Before I get any hate mail from any denizens or native sons/daughters of Piscataway, New Jersey, I hasten to mention that I am not, in fact, comparing Piscataway to hell. It's just that I am a bit more sluggish than usual tonight, thanks to the whirlwind 24-hour trip I took to Piscataway yesterday on LuthorCorp's behalf. My pal and fellow toiler T, with whom I am now working, has been courting a fairly big-deal customer, and this morning she and I, along with our boss and a few other packaging brains, were invited to show a room full of people what we can do. Overall, I think we made a persuasive case for Better Packaging Through LuthorCorp; we did get to have a nice dinner together last night; and I was back home in Astoria in plenty of time to miss the thunderstorms that are now pounding the neighborhood. The bad news is that I am laid low by fatigue, thanks to a two-day sinus headache that has only just released me from its clutches, and that on Monday morning at 8:30, we'll have to do it all over again for another customer, although this time we won't have to go to Piscataway to do it. Add to this my continued state of undersleep, underexercise and overfeeding, and you might ascertain that I am not feeling my own brand of bakerina goodness tonight.
Fortunately tomorrow is another night, and a Friday night as well. I have ingredients for butterscotch pudding, one of Lloyd's three favorite things to eat in the world; tomorrow night, he will get his. My mom arrives in New York on Saturday, when we will commence our first yarn crawl since her return from Paris ten days ago. Local strawberries are in, which means Bakerina Kitchens will get its rhubarb and strawberry jam after all. And even in my sleepy, molasses-brained self, there is cause for celebration: Snow's childhood friend Grace has brand-new twin sons; my pal Karen's son Ryan gets to moosh his very first birthday cake all over his face today; and my dear friend and official jam brain-trust Stephanie is freshly arrived in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where she is the 2006 Tyson Fellow at the Writer's Colony at Dairy Hollow, in the very suite where I myself lived just about two years ago. We do live in fine times, dear friends, we really do.