So, it’s a Monday that feels like a Sunday. Man, three-day weekends always mess with me.
The weekend was quite enjoyable, though. Friday evening was grilling with friends , accompanied by some surprisingly good (and surprisingly bad) wine. Saturday was a complete wash, spent catching up with the Tivo and generally lazing about the house with takaza. On Sunday we went to see Spiderman 2 with me_not_you, wildmouse, scarlett_fire, Thomas, Echo, and Richard. The movie was…OK. It was better than the first one, but still had a goodly number of flaws. At least I was kept entertained looking for cameos and those weird Sam Raimi touches (*boom* zoom in *boom* zoom in *boom* zoom in). Afterwards we did a nice collaboration dinner at Donald and Janelle’s and discussed redecorating their house. It’ll be fabulous!
So, as I sit here I realize that we depart for Anthrocon in, um, 55 hours. Wowsers. We’ve still got a lot to do – I need to finish lining up some folks to help with Artists Alley, Dan needs to finish newsletter preparation, then there’s the grocery shopping, baking (scones make wonderful breakfasts and keep for days!), and packing. What fun! I’ll post our detailed itinerary tomorrow, probably.
Oh yes, and that dessert surprise I mentioned on Friday? It was the result of some ideas that Dan and I had about how to improve on ice cream cakes, which I generally despise. I started with the wonderfully moist yellow cake recipe from The Best Recipe, only I halved the recipe (since it’s for two 9″ cakes). I divided the batter equally among eight 3″ ramekins that I had buttered and floured and put a round of parchment paper in the bottom of each. I baked these small cakes and then carefully removed them from the ramekins once they were cool. I cut the cakes in half, then popped them into the freezer. Meanwhile, I made a batch of Chocolate Velvet Ice Cream. Once that was ready I pulled the cakes out of the freezer, removed the top half, slathered on about a 1/2″ layer of ice cream, put the top half back on, and popped it back into the freezer.
The verdict? Pretty damn good. After being in the freezer for a few hours, they benefited from sitting out at room temperature for about ten minutes before eating. It was a great mix of flavors and the chocolate ice cream was delicious, if extremely potent. Next time, I’d want to put a little less batter in the ramekins so the cakes wouldn’t stick up quite as much, and maybe top it with some kind of whipped cream frosting just before serving. But hey – for something made up of whole cloth, I was pretty happy about it.
Back to making lists now…
I am of course going to assume that I have been lined up to help since at least last year, and you mean ‘looking for MORE folks’ 😉
The guy I’m rooming with, RBear (Stephen Wells), seems eager to help out and is arriving Wednesday as well. Want me to ask him whether he’d like to assist? I don’t know him from Adam, but I see no signs of untoward weirdness or debauchery. (awwww! 😉 )
Well, of course! Basically, my solution to making AA payout as efficient as possible is to throw more people at the problem. Takaza and I have worked up a pretty good process, I think, and I’m hoping that we’ll have enough people to have two cashiers (and two clerks, and two runners, and two line wranglers).
As I’m sure you’re already aware there’s always plenty of help needed in setup, so the best thing to do once you get settled into your room and are ready to lend a hand is to show up down at Operations (in its usual place on the ground floor) and volunteer your (and RBear’s, if he’s interested) services. For AA/Con Store specifically, I’ll be needing some help to carry stuff over from Ops starting at about mid-afternoon Thursday. If I can have the help of a couple people it shouldn’t take more than an hour, and even less if we’re efficient.
I’ll be at AC fairly early on Thursday. Plus it looks like reg doesn’t open till later in the day.
I would be more than willing to lend a paw with setup. And if you promise some fresh un-plucked chickens I know a certain Foxie who may be persuaded to help as well.
Bear.
The Best Recipe
That book is $4 cheaper at Amazon.