Busy weekend, and not over yet.
Sep. 10th, 2006 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rikibethFriday at work was NOT busy. We had NO advance catering orders at all. Two small ones came in during the day, but mostly I was left with "what do I do NOW?" after breakfast.
Said "what do I do NOW?" was complicated further by my microwave sparking and dying as I melted the butter and white chocolate for the brownies. I left a note up on the whiteboard that said "Chef -- microwave dead or dying. I NEED a burner downstairs TODAY. Just ONE burner? Portable butane burner? Pretty please?"
I did GET a burner, but it's not a butane burner. It's an induction burner. Which only works with a certain kind of pan. Of which there are only skillets at work, no saucepans. This is not exactly convenient. I can melt butter in the skillets, but I can't make a double boiler out of them, or cook choux paste, or... yeah. I told Chef I needed a saucepan, and I'm sure he'll get me one eventually, but I think on Monday I'm going to bring in my best saucepan from home and take home one of their aluminum ones as a security deposit until Chef gets me the saucepan(s) I'll need.
Meanwhile, since I had to fill up the hours somehow (it was a short enough week already), I backed up cookie dough (chocolate chip and peanut butter), did a batch of oatmeal scone dough (the Cook's Illustrated recipe, which everyone loves), a batch of pie dough (I'm not even making pies right now, but it seemed like a good thing to keep on hand, since Rudy asked for some for pot pies the other day), some cherry-orange cannoli filling (I'd made chocolate chip the day before), and toasted almonds for frangipane, because I am going to start making bearclaws to add to the breakfast selections now that school is back in session.
I was still out by noon.
In the afternoon, I finally got around to a sewing project I'd meant to do since June... putting shirring tape along the seams of the dress I got from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ashbet. It was a full-length dress, you see, and I don't find full-length dresses much fun to dance in. So my thought was to put shirring tape along each seam and pull it up like a balloon shade, and turn it into a shorter, bouffant-skirted dress. It was a little bit more annoying than I'd expected, and I had to get eternaleponine to start the ends of the shirring strings for me because they were being STUPID, but it did work, and I was finishing just as tragic_tea came up the walk.
That'stragic_tea behind me. We didn't get a picture of her in my corset and long black velvet skirt, which she tried on but decided not to wear. She looked absolutely stunning in them, because she's got more to display than I do, but she didn't quite have the nerve.
Sadly, getting dressed for Theatro Del Scassa was the most fun part of the evening.
I have a feeling the night's going to go under. There's a core crowd of, what, ten to fifteen people in Hartford that can be counted on to go to goth nights, and we were all there, and NOBODY ELSE WAS. Vinny was buying drinks for everyone, because he said "if I'm going to have to pay the minimum tab out of my pocket ANYWAY, people might as well be drinking it." It probably doesn't help that about half the core crowd is in the 18-20 range instead of over-21, which means they don't contribute to the bar tab. Also, the first DJ up played things that were just great to listen to -- I'd have happily put it on as a mix at work -- but was utter crap for dancing. Once Susy took the booth, it was a lot better; she realizes that the girls in the local crowd may love DRESSING gothy, but we have this not-so-secret love for swing dancing, so songs that'll work with Fifties footwork and turns are a good deal. Between that for the girls and the stompy industrial for the boys (and, you know, with Shannon and Peter and Steele, three tall skinny cute boys all dancing punch-the-hobbit-dropkick-the-hobbit, that's pretty good scenery even if industrial's practically unlistenable), people actually started dancing.
I wasn't in the best mood to start with, so I wound up leaving early.
Got up reasonably early Saturday morning because we were supposed to be meetinggoddessfarmer and chocorua in Boston's Chinatown for dim sum before the End of Summer party. My plan was to drive to Oak Grove, park the car, and take the Orange Line in. This was a good plan but failed to work because Mapquest screwed up the distinction between Fellsway West and Fellsway East, and we wound up in Stoneham, which was not where we needed to be. We went to a fallback position of "suck it up and pay for parking in Boston," but by the time we drove back in and parked and located the Chinatown arch, they'd already decamped for food. tamidon helpfully gave me goddessfarmer's phone number when I called her, but I think it might have been her house phone, because I did not reach her on it when I tried to explain the situation.
