I Had a Nice Day Today!

Was not looking forward to it, due to host of obligations, but it turned out to be the best day I've had in a while.

Much fun and socializing at the festival at E's school. I feel that between work and illness, I have not seen anyone in a very long time, but Thursday I had coffee with Local K, and Friday morning I rode the bus with T, inadvertently but quite delightfully, and had breakfast with P, purposefully and equally delightfully, and then at the festival I saw several of the friend/acquaintances one never plans to see but always enjoys when circumstances bring you together. Also I volunteered for an hour, because that is what one does at our school, and that made the time pass much more quickly, productively, and unboringly.

Then I took the girls to work, which actually did not go very well in terms of what needed to be accomplished, but was quite fun and full of hilarity, and the girls were absolutely angelic, though it is not hard to be angelic at this workplace, because it has all sorts of things to make you happy, if you are one of my daughters.

Then we went out to dinner, all four of us, for the first time since I can remember (usually it is only three of us going out to dinner, because one of us is cooking dinner for other people going out to dinner), at the no-longer-so-new Brazilian restaurant, which was very good. They brought around skewers of meat, and M and S ate them, and I marveled at them.

And then--yes, it's not even over--I went to a movie! OK, so it wasn't the best movie ever (I am refraining from the narrative/structural critique in light of the conventions of romantic comedy, oh yes I am), but it was a movie! and I went with M who wanted to go and did not need to be dragged! and we laughed! and she liked it!

But there's still more! You know the cake, the one I baked last night for the cake walk? Well, my lovely children were convinced that it would be the first cake to go, but you would not even believe how many cakes there were. And which went first? The ones with the peeps. Yes, there were cakes decorated with peeps. Then the ones with the gummy worms. And the ones with the oreos. And the green ones. So by the times M and E made it to the cake walk (where I was collecting tickets), our cake, with the boring M and Ms, was still there. And E won it! (Somewhat nefariously, as there was one space open in the cake walk, and she was sitting on the sidelines, so I told her she could walk, even though she didn't have a ticket, and then of course she won, somewhat to my embarassment, so when I was done with my shift, I went and bought her a ticket and put it in the can...)

So now I must say a little more about the cake. It's Devil's Food from Mom's Big Book of Baking with Chocolate Satin Frosting (scroll down about 2/3) from Joy of Cooking (1997 edition). It did indeed have little lumps of cocoa (see yesterday's post), but it's fine, tasty enough. Only, the thing is, I think I've decided that Devil's Food Cake just isn't that interesting. It always turns out kind of dry and moderately chocolatey and, well, it's the 21st century now, and we can do better than that. Yes we can!

And now I get to what is perhaps the most exciting thing of the day. Alas, I can't share the details, but I can tell you that I am now, to my enormous surprise, in possession of an ARC of The Explosionist (I can't believe Amazon doesn't have a picture of the cover, and I can't find Jenny's post with the cover). Of course I immediately emailed Jenny with this fabulous news, and we were equally thrilled, but now I am in that awkward position where she knows I am about to read it and what if I don't like it? Well, we won't worry about that, and yes, Libby, I'll send it to you when I'm done. Only maybe I shouldn't because if we just pass around this ARC, then Jenny won't make any money, and that wouldn't be very good at all...