread out, and basically we would have been trapped at a hotel waiting long periods between her four-minute performances. Not this year! This year they've scheduled things so that they prevent overlap between dance studios. So, instead of having all of the tap dances or jazz dances or whatever performed in a block of time, all of the dancers from a particular studio are in a block of time. That means that at the competition Alexis will be at this weekend, she'll only need to be there four hours. All seven of her dances fit into that time frame, one quickly after the other. The goal is to prevent interactions between groups of people, but the most excellent side effect is a much better use of my time.

I've noticed that with a lot of things in life. We're focused on staying apart, which means we're finding ways to be more efficient with our scheduling.

Let's keep that, please. A whole lot of things need to go away as soon as possible and they better take COVID with them, but let's keep improved scheduling around.

Day Three Hundred Forty-One

Speaking of interviews that stick with you, I have a million examples of how very small Pittsburgh can be. For one, there are legitimately six people I know who have applied for a position where I work, and I don't think any of them know I work there. (There are two more who do know I work there and who have applied, so SMALL WORLD, INDEED.)

But a better example of how small Pittsburgh can be happened a few years ago. We were hiring in my department and someone came through that was referred by the manager of another department. We'll call the manager Frank just for the sake of having a name. Frank happens to be the person one who is friends with my cousin's wife, so AHOY! SMALL UNIVERSE! But the pattern continues. The candidate was someone Frank had worked with previously and it was someone I know from the internet. Twitter, to be exact.

Like, OG Twitter.

So Frank was recommending this person, but my first thought was OH HELL NO. I blocked that jerk on Twitter ten years ago for being more arrogant than any one person should be. But maybe? In all my years of internetting, I've met many people who were either much more awesome in person than they seemed online or vice versa. Sometimes Twitter brings out the best, other times it brings out the worst, but it had been ten years, so maybe I was wrong?

Regardless, we brought the person in for the group interview process. I genuinely maintained an open mind, even hoping the candidate would be a good fit because that person was set to save me from drowning under mountains of work. Now, there's a few important details worth mentioning. I had actually met the candidate in the past. Several times. We became acquainted via the internet, but had overlapped with some in-person events. Multiple.

I should have been a familiar face.

And name. He easily could have recognized my name. Our in-person overlap was such that it would have been very possible.

Regardless, once we were in a room together talking about the open position, it was very clear that he had NO IDEA we had ever met. He wasn't particularly good during the interview, but whatever. I had already determined that I would go with what the other five people interviewing him thought. If they were all in, I'd be all in. There was no sense in being a jerk just because someone doesn't remember me, y'know?

But hahahahahalololz. Evvvvvverybody was a nope. My favorite nope was the nopest of them all. One of my peers asked, "How would your co-workers describe you?" The candidate, the one who I labeled as arrogant years ago, looked the interviewer in the eye and sternly replied, "They would say I"m Superman."

That's not exactly the humble sort of personality we set out to hire. So.

He didn't get the job. Clearly. And I didn't have to say a word in the debrief meeting, so extra win and such.

Pittsburgh is so small, yinz. So small.

Day Three Hundred Forty

Of all things, Timehop reminded me that this recipe exists and is FANTASTIC. My whole week of posts has been photos of tiny Mila happily eating them, so basically I need to get on that. And now.

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Somehow the laziest version of parenting has us packing Mila's lunch every day. It's a weird little loop, but, yes. Lazy. The lazy is why I'm always looking for things to make for her that will travel well.

Pizza Puffs!

I've been meaning to make tiny fist-sized pizzas for the Tiny Human for a while and finally got around to figuring out a recipe that is meatless and that maximized the cheese. Because cheese. Cheese is Mila's love language.

So is dip. If she could dip cheese in cheese and call it lunch, she totally would. While I didn't go quite that far, I did let her dip her Pizza Puffs in pizza sauce and that was enough for her to double-fist them. Repeatedly.

I imagine grown-ups would as well. These make a great appetizer, or pair them with salad for a pretty fabulous meal. (I know it's a fabulous meal because it's exactly what we had for dinner tonight.)

Pizza Puffs (makes 24 mini puffs)

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
3/4 cup milk
1 large egg
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (divided) (alternately -- use a mix of mozzarella and parmesan)
Pizza sauce 

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Find a mini muffin pan that will bake 24 at a time and spray non-stick spray all over that thing. Now spray a little more non-stick spray because cheese. Cheese sticks.

2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, oregano, salt, and basil. Whisk lightly to mix.

3. Add the milk and egg. Use a fork to mix everything up really well.

4. Stir in 1 cup of shredded cheese.

5. Place a little bit of the mixture into each of the muffin cup spots. 

6. Top each one with about a teaspoon of cheese. It's not worth actually measuring it -- just use up the remaining 1 cup of cheese that you have sitting there.

7. Bake at 400 degrees for 18-20 minutes.

8. As soon as you remove the pan from the oven, use a butter knife to score around the side of each puff and pry it out of the muffin pan.

9. Serve with pizza sauce. 

10. All forms of pizza are excellent forms of pizza, no?