Excel-ing

Happy Thursday! I had to wake up at 7 this morning, which was something new. Tomorrow it'll be back to the regular 9:30 if I have any say in the matter.

The early hour was on account of the sort of job interview I had scheduled this morning. Where they said "show up at 9," and I did and they were all "........we were expecting you later. Come in anyway I suppose we can fit you in." It was a good start.

I did some silly tests which included checking a list of number pairs to see if I could recognize whether each pair was identical or not -- actually a little challenging with my late-blooming dyslexic tendencies! Another was choosing between a pair of words from a list of word pairs, which one appealed to me more. A. forest B. trees. A. discuss B. consider.

Then there was the Word test, which was to copy a memo from the paper and format it and insert a picture and all that. Their stupid programs were set up with the menu bars all disjointed and "user friendly" so that slowed things along quite a bit. They were like tabs across the top, the tab for regular tool bar, tab for the drawing tool bar. So I couldn't find anything.

And then Excel. Copy the data table over and format it, find some totals. Make a chart. Too easy, it was tripping me out. You see, my resume implies that I know my Microsoft Office programs, but when they announced to me last week that at this interview thing there would be an exam on Word and Excel, I ran to Youtube only to find that I actually had no idea at all how to use Excel.

For example: it can do math for you!! I didn't know that before.

If you don't know how to use Excel, and would like to, here's the youtube channel that made me a pro in under a week: MotionTraining's Channel. Informational without being dry, each topic is covered at a nice easy pace. He's British, too, if that helps. But seriously, I watched all his tutorials and already feel pretty confident about using that program.

So the test part went alright, I suppose. In the actual interview I got the feeling that I wasn't exactly the person they were looking for as well as that this wasn't exactly the droids job I was looking for.

But another experience under me belt. And now I know how to use Excel.

After that, at around, say, tennish, I went home and watched non-educational youtube. Then I took a nap. Then I went to Carolyn's and we beat the Portal 2 co-op. Only took two sessions. And only about two of the puzzles were time consuming. And one of those was the final challenge, so that's understandable. But it was really fun, figuring out how to work the playing field and talking each other through the logic maze that is a successful portal deployment.

Earlier in the week my mom's yogurt maker arrived. It's really more of a yogurt incubator, and it has such a cute sciencey pod shape. But it came with a recipe book filled with uses for your shiny new yogurt, and one in particular stood out. They call it "Greek Macaroni and Meat Casserole." Where basically it's meat and macaroni, only the meat is seasoned with oregano, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and the whole thing gets a yogurty white sauce on it before it bakes. Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude it's so good. I'll make it for you some time.

Oh yeah. I was looking up the facebook album if you want to see pictures, and I'd already forgotten I made a cake, too! A roll cake, flavored with instant coffee. Coulda used more. The filling was home-made whipped cream with some cocoa powder and cinnamon. Because normally you might have a chocolate thing with a coffee accent, I wanted to switch it around. It came out alright! More coffee next time, and I'll roll it up better.

Come on over and we'll have a food party.

-Steph