Behold, the much-maligned aubergine!

Thanks to those of you who have expressed condolences or amusement at my last post. The job has actually been quite fun, and I'll be sad to say goodbye to all the friends I've made over the last month. C'est la vie...

Now to the pressing issue.

Aubergines.

Brinjals.

Nightshades. (women screaming)

No, these are not villains, X-Men characters, or video games. (Though if you happen to find Nightshade for PS2, I've heard it's a disappointing game.) The nightshade is actually a nickname for the name of the plant family Solanaceae, and aubergine and brinjal are common names for this often-not-well-received culinary item.

Ladies and gentlement: the EGGPLANT.

You've gotta admit. This guy's cute.

While searching through coupons the other day (a fully-developed habit over the last few months), Angie found the Sunflower Market ads, on which we found a coupon for $0.55 eggplants. Since I am a devoted fan of Eggplant Parmigiana, we decided to pick up a couple. Then, upon reading the recipes for my beloved Italian dish, we decided to leave the eggplant alone until something a bit more...ahem...healthy.

We found this recipe in the Wok recipe book sold at Ikea. It's called Sweet Garlic Eggplant, and the moment we saw it, we knew it was our recipe. Well, at least I knew it was our recipe. Here's a legal version I found online, basically the same thing (but add 1/2 chopped onion, and it's 6 Tbsp brown sugar, not caster). Actually, who am I kidding? I don't even know the legality of posting copyrighted recipes online.

(I could only find the Pasta cookbook image on the internet. Imagine it's blue. And says Wok.)

So, last night, during Angie's second headache during our entire relationship, I made the eggplant in the wok. And it was DELICIOUS!! Who knew eggplant could be so good?!? And what's all this information about eggplant being gross and all that I was flooded with as a child? Not to any parent's fault - I think it was just society in general. (Except that one video game, remember Ben? With those eggplants that restored health? Yeah, that was a good one...) But I did do a bit of research last night on the vegetable (also known as aubergine or brinjal, and a nightshade like the tomato and potato), and found out a good bit of information.

• Every 3.5 oz of eggplant contains only 20 calories.
• The same amount contains 3.4g of dietary fiber (that explains something...)
• Eggplants block the formation of free radicals.
• They are richer in nicotine than any other edible plant.
  -Don't worry, it takes 20 lbs of eggplant to equal the nicotine of 1 cigarette.

So those of you who are unfortunately duped by the misinformed and still believe eggplant is gross and inedible and all that, give it a try. There are TONS of recipes online, and it's really good. It mostly absorbs the flavor of whatever it's cooked in, and it's very filling! Angie and I only ate 1/2 of what I made (1/4 each), much less than I thought. Angie said it filled her like chicken does. At a fraction of the cost!! :)

Either way, I'm an eggplant fan. And I'm spreading the word. Enjoy!

My job, for another week

Angie's been dominating the blogosphere as of late, so I thought with my extra time this morning I'd post an entry.

This is about my job, the call center. Now, I know a few of you have worked at a call center before, but for the rest of you, let me explain. I get to work every morning at 8:45am, sit down at my computer in my little cubicle (which yesterday was upgraded with my name taped to the inside!), sign in to the appropriate software, click a button, and receive a call that's been waiting anywhere from 3 minutes to who-knows-how-long.

"Thank you for calling customer support. My name is Anthony. How can I help you?"

I repeat this mantra dozens of times a day. And a few other phrases. In fact, I've been noticing that in my normal speech to friends and family I've begun to include my "phone phrases". It's rather depressing, actually. Phrases like "Have you had the opportunity to..." or if I interrupt someone I automatically stop and say something like "Go ahead..." or "Excuse me", without realizing it. Not that it's bad to not interrupt somebody, but it's like a Pavlovian effect. I feel somehow less of a person... ;)

I wish I could explain the wide range of calls I get, but I don't have the time. And neither do you. But I can tell you of the extremes. For instance, a couple weeks ago I had this freaky, psycho Mormon-hater guy call. I began with the mantra, and he immediately asked "Are you LDS?" I sat there a second, confused at the abnormality of the question. He repeated himself, "Are you LDS??" My mind was saying 'Don't tell him anything!!', but my mouth said "Uhh...yes...", at which point Mr. Mormon-hater asked me (quite nicely, actually) to put him on hold, and tell my supervisor that I wouldn't receive calls concerning one of the companies we do support for. I told him we couldn't do that. He began berating me for compromising my religion by working for them. I asked if I could help him somehow, and he repeated his request, which I refused for a second time. Then he asked if I knew the "big Mormon church by DC," which I have seen (DC Temple). He said "I drive by that church every day going to work, with its big spires and its golden man pointing his golden stick in the air. And evertime I pass it from now on, I'm going to think about how bad of a Mormon you are! Does that make you feel bad?!?" I spoke before I could stop myself, with a slight chuckle, "Actually, I find that quite amusing..."

