a lot of stuff

Tonight I made the ganache for the chocolate orange cupcakes. Instead of trying to make candied orange peel (which is easy enough, just takes a little time) and shave the almonds perfectly to get the texture of the Lindt Excellence Intense Orange bars I decided to just use the Lindt bars. I didn’t like the consistency so I added a tiny bit of orange extract and a few ounces of dark chocolate. Then it was perfect. It’s been chilling for a couple hours now, so I just tasted it – divine! I have 4 cupcake orders for tomorrow so I plan to pull out some of the chocolate cupcakes and try them with this ganache.

Thank you all for the comments about the cookies. I ended up making a spreadsheet to analyze the cost of the supplies before calling the woman with pricing. When we talked I told her that generally cookies go for $1.25-1.50 each, then we moved on to discussing flavors, delivery and timing. When we went back to cost I said I’d be willing to do them for $0.85 each. I don’t think she expected that! So now I’ll wait to hear. 1000 cookies is a lot for a person with one oven to make, but my profit in this would be decent so I’m crossing my fingers.

The very day it started to cool off here in the A my Jeep decided to start overheating on me. I don’t know what’s up with that. My coolant is almost full, but it still keeps getting to an uncontrollably high temp. Luckily I remembered my boss telling me that you can cool your car down by turning on the heat. Who knew!? So I’ve been roasting my ass off even though it’s nice and cool outside, but – knock on wood – I haven’t completely overheated yet. I’ll be having it looked at this weekend and I can only hope it’s not retardedly expensive.

I also thank all of you who left comments on last night’s post. It was nice to see people open up about feeling some of the same things…that always makes things easier. I’ve always thought women make things harder on each other by not talking about things we really feel for fear of judgment and criticism. But in the end a lot of us feel similarly about situations and life. Opening up makes us feel less alone and shameful. And reading the comments today I definitely felt better about being honest. Some of the people I thought would criticize me the most, or turn up their noses, left comments that made me understand THEM better…not just myself. That was big.

This was a little piece of the conversation we had last night over tea and hot chocolate…me, Hot Flash and Asian Persuasion. HF mentioned how one of her bosses had said once that women are basically saboteurs to other women. I’ve obviously experienced this in my corporate life, as most women in the corporate world probably have. We’re so quick to judge another woman or talk about her behind her back instead of approaching, helping, empowering. That’s really quite sad if you think about it.

The most valuable experience in my own corporate life came when I was promoted to a position of managing people. The company I worked for at the time – Jesiis, Inc – while corrupt as fuck, they took the necessary steps to train new managers in coaching. Not managing, but coaching. In that position I learned that while talking to someone about something they aren’t doing well can be difficult, there’s a way to do it to gain buy-in without putting someone on the defensive.

This is also one of the greatest lessons my dad ever gave me. As a long-time people manager, one of the first things he told me when I was promoted was that he makes an effort every single day to walk out onto the floor and connect with every single person. “Make sure they know you care about them as individuals,” he said. I took his advice…and it worked for me.

Another thing my dad taught me at a young age was after he got pulled over for speeding on a family vacation. Afterwards he told me that he’d never had a ticket in his life. “Barista,” he said, “the key is to admit you are wrong before anyone ever accuses you. That way you can’t be put on the defensive. If you know you are wrong don’t make excuses. Just own up. When the police officer pulled me over I said ‘I’m sorry. I know what I did. I was going a little over the speed limit and didn’t realize it until I looked down.’ He couldn’t say anything because I’d already said it. Always own up and you will see the difference. They don’t have any reason to come at you.”

And all my life I’ve tried to live that way. I don’t say things about people that I wouldn’t say to them if they confronted me and I own up to my mistakes. Thanks, Dad. I don’t feel like I’ve ever given you the credit you deserve for that, but now I know I need to.

All this goes back to people. Relating. Understanding. It’s why I love reading blogs and anthropology so much. I love seeing people in their own situations. With the exception of a few, most of the blogs I read are written by people who will tell the good, bad and ugly. The ones who only talk of the good shit annoy me. The ones who won’t tell all sides of the story lose my interest. But that’s just me. I like reality. Honesty. Truth. Bad AND good. I like knowing you’re human with feelings, too. Because that’s what is real.

Today I was reading a blog I’ve been reading for a while now and she asked the question what would you do if you could pursue your ultimate happiness without financial or other obstacles (that’s my interpretation, not a direct quote). I responded that I’d 1) get a PhD in anthropology 2) join the Peace Corps and 3) open a bakery. When she responded that she’d gotten her undergrad degree in anthropology and applied to the PC I wasn’t really that surprised. We’re generally drawn to people like us, no? Putting up a front with me will make me reject all that is you. I’m sorry. It’s true. I’ll still read from time to time, but when you aren’t honest and real it gets old. Nobody’s life is perfect.

And since I’m trying to see things from my dad’s perspective…please remember if you see typos that I write all of this from my blackberry. I know how to spell. I know proper words. But sometimes there will be errors. Don’t hate.

And that’s all.