Because of the screwups,eternaleponine was pretty cranky by then. I said, "Pretend we didn't screw up the directions. Pretend we didn't just miss connections for food. Pretend that this is just a random Saturday when you were in college in Boston. What would you want to do?" She said, "I don't know, walk down Newbury Street?" So that's what we did. On our way there, we observed that it was move-in day at Emerson, so eternaleponine took advantage of the situation to do a little street-teaming, and we cruised into the Little Building to adorn their notice boards and stuff their giveaway flyers with Black Parade stickers. She also threw away a takeout menu from a Chinese restaurant that she said was known for giving people food poisoning. This improved her mood a lot, although we wished we'd had a camera, because if she'd taken pictures of the stickering, she could have gotten street team points.
We also wished we'd had a camera to take pictures of the Emo Walker. Boston has put in some new walk signals, you see. Instead of the standard American Oppressed Walker, or the Canadian Happy Walker (eternaleponine says she can spot movies that have been shot in Canada because the walk signals have the Happy Walker), or even the very old-school ACTUAL WORD "WALK" (there are still some of those around!), they've got new ones. Where the walking figure is very narrow. eternaleponine looked at it and said, "Tht walker's WEIRD! He has no butt!" I said, "Yeah, he needs a sandwich!" Her comeback was, "It's Emo Walker!" If we'd gotten pictures, you could see what we meant.
So we walked down Newbury Street to the original Newbury Comics, and browsed used CDs and buttons and socks, and left more stickers, and out of curiosity stopped in at Johnny Cupcakes. Silly us, we thought there would be actual cupcakes in there, not just overpriced T-shirts. Which, mind you, I liked. If anyone wants to spend far too much money getting me a girly-style T-shirt, I'd happily wear it. But I didn't need to spend money on it.
We got ourselves out to the party by about three. I changed right into my bathing suit (my new bikini!) and got in the pool, and did battle again with the Darth Maul pool float -- got up on my knees on it before it dumped me! -- but was called out in short order to admiretamidon's lemon mascarpone strawberry trifle, which disappeared as fast as people could stick a spoon into it. Had a very nice time chatting with people, and introducing eternaleponine around to everyone -- I have noticed it's become a habit for me, now, to make introductions by given name, and then to add in LJ handle -- and eating various sorts of good food, like rosif3r's allspice bread, and whoever brought the gazpacho fresca? That was YUMMY. And a couple of cups of sangria, although I sensibly switched to lemonade after the second.
And then I got to fire dance.
Kaz loaned me her fans, and I got the safety lecture, and I got the Cruxshadows' "Euridyce" cued up for me, and... WHEE. FIRE. That was FUN.
mangosteen got pictures, and I can't wait to see them.
After that we drove home, and I had to hand it off toeternaleponine in Vernon because my eyes were starting to unfocus, and I picked the wrong exit to do it at because the way to get back on the highway is counter-intuitive, but we got home okay.
Today, I have gotten out of bed, acquired coffee, found a Freecycle taker for a rug I don't want (one more thing cleared out! yay!), offered up the old exercise chair (anyone want a flex-trainer chair with demo video? Come cart it away), and written this post.
Next on the plan is to touch up my purple dye and do some more housework.
I'll catch up on my friendslist during cleaning breaks.
And tomorrow is back to work. With a burner!
Said "what do I do NOW?" was complicated further by my microwave sparking and dying as I melted the butter and white chocolate for the brownies. I left a note up on the whiteboard that said "Chef -- microwave dead or dying. I NEED a burner downstairs TODAY. Just ONE burner? Portable butane burner? Pretty please?"
I did GET a burner, but it's not a butane burner. It's an induction burner. Which only works with a certain kind of pan. Of which there are only skillets at work, no saucepans. This is not exactly convenient. I can melt butter in the skillets, but I can't make a double boiler out of them, or cook choux paste, or... yeah. I told Chef I needed a saucepan, and I'm sure he'll get me one eventually, but I think on Monday I'm going to bring in my best saucepan from home and take home one of their aluminum ones as a security deposit until Chef gets me the saucepan(s) I'll need.
