Looks Like We Made It! Next Stop: Vacation-land!

What a day! The office (or at least parts of it) has been working frankly insane hours trying to get multiple reports out by the end of the month* despite all the holidays and vacations thereunto appertaining. I spent the whole day trying to do as much as I possibly could, barely stopping for lunch, starting with Report C (whole, but not written locally--I first edited it back in August!), then was given a piece of Report A, then had a piece of Report B, then another from A and finally another from B**. Never did get back to C, so not much of that got done. Boom--boom--boom.
*Because that means so much, of course.
**Not my best work on that one, need I say. But better than no editing at all.

I think their deadlines are quite mad, and wouldn't even feel sorry for not being able to magically edit everything today, except that I like the people involved and I feel badly for them. But not enough to stay until midnight, even were I able to do so! And I couldn't, not just because I didn't want to but because editing doesn't work that way. I could feel the edge going by 4 o'clock, and I worked a bit later than that. Then, bang! Out the door and into vacation-land!

Well, not literally. Literally it was out the door and into mad rush-hour holiday traffic. But as the evening progresses, I feel the working-world's claws letting me go, and relaxation teasing at the corners of my mind. All day tomorrow to get ready, and Sunday morning I'm off!

I did make my banana bread last night, although it almost didn’t happen. I got the bananas ready, then looked at the recipe and realized that I didn’t have Crisco in the house. It’s kind of a pet peeve of mine that Crisco doesn’t come in smaller amounts, since I don’t bake enough to use it up before it turns, and always seem to be throwing it away. I mulled this over, thinking of waiting until tonight to make it after a grocery-store stop, then decided to browse the internet for a recipe that used butter, instead.

I looked at a whole bunch of them, easily eliminating some due to the presence of ingredients that meant it wasn't my kind of banana bread. I mean, the one with cinnamon might be delicious, but it isn't banana bread, not to me. And candied ginger? Next! I ended up choosing this one, from Simply Recipes, though I was a little wary of the vanilla, and it does fall victim to a banana-bread-specific pet peeve, which is giving the amount of bananas needed by number of bananas. People, please! A banana is not a specific unit of measure! Have you seen how the size of them can vary? Please, give me an estimate of how many cups you mean. Even if it's not exact, a ballpark idea would be great.

It turned out pretty good anyway; I did not take a picture because, well, I find banana bread inherently non-photogenic, but it tastes good, which is what counts in the end. It's very moist, almost dense, while the recipe I have from my mother is sort of lighter. I don't know if I'm explaining it well, and no matter: I brought some in to work, for the stalwart few who came in (some were out on vacation, and some working from home), and I'll have some tomorrow and then some to take for breakfast on the plane. Yum!

I don't have anywhere to go with this, so I'm going to close with a wonderful quote that I read on Alexa's blog.

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
–William James

I love this! I'm too tired to Google it and fall down that rabbit-hole, but does anyone know anything about the author?