This mother truckin’ Inuit knife and breadboard bowl set drops it like it’s hot and then crushes it! Did you club a seal today and need to skin it? Did your redneck neighbor pass out on your front porch again and it’s time to cut off his mullet? Or hey, maybe you just got some fresh strawberries from Trader Joe’s and you’re looking to make some shortcake, yum! Brother this is THE knife and breadboard set for you, because it’s been doing all that and more for a couple millenia. That knife warns you too, DON’T MESS WITH ME, I’LL CUT YOU. Look at those eyes. Those are not teddy bears, friend. Those bears mean business. Now it’s about time to chop those carrots and olives into oblivion, but don’t worry, they’re gonna keep safe in this bowl. No rolling around gonna happen. All in all these tools will make your chopping a breeze, and they might even protect you from a home invasion.

This morning Aimee and I went over to Junction City to measure a building that the JC Little Theater bought for some extra space.  Get this - the place started off as a mortuary, and most recently was some creepy-ass church that God was probably not even gonna claim.  So after hearing nothing but bad things about this building, imagine my surprise when I walked into the main room and felt nothing but inspiration.

John Ashcroft would be so proud!

The past couple weeks, I’ve been inspecting post office buildings across Kansas.  At first I was excited for the opportunity to get out of the office, but after doing a couple of them I started getting tired of transcribing manufacturer and model information on panel boards.  But today was actually really interesting.  I went down to Emporia to check out their place first.  It was actually a wealth of information of mechanical systems.  Surprisingly I hadn’t seen much about what goes into a modern HVAC system in 5 years of practice.  So I had a lot of catching up to do, and this was definitely jumping in head first.  They had equipment there I’d never even heard of.  I finally saw the culmination of what mankind has invented to keep a building at 72 degrees year round.  Hoses, tanks, metal boxes, finally they make sense to me.  Plus I keep getting up on the roofs of these places.  I can’t explain why that is so cool, maybe something to do with the height and the fact that not a whole lot of other people go up there, but it is super rad.

Let me tell you something else about post offices.  They all have an inspector’s gallery, which is this elevated hallway that surrounds the workroom (and pretty much every other space), with sneaky slots to look through to make sure people aren’t snooping through the mail.  Very off limits, even to Aimee and me, and we were there to assess the building conditions.  But here’s a picture of what they look like from the outside:

See the black rectangle and circles?  They’re louvers so that the inspectors can see out without anyone knowing they’re even up there.  “How could you miss seeing the inspector in the building” you ask?  They go straight into the gallery from a special door outside! Plus the inspectors carry a sidearm because “BITCHES TAMPERING WITH THE MAIL IS A FEDERAL OFFENSE!!!”

Another interesting part of Emporia’s post office was that they rent out the upstairs for people who want small office spaces.  And one of them, maybe a lawyer or something, had his place ransacked yesterday!  I’ve never been or even seen a place that had been so incredibly upended.  Papers everywhere, furniture turned over, office supplies splayed broken on the ground… it was just like on TV.  I wanted to find out what happened so badly… but the look on our escort’s face definitely said he wasn’t allowed to talk about it.

After Emporia, Aimee and I headed over to Osage City - a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, not that it’s bad at all.  It was a charming town.  Their post office was much less complicated, but really beautiful.  It definitely needed some help with a restoration, but you could see how much craftsmanship had been put into the place, almost a hundred years ago.  In fact, when the postmistress (?) was looking for building records, she found the original construction photos from around 1914.  They dug out the foundation using mules!!!

One more post office to go, then lots and lots of data entry.  :-/

Found on the door of the bathroom in a kindergarten class I was working in today:

Whew!  I just finished making some samosas.  Well, my take on samosas.  The pictures are crappy, but that’s just because I have a crappy camera and I just want to get going… sorry…

Take about 4 medium red potatoes, and boil ‘em down.  It should take you about 25 minutes.  Put the potatoes in a big bowl, and mash ‘em up with a fork.  Meanwhile, get an onion diced, and sautee it in a saucepan, and while you’re doing that, go ahead and throw maybe a cup of some frozen peas in there.  And throw some chopped jalapenos in there too.  Add in some garam masala, some cumin, a little coriander, a little turmeric, and (my own thing here) a little bit of yogurt - just to make it blend a little better, all to taste, and mix it up.