That didn't make him happy.

I've also had a lady who screamed herself hoarse on the phone. Like, literally, hoarse. She couldn't speak more than a whisper by the time she was done.

But then, I've spoken to a lady who was absolutely kind and wonderful. She was 82 years old, engaged to be married in a couple months, and just talked about how life starts at 80 and how wonderful my life will be with my wife and how I should just love every minute of it. That call was about 20 minutes long, and totally made my month. :)

Either way, I have to get to work, but now you know what I do every day. Well, at least the extremes. Just try to find a midpoint, and that's my job. :) It's not that bad. Besides, I only have another 8 days in it.

Ravioli

With all of my extra time at home, I've been thinking up more creative ways to make dinner. Nothing expensive, just homemade. :)

So for the first time I tried making homemade ravioli. Not too hard right? I didn't have a pasta presser though so I did have to ask Anthony and his bulging muscles to help out :).

They actually turned out a little on the big side but they tasted great! The filling just consisted of spinach, mozzarella, parmesan, salt and pepper, and 1 egg. Super easy! :)

We ate it with tomato sauce from a jar and the best homemade Rosemary Bread
ever!

Side note: If you ever do make past dough from scratch, unused dough doesn't keep very well (actually... not at all!). It must be all the eggs involved or something because when I pulled the leftover dough out the next morning it was green. Definitely not edible.

Home Sweet Home

To start off my boring week of unemployment, I decided to figure out the square footage of our teeny tiny apartment. The measurements:

17ft by 24 ft

which equals.... a whopping 408 sq. ft. :(

I think my parent's living room is bigger than that.

Update

Just in case all four of you who read our blog are dying from the suspense from the last post, here's the update:

Anthony took the call center job and I'm still trying to hunt one down.

As for the guy we met at Costco:

We did have interviews with his financial services company on Saturday and I felt like it was my last and only option. It's a commission-based salary and even though I've always avoided sales jobs like the plague, this product actually helped people save money rather then scamming them into spending more money.

However, these type of jobs require some upfront investment to become an official representative. It covers a lot of things, like getting licensed and having an online account. It's not a fortune but, remember, we are literally dirt poor. So what I thought would be my saving grace from boredom and laziness, was just a dead end. Back to job searching... (silent sobbing)

Now some of you right now might be thinking that you'd rather be in my place than work at the boring job you have now. But I've learned that being unemployed with your husband is a lot more fun than being unemployed with yourself. Apart from searching craigslist every 5 minutes, I've taken to baking my own sandwich bread and making homemade potato chips to fill up my free time.

It's going to be a long 5 weeks.

Stormy Interview Results

Stormy, because I'm watching a strong thunderstorm approach from the West, over Utah Lake. Just beautiful...

Interview results, because, well, the results from the interview are back. Let me explain the whole situation.

First, read Angie's blog from last night.

Good. Now, here's how it all went down. We showed up there a few minutes early, a little flustered because our printer decided to only be "half there," printing only half a line (like the bottom half, not the top), so we had to stop by campus to print our resumes there. The building is one of those beautiful stone and brick office buildings on North University Avenue before Riverwoods. We walked up the stairs to the 3rd floor (forget the elevator - we needed to get rid of nerves) and meet some guy at the front desk of the suite. Something seemed a little odd at first. He's wearing a polo (nice one, but still a polo), and jeans. "Hmm..." I think. "Relaxed kind of guy."

Then he greets us and asks Angie to wait in a side room while I'm interviewed. He takes me back, starts the small talk, then asks me who I know that works here. Suddenly I begin to think that maybe, just maybe, this isn't the interview I thought it was. As my palms began to sweat I looked up at him with a completely natural face and explained that with all the phone calls we made and resumes we sent out, I can't really remember who it was that referred his company to us. (Meanwhile I'm wracking my brain - "This isn't the Costco guy! Who is it?!?")

