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Pros and cons...
Nov. 28th, 2009 09:12 pmI made a conscious decision to "play hooky" yesterday, figuring - about time, too - that it was far more likely that Huntur (and maybe even Mathew) would remember baking bread and cookies and a dessert with their grandpa on the Friday after Thanksgiving than their grandpa disappearing into his office to translate a fascinating reliability analysis of some hardware half a world away. I reasoned I would have the weekend, and maybe even a day or so this coming week to catch up.
Making the bread is a sort of routine affair by now, so there's nothing new to say about that. The cookies came out of a package Huntur bought at the store. The dessert? Well, that was something else.
It was a galette (which I, in my own philistine manner, kept called a torte), the makings of which are described in a video at Chez Pim's Mix-on-the-Counter Flaky Pastry Dough. The recipe looked so easy, I figured I'd give it a try, using raspberries instead of nectarines. The kids helped. There is something about kneading dough into butter, I don't know...
Anyway, the result was not as nice-looking as what came out of the oven in the video, but it was more than serviceable. Folks who ate it were pretty enthusiastic about the product, which disappeared quickly. Even Galina complimented me (mostly it was the surprise in her voice when she said "This is really good!"). I was a little surprised myself, too.
The grandkids spent the night, mostly with Aunt Natalie, and after we got up, we all had a nice breakfast, whereupon I really had to disappear into my office and get to work. The night before, my client had sent an email saying the translations on my plate had to be delivered Monday, and to let him know if he needed to reassign any of my documents, which - as it turned out after I took a close look at what needed to be done- he did.
There is a part of me that felt bad about doing that that, because I pride myself on being the type of freelancer whose assigned work doesn't get reassigned, but I temper that feeling with the knowledge that there really hadn't been a deadline set for the documents on my plate. Had the email set a deadline of Tuesday morning, I wouldn't have written this paragraph.
Balancing the two, the time spent with the grandkids was well worth it. We all got together for a dinner of leg-of-lamb earlier this evening, and then sat around a fireplace that hadn't seen use since 1995, according to Natalie.
It was definitely a time well spent.
Cheers...
Making the bread is a sort of routine affair by now, so there's nothing new to say about that. The cookies came out of a package Huntur bought at the store. The dessert? Well, that was something else.
It was a galette (which I, in my own philistine manner, kept called a torte), the makings of which are described in a video at Chez Pim's Mix-on-the-Counter Flaky Pastry Dough. The recipe looked so easy, I figured I'd give it a try, using raspberries instead of nectarines. The kids helped. There is something about kneading dough into butter, I don't know...
Anyway, the result was not as nice-looking as what came out of the oven in the video, but it was more than serviceable. Folks who ate it were pretty enthusiastic about the product, which disappeared quickly. Even Galina complimented me (mostly it was the surprise in her voice when she said "This is really good!"). I was a little surprised myself, too.
The grandkids spent the night, mostly with Aunt Natalie, and after we got up, we all had a nice breakfast, whereupon I really had to disappear into my office and get to work. The night before, my client had sent an email saying the translations on my plate had to be delivered Monday, and to let him know if he needed to reassign any of my documents, which - as it turned out after I took a close look at what needed to be done- he did.
There is a part of me that felt bad about doing that that, because I pride myself on being the type of freelancer whose assigned work doesn't get reassigned, but I temper that feeling with the knowledge that there really hadn't been a deadline set for the documents on my plate. Had the email set a deadline of Tuesday morning, I wouldn't have written this paragraph.
Balancing the two, the time spent with the grandkids was well worth it. We all got together for a dinner of leg-of-lamb earlier this evening, and then sat around a fireplace that hadn't seen use since 1995, according to Natalie.
It was definitely a time well spent.
Cheers...