Here’s where I get a little off the traditional path.  Usually people would make their own dough to wrap the filling, but my difficulties with dough have been a little ridiculous lately.  I went ahead and bought wonton wraps, and all you have to do is put a little ball of the filling into them, slap some egg wash on the insides, and pinch them up into delicious little triangles.

Now I’m always weary of frying stuff.  It’s not that I’m bad at the execution, it’s just the idea of all that oil, when I could bake it instead… sorta gross… although it does taste good, I’ll definitely grant you that.  But because I’m cooking it for a big group, I went ahead and did both.  I baked about 20 of them, just pinched up the wontons, sprayed them with a little Pam, sprinkle a little sea salt on top, and pop them in the toaster oven.  With the rest of them, I did a little trick.  I put some vegetable oil in the pan, along with some red pepper flakes, and a little garlic powder.  Now I can’t say I’m an expert on the issue of frying stuff, but this all seemed like a good idea when I started out, and hell’s bells, it actually tasted damn good too - the flavors meld onto the wontons!  So there you have it.

The traditional dip for this is a cilantro and mint chutney.  And because I’m not really crazy about cilantro, (in fact, I hate it) I did a little “research” for good dipping sauces.  It really just involved mixing up different stuff I have in my fridge.  The best I came up with is Sriracha and yogurt.  I know, you’re thinking I’m nuts.  But it’s actually not to bad.  It’s spicy as hell, but it’s also cooling.  My taste buds didn’t know what to do.  Part of them felt like I did earlier when I was chopping the jalapenos and I rubbed my eye (AVOID THIS ACTION AT ALL COSTS), but the rest of my taste buds were nice and cool, like they were listening to Michael McDonald while skiing down a slope of fresh powder.  Anyway, cooking is just an experiment, so do what you want, whatever tastes good.

There is someone in my office that believes that Barack Obama is a sleeper cell for Al Qaeda. She thinks that if he gets into the oval office he’s going to start filtering information back to Iraq and basically blow up the whole USA.

I don’t think this picture helped.

Yeah, I know. Wearing a giant piece of fabric instead of a suit does not a terr’ist make.  Unfortunately, we live in a world where not everyone understands that.

*I wasn’t going to say, but this lady is the same one who hides pens.

This morning, our office manager came up to me with a peace offering.

The Zebra Orbitz.

I was excited, although skeptical.

As it turned out, I had good reason to be skeptical, because by 3:00 the pen had stopped working.

I still haven’t thought of a good way to get her to order the pens that actually work, but it’s always in the back of my mind.

This morning, my project manager forwarded me a voice mail on my phone at work. For 2 years, I’ve been under the impression that when I get a message, the phone will blink at me, or say something to the effect of “Message on Voice Mail,” but not this phone. Somehow it’s been set up differently from all the rest of the phones in the office. So for 2 years I never knew I had a single voice mail.

Finally, I figured out that I have to call to check if I have any messages. Who invented this system?? But my great discovery was not without a tinge of sadness. In an undated message, I was informed that after dropping my business card in the fishbowl at Malaya restaurant, I won free lunch for 15 people. They just needed to hear back from me within 48 hours… of last year.  D’oh!

And, by the way, Malaya is an awesome restaurant. I recommend it to anyone. Try the Rendang Beef or the Masaman Curry. It’s going to blow your mind.

So, I was walking to the office this morning, and I got to the pedestrian bridge in East Point, and all the sudden some bum started screaming at me. At first I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but he kept repeating himself, and this is what he said: “You better get on to school, miss whitey! Get on now!” I looked around to make sure he wasn’t yelling at someone else, but no, it was just me. I was so confused about it all that I just about tripped on the stairs.

First off, I’m 26. I’m an architect. I’m pretty sure he was referring to Tri-Cities High School here in the hood. I went to Manhattan High School in the late 90’s, so I’m good there.

I also like that a bum is telling anyone at all to go to school. Especially when said person is already headed in the direction of the school. It’s like, “no dude, you go to school!”

And most of all, I love that he called me Miss Whitey. I don’t know why he chose that name for me, but yes, I am Caucasian. I guess he’s just not that creative. Which may have to do with why he’s a bum.