Happiness is...

1) Sneaking a few spoonfuls of cool, creamy chocolate mousse before walking to work.

Especially when each spoonful delivers an explosion of super-saturated dark chocolatey goodness to your tastebuds.

And extra especially when that mousse was not made nor paid for by you...when it was a gift from another baking and pastry class, because they made such a huge vat of it that they had to give some of it away.

Yum!

2) Finding out when you arrive at work that your boss is going to let you leave at 2 p.m., to get an early start on the long holiday weekend.

3) The amazing coincidence that the very week it gets hot in Seattle is the same week when your baking class is slated to make ice creams and sorbets.

Sigh.

Blinded by the sight

Ahhhh...my eyes! My eyes!

Brown mandals (that's "man sandals," in case you didn't know) with navy blue socks. Oh the humanity! And outside the Starbucks on First and Bell, no less. For shame!

I know it's sandal season, but honestly...there's just no excuse for such a fashion faux pas. If I ever witness such an ugly sight again, I'll just have to gouge my eyes out with forks. I see no other way around it (pun not intended).

The only thing worse would have been the same foot ensemble...worn with manpris.

Aiiieeeeeee!

You're the inspiration

I had the brilliant idea today that, in honor of spring, I would hoof it to my friendly neighborhood Old Navy at lunch to pick up a few spring staples.

Unfortunately, everyone else in Seattle had the same idea.

I couldn't bring myself to pay $25-35 for a cute skirt that I could make for less than $10; they didn't have the capri pants I wanted in my size; they didn't have the divine Perfect Fit T-shirt in the colors I wanted. So I left, empty handed.

I detoured to Banana Republic and Anthropologie for inspiration. At Anthropologie, I was inspired to leave a puddle of drool on the wide-planked wood floor. But no matter how cute their flippy little spring skirts (and they were so cute that it almost brings a tear to my eye even now), I can't bring myself to pay about $90 for a skirt with an unfinished hem, no matter how fashionable (and, yes, part of the reason is that I could make that unfinished-hem skirt for a fraction of the price myself).

At Banana Republic, I was so close to buying a $78 crinkly, gauzy, pink-and-green-striped skirt that my fingers were tingling...but I didn't. Because I wasn't 100 percent crazy about the 2-inch band of pink around the hem. Sigh.

Then I went to Borders, with the intent of buying Vogue and InStyle for further inspiration, and as kind of a consolation prize. Instead, I flipped through them and put them back on the shelf, coming away only with the conviction that Katie Holmes is one of the cutest 20-somethings alive, and that it is really, really wrong that she is dating Tom Cruise.

By then I was dragging, and due back at work, so I made my one tiny purchase of the day: A grande sweetened iced coffee from Starbucks. Ahhhh...refreshingly satisfying. But I wouldn't want to wear it.

Die, morons, die!

There's nothing quite as annoying and frustrating as dealing with a freaked-out golden retriever, unless it's repressing the urge to track down and kill the morons who decided to shoot off two professional (or perhaps just high-caliber illegal...I'm not a connoisseur) fireworks from a small barge-like craft just off the waterfront in Elliot Bay.

I was sitting at my sewing machine, sewing a tricky seam on a costume-in-progress, when this incident occured. Doofus the Dog promptly tried to climb onto my lap. And at 85 pounds, give or take a couple of pounds, he is not exactly lap dog material.

I managed to keep him off my lap until I finished what I was doing, then hustled him downstairs to distract him with the last few minutes of "Lost," which I don't watch, then with "Alias," which I do. I also managed to keep him from jumping in the shower with me. I know that when he's stressed he likes to have his people in sight at all times, but sheesh.

My dread-drenched countdown to the Fourth of July has officially begun.

Spring fever

Something odd happened yesterday. As I was walking to work, three strange men (and my that, I mean strangers, not strange) said "Hello" to me.

I had a feeling of deja vu, because after moving back into the city a year ago, this happened a lot. Not necessarily every day, but a lot. But it had not happened for some months. I pondered this turn of events for a moment, then with crystalline clarity I realized the reason for the stopping and starting of this strange phenomena: spring.

More specifically, yesterday was the first day I walked to work without a coat or jacket of any kind. Just a black skirt and tank top, sage green V-neck cardigan, cute dark red Mary Janes, and my beloved cream-and-purple flowered silk scarf from Banana Republic.

Then my (male) work buddy independently commented on the joys of spring...especially women in cute (and less concealing) spring clothes.

Then two more guys said "Hello" to me as I walked home from work.

