I would like you to dance

[austin_dern]

There's been a bit of development at the extruded office product this week: specifically, Monday, one of the people on the first floor had a birthday. That's ordinary enough although the birthday card was brought to me several times over to sign, showing the inadequacy of the signed-card information system between the different floors. But it came along with good news: in the early afternoon, right about the time that would be appropriate for me to go move my car because it turns out I'm blocking this one person who has to go out to clients early, we were all invited downstairs for cake and a perfectly keyless, tuneless rendition of ``Happy Birthday To You''. The cake was yellow, with white icing, and strawberries on top, with some kind of nutty shell on the outside, which is interesting given one of the people is allergic to strawberries and another is allergic to nuts. (The shell was, according to the store, not nuts; it tasted like the crumble put on ice cream.)

That's fine, but come Tuesday someone else had brought in another cake, with the first not yet finished, for the same birthday, and that's a multi-layer chocolate cake with buttercream filling and icing. This we didn't gather together for; it was just sitting in the lunch room for people to sloppily cut segments from the really too tall cake. There've been pieces of it scattering all over the break room ever since as the cake shrinks not so quickly as you might think.

Someone made a tub of popcorn for Wednesday, although it was widely regarded as ``smelling funny'' and depending on just how the dates are meant to be it expired either in July of this year or of 2006. And Thursday someone brought in a pecan pie approximately the width of the starship Enterprise's saucer section. Despite our best efforts, we're in real danger of sinking beneath the desserts. We may have to bring in guest eaters.

Trivia: The force of the Halifax Explosion of 6 December 1917 sent the anchor shank of the Mont Blanc flying across the city for approximately 2.35 miles; it landed on the other side of the peninsula of Halifax. Source: Curse of the Narrows, Laura M MacDonald.

Currently Reading: Sun in A Bottle: The Strange History Of Fusion And The Science Of Wishful Thinking, Charles Seife.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

We're still going through post-Thanksgiving pies at home, slowly. As I expected but Mom'goose refused to accept, our "four people, possibly up to six" for dinner stayed right at four, as it did in previous years; And one of them broguht a pie, also as I expected but Mom'goose refused to accept, and it of course has stayed here. This means that of four pies, not quite one was consumed on Thanksgiving itself; and they feed me at work and I'm just not hungry for much pie when I get home.

When I move out, I hope she'll start adjusting her batch cooking downward, but I'm not holding out hope yet.

[moxie_man]

If she's anything like my mother, who cooked for the "7th fleet" as I grew up, I highly doubt she'll ever adjust to cooking for fewer people. Then again, my father has a high metabolism rate, eats as much 2 to 3 normal people and remains skinny as a rail.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Lucky state of affairs. My father likes to cook, although he didn't need much to adjust from the full family with all the kids down to just him-and-mom; worse from his point of view, my mother often eats out because it's much more convenient for her office hours. So he waits for reasons to start cooking more.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I've actually only just now finished the desserts at home left over from my siblings' dessert party. Most of a pumpkin pie is left as well, but the cookies and cream ice cream from before Thanksgiving is just now finished too. Of course it goes slower when I'm on my own, particularly since Monday and Wednesdays are late days for me for various reasons and I have dinner relatively late then.