Must. Drink. Arni's. Coffee.

I got up after 5 hours of sleep and went to read last-minute email before doing the final packing of my car... checked CNN to see if the world exploded while I slept and this is what I swear was a headline, "China halts export of tainted boy toys". My first thought was, "Lordy, not another Boy Band out to date the Hollywood Hussies"...

No, really the headline was, "China halts export of tainted bead toys".

Must drink some of Arni's coffee before I do anything else. I fear what I'd be bringing to the kitchen otherwise. "Why yes, my lord, I did mean for us to slice and saute the frozen ice cream in it's box - it'll be easier to divide that way, don't you think? And the Mardi Gras beads are to be unstrung and added to the peas for a bit of color..."

Done. Unwinding.

Home again after the feast-cooking. I learned a bit. Okay, a lot. I learned I don't know diddly about plating food or estimating when something should be started in order to serve on time - not that more than one item was late but still - the servers all stood on the other side of the pass-though window and looked at the dumb cook who didn't know how to plate...

Thank the GODS for Calli, 'drea, and Felicia. ANd Orianna. Oh my god, was she a god-send when we started flagging.

So it wasn't too bad. The day in the kitchen with them was actually a lot of fun it was only serving-crunch time that got me down.

I learned that cheese cut into leaf shapes looks pretty good but bread cut that way looks like torn bread. Oh well.

So I'm done now and everyone survived the cooking. Now to take off my shoes and wiggle my toes....

Oh, and it didn't suck that Total Wine and More was just down the road. Strongbow and Woodchuck were liberally applied to crew and Baronage, as needed, whenever I could catch them.