Comedy of Errors

That's right. Today has been one of those days. One of those days when there's nothing more to do but throw up your hands and have a laugh. Today has been a comedy of errors.

1) To start with, knowing that there was a 75% chance of rain today I decided to go for my not-quite daily run this morning. I looked out the window and the sky was perfectly blue with just a few non-menacing looking clouds - it appeared I had at least a few hours before the rain came. I headed out full of ambition reminding myself of that bridesmaid dress I'll be wearing in August every time I felt like quitting. Soon into my run I noticed a small dark grey (gray?) cloud hovering over the park, but again, the sky around it was crystal blue. I wasn't afraid. Not long after that, I noticed the occasional sprinkle, but it wasn't yet enough to make me back down. After all, the sky was still blue.

Nearing what I had hoped would only be the half-way mark of my run, the sprinkles increased. I thought, "okay, maybe I should head home." Next thing I know, the sky burst open and poured down it's fury on me and my white (with a strategically placed print on the front) t-shirt. The wind blew the rain sideways enough that I was able to take shelter for a moment by the park gate before braving the freezing wind and rain again to go head home. And still, I could see that just a kilometer away from where I stood, the sky was sparkling blue. Of course, the menacing clouds were moving in my direction, so they followed me all the way home...

2) Later the rain stopped and the streets invited my presence once again. So I decided to walk down to the grocery store to buy some ingredients for the pecan pie I'm making for Easter. Little did I know that with the rain came a temperature decrease of at least 15 degrees (F, I'm still not a pro with C) and an even stronger wind than this morning. I was very unprepared with my waist-length Old Navy peacoat and scarf. This was bomber-jacket weather. So I suffered the whole way to the grocery store, but got a coffee on the way to warm me up.

3) I came back from the grocery store ready to bake my pie, and while the pie was baking I was planning on running a file recovery program to recover my iTunes library that I lost ("Don't forget to back-up your music" - I always clicked "later"). I downloaded the program and was getting ready to print the directions when I realized we were out of printer paper. I just stood there. I can't do this w/o directions - I'm technologically challenged. So I got creative...we have some double-wide paper that our landlords left, so I got busy with the scissors, cutting the 8.5x22 paper down to 8.5x11 for the printer. It worked!

4) I was told that I needed a 4GB flash drive and a CD-ROM, so I bought both of those a week or so ago and sat down to begin the process. I popped in my 800MB CD-ROM and surely you can guess what message I received..."there is not enough space..." How much space did I need? Why, 847MB, of course.

5) So I got busy baking my pie. The directions said to roast the pecans in the microwave, but our microwave shoots flames when you turn it on and since I don't want to blow up the apartment building I decided to roast the pecans in the oven while it was pre-heating. I've roasted pecans before - how hard could it be? Well, this time was different b/c the pecans weren't coated in eggwhites and yummy sugar and cinnamon, and the oven was hotter. Next thing I know it smells like burnt popcorn, but I wasn't making popcorn - it was the pecans. Now please keep in mind that not only are pecans my favorite snack of all time, one of the few nuts I'm NOT allergic to, and pecan pie is my favorite, but on top of all that, you can't get pecans here. Most people here don't even know what they are. So the only way you can get them is to pay an arm and a leg at the American Store or else have somebody send/bring them to you, and these were the last of the pecans that somebody brought me in January. My initial reaction was to cry, but really, what good would that do? So I laughed. And then I tasted one of the pecans....charcoal. So I set about picking out the bad ones and got a sharp knife to shave the charcoal off of the only half-bad ones. I am determined.

6) Finally, everything was ready. All I had left to do was roll out the crust, put it in the pan, and then put everything inside of it. So I pull out my store-bought pie-dough (because Crisco is also an American Store item and I forgot to buy some last time I went...besides, making crust is hard work!) and get ready to lay it out. As I unfold it, it just breaks into three pieces. Three pieces that won't smush back together. I forgot to defrost it. Again, what can you do but laugh? Thankfully the box comes with two pie doughs, so the second is currently defrosting while the rest of the pie materials wait politely on the kitchen counter.

Let's just hope and pray the pie turns out deliciously non-charcoal flavored. Either way, I'll take a picture for you.

-LB