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We wait too long to go from rags to riches
1. I slept nine hours last night. I'd slept an hour the night before. I dreamed I was at a convention where I kept being invited for academic reasons onto panels where I had nothing to contribute (I read Latin, so I was expected to explain the Crusades before the other panelists discussed the work of a nineteenth-century writer with a medievalist background) and walked out of lunch with strangers because one of them kept making offhandedly anti-Semitic comments ("Well, there's the money, but they're all right . . ."). I have no idea where any of that came from.
2. I'd spent the previous evening at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ratatosk's birthday party, for which I provided two cakes: a cheesecake and a brick of chocolate. The latter was the standard variation on chocolate decadence, recipe half-doubled to accomodate more than fifteen people; it is dense and dark and exactly what it sounds like. I watched people discover they couldn't actually eat it by the slab. The former was just a small, solid cheesecake with lemon zest and oil in the filling and a chocolate chip cookie crust, but Tracy had made a specific request for cakes of colors not naturally occurring in pastry, so rushthatspeaks and I bought neon-grade food coloring from Shaw's on Friday night and on Saturday evening turned the cheesecake into this:
The brick of chocolate is served with whipped cream and puréed raspberries, so we partitioned out a third of the cream in advance and frosted the cheesecake with it. The glitter on top is just colored sugar. I regret that I have no photographs of the rest of the cream after we'd turned it electric blue and/or other people had put it on their plates, but maybe Tracy got one. I am informed the raspberries went as well on the cheesecake as on the chocolate. I feel I should say at this point that I had nothing to do with providing the dry ice that people were putting in their drinks, nor did I organize (or play, for that matter) Pin the Shadow on the Groundhog, but I approved of being at a party with both of these things happening. And then I came home and fell over.
3. I still need to write up the movies Rush and I watched the night before that. DooWee & Rice now makes lime habanero chicken bao. They are better than the wings. Also basically a legal high.
4. My poem "Delenda" has been accepted by Not One of Us. It's the poem I wrote a few nights ago. It is about loss and gods and exile; the title is as in Carthago est.
5. Readercon has a safety update.
2. I'd spent the previous evening at
ratatosk's birthday party, for which I provided two cakes: a cheesecake and a brick of chocolate. The latter was the standard variation on chocolate decadence, recipe half-doubled to accomodate more than fifteen people; it is dense and dark and exactly what it sounds like. I watched people discover they couldn't actually eat it by the slab. The former was just a small, solid cheesecake with lemon zest and oil in the filling and a chocolate chip cookie crust, but Tracy had made a specific request for cakes of colors not naturally occurring in pastry, so rushthatspeaks and I bought neon-grade food coloring from Shaw's on Friday night and on Saturday evening turned the cheesecake into this:
The brick of chocolate is served with whipped cream and puréed raspberries, so we partitioned out a third of the cream in advance and frosted the cheesecake with it. The glitter on top is just colored sugar. I regret that I have no photographs of the rest of the cream after we'd turned it electric blue and/or other people had put it on their plates, but maybe Tracy got one. I am informed the raspberries went as well on the cheesecake as on the chocolate. I feel I should say at this point that I had nothing to do with providing the dry ice that people were putting in their drinks, nor did I organize (or play, for that matter) Pin the Shadow on the Groundhog, but I approved of being at a party with both of these things happening. And then I came home and fell over.
3. I still need to write up the movies Rush and I watched the night before that. DooWee & Rice now makes lime habanero chicken bao. They are better than the wings. Also basically a legal high.
4. My poem "Delenda" has been accepted by Not One of Us. It's the poem I wrote a few nights ago. It is about loss and gods and exile; the title is as in Carthago est.
5. Readercon has a safety update.
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And congratulations on the sale! I like seeing how this chapbook is falling out little by little. (The shape only becomes clear by looking into the past).
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Hee. Thank you. I am told it was tasty.
(The choc-brick, on the other hand, is sounding very tempting).
There is a tablespoon of flour in the recipe, a tablespoon of sugar and four eggs. The rest is chocolate. Honestly, I have your e-mail address: I can send you the recipe. Just be warned that it involves a double boiler and interminable quantities of eggbeating.
And congratulations on the sale! I like seeing how this chapbook is falling out little by little. (The shape only becomes clear by looking into the past).
Thank you!
There are a lot of ghosts.
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And if Shackleton ever happens to turn up in the passing ghost-crew, I would be very interested to see the results.
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It should be in your mailbox. I want pictures when you do.
And if Shackleton ever happens to turn up in the passing ghost-crew, I would be very interested to see the results.
So noted. At the moment my brain keeps nudging me with Jean Cocteau, but only as a constellation of ideas, not language. I have a title, which is totally useless.
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Check your e-mail!
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I look forward to hearing how it turned out for you!
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I am very sorry: I didn't actually think of it when I was describing the cake. Would you like me to look into substitutions?
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4. Congratulations!
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Thank you on both counts!
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...Pin the Shadow on the Groundhog,
I'm trying to figure out how that works. In any case, I approve of the concept.
I'm glad for your nine hours of sleep, but sorry if the dreams were disturbing as they sound.
Congratulations on the acceptance! That's a lovely poem, and I'm glad it's going to a good home.
...lime habanero chicken bao.
Sounds delicious. Wish they'd open up a branch in my vicinity.
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The basic idea is that you have a picture of a groundhog on a string so that you can flip it (or not flip it) randomly once someone is blindfolded. Everybody who's going to play gets a shadow with a bit of tape on it, and one by one you have them put the blindfold on, you spin them around and aim them at the wall, and then they stick it somewhere. Then everyone votes on whether or not the groundhog can or can't see the shadow from its position, depending on line of sight and so on. Once everyone has gone, you average the results -- if on average the groundhog could see its shadow each time, you take a break and come back in half an hour. If on average the groundhog can't see it, everyone removes an article of clothing and we turn the thermostat up two degrees. Once the heat has time to adjust, you do it again. The game ends when either spring arrives or everybody gets bored.
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Sounds fun, as party games go, although it might be a bit difficult to play with most of the groups I end up going to parties with.
Oh, and happy belated birthday!
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Congratulations on the poem--I like all your poems, but that one is fresh in my mind and on a theme I like.
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I will ask
[edit] Because at some level my mental model for radioactivity is still Tom Paxton's "All Clear in Harrisburg."
Congratulations on the poem--I like all your poems, but that one is fresh in my mind and on a theme I like.
Thank you.