I rest my case.

Dahlia delights

Had lunch at Dahlia Lounge today. Ordered my usual grilled bread salad with pesto, oil-cured olives, fresh mozzarella and coppacola (I always humor myself by looking at the menu, but really, who am I kidding?). Topped it off with the pear tart (nestled in a puff pastry shell, topped with almond cream and warm caramel sauce). That part wasn't my usual...I often go for the fabulous creme caramel. Disappointed by the coffee, however. Specifically, I was bummed that since my last visit, they had traded out their usual rustic sugar-in-the-raw cubes for tiny, plain white sugar cubes, paired up and wrapped in paper (for your protection!). I loved those little tan cubes!

Afterwards, I stopped next door at Dahlia Bakery to pick up a loaf of pain de campagne. When I exited, a rather questionable looking gentleman (I use that term loosely) asked me for a "favor."

"What?" I said, giving him a hard look.

"I'm trying to raise $15..."

"No," I said, turning my back on him. Then my coworker emerged. She said "no" before the guy even had a chance to ask his favor.

"You shouldn't talk to me that way," he said. "You don't know me...or what I can do."

Excuse me? Being threatened at 1 p.m. in broad daylight on a sunny day in front of Dahlia Lounge? The nerve!

I have two regrets:

1) That I didn't get a better look at the details of his appearance before he moved halfway down the block. I would have totally turned his ass in to the police. Bastard.

2) That I didn't have the presence of mind to utter this snappy comeback: "Yeah? Well, you don't know me. And since you don't, you don't know that I'm sick of getting asked for money, and that just this morning I decided that I was going to pop the next guy who asked me for any." Of course, to make that effective, I would have had to been able to pull a gun (or a reasonable facsimile) out of my Kate Spade purse. I don't think a finger-in-the pocket gun would have worked. Especially since, today, I am without pockets.

Jammin'

Inspired by my 'A' grade on my baking practical exam on Saturday (yay, me!) I decided to dip into the possibilities of a lovely book I had checked out from the library after seeing it, and it's author, praised so highly on my favorite food blog, Chocolate & Zucchini.

The book, Mes Confitures: The Jams and Jellies of Christine Ferber, is a treasure trove of delightfully unusual (you guessed it) jam and jelly recipes. The recipes are arranged by season, so on Sunday I eagerly read the spring suggestions, settling on a rhubarb and Granny Smith apple concoction, jazzed up with a cup of Gewurztraminer wine.

A quick outing to Pike Place Market netted me the required ingredients, which I peeled, diced, combined and left in the refrigerator in a parchment paper-covered bowl to macerate overnight.

On Monday, a quick lunchtime outing to Sur la Table netted me jam jars and other jam-making necessities that added up to 10 times the cost of the ingredients. Yikes!

That evening, I drained the juice, boiled it down slightly, then added the fruit to boil for several more minutes. Then, I ladled them into my new, sterilized jars, twisted on the caps, and turned them upside down to set the seals. I opted not to do the hot-water bath treatment on the sealed jars, as is the norm in this country. Jam is a low-risk food, and it is the European custom to simply place the boiling hot jam in hot, sterilized jars, seal them quickly, and call it good. I decided that was good enough for me.

The jam looks lovely, all shades of pink and red and pale green. I'll let it stay in its jars for a few months to allow the flavors to continue to mingle. In the meantime, I am practially salivating for local strawberry season. I have in mind some strawberry-rhubarb jam, and the enticing strawberry-mint-black pepper concoction. Yum! And then there's summer, with apricots and nectarines and raspberries...oh, my!

No rest for the weary

The weekends are when I usually compensate for any sleep debt I've run up during the week. So you can imagine my ire when my apartment building's fire alarms went off at 5 a.m. Saturday morning (a mere 4 hours after I rested my head on my pillow)...and again at shortly before midnight on Sunday (right after I had finally fallen asleep).

It turns out that one occurence was caused by a small drip in the building's fire sprinkler system, and the other by air in the pipes of the same system. A system that is very sensitive, apparently.

Much like The Boy Who Cried Wolf, all of these false alarms have made me quite disinclined to evacuate the building as I technically should. Instead, I evacuate to my rooftop patio to watch the ferries, the sliding glass doors muffling the shrill sound to a sufficient degree.

