Beach, Baking, and Brooks

Hi, all. As promised, I have a happy post filled with puppies and unicorns. Well, my excitement about my upcoming beach trip, anyway. I leave the 21st for a week on the Outer Banks in NC with my friends from high school! This is the third year that we've rented a house and a bunch of us just get away for a week and forget about life. I'm sure I'll have either a huge blog with lots of pictures after I'm back, or several during the week there. The only bummer is I have to wait until I'm done with work on the 21st to leave for North Carolina. I'm hoping we're done by 2:00 or 3:00 so I can still make it there by 10:00 or 11:00.

Connected with the beach trip is my beach baking. Last year I took homemade granola bars and several loaves of Amish Friendship Bread, which were a big hit (especially the chocolate chip). Well, the Amish Friendship Bread comes from a starter that you feed for a week and then bake, after taking out three more starters to pass on. Well, I can never NOT keep another starter for myself, so once I get one, I have to keep making bread every week until I get sick of it. Since I don't have a starter this year, I'm making several other goodies to take along. I've decided on Chocolate Chip Muffins, Maple Pecan Muffins, and Almond Cinnamon Cookies. These are all do-able in a night, will keep well on the trip to the beach (not to mention convenient to snack on in the car), and aren't expensive to make. I'm also making supper one night while I'm there, and I'm going to do my lasagna with garlic bread, and probably a salad. I think I'm also going to attempt real sangria. I have a recipe with, like 11 ingredients. Apparently it's not just juice and wine, people.

In other news, there's no news on the job front. I've sent out about 25 applications. I had one first-round interview with no follow-up, and two rejections. I'm staying at the Brooks Center for the rest of the summer, then if I can't line anything up, I guess I'll just move home. :-\ Summer crew at the Brooks has been pretty awesome so far. There's lots of sitting around and cleaning. I did get to run the sound board for a dance school recital last weekend. That was pretty cool, and I'm less terrified of sound world now. Our sound console is a digital board, so I'd like to learn how an analog board works before I go, and I still want to get some practice on the older light boards so I'm not all spoiled and pretentious when I get to a theatre that doesn't have all the latest and best technology. :-P

If I knew anything about running a business, I would love to just try for a business loan and open up my cafe/bakery/bookstore that I've been dreaming about. I was told again today (after someone sampled my awesome Cinnamon Banana Cookies) that I should open a bakery. Maybe I'll happen upon a business-savvy partner and they can take care of the bookkeeping and bureaucracy and I can handle the baking and book-stocking. Any takers? :-P