Sophia, I tend to cook my down a fair bit, so it does get a little mushy, but the tomato paste thickens up what all the moisture coming out of the veggies would make soupy.

Do you guys have a long weekend this weekend? We have no holidays between New Year and Easter, it's so wrong.

Too bad y'all weren't bigger racists, huh?

That's what niceness will get you, Canadians.

Tomato paste-- check.

I do not have a ong weekend, and we get no time for easter, so I think that I have nothing between now and memorial day.

That is far too long between holidays.

Ooh, I just invited some (possibly semi-, but still) vegetarians over for dinner. Maybe I'll make chili!

Tonight I had Italian out for dinner, which was yum, but more money than expected. Which is what happens when you order a million things.

And yet? I really want Korean food.

OMG, this picture of the world's smallest man with the world's tallest man is just freaky: [link]

He Pingping of China holds the hand of Sultan Kosen of Turkey as they attend the Guinness World Records Roadshow, on January 14, 2010 in Istanbul, Turkey. He, standing at 73 cm (2 feet 5 inch), and Kosen, at 246.5 cm (8 feet 1 inch), are both in the Guinness World Records for their statures.

Oh, yeah, we just discovered hominy in chili and it is serious nom. It's the right texture for chili and everything just absorbs all the spicy deliciousness. The SO always makes a big batch that we intend to freeze, but we never do because it's so good we have to just eat it all up.

We make ours with ground bison, natch. And super hot. Because we've been living in the southwest a long time now.

Oh, yeah, and the only major deviation we have in our recipe is that we bring to a boil first, then reduce to a simmer. You can simmer it all day and it just keeps getting better. Then we add the canned beans with their liquid late in the process, so they don't get too mushy.

Do you guys have a long weekend this weekend? We have no holidays between New Year and Easter, it's so wrong.

I do for the first time in live ever, and it's fucking my shit up.

I cannot believe how crazy fucking swamped we've been - we're two weeks into the year and it feels like we've been going full steam for two months already. And it's not getting better any time soon.

Oh, except, maybe a little better. After a long and kind of strange late night IM chat with my boss last night (the kind that started with her pinging me at 11 pm and asking "can I ask you a question and have you be completely frank in your answer" oy) I may have convinced my boss to put our senior people on a two-day-a-week work from home policy. That would be huge for me, from a mental health standpoint as much as workload. Fingers crossed.

Also she managed to get budget to fully fund my Blackberry, which will be an extra $50 a month in my pocket. (Right now they pay the data plan but not the phone; technically the policy is they only fund it at all for people at VP level and above, unless you travel like 80%.)

Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I'm not coping particularly well right now so makes a big difference to me.

Until a few years ago, we were in the same boat (not getting time off between New Years and Memorial Day). Now, they give us Presidents Day off.

I probably won't be getting any PTO between now and then, either, since my boss is out with a broken ankle until about that time (she can't put any weight at all on it for six weeks, had to get pins put in and everything).

If the scheduling of my surgery works out, I'll probably be out for at least half of April. I was just going to take 1 1/2 weeks disability for the surgery, but a friend and former co-worker was telling me that it's easier to schedule too much short-term disability and then come back early than it is to get more if something happens. Also, she told me to relax a bit and take my time coming back. She has a point, so I'll probably schedule a month and then maybe come back after 15-20 days if nothing goes wrong.