So, much like Pavlov's dog, last night I was fully expecting to be rudely awoken from dreamland. I was pleasantly surprised (pleasant being a relative concept in this case) when the alarm went off while I was still actively awake. Off to the patio we went. Apparently the fire department (they must be really sick of showing up at my building every day) decided that our alarm system needed to be turned off. Which means that the fire doors stayed closed, the elevators stayed offline, and forced air rushed down each blocked-off section of the corridors, creating a wind-tunnel effect. All of that in case there really is a fire before the system is fixed. Lovely.

It's a mystery

A very strange thing happened this morning on my way to the kitchen. I discovered a cigarette butt laying in middle of the dining room floor.

This is indeed a true mystery, because no member of my household (human, canine or feline) smokes cigarettes. He Who Puts Up With Me smokes a cigar a few times a year, but that's it. And if that ever changes, the offender will die swiftly by my hand.

What with getting up late this morning, then dragging my sorry ass through my morning routine, I didn't have time to sufficiently question the cats. Little hoodlums. You wouldn't think that at 12 years of age (which is, what, like 80 in cat years), they would develop a nicotine jones. Strange.

Dead woman walking

Or not walking, as the case may be. I think I'll fall over from exhaustion if I stand up for too long.

I left work early yesterday to practically sprint home, grab my crap for baking class, and fly over to the school library early to work out a game plan with my team for this weekend's round of practical exams.

As I'm cramming my uniform in my bag at home, I notice, by chance, that my cell phone message light is blinking. It's He-Who-Puts-Up-With-Me, reminding me to feed Doofus (when in fact that morning he said that HE would feed him before he left for work that afternoon), and oh, by the way, Doofus was having trouble, ahem, taking care of business, so could I take him out before I go to class.

Well, gee, no, I can't. I don't have time to stand outside in the pouring rain for a half-hour with a dog who can't pee when I'm supposed to leave for class RIGHT NOW!

So I leave for class, drenched in rain and guilt, only to discover that none of my teammates managed to show up. Lovely. So I work out an exam game plan on my own. When I present it to my teammates at the beginning of class, they are so relieved and appreciative that I can't stay mad at them (good thing, because I had been so pissed off that I was practically spitting nails). "You're so organized. You'll make a great business owner," they say. I hope they're right.

Tonight, we learned about chocolate. Specifically, the precise temperatures that chocolate must be heated to, then cooled to, then heated back to, in order to temper it. When chocolate is tempered properly, it has a nice sheen, it holds a desired shape at room temperature, and breaks with a crisp, satsifying snap. How? Because all that heating and cooling forces a certain type of crystal in the chocolate's fat (aka cocoa butter) to line up in an orderly procession.

All I will say is that tempering chocolate is one of those things that always works in theory, but doesn't always work in practice. Ahem.

So I spend class surrounded by chocolate, good and bad (I'm never eating Hershey's again). I haven't eaten any real food since lunch, so when a few of the students start discussing leg of lamb, it kills me. I start intensely craving lamb chops. Lamb chops have actually sounded good for the past few weeks, but I haven't gotten around to procuring any. The chocolate I've eaten starts to make me nauseous.

At the end of class, we go to watch these videos by/about the grand master of all confectionary artists, Ewald Notter (seriously, this guy is so good that he had to stop competing in culinary olympics type events because no one else stood a whisper of a chance...on one occasion, the judges had to make up a new award because they decided the gold medal wasn't sufficient). Interesting videos, but at 10 p.m., not interesting enough to keep my eyelids from trying to shut.

So I get home, just wiped, close to 11 p.m., relieved to find that Doofus has apparently survived my absence. So I take him outside, and spend about a half-hour trying to empty him. This isn't helped by the fact that he's all atwitter, apparently thinking that we're on our way to go meet HWPUWM.

By the time we get home, I'm not just tired, I'm really cranky and bitchy. I call HWPUWM on his cell and work phones about five times before he picks up. But he's on deadine, so he hangs up on me when I start to unleash the cranky and bitchy. Can't really blame him, but he shouldn't have dumped the dog's problems on me on Thursday, the worst day of my week. So I guess we're even.

I set my alarm for an hour later than usual this morning (no workout for me), but I'm still feeling like a zombie. Thank goddess that my boss is springing me at 3 p.m. today. So I can go home and do laundry before class. Oh, how glamorous my life is!

A fashion "maybe"

Most interesting fashion sighting of the morning:

Exiting a building on First Avenue was a tall, middle-aged man with neatly cropped graying hair, wearing a black leather-and-cloth bomber jacket, a black Utilikilt, and black and yellow horizontally striped knee-high socks.

Interesting.

