February 4, 1994
Dear Everyone:
“Jeannie” was invited to a
Super Bowl
Party last Sunday. She was told
to "bring something", presumably something edible.
As the usual salsa, chips and dip
were already spoken for, she opted for "something a little sweet".
We discussed Grandma's almond
pastry, but puff pastry and afternoon football games didn't seem to go
together.
Then we had a brilliant idea:
Cookies. Cookies are,
after all, relatively easy to make. All
we needed was some way to make cookies football-oriented.
We discussed this both before and
after the movie. Blink,
a semi-thriller about a semi-blind, but terribly independent, young
woman who semi-sees a murder and the cop who tries to protect her.
I don't want to say it's
predictable, but “Jeannie”
claims to have spotted the murderer 20 minutes before there
was a murder.
Now back to the cookies. We
decided that sugar cookies would be best, particularly if we could find
ready-made dough at the grocer, and if we could find some shape for
football-related cookies. At a
specialty store in
Walnut
Creek, we found (are you sitting down?) football-shaped cookie
cutters! Or, maybe squash-shaped
cookie cutters, but they looked enough like footballs to suit us.
On to the grocery store for already-made chocolate and white frosting
(for coloring and decorating). It
should be noted that not all white frosting is equal.
What we thought was vanilla
frosting turned out to be cream cheese flavor.
Chocolate and cream cheese
footballs didn't seem like too good an idea, so I sent “Jeannie” back to
the store for vanilla frosting while I made up the cookie dough.
(We never did find ready-made
dough in the stores, although I've seen ads for it on TV every night
this week.)
We decided to do the honors at my place because, when I asked “Jeannie”
if she had a rolling pin, she fell down laughing.
I also happen to have such luxury
items as a mixer, baking sheets, cooling racks, and a cake decorating
kit.
Our plan was to color the cookies brown with the chocolate frosting,
then make the stripes that go around the ends of the footballs with
frostings colored to match the two teams.
Problem: Neither of us
knew what colors the
Dallas Cowboys
or the Buffalo
Bills wore. We asked various
store clerks and people standing in lines, and discovered that quite a
few people pay even less attention to football than we do.
After we got to my place, we called several male relatives, plus
“Frankie” in hopes of finding someone who could give us the proper
colors. We figured “Frankie”
probably wouldn't know, but “Larry” and/or “Trevor” might.
Nobody was home! On a Saturday
afternoon, nobody was home. We
left messages all over the country and decided, if no one called back by
the time the cookies were ready, we’d try a local radio station.
Failing that, the sports desk of
the
San
Francisco Chronicle. Luckily,
“Marshall” called back and reported that the Dallas Cowboys wear silver
and blue and the Buffalo Bills wear red and blue.
We were in business.
We rolled and cut and baked cookies and talked about what it was like to
bake when Dad was around.
Dad: "Whatcha doin’?"
Answer: "Makin’ cookies."
Dad: "You can fit more on the
sheet if you put them closer together."
Answer: "The recipe says 1 inch
apart."
Then he'd go and get a ruler.
Dad: "Is that one inch from edge
to edge or from center to center?"
That's what you get for picking an engineer for a father.
In engineering, inches count.
In cookies…well, it's not exactly
rocket science.
When they were baked, we ended up with an odd number of cookies, a
problem which “Jeannie” immediately solved by dropping one on the floor
and pronouncing it to be "a tester". We
made half of them "Cowboy" cookies and half "Bills" cookies.
“Jeannie” said the party was a big success (translation: there were a
multitude of ways to bet on the game) and so were the cookies.
The fans ate them all.
As for me, I did "watch" the game, which is to say, it was on.
I’d do things while the game was
actually in progress, then stop to watch the now-famous commercial
breaks, which I found to be over-rated. I
mean, $2,000,000 to sell potato
chips? Nevertheless, it
turned out to be a profitable day. I
did the laundry, made the bed, cleaned the bathrooms, emptied all the
wastebaskets, straightened out the dining table, completed my 1993
filing, shifted the file drawers and started my 1994 files.
I even considered doing my income
taxes, but no football game lasts that long.
Not even this one.
In other news…
Our "informal" presentation to upper management went virtually without a
hitch, then “Ken” took the whole team, plus the others, out to lunch.
With that, RMSEP is finished and
RMSTIC begins. (Records
Management Software Testing, Implementation & Conversion.)
This week is also the beginning of a new Safety Awareness program at
work. Apparently, Company may be
"Better Than the Best", but we’re also clumsier than most.
They're trying to improve our
On-The-Job Injury record. To
advertise, they gave everyone at a recent meeting a coffee mug with a
Safety logo on the side, and gold trim along the edge.
Which means it's not safe to use
in the microwave. Just a little
unclear on the concept.
Love, as always,
Pete
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