Off to Maryland!

No sooner did I catch up from 300+ unread emails from CNCH, than I head out onto the road again!  Tomorrow I am flying to Maryland for my mom’s 70th birthday and retirement party.  I have the honor of making the cakes for not one, but TWO parties that day, so in addition to my other stuff, I’ve got 2 12″ cake pans, 1 9″ springform pan, 1 6″ pan, 3 kg of Valrhona Ivoire (white chocolate), and 1.5 kg of Valrhona Tainori (dark chocolate) in my luggage.  (Hey, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do!)

I’m actually not quite sure why I’m bringing 1.5 kg of dark chocolate.  Mom has requested guava + white chocolate and some sort of mango mousse or maybe cheesecake for her two cakes, but some part of me just can’t imagine anyone NOT wanting chocolate cake, so I’m bringing it along just in case she comes to her senses.  🙂  If she doesn’t want it, I’m sure my brother and his wife would LOOOVE to have it…I’m considering bringing them some cocoa as well.  Always a use for Valrhona chocolate and cocoa!

Also coming along with me are also five or six weaving books: Sharon Alderman’s Mastering Weave Structure, and Bonnie Inouye’s Exploring Multishaft Design, of course; but also seven or eight copies of Complex Weavers Journal, Doramay Keasbey’s book on weave structures (title escapes me at present and the book is safely packed away), Twill Thrills: The Best of Weavers, and of course my handy laptop with weaving software, so I can draft up some of the stuff I’m reading about.  I’ll be away for five days and I don’t want to miss an instant that I could devote to learning!  I’ll be on my own for most of Monday with no Internet, so once I finish my mom’s cakes I’ll have to (zounds!) entertain myself for half a day without a loom!  Clearly I must pack as many books as humanly possible (plus a couple of DVDs), just in case.  The partridge (pear tree shipped separately, via UPS) will come in handy, too.

Oh, and my AVL WDL is working again.  I got the solenoids, opened up the box, and realized that there was dust ALL OVER the interior!  I got one of those dust-removing spray cans that you get in geek shops, blew out the dust, put it back together, and presto! all was happy again.  So now I have two spare solenoids.  I feel pretty good knowing that I can replace them on the fly if necessary.  But next time I will try disassembling and cleaning first.

Onto the plane tomorrow!