Full house

My household doubled this weekend. My one intern and myself have gotten company in the form of another intern and an intern-to-be.

Well, technically, that last one isn’t in just yet, or at least hasn’t made it to the apartment. He’s one I had from last year but his paperwork hasn’t come through yet. However, he already had a plane ticket and asked if I could house him until all the paperwork is done. We can’t officially house him until it comes through, but he can stay with me more or less informally until then. So he’s coming tonight and joining the two I already have.

They’re sick puppies right now. Apparently yesterday’s meal – whatever it was – didn’t agree with them. One was puking all night last night and the other is down for the count now.

Collectively and individually, they are so much better than Girl Intern last year. They have personalities, and they’re nice personalities.

One’s from Kansas and goes to grad school in Texas; one goes to school in Nebraska, where he’s from; the remaining one goes to school in Virginia but is from Montana, where our ambassador is from. He said his dad knows him, but it’s from work – his dad is an editor and publisher.

Anyway, we officially have more people than are allotted free breakfasts in the morning. I get one for every bedroom, and the guys are doubling up. So no free breakfast for me this week, a sacrifice I’m fine with making. I think it’s awesome that my apartment building is willing to feed me but it’s really rather inconvenient to go down and get it.

First world problems, I know.

Next week is going to be a very busy one at work. I am booked Tuesday through Friday evening. As a result, I had to spend today baking. We’ve got a going-away party for the big boss on Friday (though she’s not leaving for some time after that; I’ve no idea why it’s so early) and I signed up to bring something sweet.

When I packed out that apartment, I got custody of the leftover foodstuffs to keep or distribute, and I kept the baking stuff. One of the items was cacao powder, and I poked around for a cookie recipe that used it and whatever else I happened to have. I found one that bills itself as Mexican Hot or something like that – it has cinnamon, cayenne and black pepper in it. Not bad at all.

And I got just a generic chocolate cookie recipe, which, as it turns out, is really hard to find. I never did find just a plaint chocolate cookie recipe; they all called for chocolate chips. Those are really pricey, and not even available in my little neck of the woods, so I just took that recipe and skipped that part. Instead, I dunked them in powdered sugar (even rarer here, but I bought mine when I was in the U.S. last September) and made kind of “snow on the mountain”-type cookies.

My kitchen continues to be a thorn in my side. It’s way too small for cooking, so I brought everything out to the kitchen and coffee tables to work. The pepper cookies are pretty good, and the others are really tasty, too.

I also have a cake mix, but I’ve run into another problem: I don’t have any room in my little fridge and freezer. As I’ve mentioned before, I have a stunted freezer that’s filled with Junior Mints. Right now, it also has Tuesday’s Bible study meal in it; I had planned on hosting last week but we went out to dinner instead. It’s in three big Ziplocs, which takes up an entire shelf. The shelf, incidentally, used to be a drawer, but I learned I could expand the area a tiny bit by pulling out the drawer.

The other two drawers are the ones mostly filled with Junior Mints. I have eaten some; enough to have crammed one batch of the cookies in there, but that’s about it. I have no room to store a cake, and no airtight container to store it in anyway. I’ve decided that I will just bake it tomorrow night and use it for dessert for Bible study. I doubt we will finish it, but that’s what interns are for.

I also did my cooking for the week this afternoon, so I’ve really been in the kitchen all day. The part when I wasn’t in the kitchen was when I was down in the breakfast room, which I did solely because I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it for the rest of the week.

We’ve been doing a lot of movies. Even before the two guys got here, the two women had been watching a lot. Last night, the guy present wanted to see “Being John Malkovich” and right now, we’re into “O Brother, Where Art Thou.”

It’s likely that the intern from last year won’t stay too long, and the other guy is only here for a week, max. But right now, we’re just brimming with people.