Meanwhile, since I had to fill up the hours somehow (it was a short enough week already), I backed up cookie dough (chocolate chip and peanut butter), did a batch of oatmeal scone dough (the Cook's Illustrated recipe, which everyone loves), a batch of pie dough (I'm not even making pies right now, but it seemed like a good thing to keep on hand, since Rudy asked for some for pot pies the other day), some cherry-orange cannoli filling (I'd made chocolate chip the day before), and toasted almonds for frangipane, because I am going to start making bearclaws to add to the breakfast selections now that school is back in session.
I was still out by noon.
In the afternoon, I finally got around to a sewing project I'd meant to do since June... putting shirring tape along the seams of the dress I got from
ashbet. It was a full-length dress, you see, and I don't find full-length dresses much fun to dance in. So my thought was to put shirring tape along each seam and pull it up like a balloon shade, and turn it into a shorter, bouffant-skirted dress. It was a little bit more annoying than I'd expected, and I had to get eternaleponine to start the ends of the shirring strings for me because they were being STUPID, but it did work, and I was finishing just as tragic_tea came up the walk.That's
tragic_tea behind me. We didn't get a picture of her in my corset and long black velvet skirt, which she tried on but decided not to wear. She looked absolutely stunning in them, because she's got more to display than I do, but she didn't quite have the nerve.Sadly, getting dressed for Theatro Del Scassa was the most fun part of the evening.
I have a feeling the night's going to go under. There's a core crowd of, what, ten to fifteen people in Hartford that can be counted on to go to goth nights, and we were all there, and NOBODY ELSE WAS. Vinny was buying drinks for everyone, because he said "if I'm going to have to pay the minimum tab out of my pocket ANYWAY, people might as well be drinking it." It probably doesn't help that about half the core crowd is in the 18-20 range instead of over-21, which means they don't contribute to the bar tab. Also, the first DJ up played things that were just great to listen to -- I'd have happily put it on as a mix at work -- but was utter crap for dancing. Once Susy took the booth, it was a lot better; she realizes that the girls in the local crowd may love DRESSING gothy, but we have this not-so-secret love for swing dancing, so songs that'll work with Fifties footwork and turns are a good deal. Between that for the girls and the stompy industrial for the boys (and, you know, with Shannon and Peter and Steele, three tall skinny cute boys all dancing punch-the-hobbit-dropkick-the-hobbit, that's pretty good scenery even if industrial's practically unlistenable), people actually started dancing.
I wasn't in the best mood to start with, so I wound up leaving early.
Got up reasonably early Saturday morning because we were supposed to be meeting
goddessfarmer and chocorua in Boston's Chinatown for dim sum before the End of Summer party. My plan was to drive to Oak Grove, park the car, and take the Orange Line in. This was a good plan but failed to work because Mapquest screwed up the distinction between Fellsway West and Fellsway East, and we wound up in Stoneham, which was not where we needed to be. We went to a fallback position of "suck it up and pay for parking in Boston," but by the time we drove back in and parked and located the Chinatown arch, they'd already decamped for food. tamidon helpfully gave me goddessfarmer's phone number when I called her, but I think it might have been her house phone, because I did not reach her on it when I tried to explain the situation.Because of the screwups,
eternaleponine was pretty cranky by then. I said, "Pretend we didn't screw up the directions. Pretend we didn't just miss connections for food. Pretend that this is just a random Saturday when you were in college in Boston. What would you want to do?" She said, "I don't know, walk down Newbury Street?" So that's what we did. On our way there, we observed that it was move-in day at Emerson, so eternaleponine took advantage of the situation to do a little street-teaming, and we cruised into the Little Building to adorn their notice boards and stuff their giveaway flyers with Black Parade stickers. She also threw away a takeout menu from a Chinese restaurant that she said was known for giving people food poisoning. This improved her mood a lot, although we wished we'd had a camera, because if she'd taken pictures of the stickering, she could have gotten street team points.We also wished we'd had a camera to take pictures of the Emo Walker. Boston has put in some new walk signals, you see. Instead of the standard American Oppressed Walker, or the Canadian Happy Walker (
eternaleponine says she can spot movies that have been shot in Canada because the walk signals have the Happy Walker), or even the very old-school ACTUAL WORD "WALK" (there are still some of those around!), they've got new ones. Where the walking figure is very narrow. eternaleponine looked at it and said, "Tht walker's WEIRD! He has no butt!" I said, "Yeah, he needs a sandwich!" Her comeback was, "It's Emo Walker!" If we'd gotten pictures, you could see what we meant.So we walked down Newbury Street to the original Newbury Comics, and browsed used CDs and buttons and socks, and left more stickers, and out of curiosity stopped in at Johnny Cupcakes. Silly us, we thought there would be actual cupcakes in there, not just overpriced T-shirts. Which, mind you, I liked. If anyone wants to spend far too much money getting me a girly-style T-shirt, I'd happily wear it. But I didn't need to spend money on it.
