experiments and experience

When it's this hot out and I still want to cook things, that's a sign of either insanity or a new cookbook. In this particular case, it's the latter; I bought myself How To Cook Everything Vegetarian last weekend, and while I'm not really a vegetarian, it's giving me ideas. I'm so out of practice cooking meat (due to the expense thereof while I was in grad school, and the expense and cooking odors thereof when I lived in Roxbury) that I don't do it very well these days.

Given that our office is populated entirely by adults, why is it that we can't just say "if the phone rings, somebody answer it"? Instead we get phone-coverage-schedule emails, and if we don't LEAP at the chance to volunteer for several three-hour blocks of phone coverage over the course of a week, we get assigned several three-hour blocks of phone coverage by the office manager. (Who will not be here next week, along with the receptionist and the Dean for Faculty Affairs, so nobody who cares that much whether the phone gets answered or not will be here.)