Weekly Round Up: Quitter's Edition

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  This week I'm going to speed through my usual round up stuff and then tell you about quitting my job.  Again.

Eats

I would say that the NYT cooking section is not my #1 go to, but I do find things that look interesting over there once in a while.  This week I whipped up a simple pasta number, with the number one consideration being modifying it to things that I already had in the house.

Changes:

• Since I was using Costco frozen broccoli, I air fried it instead of pan frying it.
• Eliminated the yellow bell peppers since that would have meant going to the store.
• Halved the pasta.  The recipe as written said a full pound of pasta for four servings, which is A LOT of pasta, even when two of the four servings are for teenage boys.  It just seemed like too much in proportion to the other ingredients, and I saw a few comments called that out.
• Lol of course I skipped the red pepper flakes for the main dish on behalf of the tender palates in my house but I added a spoonful of Calabrian chili paste to my portion.

Review: super easy to cook, everyone loved it.

Workouts

I'm on the verge of dropping the workout section from the weekly round up.  It definitely had a place back in my running days, but there just isn't much to say about workouts now besides that I do them.  I think it's time to let it go and I can always add it back when/if something notable happens.

In place of a workout recap, I'll give you two pictures from our weekend hike with Doggo - at the top of this post and here.  We went to a new-to-us place.  The terrain wasn't very difficult, which was fine.  I mean, we could have used a little more of a challenge but in hiking you take what you are given.  Doggo enjoyed splashing around in the stream and chasing chipmunks.

Watching

Still cranking away on Your Friends and Neighbors, and it is still holding its ranking of "good enough to keep watching" and "I'd watch Jon Hamm in anything".  I have one more episode to go.

Reading

Here is where it gets good!

Last week I told you that I was 10% in to Remarkably Bright Creatures, which is a book that I put off reading because it is about an animal, so in my mind there was too much potential for it to miss the mark if the author got it wrong, or too much potential for it to be sad if the author got it right.  

RBC was worth the hype!  The only thing that I had trouble with is that in the beginning there is a slow spot where a lot of characters are introduced.  I had a hard time seeing how they related to the story, and frankly, didn't care for them.  After a stretch of me saying (to myself), "OK, can we get back to the octopus and the old lady already?" the ship righted itself and everything paid off.  Once the book got past the 50% mark I was All In.  The ending gave me misty eyes and required a nose blow.

Next up: the book that everyone else on the planet is reading right now!  That would be Heartwood by Amity Gaige.  My hesitation was that the Sarah's Bookshelves podcast went all in on this one, as they did for her previous book, which was a DNF for me.  I waited until I heard a few more yes votes from other readers that I trust, and also it helped that it was about hiking.

The story is about a woman who disappears while hiking the Appalachian trail.  We get three main POVs: the hiker, the leader of the search team, and an older woman in a nursing home who is interested in the story as it unfolds on the news.  Plus we hear from a few other folks in passing.  I generally do not do well with multiple POV/shifting timelines but Heartwood was a stellar exception.  Count me in on the hype!

Currently: the latest book by an author who has been a hit in the past (you have read The Last Flight, haven't you?)  That would be The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark.  As you can guess from the title, it's about a ghostwriter who has built her entire life around being invisible so that no one will figure out that her dad is a famous author who was suspected of murdering his siblings.  The time comes for dad to write his tell all, and guess who he picks for his ghostwriter?  I've barely started the book, so it's too soon to say, but the story has yet to rope me in.  We'll see what shakes out.  

Exciting Life Announcement (I think?)

I quit my job.

Sort of.

There was an off-blog situation that made it convenient for me to hold on to the job, but that cleared up last month.  I continued to hold off on quitting, and continued to be miserable, and last week I finally had enough.  During my weekly meeting with my boss, I told her that the job was not working for me, and offered to stay until they found a replacement.  I told her that my next role was going to be taking some time off from work to travel.

The response: "If we made it a part time role would you consider staying?"

Well, that's a curveball.  Maybe?

Today I had a conversation with my boss's boss who told me that they just love me, that they have outsourced the big horrible project that tipped the scale from me not liking the job to hating it, and he asked if I would stay on and see if I still felt the same way in a few months.

After the conversation ended, I realized that it was identical to the conversation I had with my then-employer two years ago where I quit and the answer was "No you didn't!  We'll give you a raise".  In this case it seems like the answer is "No you didn't! We'll just take away the work that you hate."

(In case anyone is new or has forgotten due to boredom, I am an accountant who specializes in payroll.  It's a bit niche but I'm hardly the only person on the planet who does this kind of work.  The normal reaction that I get when I quit a job is "don't let the door hit you".)

So now you know everything that I know about my current job status.    Is my role part time and if so what at what hours/pay/benefits?  Or am I free to travel as I please at full salary for the next few months?  I'm not clear but I guess my next move is to live my life and see how work reacts.

What's Next

A little more time at home, and then I'm off to BC to live the West Coast Life for a bit.  Then I'll be back home for a bit and then I'll jet set off to Nova Scotia to see how the East Coast lives.

Peace out!  See you next week!