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!