P.S. Check out the "Top 10 Reasons to Wear a Utilikilt" on the Utilikilt site.

Cuke, I am your father

As you probably know, today is the opening day of the latest Star Wars movie. Which means that geeks in Stormtrooper costumes will be standing in line all across America (I myself will only stand in line all day for a U2 concert).

For those of us who don't feel The Force quite so urgently, or who saw the less-than-stellar reviews, I offer you a more educational, and possibly more entertaining option: Store Wars.

If your computer is equipped with Flash and a set of speakers, you too can experience the world of Obi Wan Cannoli, Cuke Skywalker, Darth Tater, Tofu D2, Princess Lettuce, and a host of other tasty characters.

The production values on this short film, sponsored by the Organic Trade Association, are quite excellent.

Still not convinced it's worth your while? Let me put it this way: Where else will you get to see a cucumber in a bad blond wig? Yeah, exactly. So watch it right now (just keep the volume low if you're at work!).

The real thing

Why did I do it?

Why, why, why did I even bother to buy food-court Thai food and think it was going to be satisfying?

It's true that I'm not hungry anymore, but that pale substitute has left my tastebuds crying for Typhoon. Especially their chicken in green curry. Sigh.

And if I had gone to Typhoon, I could have also had the pleasure of choosing a tea from a list that is longer than many wine lists. Sigh.

Even Wild Ginger (on a day when I'm not seated next to the kitchen and forgotten about...I will never go there during Dine Around Seattle again) would have been preferable.

I'll just have to chalk this up as a hard lesson learned.

Two fugs, and then some

I haven't quite recovered from the three rather alarming sightings I had last evening.

First, I was at Third and Pine when I was stopped in my tracks (OK, I also had to stop for the light) by the horrifying visual confirmation that the 80s were coming back into vogue. As evidence, I present you with this: stonewashed denim mini-skirt over black capri leggings, topped by a rather abstract Flashdance-inspired T-shirt and a pair of the largest plastic hoop earrings I have ever seen.

It is said that one should not wear a certain look if one is old enough to have worn said look the first time around. Well I am, so I won't. Enough said.

I was still mesmerized by the idea of big plastic hoop earrings when I encountered a second fugly vision, only moments and one city block later.

Picture this: faux dark tan, faux blonde hair forced into pigtails that were somewhat reminiscent of Pippi Longstocking (i.e., sticking straight out from the sides of her head), set off gaudily by a matching sweatshirt and baseball cap in a hideous shade of pink that I can only describe as the sickly love child of Pepto-Bismol and bubblegum.

To make matters worse, I couldn't decide if the poor deluded woman was way too old to be wearing pigtails and that much pink, or if years of hitting the tanning beds had rendered her old beyond her years. Not pretty, either way.

I had a brief reprieve before the third sighting: an apparently sane woman pushing her Daschund through the park in a baby stroller. This encounter brings up so many questions. Is this poor woman so wanting a child that she is driven to pretend that her dog is in fact a child? (Anyone with pets knows they are indeed akin to children, but honestly now!) Does she enjoy longer walks than her dog's little legs can handle? Did her beloved canine have some sort of surgery that makes it unable to go for walks? Sadly, I will probably never know the answer.

Cheese, scones and quiche, oh my!

Yesterday was a foodie day.

First, we enjoyed the last two Lemon-Lavender Scones from Saturday's mini-bakefest (I was so frustrated that because of my baking and pastry classes, I never have time to bake at home anymore, so I woke determined to make whatever scones I had the proper ingredients I had on hand for, plus a crust for a quiche-to-be-made-later.), along with a nice hot cafe au lait. Oh, the scone recipe is from the completely excellent Macrina Bakery cookbook. Buy one today!

In the afternoon, I attended a short seminar at the Art Institute of Seattle about starting a restaurant. The speaker was chef Ethan Stowell, who opened his first restaurant, Union, about 18 months ago.

He gave a great talk, with interesting tidbits about putting together a business plan, getting investors, etc., but the one thing that sticks with me the most is that he said he owns 600-700 cookbooks, and that "I've literally read every one of those recipes backwards and forwards at least three times." Yowza! I thought I had a lot of cookbooks, but I don't think I've topped 100 (didn't have time yesterday to count, though). I'd better get shopping. Of course, I do own about 5 million back issues of Food & Wine.

After the seminar, I grabbed He-Who-Puts-Up-With-Me and our dog Doofus and headed down to the Pike Place Market for the Seattle Cheese Festival. We fought our way up to enough tables to satisfy our cheese tooth with samples. We even bought a couple tasty wedges to take home, accompanied by crackers from Beechers. Yummy!

