This week’s sidequests include writing down a favorite memory, learning a new recipe and making it, and learning how to make… origami stars.

Oh. Oh no. I just re-learned how to do those! Well shit. Still, it was a good excuse to make some more, because I still have plenty of my glow in the dark origami star paper.

I’ve got strips with several different designs on them, but I decided to go for the floral one since spring is very sprung.

Last week, I became interested in meal kit subscriptions again – I turn them on every once in awhile out of curiosity to see what they’re like. What I generally dislike about most meal kit services is that the minimum orders send too much food for a week for a single person. My parents send me home with leftovers most Sundays, and I like to eat out maybe once or twice a week, so I really only need one or two meals subscription wise. Plus the cost of meal subscriptions tend to stack a bit too much for my tastes. I signed up with Dinnerly to give it a try for the hell of it.

Then, when I sat down for this week to think about what kind of recipe I should look up and try to make, it suddenly occurred to me that I could use the Dinnerly subscription for this. Dinnerly is one of those meal kit services that sends you the ingredients and a recipe card, and you cook for yourself. I hadn’t even thought of using my random online ordering obsession to help with the Sidequest until the overlap became obvious to me.

Okay. The two recipes I chose were Philly Cheesesteak Stuffed Peppers, and Lemon-Tarragon Chicken with Polenta. Each recipe makes two servings, so I was still up to 4 meals in a week – I had hoped maybe I could be enough of a fatass that I’d be able to demolish two servings, but the portions are really decent so I was back up to the problem of having more food than I needed in a week (so more than likely, I will turn off Dinnerly within a month). The recipes also have ratings for how easy/difficult they are to make and how much clean up they involve, because some recipes are more complicated than others. The chicken recipe required more effort and also seemed to assume I had more tools on hand. The ingredients were okay, though the peppers that arrived were already a bit soft/wrinkled.

I did not take pictures of the food. I’ve never been good at remembering to take pics of food. But everything turned out delicious, and I have the recipe cards to stick in my personal recipe book for future use. I especially liked the ease of making the stuffed peppers.

That being said, I am still on the lookout for a meal service that fits my needs. Of course, most of them allow you to skip weeks at a time, which may be the option I end up choosing to make one of them feasible for me.

The last sidequest is to write down a favorite memory. I especially love moments that leave you wheezing with laughter, so let’s do a silly one.

I work in a pharmacy, and we have to sort paperwork and retain documents in a manner that allows us to find them later if needed for an audit or any other reason. The actual prescription hard copies that we receive are called log copies, and several years ago our state did not allow us to store electronically received documents digitally. This meant that every electronic document prompted our system to print a physical copy which we had to store per the legal requirements of our state, which made for a lot of paperwork to sort and put in order. I was working on that one day, and had several piles sorted out. Right next to where I was standing were some boxes of supplies, and I was using those boxes for extra counter space to work on.

One of my coworkers came over and attempted to lean over the boxes to grab something on the shelf behind it. Unfortunately, she was more top heavy than she knew, and she bent further than her center of balance. As she realized what was happening, the panic set in. “Oh no, Mary!” she said loudly, arms flailing. I looked up to see her falling, but didn’t reach out to help because she did it very very slowly, and I was somehow convinced that certainly she could catch herself and stop the fall.

Nope.

Not only did she not catch herself, instead of grabbing the boxes to keep herself up, her flailing arms pushed everything out of the way so that she could continue to fall directly to the ground. Paperwork went fluttering into the air and boxes went tumbling everywhere.

Being the helpful individual I am, I went, “Oh shit!” and then burst out laughing. Everyone looked up to see us practically dying as we wheezed with laughter, before she half-angrily asked why I didn’t catch her. (I also did not help her up. I’m such a great friend.)

Not as dramatic but still fun, I remember saving something that is usually thrown away as trash, and setting it on a filling pod. I don’t remember specifically what it was (sometimes we save desiccant for use in other things, so maybe that). Another friend walked up, spotted the trash, picked it up and tossed it into the garbage just a few inches away.

“Nooo!” I said dramatically, reaching out futilely as the item went sailing beyond my reach. Apparently my reaction was just humorous enough to send my friend into the WTF giggles.

Lots of moments like that – saying something just shockingly inappropriate enough that someone’s eyes go wide and they start laughing, or some misunderstanding or misinterpretation occuring, or oddball conversations or arguments about inconsequential things. I don’t always remember the fine details, but I love those moments. After all, as trite and stereotypical as it sounds – laughter is the best medicine.