3:20pm Kenai, AK
yea...sorry about that. i was trying some new things and then we lost the internet for a few days so i couldn't see the crazy picture and how odd it looked. i have things to put on but i am super busy right now. i saw the internet was working so i figured i would say hey really quick. anywho i'll be back in a bit. i have a draft in the works and i think that they add them to the blog for the day you started the draft so i am going to put up something i typed today but keep your eyes peeled for entries that may come "after" what i am posting now.

7:07am Sunday June 15, 2008 Kenai, AK
Every day I get into a fight with the Kool Aid man…and every day I lose…and I’m starting to get mad. Michelle gave me one of her tips for keeping employees happy – freeze the juice from the day before and put it in the juice the next day so that it stays cold all day. Great idea, wouldn’t you say? Brilliant – who doesn’t love cold juice? Well it is becoming a thorn in my side. We have a 10 gallon Coleman cooler with a spout and I bought a gallon pitcher to freeze the juice in. So when I come in, in the morning, I run the warm water on the pitcher to loosen it up…preparing for battle. Then I try to gingerly tip the pitcher and slowly let my juice cube slide into the freshly made juice below. I have even tried to use a spoon to lower it down because I’m not quite certain I should use my hands. Well this is when all hell breaks loose. The cube just races to freedom not taking the time to enjoy the ride and then SPLASH! – juice everywhere. And it keeps getting worse. The other day it splashed up under one of my shelves, today it got all over the freezer, floor and who knows where else. I keep finding juice droplets that I didn’t know were there and I hate to say it but part of me is impressed with the distance I get. But I always get juice all over me – it’s not so bad with the two lemonades but Kool Aid stains! (not just clothes…flesh too!) Up until now this has been a private battle but I have decided that I can no longer walk this road alone…I am being consumed by my hatred for the Kool Aid man. Help.
I almost don’t want to tell you about my first juice freezing experience but I know you will all get a kick out of it. So I’m one or two days into my juice making journey and people are coming up to me and saying ‘Michelle used to make the juice cold somehow.’ Basically – your warm juice isn’t cutting it…figure it out. And that is when Michelle told me the secret of the frozen juice. Later that night I am in my snack shack with my 10 gallon Coleman juice cooler…just looking at it. I open up the freezer (it opens from the top, it’s a floor freezer) and there are all of these dividers inside. There is one long one running down the middle and two short ones – making six compartments total. So I’m sizing up the dividers and I try to put the cooler in one of the compartments. Well wouldn’t you know it was too big. So I start taking out the short dividers but the long divider is still in the way. ‘How did she do this?’ I’m thinking to myself. ‘She must have done it somehow – she had cold juice.’ That is when I decided to lay the cooler on its back – ‘maybe that’s how it fit.’ Well then the juice just started coming out the top – and when you spill juice in the freezer…it freezes. ‘Great.’ I’m trying to quickly mop up my juice before it freezes and figure out how in the hell she got the juice to freeze. I don’t know when it happened exactly but at some point I had the realization ‘Meredith, this is a cooler not an ice cube tray – you can’t try to use it as such’ and that the likelihood of my juice freezing inside the cooler was significantly less than likely, hell, the likelihood of it even effecting the temperature existing in the cooler was less than likely. So I figured, ‘Screw it! They can have warm juice another day until I can talk to Michelle.’ And that is when I learned the second secret of the frozen juice – put it in a separate non-cooler container and freeze it – that way it will fit in the freezer and actually freeze. Doh!
3:25pm
While I was on lunch I looked down and there are Kool Aid stains on my arms. I look like a damn fool. Oh how I hate you Mr. Kool Aid man.