At this point I realize that my Heavenly Father really does love me. Just as I'm about to spill the beans and announce that, in reality, I have no idea what company this is that I'm interviewing for, he says, "Why don't I explain a little what we do." I bit my tongue. "We're a customer service call center..." I shook my head as if it was an expected comment, while internally I was screaming out of relief and thanking my Father in Heaven for His obvious hand in keeping me from stuffing my foot in my mouth.

He went on, but for the minute or so afterward I was sort of lost, wondering how on earth I could have mixed up the interviewers and how I was going to tell Angie before she stuck her foot in her mouth. I quickly rerouted my Interviewing Strategy from Finance stuff to phone calls/customer service/sales, which took a few seconds to jive in my head, then began to proceed with the interview as if it was completely planned. We were interrupted for a moment when an employee knocked and needed his signature on a document, during which time I stealthily snuck out my phone and texted Angie "this is the call center".

Anyways, to make a long(er) story short, this was the call center my sister's friend works at and gave me the number to, since they hire for the summer and expect everyone to quit once school starts again. Which is what we're gonna do anyways, minus the school starting thing.

He wants to hire me (he can't hire both of us because the company doesn't allow family members to work together) full-time, 9-5 M-F, and I said yes.

To thicken the plot...

20 minutes after I shook Mr. Call Center's hand, the Costco guy called. We have interviews tomorrow at 11am... Oh dear...

Currently Unemployed

Well, it definitely has been awhile and we're definitely back in Provo. Not just from the Singers tour (we've been home from that since May 26) but from family trips to Texas and Las Vegas. Devan and Bekah both graduated from High School so we had to be there to celebrate! It was great to see family, relax and not really have to worry about the real world.

But as I told you before... we're back in Provo, which is as close to the real world as we get. Anthony and I both had jobs on BYU campus and because of our recent graduation in April, we're no longer qualified to get paid by the university. So where does that leave us? The "currently unemployed" status. We're not really students anymore but we're not really full-time job material either. We're only in Provo until the middle of August which gives us a less than 7 weeks of working time. Every morning for the past week and a half we've checked craigslist.com, monster.com, the Daily Universe and even the Daily Herald for job openings. I'm even guilty of creating a profile on a few babysitting websites in hopes of some income.

So all of you who have had the intimidating task of job hunting probably understand our frustrations. We've also had quite a bit of free time, so we've gotten into the habit of window shopping (more like browsing around stores because we have nothing else better to do.) Costco has been one of our favorites. Mostly because they have so many free samples! :)

This past Wednesday, we were browsing through the kitchen aisle in Costco and I spotted a very nice set of bamboo utensils. As I was having an internal struggle of whether to buy them or not (we really do need a wooden spoon) a man started eyeing the same set. I wasn't really paying any attention to him, but then he started to ask me questions about the set. (tangent: Honestly, when strangers start talking to me, I try and give the shortest answers I can. I don't start conversations, and I don't really like sharing personal information. You probably think that sounds rude, but I just have a hard time making small talk with someone that I don't know and probably won't ever see again.) Anyway, after asking me about the wooden utensil set, he asked us if we were planning on buying anything. Odd question, but I guess it is small talk and we are in a store. Anthony is much better at talking to strangers than I am, so he answered him by saying we were just browsing, but mostly wishing for things we couldn't have. The man then asked us if we were wishing because of space restraints or because of the lack of income. Another odd question, but Anthony just went along and replied that it's really for both reasons; our apartment is the size of a cardboard box and we both have no income at all.

Then the man's personal interest in us all made sense as he started to tell us that HIS financial office was hiring part-time employees right now. What are the odds? :) We told him that we would be leaving in August but he said the company is nationwide, so there's no reason to worry. He nicely asked for our names and phone number and said that he would be contacting us soon for interviews. Not too bad.

So after all of this job hunting on the internet, we finally found an opportunity in the kitchen aisle of Costco. Weird. He called us earlier today and both Anthony and I have interviews Friday at 3:30pm. This guy we met (I don't even know his name) said that he mostly helps older people plan for the retirement, but the website said that it's a mortgage home loan company. By tomorrow, we'll see what we're actually getting ourselves into.

So for right now, we have one possibility and we're really hoping that it works out. So be sure to send us some good vibes tomorrow around 3:30pm. :)