Devilish Delights

Invited to dinner by two tenants who appreciated the time I put into making sure they got dibs on just the right suite for them, we feasted on lamb shanks with parsnips sprinkled with a gremolade that was just the right combination of a winter and spring dish! A bit of tasty young greens salad with a lovely dressing and a glass of light chardonnay started the meal, which I closed with my chocolate mousse-filled phyllo cups. Though milk chocolate in hue, the taste was definitely dark, rich chocolate lightened only by air. Ripe raspberries adding a nice acidic note as a foil, and I topped it all off with whipped cream barely sweetened with my lavender sugar. Tucked into a cup of crispy phyllo dusted with a sprinkling of sugar and finely chopped toasted hazelnuts between each paper-thin layers, I do believe it was a hit!

Cornucopia

Rainbow carrots! The dark one is a deep reddish purple. So far, they all taste the same, maybe a touch milder. I also bought about three Meyer lemons and they are huge... huge I say! Almost as big as my fist. Indulged in my favorite bars of chocolate, since I can't make it into the City for a stop at Recchiuti, and got three Dagobas -- the ones with cherries, chiles, and lavender -- not altogether, of course. And one Seeds of Change bar, as I like their packaging. It's the designer in me!

The depression from my hard drive crash is fading, my mood is lifting (must be the antioxidants) and I am feeling more hopeful, and I'm getting a new set of Adobe CS3 disks to replace the hosed applications on my backup external. Mercury goes direct in 5 days!

Mercurial Madness

And not of the lighthearted sort. Thanks to Mercury going retrograde, my life has taken a few more twists and turns than I had bargained for at this time of the year. Just as everything was going well, and work had picked up to the point where I thought I could be comfortable, both my major projects have come to a screeching halt... one moving in a totally different direction, one going out of business. Not that we didn't see that one coming. Of course, they owe me, and many other people money. I got some new projects, which really have much better potential, and just as I was feeling great about them... BOOM. Thanks Mercury!

Did you have to corrupt my hard drive? Did you have to do it before I learned about cloning hard drives? Did you have to do it when the software disks I need to fix the corrupted graphics files are now part of property being sold off for creditors? Did you have to do it just as I got new clients, so now I have to scramble to reinstall the software?