So, it’s Wednesday, which means we’re hosting Poker Night tonight. Yay! To back up to the weekend, though…

On Saturday we did some last-minute shopping before heading over to Rob and Janet’s for the extremely-delayed Secret Santa party. My gift for Sherry was a cell phone charger for her car – utilitarian, yes, but something she had mentioned she needed. Janelle (wildmouse) got me a wonderful book, The Art of the Cake. I still need to dig further into it, but it looks like a terrific resource. The party was quite entertaining – good company, good food, good wine (mmm, that was a tasty Cote de Provence!). The evening ended with a fun poker game, and we decided it was so much fun we needed to do it again, hence the Poker Night here tonight.

Sunday we had to clean the house up for a showing in the afternoon, which is fine because it kind of needed that extra polish to be in showable condition. We vacated the house in plenty of time and took care of our weekly grocery shopping, then had a nice quiet evening snuggling on the sofa and watching Tivo.

Monday was gaming, and another attempt at a chocolate layer cake. This took a lot more time than I expected, mainly because the first cakes were a mess (too much baking powder in the recipe leads to uncooked centers in cakes. Bleah!) and I had to remake them, then the buttercream frosting didn’t work nearly as well as it should have – it came out quite greasy and…salty. I really should have double-checked I was using unsalted butter. Ah well, it was a learning experience, and the cake (with chocolate ganache between the layers) was quite tasty. I’ll just have to keep inflicting cakes on the Gang until I get it right.

Not much going on yesterday, except a little cleaning and job-hunting. Today? Well, I already took care of re-seasoning our cast iron pan, since it was showing a bit of rust (my life is so exciting), and in a bit I need to take a shower and meet takaza for lunch. Laundry this afternoon, and maybe make some kind of dessert to go with the pizzas we’re ordering for dinner.

On the job front: no word yet from the company I interviewed with last week. I hope to hear something by the end of this week, but nothing is definite. One bit of amusement – a recruiter called Monday afternoon pitching me a job that sounded very familiar. After he described it a bit, I finished it for him, told him who the company was, and what they were willing to pay. He was trying to sell me on the same job I interviewed for last week (and he said he was surprised they wouldn’t meet my salary expectations, but hey, that’s the way the game is played). Anyway, I e-mailed him my resume anyway, since he has a partner that specializes in the urethanes field, an area in which I’m well-versed.

And so we wait, and apply all over, and hope something comes along…