Mark My Words

Working in Madison two days a week has its perks. One of the biggest? Trader Joe’s. It’s close enough that I can zip over on my lunch hour and stock up on essentials. Otherwise, it would be a 90-minute roundtrip from MarTar Manor, plus however long we spent shopping.

Granted, better than the 11-hour roundtrip Trader Joe’s used to be!

(It occurs to me I would have a lot more free time and money if I’d never discovered Trader Joe’s. But what a sad and unfulfilling life that would be.)

The only downside to making a lunchtime TJ’s run? Figuring out where to store all the perishable items that inevitably find their way into my cart. During the colder months, I throw a cooler into Zoey’s backseat and keep everything in the car. Turns out nothing spoils when it’s three degrees out. Honestly, I could probably dispense with the cooler altogether.

Wednesday, it was not three degrees out. Add eighty-four more degrees to that number. It’s been hot lately! Sadly, an ice pack-filled cooler in a locked car in that kind of heat isn’t very efficient, so my only real option is to bring everything into CheeseGov HQ and find a home for it in the 4th-floor fridge and freezer. Which is exactly what I ended up doing yesterday. There I am, cramming boxes of frozen brown rice and packages of edamame into every nook and cranny of the tiny freezer, which is already full of other peoples’ lunches, and stuffing the refrigerator with guacasalsa and curry chicken salad, i.e., the staples. Midway through doing this, I spot a sheet of paper taped to the door. It’s a list of REFRIGERATOR RULES, and number four explicitly states, Do not store groceries in the refrigerator or freezer for the day/afternoon.

Hell, space is so limited, you aren’t even supposed to keep a lunch bag in there. They ask you instead to unpack your food. Which is a shame, because I love showing off my hilarious new lunch bag!

The moment Beth posted a pic of this lunch bag on her blog, I knew I had to have it. Three days later, I did. What can I say? I’m a man of action (with a twisted sense of humor). For an introvert, I sure do like drawing attention to myself sometimes.

I’m a freakin’ conundrum.

And also a scofflaw, because Rule #4 didn’t stop me from filling every square inch of the freezer with my groceries. I mean, what choice did I have at that point? Sure, I felt bad…but not bad enough to sacrifice my frozen goods so Josephine in accounting could reach her Lean Cuisine Crustless Chicken Pot Pie more easily. What an oxymoron anyway. You can’t call it a “pie” if there’s no crust. Find something real for lunch, Josephine! Anyway. I was headed home in three and a half hours, and hoped Josephine wouldn’t be too inconvenienced before I left for the day.

It never occurred to me, until just now actually, that I could have brought a cooler into the office and left it in my cubicle [insert facepalm emoji]. Well, duh! I never was the sharpest or brightest something, something in the something, something.

Forgive me, Josephine?

Like Christmas in Wisconsin

Did you know June 4 is National Cheese Day? If not, you clearly don’t live in Wisconsin. Today is like a second Christmas in America’s Dairyland. I shared the following graphic across CheeseGov’s social media platforms this morning, which really illustrates just how huge the cheese biz is out here.

I meet monthly with a Digital Communications group to share agency updates and discuss various social media topics. In our May powwow, we spent 20 minutes talking about our favorite cheese. The Wisconsin stereotypes are real, folks!

My answer: Port Salut, a soft, smooth, and buttery cow’s milk cheese. I even narrowed it down to Belaire, a local variety produced by Hoard’s Dairyman Farm Creamery right here in Fort Atkinson. An incredibly specific response, especially when most of the participants offered up generic replies like cheddar or feta. I have never felt prouder or more Midwestern in my life.

Not much love for blue cheese though. What a shame. I do love me some tang.

What’s your favorite cheese? Ever break a workplace rule?