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Or the next day, whichever.
Monday I played catch-up, reading my 467 e-mails and listening to my full voice-mail box in between meetings and frantic phone calls. I mention specifically the number of e-mails to illustrate the point that people don’t read a fucking thing I send them. (Here’s the body text of the e-mail I sent before leaving: “I will be on vacation next week (July 14-18 2003) and will not return until July 21. I won’t be checking my work e-mail or voice mail while I am on vacation. If you have any urgent computer issues while I am on vacation, please contact $COLLEAGUE1 or $COLLEAGUE2.” Do you see anything ambiguous about it that would indicate that I’d be able to help them with their piddly shit while away? Do you see anything that tells them “Hey, I won’t be checking e-mail or voice mail but if you IM me I’ll hop right to it!”?)
Tuesday I got back into new stuff, or rather, new problems with the same old stuff. For the record, I severely dislike LB&E. After work I picked up supplies for tonight’s dinner attempt, which I’ll summarize later.
My workouts Monday and Tuesday were at the same levels as before I left, trying to set the bar at a respectable level for tomorrow and Friday. Somehow I think I was expecting more of a challenge, considering I’d been away from the weights for a week and a half, so I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to stay where I was. ‘Course, it didn’t hurt that I was a little irked at my stupid users both days. (And I think the leg press machine is trying either to escape or to migrate, because every day I go through there it’s just a liiiiiiittle bit closer to the door.)
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Tonight’s dinner will be my first attempt at tandoori chicken, as cooked on a barbecue grill. I’ll be heading home at lunch today to prepare the marinade (plain yogurt + spices) and toss in the chicken; five hours should be plenty of marinatin’ time. You could say I’m excited about tandoori – even though it’s a northern Indian style of cooking, it’s not all that far from southern Indian in a global sense; it appears to be shockingly easy (famous last words); and I’ve been all about grilling with marinades anyway. Technically, tandoori requires a special wood-fired clay oven (a tandoor), but since I don’t have one readily available, the barbecue will get that smoky-spicy flavor much closer than the oven.
My one big, huge, tremendous problem about Tandoori Attempt Alpha is that I could have sworn that Jay’s sold poori or chapati or SOME Indian bread already made. Unfortunately, they don’t, and I don’t have time to learn how to make any of them before tonight. So it’ll just be rice with the tandoori chicken. 
Later in the year, when the grill starts to become impractical, I think I’ll try another of the recipes on that site – the chicken curry looks especially good, although I have to be surreptitious with ginger around Ed.
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This is my obligatory link to a balanced picture of the whole SCO vs. IBM mess, for good Google-measure.
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I really should do a vacation recap about now, but I so don’t feel like it at the moment. Next post.
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