So, wildmouse was kind enough to proctor my final exam for my Introduction to HACCP class last night, a favor for which I thanked her with a Granny’s Apple Pie apple from Rocky Mountain Spotted Chocolate Factory. Nummy! The test was easy, all of twenty questions, multiple choice and true/false. It took maybe 20 minutes, then I spent the better part of an hour and a half chatting, helping her and me_not_you plan for their Christmas party next weekend, and enjoying a glass of their excellent Remy Martin XO cognac.

The good news is that with that exam, in addition to the three papers and other final exam I completed earlier this week, I am now completely finished with classwork for this semester. The feedback I’ve gotten from my professors has been rather minimal, but as near as I can tell I’ve gotten well above the 80%-or-better grades required to get my HACCP certificate. If all goes well, I might even get a shiny star on it if my grades are over 90%.

Does this certificate actually get me anything? Probably not. But it improved my knowledge of food processing a bit, it put my student loans on hold for four months (which more than covered my tuition!), and gave me the ability to say that I was taking classes for the last few months instead of sitting on my ass. I doubt I’ll be taking the second tier of classes because it just doesn’t seem to really get me anything. A cursory review of “Food Safety Manager” jobs listed on Monster and Careerbuilder shows one or two jobs at most, and those require a minimum of 3-5 years’ experience in the food field. So no more school for me, at least in the near future.

This leaves me with my life again. Now that I’ve wrapped up classes and MFF is past and hiring is pretty much completely dead until after the holidays, I’ll have a lot more time available to me. This is nice, because I’ve got a number of things I’d like to do. I need to wrap up some stuff from MFF this year and planning for next year. I also want to cook a bit more – we’ve been getting by on a lot of really boring and uninspiring dinners, and now I have the time to do something about it. And finally, I want to get outdoors a bit more – some more hiking, and also get back into geocaching. I’ve been too much of a couch potato for the last three months, and I want to do something to improve on that. On the entertaining horizon, we’re going to host an Orphan’s Christmas Dinner the night before/night after Christmas to which the Gang and all of our friends are invited. We’re also hosting a New Years Eve party, though we’ve not even begun planning that one.

So that’s the current state of the husky. For today: meet takaza at Carolina Wine Company to pick out some wines for his company’s Holiday Party (which I am also the DJ for). Also, I need to get some lists of cheesy dance music and check our MP3 directory to see if we have it, otherwise it’s off for a little P2P surfing. Tonight, dinner with friends at a truly yummy restaurant! And tomorrow evening, the Holiday Party. And on Sunday, we rest. Yay!

MFF report still to come. Really! I mean it!