Maybe a year ago I was watching Food Netowrk and someone on a show suggested that one quick and easy way to eat healthier is to substitute hummus for mayonaisse.  I tried this a couple of times and wasn't all that thrilled with the result (although I don't remember if it was taste, texture or moisture that didn't work well for me at the time).

Anyway, this is an idea that has stuck in my head and resurfaced with an intriguing idea - substitue the hummus for mayo when making a tunafish sandwich.  So I tried it and, with a little tweaking found I liked the result.  Then I started playing with flavors and things have gotten much better.  Today's lunch was tuna with tomato-basil hummus (with a bit of extra olive oil, salt and pepper to round out the texture and flavor).  This is a wonderful combo.  The tomato flavor works really nicely with tuna.  Next time I run out of tuna I will probably try and get some that is packed in oil (rather than water) since that would possibly increase the tuna flavor.  In any case, YUM!

I finished a couple more books in the past day, which are both worth mentioning.

First up is "Legion" by Brandon Sanderson.  This is a short novella (80 or so pages hardcover) about a man with multiple personalities who makes his living as a detective (of sorts, I think).  The premise of the novella is that this character (Steven Leeds) is hired/brought on by a company to find a scientist who stole a camera he invented (which the company helped fund) that takes photos of the past.  This storyline wasn't all that terrific because the premise is so unwieldy (the story goes into some scientific reasons why it shouldn't work, but doesn't mention some of the more obvious ones like how do you control the date/time period of the photo).    In the end, though, this didn't matter much to me because the character(s) of Steven and his sub-personalities (or hallucinations, as he calls them) were so interesting; each able to act independently, each a genius with a psychological problem, each a specialist in one area of knowledge.  And, since they are independent individuals, he can only have around him those who accompany him somewhere (and each gets their own car seat).  So, to sum up, a quick enjoyable read and a set of characters I look forward to seeing again in the future.

The other book I finished was "The Edge of Nowhere" by Elizabeth George (author of the Inspector Lynley mystery series).  This is the first book in a new series set on Whidbey Island in Washington State (and coincidentally close to where "Folly" by Laurie R. King is set).  The book is listed as a Young Adult (or Teen) novel, but I've never been able to figure out what, exactly, that means (except that the main characters are teens or young adults).  The vocabulary and storyline don't seem to be lowered.  So, as far as I'm concerned, there is no reason for an adult to avoid the book because of the marketing.  The story centers on Becca King, a 14 year old girl from California with slight telepathic abilities (she hears disjointed whispers from people around her) which let her find out her stepfather has killed his business partner.  She and her mother flee, and her mother arranges for Becca (the alias she uses after the prologue) to stay with an old friend on Whidbey Island while the mother goes north to Canada to try and set up a new life for them there.  The rest of the book is about Becca trying to find her way in a new place where she knows no one, has no one she can confide in, and people who have a lot of history behind them that keeps her off balance or unsure of who she can believe or trust.  Throw in a bit of mystery and her constant worry about her mother's well-being and her step-father's presumed desire to hunt her down and you have a quick overview of the novel.  I found it a bit hard to get into at first, especially getting confused with the telepathic pieces (which also confuse Becca, so maybe it is intentional), but once she gets settled on the island the story picks up  The other problem I will mention is that there is an epilogue that seems designed to set up the next book (whenever that comes out) but is incredibly annoying because of the abrupt way it changes the direction of the narrative (similar to the way the last Lynley book ended, for that matter).  So, to sum up this one, I enjoyed the book and would say that fans of Elizabeth George's other books should pick it up, as well as anyone looking for a good character read.

There are a lot of things that can be frustrating about being unemployed/job hunting.  Some you have control over, others you don't.  I think the most frustrating one I've come across is the apparent idea that people can't learn/change.  In the past 6+ months I've been told that I couldn't get hired to to temporary word processing because I haven't done so in the past couple of years.  I've been told that I couldn't get a job in a retail store because I've not worked in a retail store before.  These are annoying because they seem to ignore the fact that I've got other experience that shows I can either do the job or learn how to do so very quickly.

The worse corollary to this is the idea that people might not hire me because I've been unemployed for a while (too long for my comfort, but that's besides the point).  For whatever reason (maybe I'm applying for the wrong type of job, maybe I've had bad interviews, maybe I don't have all the skills listed in a job description, maybe something else that I don't know about) I've not gotten to the final step of being offered employment by any of the numerous companies I've interviewed with.  This is seen as a major negative by prospective employers (or so I have been told).  I don't understand this.  Why should the fact that I might not have been deemed the best candidate for one job shouldn't affect my being seen as a good candidate for another one.  No one, at least outside of those companies I've applied/interviewed at multiple times, can know why I didn't get a job (especially if I don't myself).  The job requirements might be very different.  The company culture might be different.  Someone else who was better qualified might have applied for the one I didn't get.  Who knows? 

Yet it sometimes feels like there are maybe 20 jobs available at any time and these are all given to people who are already employed somewhere.  This, in turn, opens up 20 new jobs, which are all given to other people who feel like switching companies.  And so on.  And with all this, the economy remains sluggish (new hires are happening, but unemployment remains high), which means companies are reluctant to expand (so that 25 new jobs would be there and only 20 filled by people currently employed elsewhere).

End of rant.

Note:  I took the title for this post from a book by Richard Feynman [well worth reading, as well as "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman"].