Five Things Friday Vol. 59

Five Things Friday: just five things I’m thinking about or things that made my week, or things that I otherwise feel like sharing.

Today is my birthday. It really snuck up on me this year and I have nothing planned (well, besides eating cake and talking to my (twin) sister. That’s a given.) I’ll play it by ear otherwise.  I am glad my birthday falls on a Friday this year, so I don’t actually have to take the day off (because I get most Fridays off anyway), but can still sleep in a little bit and see what the day brings. As you can guess, I am writing this the night before and I have no clue as of yet what my birthday will look like this year, but I will – as always – make the best of it and embrace getting another year older. I believe that if you wake up and feel good on your birthday, consider yourself lucky and get outside and move your body! I’d usually go for a run, but I’ll probably opt for a celebratory Peloton ride this year because we have a storm warning today and for the rest of the weekend (more weather-related news below). 

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I baked a marble cake last night. It’s my favorite (pound) cake, and my mom used to make it for my birthday growing up. What’s your favorite treat for your birthday?

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I stood up for myself at work this week. Earth-shattering, isn’t it? Well, for me, it’s a big deal. Remember how I said that one of the things I wanted to do in 2023 is to advocate better for myself? I am not good at it, but I am trying to be. It was suggested by management to boot me from fieldwork that I was looking forward to doing in favor of someone who needed “more hours”, but instead of just accepting and going along with it, I made my case about why I thought I should still be going (I’ve done this type of fieldwork numerous times with some of the same crew, I have expertise with the equipment, I had already made arrangements to pick up a surplus vehicle at another office and drive it back to our office during this trip, etc.). It seemed somewhat silly to me to throw the whole plan into disarray just to shuffle 40 hrs around (which in the grand scheme of things is not that much time). 

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Frugal tip of the week: I shopped at Trader Joe’s last week and picked out some Alaskan Cod for our Fish Florentine dish (which I highly recommend, by the way!). I usually get the Cod filets, but they were out, so I looked around and saw that they had a package with Alaskan Cod pieces. When I looked at the price I almost fell over backward: it was half of what you pay for the bigger filet pieces. I mean, for this dish, it doesn’t really matter if you have a filet or pieces, so you can bet your patootie that I’ll buy the pieces from now on. Moral of the story: always look around and compare prices (and hey, I thought I was good at this already!).

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California is expecting another atmospheric river this weekend and we have a flood warning in the Sacramento Valley. I am sure Tahoe/the Sierra will get more snow. It’s not like they just had a huge dump of snow two weeks ago or anything. Man, it’s feast or famine with the weather lately. Seriously. It snowed in Germany this week as well. That wasn’t uncommon when I was a kid, but snow in March hasn’t happened in a long time. The weather is officially crazy.

What’s been going on in your world this week?

  1. Happy birthday! I hope you were able to celebrate in style!

    We had beautiful snow this weekend and it was gorgeous and pretty and the dog loved it and it made me happy. But now I’m done with snow and would like the weather to turn towards spring.

  2. Happy (belated) Birthday! I hope that you had a great time relaxing and eating marble cake and doing whatever else you decided to do! Friday actually turned out to be a great day here, weatherwise; although we were supposed to get dumped on, it was sunny!

    This weekend I went to a concert of a band that I did not really know much about. It was fun, but the music was a little bit more EDM than I had anticipated from listening to the songs on YouTube, so it was an interesting experience. On Saturday I took a hike with my brother before the rain started and then I spent the weekend working on stuff around the house. I get kind of annoyed when the weather is bad on a weekend, but I do end up getting those pesky to do list items crossed off, so there is a silver lining.

  3. I haven’t had marble cake in years. I hope your birthday was great. I like German chocolate cake as my birthday cake [and I’m not just saying that because of where you’re from].

    I didn’t know about Alaskan Cod pieces and will look for them. I use cod to make fish enchiladas so I break the fillets apart to begin with. Thanks for the tip.

    As for what’s happening in my world, this is a nothing time of year for me. Everything is just blah, but thanks for asking.

  4. Happy Birthday!! I hope it was all sorts of amazing for you. Pound cake is so good. My go-to birthday request is Unbaked Cherry Cheesecake (and I always get a package of Twizzlers, too). But really, any cake is usually delicious in my books.

    It is March Break for my kids and coming off the time change this weekend I am feeling – exhausted!!! Yesterday I felt okay, but today I felt like a freight train has run over me. Ugh. I am NOT a fan of time changes.

    Other than that, though, life is good. We’re supposed to get a rain/snow mix tomorrow that will make the roads quite messy, but I know that spring is coming in the not-so-distant future.

  5. Happy belated birthday!!! I hope you had a nice day!

    And I am so glad you stood up for yourself at work!

    We experienced the rain in CA then snow when we got home to IL yesterday. Both were unexpected to me!

  6. My mum always baked marble cakes for our birthdays growing up too. We had my niece’s 3rd birthday on the weekend, and mum made her a marble cake. So yummy!

    I’m just back from a long weekend at my parents place and it was so great to catch up with family but I couldn’t take full advantage because I was feeling sick from having two vaccines on Friday, so that was unfrotunate.

  7. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! *throws confetti*
    I love birthdays, especially my own! My favourite cake (I mean, I love cake, so this is splitting hairs) is an angel food one with coconut whipped cream and strawberry. YUM. I hope you had a most wonderful birthday!

  8. Happy (belated) birthday! I probably tell you this every year, but it still tickles me that you and your twin’s birthday are on the same day as my twin cousins’ birthday! Is March 10th a day for twins to be born?! Haha.

    I’m proud of you for standing up for yourself at work! That’s not an easy thing to do, but once you do it once and it works in your favor, it gets easier to do moving forward. Nicely done!

  9. Happy Belated birthday!

    And well done on standing up for yourself :-) that’s awesome work! I Hope you were able to go on the field work trip?

  10. Happy belated birthday!! I am woefully behind on commenting as work has blown up this past week with the stress in the banking sector. I hope that you had a wonderful birthday! I usually get treats from my favorite GF bakery. I love their cinnamon rolls. They are sooo good! So I always get one of them and then a few other things!

  11. Well, done standing up for yourself. It can be so tough but the feeling when you did.

    Funnily I never really had a specific birthday cake my mom made for me… Or maybe it is a strawberry cake. My birthday falls with the first ripe strawberries and usually my grandma saved the first ones for my cake. Somehow that has stuck. I often times bake myself a strawberry one now.

  12. I am seriously impressed with how you advocated for yourself at work. The fieldwork is important to you – and your participation is clearly central to making it work. So yay, you. :)

    And yay for a happy birthday, although I’m sorry you couldn’t be with your sister and your family. The cake – I remember that from last year. It looks amazing. Does it have a pound-cake-like texture? (the recipe makes it seem as though it would with 4 eggs :>)

    Here’s to another fabulous year, my friend. <3

  13. Ohhh, happy belated birthday! Hope it was a good one. And way to go standing up for yourself at work! That can be so, SO hard.

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