No sleep for the weary

Ken's in Seattle today after getting home from work after 1 am and leaving for the airport at 5:30. I think he'll be quite ready for some sleep this weekend... except that he's in a camping/softball tournament this weekend where he has to play at least five games.

I've been doing the food manifestos for the weekend trip with another girl. Kind of weird to split a job I'm used to doing by myself... especially since all my weirdness becomes quite visible. Case in point: i've just made the dream excel spreadsheet for the cost breakdown of the meals. Complete with who's eating what meals (and if they are), an automatic "COUNTIF' equation that breaksdown the grocery cost based on how many people are coming. The spreadheet automatically adds the totals for each person and crosschecks itself. I think it's my proudest spreadsheet to date. And it's totally reusable... just need to delete some names/costs and it's good to go again. If anyone ever needs to breakdown costs for a weekend, this will have you covered. Like I said, my weirdness is becoming very visible. I ordered 2 magnums of champagne from costco, but the sad part is if I were with the Tucson girls, we would have ordered 5+. It's weird planning meals for people that you don't know very well -- what do they like? dietary restrictions? are they meat & potato folk or gourmets? Do they like thai food and hate mexican or vice versa? Keeping it way simple this time and inexpensive.... don't want to be that girl who overspent on food. Here's our menu:

Friday: Bacon-wrapped Brats & Burgers; Banana Boats & smores
Saturday Breakfast: Bacon, Eggs, Sausage Links, Coffee, OJ, Tortillas for wraps
Lunch: Quesadillas, Apples/Bananas, PB&J, Summer sausage, crackers, Cheese
Saturday Dinner Hobo Packs (karl made these once for us; ground beef and/or sausage with all sorts of veggies. Wrapped in foil and thrown in the fire coals. Feeds a lot and everyone makes there own. Dessert is campfire baked apples with various toppings (like banana boats, but with cinnamon sugar, caramel, granola, raisins, etc.
Sunday AM: Omelets in a bag, bacon, coffee

On a different note, work's been good on my end... no data lately but I'm getting a gigantic crash course in DNA, PCR, insertional mutagenesis, making & screening clones/mutants/etc. Wow. Very cool to see how things work and why they do/don't. I'm feeling much more comfortable with the whole molecular biology realm, which I feel is giving me a bit of freedom. If you know what something is, how can you be scared of it?

Farmer's markets today after work to get produce for the weekend. Then grocery store to pick up the rest. Ken gets home around 6 tonight. Will be great to see him; I bet he's beat.