Runs with knives!
In the morning/early afternoon, Jay & Angel and I went up to Xenia to read the script (“Gratuitous”) written by Dan, a filmmaker friend of mine. Dan likes to workshop his scripts to see what works and what could be tightened. This is the second…
We did a bunch of yardwork today, building on some initial work that Wendy had done earlier in the week. We replaced the old-n-busted pavers along our sidewalk with lovely new ones. This involved a trip to Home Depot for the new pavers, all 22…
We slept in this morning, a lovely thing. The fan in the bedroom kept us cool, and Buster was reasonably quiet until he messed his playpen at 7:00am, but we were able to get him cleaned up, settled in, and everyone back to sleep without much fuss. We got up around 10:00am and went back over to Home Depot to pick up a few more yard items, including new brackets to secure our dog-door-through-the-backyard-screen-door since Mr. Face just discovered he can get through the old setup. Quite alarming to discover your blind cat blundering around the backyard!
We also stopped by the Delhi Garden Center to get some plants & mulch for the front yard. Wendy did a great job of getting everything placed, planted, watered, and mulched. If everything lives, we should have a fairly nice front yard.
At 3:00, I headed into downtown Cincinnati for the annual Taste of Cincinnati festival to work in the Cincinnati Magazine/Cincinnati State booth. This was the first year for this booth, which featured restaurants listed in the magazine’s Top 25 in the city. Students in the culinary program got to help out in the booths, a nice chance to ‘rub elbows’ with the professionals. I worked with the gang from Knotty Pine on the Bayou who were serving their Seafood Etouffee. Once their shift was done at 6:00, we served Chocolate Grand Marnier Bavois which were made in the kitchens at school. The Bavois is almond sponge cake filled with Grand Marnier Chocolate Mousee which has a blob of soft caramel in the center, then topped with pistachio dust and half a chocolate-dipped strawberry to crown it. We had approximately 200 pieces to sell, and we sold them all.
After cleaning up, I walked around the festival and dinner was a Gyro, some cold sesame noodles, and some roasted corn. I came home tired & sweaty, but happy from a good day’s work.
As for the carpenter bees referred to in yesterday’s update, it sounds like we got MOST of them; there’s very little humming from the roof of the porch now. We feel like another attack should allow us to declare victory. This attack will probably come Tuesday evening (but don’t tell the bees that; we want to surprise them).
This article was written by Wendy. At this time Buster is making great strides, literally. As last week drew to a close he started to push himself around the floor more enthusiastically. As anticipated, his rear end is stronger than the front (which we expected…
This evening, Wendy & I went to Joann Fabrics to pick out fleece for our upcoming participation in a Project Linus event that Holly organized and Tracy is hosting. Project Linus is a 100% volunteer non-profit organization with a two-fold mission: First, it is our…
I had my GARDE MANGER class this evening, so I went directly to Cincinnati State from work.
We worked on a few items tonight since the food order was yet again messed up. As a result, we didn’t have the ingredients we needed for the items assigned tonight. This is a frustrating occurance that has happened far too many times this term. So, we made what we could — Pate Choux Paste, herbed cracker dough (we’ll pipe this out and bake it for decorations on our final platters), and a few other things, but nowhere near the production we hoped for.
During class, Chef brought out some Irish Breakfast Sausage and one of the students whipped up some Cranberry Mustard. The two together were a very satisfying dinner.
At home, Wendy was in the computer room and Buster was laying at her feet. When Dolly & Bean (the other two dogs) went crazy when I got home. Buster followed them halfway down the upstairs hallway before Wendy could catch him! Pretty good for a ‘paralyzed’ dog, don’t you think? He’s really starting to get his proprioception back — he’s placing his front feet somewhat deliberately, but he gets it ‘right’ almost half the time now. Pretty good for a dog who was immobile only two weeks ago! We’re hopeful that he’ll continue to improve.
In other news, he’s completely off all his medications now — the steroids, the muscle relaxers, the metronidozol, the Vitamin E, and the Selenium. He’s been dry in his playpen for the last couple mornings and his stools are starting to firm up.