This might be beef stroganoff.

I don't know what beef stroganoff actually is, and maybe this isn't it, but it's what I call it. We also say strokemeoff and laugh like 12 year olds. I got a recipe from Big Hungry Shelby over 10 years ago and modified it as the years flew by and here we are with a quasi beef stroganoff casserole thingy.

Despite that intro and the photo (casseroles photograph like dog meat) it's good. I promise.

Ingredients
2 lbs ground beef - for this I had leftover shredded french dip so I used a pound of that instead + a pound of ground beef
2 tbs worcestershire sauce
2 cans cream of mushroom soup - please make your own if you can, it's good, I promise
1 medium minced onion
One bag of egg noodles, cooked
16 oz sour cream
parsley
buttered cracker crumbs

Directions
Saute onion in a smidge of butter. Remove and immediately brown ground beef. Drain, add Worcestershire sauce. Mix meat, onions, cream of mushroom soup, sour cream, and cooked egg noodles. Grease a 9x13 dish and dump it in. Top with buttered cracker crumbs if you dare.

Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Serve it with a side of veg and get some health in you.

Haikuesday

Casseroles look gross,  

taste good. It's a conundrum.

Like eighties fashion.

Please tell me you are voting in your local general election today. 
I don't care who you vote for, I don't even care if you go and push the vote button without making any choices to make your thoughts on the bullshit political process known. 
I do care that you go and push the button. 
"Voting doesn't matter, it won't make a difference" is up for debate. 
Sitting at home on your couch will definitely not make a difference. 
Go.
Vote.

TWTW - the one with the purple and the purge

Friday

Kitchen reorganization/purge, final two episodes of Stranger Things, grocery delivery, reading

Saturday 

PanCAN Walk with my family in memory of my Grandmom. Thank you so much to everyone who donated, Madeline's Marchers came in at $1,000 over our goal. Fairmount Park was ablaze with fall and it was gorgeous. We brought up the rear of the walk as Lola Jean was doing her Bob the Builder dance through the park. 

A stop at Lou's on the way home for veggies, kitchen reorg/purge continued, I made homemade all-purpose castile soap cleaning spray, and we watched The Office all night. 

Sunday

Bruce does not observe the time change. I was up for an hour from 2-3 then up again at what would normally be 5:30 then up for the day at 7:45 new time. Gus and Mae were not amused. 

I drove a banner down to MFD in Center City for a Homes for Heroes event, went to Redner's to get a few things so I could get their turkey deal, did the dreaded laundry, ripped one million things out of Bruce's mouth, and purged and organized all afternoon. Sorry for the weird boxes, my address is on the actual boxes and you've got to cover that shit up on the internet. I'm getting rid of a lot of shit and I'm not done yet. Vietnam Vets pickup is on Wednesday. Unseen on the left: about five boxes of MFD's shit that has sat for years that's getting sorted or tossed by Tuesday. 

Sunday night I did some beautifying and reading. I sat on my ass from 5 pm on and felt like I deserved it. This is a busy week ahead. 

Weekly food prep: breakfast is homemade waffles and a banana; lunch is sliced hard boiled eggs on Dave's bread with mayo and a few pickles (there's a little Kinsey Milhone sandwich for you), and dinner is chicken pesto with a side of rice or an old beef stroganoff recipe that I'll be sharing with you tomorrow. I also made turchicken burgers to freeze and a vat of iced coffee. 

The Sunday of the fall time change always seems so long, right? I feel like I kick ass on that day every year. I hope you did too.

Get your ass to the polls on Tuesday: there are no unimportant elections

I actually didn't fully realize until this year that some people have no idea when elections are if they are not voting for president, which happens every four years. Elections happen every damn year! Twice - a primary and an actual election in November. This is a stab in my heart, as I have said one zillion times in my life that voting for your local judge/state rep/mayor is more important than voting for president. Why?

1. The decisions of local government will directly affect your life. Local government is responsible for the quality of schools, the judiciary, rental costs/affordable housing, recycling options and trash collection, public transportation, policing and public safety, public health measures in schools, environmental ordinances, alcohol and drug ordinances, welfare, amenities, infrastructure, job training programs, taxes, and on and on. Everything about the delivery of essential public services (that we often don't even think about and take for granted) and the quality of life we have as communities is managed by local government. Local government has a lot of money and they decide the community's priorities.

2. Your vote actually does count there. Since voter turnout is so low in local elections, they are decided by a very slim margin in a lot of cases. Every vote counts. Get your ass out there, and bring your friends.

3. Even though it seems like the reverse, state and local governments lead the way. Policies on environmental protection, women's suffrage, minimum wage, and marriage equality all began at the local and state level. They were the impetus for landmark fed policies.

4. These people you're electing work for you. Why the fuck wouldn't you want to have a say in who you're hiring? I know it's en vogue right now for government representatives to act like you are their peasants and they are doing you a great favor to grant you an audience, but it's the other way around. The sooner we take back the power, the better off the entire country is. If you are not in tune with what's going on around you, how will you make sure you have an impact on how your community is run?

5. Not voting does not make politics go away. I know. You're sick of politics. But not voting won't make them go away. It will just make you feel like a peasant under the rule of a moody lord.

Know your voting rights
-If you are asked for identification at a polling place and do not have any acceptable ID, you must be allowed to vote by provisional ballot.
-If your right to vote is challenged at your polling place and it cannot be resolved there, the judge of elections at the polling place should call the county Board of Elections. If it cannot be resolved via phone, you can show up at the county Board of Elections where a judge will be on duty to resolve election problems.
-Regardless of any issue, you must be allowed to vote by provisional ballot at the time and the eligibility of your vote must be pursued - by YOU - after.