We got ourselves out to the party by about three. I changed right into my bathing suit (my new bikini!) and got in the pool, and did battle again with the Darth Maul pool float -- got up on my knees on it before it dumped me! -- but was called out in short order to admire
tamidon's lemon mascarpone strawberry trifle, which disappeared as fast as people could stick a spoon into it. Had a very nice time chatting with people, and introducing eternaleponine around to everyone -- I have noticed it's become a habit for me, now, to make introductions by given name, and then to add in LJ handle -- and eating various sorts of good food, like rosif3r's allspice bread, and whoever brought the gazpacho fresca? That was YUMMY. And a couple of cups of sangria, although I sensibly switched to lemonade after the second.And then I got to fire dance.
Kaz loaned me her fans, and I got the safety lecture, and I got the Cruxshadows' "Euridyce" cued up for me, and... WHEE. FIRE. That was FUN.
mangosteen got pictures, and I can't wait to see them.After that we drove home, and I had to hand it off to
eternaleponine in Vernon because my eyes were starting to unfocus, and I picked the wrong exit to do it at because the way to get back on the highway is counter-intuitive, but we got home okay.Today, I have gotten out of bed, acquired coffee, found a Freecycle taker for a rug I don't want (one more thing cleared out! yay!), offered up the old exercise chair (anyone want a flex-trainer chair with demo video? Come cart it away), and written this post.
Next on the plan is to touch up my purple dye and do some more housework.
I'll catch up on my friendslist during cleaning breaks.
And tomorrow is back to work. With a burner!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-09-10 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-10 04:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-10 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-10 05:10 pm (UTC)#
no subject
Date: 2006-09-10 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-10 06:11 pm (UTC)I would never recommend parking at Oak Grove. It's a pain to get to, and parking their is minimal.
For off hours parking (weekends or afternoons) Sullivan Station is much easier to get to, and there's usually a parking space (sometime it's crowded when there's a Red Sox game).
I'm sorry I didn't get to say more than just "hi/bye" to you at the EOS party. And with the bandanna on your head, I didn't get to see your new hair.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-10 09:19 pm (UTC)Besides, in the dark, the purple was pretty much not visible. I'll be retouching it soon. Just imagine this icon pic with some
At least now I know I wasn't crazy for having trouble finding the Oak Grove station!
no subject
Date: 2006-09-11 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-11 01:06 am (UTC)I knew they weren't, but it was a lovely moment anyway.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-11 01:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-11 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-11 01:40 pm (UTC)Sounds like it's a good thing I didn't kill myself trying to make it up there, though...
no subject
Date: 2006-09-11 08:24 pm (UTC)Yeah. Although I had the doors time wrong. It was at ten. If I'd realized that, you'd have had plenty of time to make it up! And then you could have gotten all the attention because WOW NEW PERSON! Have you ever heard Voltaire do his little spiel on that? He's SO right.
Maybe this weekend.