Mishaps and other haps

I have been under the weather with a cold most of this week.

We managed to keep the catering appointments we had set up for Wednesday and Thursday evenings, but I don’t think the bar smoke at Sweet Sophie’s did much to help out my cold and I felt worse on Thursday.  I stuck it out at work that day, but the congestion and laryngitis were too much this morning and I called in.

It might make a difference if it were 70 degrees out, but right now the best place to be when ill is at home in bed or resting, not commuting twice a day in below-freezing conditions.

Only one cake tasting this weekend.  I’m taking extra mouths and planning to *try* to taste things.  Last night I couldn’t taste the ginger-lime chicken I made, so I am not too hopeful that I will be the best judge, but that’s probably OK.

The rest of the weekend, I will try to rest up for next week, maybe recruit Michael to help with some light cleaning if I feel up to that.

Ooof.

This past weekend was busy.  It finally slowed down Sunday evening and we had a little time to relax, but … I am glad we’re planning to take it a little easier for a week or two.  My body has been freaking out a little the past few days– headaches, fatigue, chills at night, weird leg cramps, twitches and spasms … and nausea.  I’m hoping a full night’s sleep will help set things right.

I worked a little late last Friday night to catch up at the office.  Work never did “slow down” as it usually does over the holidays and the beginning of January was CRAZY.

When I arrived home Friday night, a bit harried and still in “work mode”, people were showing up for our RPGA night.  We had fun.  I finally relaxed and pizza arrived and all was well.

Saturday morning we were up early for cake tasting at La Brioche.  Around the end of the year, the bakery moved from its old shop on Midvale to a new, larger space on University Avenue.  The entire shopping center it had been in for many years was vacated due to the building of the new Sequoya Commons and the imminent (or at least eventual) demolition of the old Sequoya shopping center.  Therefore, La Brioche had to move and did … but I like its new digs a lot!  I have written a mental note to myself that we should go back and have brunch there sometime soon.

After La Brioche, we dropped back by the house for a bit and headed out again with Joe.  He needed a few more items for his semester in Sri Lanka, so we stopped at Best Buy and Radio Shack and he found a travel alarm and a plug converter.  We had a farewell lunch for him at Pedro’s with Kim and Tom.

Joe needed to pack, so we dropped him off at home and went to … another cake testing.  If I can offer future brides and grooms advice about shopping for wedding services, one thing that I would recommend is NOT having two cake tastings in one day.  The second bakery we tested on Saturday was Rolling Pin Bake Shop and it was just as amazing as our first impression at the Bridal Show.  However, we were both comatose on sofas in our living room within an hour of the second cake tasting.  It was very difficult to move for sometime afterward.

We did revive in time to babysit at the Dotzours’ in the evening.  We returned home and crashed pretty quickly, a little oblivious to friends who were staying over at our place in order to complete some of their scuba training the following morning.

Sunday morning we woke up in time to go to breakfast with Joe and transport him to the Dotzours’.  We didn’t actually make it to their house because a water main had broken and large trucks were blocking part of the road, but we met up with Althea and sent Joe on his way with her to the airport.  We received confirmation tonight that he has indeed made it to Sri Lanka.  He intends to update his blog with news and reflections on his experience there when it’s convenient.

Our afternoon back at home consisted of gaming, grocery shopping, and some general relaxing later in the evening.  I am looking forward to doing more of that nondescript, unbloggably-boring “general relaxing” quite a bit over the next few weekends.  January has been even busier than I thought it would be!

EDIT: I forgot to mention the exciting news we received last week that I alluded to in my last post.  Michael has been hired on as a regular employee by Lands’ End, much sooner than we initially expected, with a very decent raise.  He has been very happy with the job and likes the people he’s working with, so we’re very pleased

I think the photo on the front page of the Capital Times this past Monday morning was a good candidate for photo of the year– Barack Obama speaking in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the day before he was sworn in as 44th president of the United States.

It has been a week of good events and good news.  That’s about all I can say at the moment, but I wanted to write a small post as a bookmark!

Michael and I spent a couple of hours on Saturday at the annual/semi-annual Bridal Expo.  It was a reasonably sane experience and we had fun investigating the various booths, registering for drawings, and eating a lot of cake.

Since we have some ideas and recommendations in mind for photography, flowers, and music (although we still need to scope these things out), important things that need to be decided relatively soon are cake, catering, and officiant.

We got a good start on the cake on Saturday.  I knew that Carl’s Cakes, Craig’s Cakes, Hubbard Avenue Catering, and La Brioche were going to be top contenders in cake shopping.  However, we also happened to taste a couple of different types of cake from Rolling Pin Bakery in Fitchburg and they are now at the top of our list.

We particularly liked the lemon poppyseed raspberry cake and the strawberry shortcake from Rolling Pin.  I was pleased to see that they also had carrot cake and German Chocolate cake, which would make good “Fall” cakes, but we may not stick to that theme in the quest for the best cake we can find.

I am glad that Michael and I can agree on what a “good cake” is.  A good cake is not covered in fondant.  A good cake is not so sweet that your mouth puckers up when you taste it and you collapse into a sugar coma after finishing a piece.  A good cake has buttercream icing and the cake itself is rich, light, and buttery and full of flavor.  If there is fruit in the filling, the fruit tastes like fruit.  I’d much rather have a cake that tastes good, rather than a cake that is pretty, but I think we can have a fairly pretty cake that tastes awesome.

More to come on cake, and then we will probably move on to figuring out the other food.

This year is already going by faster than I could have imagined.

Before we get too far in, let me make the excuse that if this blog gathers dust it’s because …

I am planning a wedding.

I am working a lot to fund this wedding (and other things).

There are hobbies and activities I keep hoping I will have time for that I would like to write about, but I might be busy doing them.

Also, if I don’t call/email/IM much, its not because I don’t care.

I’m finally getting around to posting a Big, Happy 2009 to all you folks out there!

We’ve been busy with New Year’s celebrations, post-holiday sales, and getting back to work this week.

The New Year’s party was successful– we probably had 20 people or so drop in over the course of the evening.  Alice picked up a copy of Rock Band, so a lot of that was played downstairs and there was mostly chatting upstairs.

One more non-stop weekend of friends and food, then back to work and life-as-usual.  We’ve been kind of in celebration mode since around December 11th/13th, so I’m not by any means opposed to getting back on a normal schedule.

But who knows what the next few years will bring.  We might look back on the holiday season of 2008-2009 as one of the last times we were able to all get together as much as we did in this three or four week period.

Good times and best wishes for the future!