Dinner was so easy: A rotisserie chicken from Costco and sauteed fresh asparagus. For dessert: wedges of the cherry pie I made in class Saturday night. Sigh.

I tested out the grater attachment on my new food processor in order to grate the 4 ounces of Gruyere for my quiche. Wow. Drop in a block of cheese, you get grated cheese...presto! How did I ever live without this contraption?

I had never made a quiche in my life until last week...now I'm addicted. They're so easy...the crust is the hardest part, and even that's not that hard (especially with my trusty food processor). I already have my eye set on a spinach and feta quiche for next week (great way to use up the feta in my fridge). A wedge of quiche, heated slightly in the microwave (like, one minute or less), makes a great brown bag lunch, along with a green salad. Yum, yum, yum!

Sailing away

My intent this morning was to slip in a few minutes of studying along with my breakfast. Instead, I end up standing at my kitchen sink, mug of coffee in one hand, toasted baguette with butter and marmalade (I found a jar hidden behind the tea in my pantry...so happy!) in the other...while an enormous cruise ship, well, cruised on by.

As the Celebrity ship slowly made it's way along the Elliot Bay waterfront (it never ceases to amaze me how close to shore they get), its hulking size filled the view through my sliding doors, all but obscuring West Seattle in the distance. I swear, I could almost count the deck chairs.

I have mixed feelings about cruise ships. First, I hate it when the tourists these ships deposit clog up my beloved Pike Place Market while I'm actually trying to shop for produce, then back up the line at Starbucks while they hem and haw and dither and try to decide what to order (honestly, you would think these people had never ordered coffee before). Second, the cruise industry is not exactly environmentally friendly.

In spite of my misgivings, I seldom fail to be impressed by the sheer size of these waterbound creatures, and the fact that they move so swiftly, with so little wake.

Reading about how to assemble an Opera Cake will just have to wait.

Double-teamed

Walking around downtown, it's impossible not to get solicited for something. Money, petition signature, a moment of your time, religious conversion.

Since I've fairly perfected the Don't F--k With Me face, some solicitors don't even bother with me. So I was especially tickled by the unique approach I experienced as I was walking back to the office from Pike Place Market today.

Solicitor Number One has a folding table set up against the building. As I approach, he asks "How would you like to defeat Dick Cheney?" Curious, as the election is well past over. I keep walking without the slightest acknowledgement of his presence.

Solicitor Number Two is standing several feet further up the sidewalk, next to the curb. As I approach, he points behind me and asks, "What do you think it takes to build one of those cranes?"

Ah, deftly done, but no dice. Solicitor Number Two was clearly banking on the assumed politeness of the nicely-dressed thirty-something female office worker with his innocuous question. Once snagged, the conversation would surely have swiftly turned to one Mr. Richard Cheney.

I'm sure that many people (primarily women) would have anwered his question, not wanting to, heaven forbid, appear rude. I have no such problem. I feel no obligation to strangers whatsoever, other than not tripping them, running over them with my car, cutting in front of them in line, or dropping litter on the ground (I don't like to look at other people's litter, why should they look at mine). I'm sure I have a few other stranger-related rules in there somewhere, but Must Talk To Any Stranger Who Talks To Me First is so not one of them.

Crime and punishment

One of the dirty little not-so-secret secrets at my community garden is that its more secluded spots are a magnet for assorted, well, riff-raff. At various times of the day and night, gardeners, and visitors, may encounter quite a spectrum of humanity, ranging from day-laborers who have nowhere else to go at the moment (they are generally not a bother at all), to run-of-the-mill homeless people looking for a place to sleep or drink their cheap beer, to completely wasted crack addicts who seek their fix in the garden's darker corners.

Knowing all of that, it was still depressing to see the havoc these people wrecked on our beloved garden. At Saturday's monthly work party, we discovered that plants had been yanked out of the ground because they had the audacity to be located where some of these, ahem, gentlemen wished to sit. Dozens of thick cobblestones had been dug up from around our beautiful solar-powered fountain. And one poor gardener had a good portion of her plot crushed because someone decided to use it as a bed.

I hate vandalism in all forms, but to put so much love and care into growing and building a garden that is a joy to many more people than just those who garden there, only to have it carelessly destroyed by people who have no business being there in the first place...it really makes my blood boil.

So how apropos that, just as I was standing where the worst of the damage occured, discussing it with the garden coordinator, we look up to see two of that exact sort of people physically threatening a fellow gardener.