Reminder to PA Voters to vote NO on this ballot question:

More about this from Education Voters PA
More about this - and an entire voting guide - from the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania Citizen Education Fund

PA friends, please also check out Judge Ellen Ceisler.

I hope you're voting on Tuesday. How life goes in your community DOES depend on it.

Happy weekend!

Thursday Thoughts - take a right at the light, keep goin' straight until night

Wishing my Dad a very happy birthday today. Still picking me up 40 years later...not physically because I’m heavy now but in all the other ways that count. As stated many times previously, sorry to the rest of you but he is the very best Dad. I'm also wishing we were in Ireland celebrating it like we were last year. That was awesome. I'm getting the itch to plan the next family trip but it won't be for a while since a newborn is coming in December. 

Raising money for pancreatic cancer research. My family is walking in the Purple Stride walk this Saturday in memory of my grandmother. She lived nine months from her date of diagnosis. I've done many walks for various cancers, and what strikes me at the PanCAN walk is how very few survivors are present. We'd like to do what we can to change that. We are Madeline's Marchers and you can donate to MFD here if you are so inclined - we are only $105 from our team goal! Thank you so much to those who already donated and helped me meet my goal. It's a cause very close to my heart.

Feeling colder than I usually feel. I've always been a very hot blooded person. I have the chills a lot now. Is this getting older syndrome? Yesterday it was my own fault, I looked at the weather before I got dressed and looked at the wrong fucking day. 

Hearing MFD on the phone for three hours in a row some nights and I know, I know, it's his job, but it drives me fucking insane because he doesn't stay in one spot - he paces and he's loud. I can't get away from it.

Sharing what the hell else but dog photos. Oh. And I had MFD take the top right photo, which is terrible...he says I posted that on Instagram. I said are you fucking serious. Then I go on and I can't find it. But I see in my messages that Marla and Sara commented on it. I was like where the hell is this photo? Here he posted it as a fucking story - I've never posted an Instagram story...on purpose. I hate them.

Perusing Christmas card designs. Ho ho ho motherfuckers.

Reading Daisy in Chains by Sharon Bolton

Watching Stranger Things Season 2 like most of the world. Halloween night we were up until 12:30 watching it. Too late!

Wearing a cardigan. It's my uniform. 

Following Amy Siskind's weekly authoritarian list, being archived by the Library of Congress each week, now has its own website and is easier to find and follow than ever. Here's the site and here's October 28th's post. 

Loving how the light hits the buildings when I'm coming up out of the train station in the mornings now that the sun rises later. 

Hating General Kelly showing his racist ass for everyone to see; everyone throwing shit against the wall to distract from the first two Mueller indictments on Monday;  the voting data with irregularities from the special election in Georgia being wiped off the server; the imposter president tweeting erroneous  partisan bullshit instead of doing anything about the 600 shot in Las Vegas/the 1000+ dead in Puerto Rico/providing calm leadership to NYC/any actual presidential work; Kevin Spacey being a fucked up pedophile trying to play it off as something else; and Notre Dame no longer allowing faculty, staff, and (in 10 months) students to get birth control through their insurance plan.

Reminding you to be a ripple, every day. The smallest act of kindness or bravery from you can improve the life of someone else immensely. 

Sharing an e-card like every Thursday

What's new with you?

Running Your Own Training Course Successfully

Midway, my friends! Something I don't like to do: present in front of people. I have to do it at times though, including some stuff of my own I've put together on taking useable photos and business writing 101. I'm certainly not an expert though, but here are some tips from someone who might be, Jessie from across the pond:

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It is a fact universally acknowledged that there are a lot of courses out there. You only have to type in the subject or area of expertise and hit enter and away the search engine flies, an insanely fast Retriever that brings back far too many options. However, though the choice may be endless, the quality is all important. Indeed, many professionals are at a level in their careers that they see the substance of these courses lacking – perhaps they have even been on courses that didn’t quite deliver (or that definitely didn’t deliver, infuriatingly so) and felt cheated of their time and money – and so seek to provide their own, properly researched and expertly delivered alternative.

Use What You Know, and Then Some

Successfully creating your own training course is, to put it mildly, a massive undertaking. Further, you don’t want to let your day-to-day job suffer for it, either, even though you aren’t offering the course for free. Your own course creation is not something to attempt when first starting out, however, thinking you know it all (new graduates, turn back now); this is for the people who have been there and done that in the real world, and are ready to teach those eagerly coming up behind them a few tips and tricks for tomorrow. Indeed, that care for others, formed from your own experiences, is a crucial part in formulating a course that connects with its participants.

PowerPoint is Your Frenemy

It is also a truth universally acknowledged that, no matter how lucky you have been in the past, at some in your life PowerPoint will fail you (most likely in a spectacular, memory-making way). Indeed, how many people have painstakingly prepared a presentation for delivery to a handful, a small group, even a large room full of people, and then had the lauded technology fall embarrassingly short of expectations? Too many to count, certainly, and yet PowerPoint is a key part of lessons that aids your hard-crafted syllabus immeasurably. A tough call, but you have to face the fear and give the technology another chance: your students will thank you for it.

The Exam and the Farewell

Every training course has to have a closing exam, obviously, finishing up with you getting busy with the certificate maker and officially deeming the participants “trained”. After all, you need to be sure that your output was very much inputted to the brains of those who chose your course to undertake that further beneficial training they had been looking for. Nonetheless, it takes time to write up a proper paper that asks the right questions, but which have set answers.

Depending on what you have been teaching, essay-type questions that require an elongated and detailed answer can be a more expedient way to go at first consideration, but just make sure you have the time to read what’s been written, multiplied by the amount of students on the course. Perhaps routine-answer questions are worth the extra time in the first place, after all.

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