Soap, and meetings

A busy day yesterday: my weekly DBT session in the afternoon, followed by a Circle of Artemis planning meeting for Beltane, which went very well (the ritual is pretty much done, now we need to find one more member for the ritual team and start rehearsals!). On the way out of my end of town I stopped in at the post office and picked up the soap he_dreams_awake made for me as a fundraiser for his monastary, and... wow. The $2 soaps are very big and just amazing, absolutely perfect for the ritual use the Full Moon group will be putting them to. So at the DBT meeting and the Circle of Artemis get-together, part of the time was spent by various people admiring the soap and inhaling the sweet, sweet fragrance. Mmmmm, honey/almond/orange, cucumber/melon, lavender/vanilla, wild berry, and green apple...

In short, I highly recommend the product. You can find details on how to order some here and here. Want to know what the fundraising is for? Check out Neo's Live365 broadcasts on Radio Zero-One, usually on in the evenings after 11 pm CST. You can also try out Neo's new game, the sequel to his popular offering "Gnosis" (which, since it doesn't run on the Mac platform, I cannot offer comment upon).

Oh, and the Hardy Boys people are going to be even later with my cheque: yes, they sent it out yesterday by FedEx, but with a domestic waybill attached. D'oh! It should be here Friday, but it's still causing a bit of gnashing of teeth at my end.

Feh. Off to do step exercises, then probably out for a light lunch with George at one of the local cafes.

Breaking the diet? Try nuking it!

George and I ended up stepping outside our neighborhood and catching a 5-minute bus ride down to Osborne Village, where Baked Expectations awaited us. We each had a bacon cheeseburger (mine with real cheddar, George's with Swiss), with a side of fries (for him) and Caesar salad (for me). But the real highlight of our little lunch out was of course the desserts, which Baked Expectations is justly famous for. I ended up having their Crazy Chocolate cake (chocolate cake, chocolate mousse, and chocolate cheesecake in one not-too-sweet package) while George had a fruit-trifle-and-meringue cake (three bites from the meringue, which I ended up taking, must have been almost 60 g of carbs in themselves). The portions were enormous, and we ended up bringing food home.

(A couple of photos of the Baked Expectations interior, with a bunch of people I don't know from the U of M physics department, can be found here and here.)

Afterwards we stopped in at a used bookstore just up the street from the restaurant, and were pleasantly surprised by the wide variety of quirky and antique books they had in stock. There was one book I just couldn't leave behind: Spock, Messiah!, possibly THE worst Star Trek novel ever written... if not, it's right up there with The Price of the Phoenix in terms of overblown style, at least as I remember it. I'm going to curl up with it over a nice hot cup of tea this afternoon and see how much I wince now at a novel I idolized in my screaming-sugar-high-fanpoodle days.

Hmmm... maybe I'll even tuck into that piece of Crazy Chocolate cake I hauled back to the lair...