The gardener was wielding his rake defensively as one of the interlopers swung punches at him. For a moment, I thought that they were joking around. Then I read the tension in the gardener's body language: This was no joke.

We ran up to the other side of the fence from where this scene was playing out. "He called the police 10 minutes ago," a gardener said. Apparently, the two very drunk and very threatening Hispanic men took offense to being politely asked to move along.

Pissed off, and feeling bold thanks to the whole safety-in-numbers thing, I used my firmest, most forbidding voice to loudly tell the trespassers to go away and leave the gardener alone. No takers. So I informed them I was calling the police, whipped out my cell phone, and called 911. You would think that the fact that someone was being threatened with physical agression in a community garden in the middle of the day would bring a speedy response. Alas, no. It took a good 10 minutes for bike cops to show up, during which one of the agressors decided to lie down and take a nap, and the other took a walk, then returned. So frustrating.

I had to head home at that point, so I don't know how this drama played out in the end. But I have the sinking feeling that even if the dasterdly duo got hauled off to jail, nothing will really change. We will always garden knowing that our work can be destroyed at any time. So we hope for the best, and try to prepare for the worst.

Mother's Day Memo

To: Self
From: Self
Re: Mother's Day Insanity

I know that you thought it was a fine idea when your mother suggested that for Mother's Day she wanted to go shopping at the brand new (truly...it only opened on Thursday!) outlet mall next to the Tulalip casino, and that you saw no real problem with her suggestion to to to lunch at one of the casino restaurants afterwards (even though the idea didn't thrill you). But , really, what in the hell were you thinking?

The traffic, oh, the traffic. Couldn't you have forseen how bad the traffic would be as carloads of Mother's Day shoppers flocked toward the shopping Holy Grail? Didn't you guess that what would normally be a 45-minute drive from Seattle would come closer to two hours? And as for the mall itself, why were you so blind as to not guess the depressing cross-section of humanity that would be packed into the mall itself? Oh the agony of the restroom line (shouldn't have had that coffee on the way out of the city), which was only dwarfed by the line of people waiting to get into the Coach store.

And then, at the casino, were you really suprised to discover that it was a one-hour wait to get into the restaurant, and a two-hour wait for the buffet? Yes you were surprised, but you should not have been. Shame, shame on you.

Finally, when you suggested escaping into Marysville proper for a meal at a Chinese restaurant you love, you should have insisted that He Who Puts Up With You follow your ususal arangement of splitting the divine honey-walnut prawns and snow peas & broccoli with garlic sauce, instead of adopting his idea of going with the greasier combo plates. You would have both been grateful later.

Of course, you know what the real problem is: you failed to think at all. And, for someone who is usually thinking 24-7, whether she wants to or not, this is a complete breakdown on your part. Don't let it happen again!

Burning that candle

Shame on me for being a sporadic blogger. I shift the blame for that sin, however, to the fact that I have been doing penance for a second sin: failing to take proper care of myself.

Take this weekly schedule: full-time, job, 15 hours of baking & pastry classes, one intense bellydance class, requisite daily dog walks, morning workouts five days a week, studying, tending my community garden plot, sewing a costume for whatever bellydance performance is looming on the horizon, (sadly minimal) meal preparation, enough cleaning to prevent the apartment from becoming a total stye, laundry, and daily grooming (so I don't look like I live in a stye).

Then, add to that my three consecutive nights of sleep deprivation due to the aforementoned baking & pastry classes (which don't end until well past my normal bedtime), and stack on two more as a result of two back-to-back rockin' U2 concerts. Is it any wonder I was nearly knocked to my knees by a nasty cold.

When I woke up two mornings after the second U2 concert feeling like my throat had been stripped with sandpaper, I suspected it was too much to hope that it was a slighly delayed reaction to screaming my devoted lungs out when my boys were on stage.

My suspictions were confirmed the following morning, when I was greeted upon awakening by a sore throat + stuffy nose.

Now, almost two weeks later, I am still not completely recovered. It probably didn't help that during the worst three days of my illness, I had to deal with midterms (two days of practical exams, and one day of written exams). And yes, I feel as guilty as hell that I went to class while sick (I did work from home, however, to protect my co-workers from the worst of my contagiousness).

So, as I battle the dregs of coughing and occasional nose-blowing, I resolve to sleep more and eat better. And to take pity on He Who Puts Up With Me, who started developing his own sore throat the other day...sorry, babe!