I was in Holland recently visiting my family.  My Dad has been making his garden pretty and he was very keen to show me his new plants.

“You have to take a picture of me and my wonder bum”, he said.

Well, like the mature adult I am, all I could do was giggle at the thought of a wonder bum.

“A wonder bum?”

“No”, he said, “a wonder bum!”

I don’t know a lot of Dutch, but since I was hearing “bum” I did wonder if the word for tree was going to be something similar to the German word “baum”.  It turns out that the plant, in Dutch, is called “Wonderboom“, and “boom” is the word for tree. But please, don’t ask me to pronounce “boom”.

 

 

I arrived in Riga last night, and my luggage joined me this afternoon.  I’m glad I brought a rain coat and umbrella, but I didn’t bring enough winter clothes.  It’s about 13 C (55 F) and I’ve been living in 33 C (91 F).

I met a couple of friends last night from Birmingham.pm, and though I may be lured out of my room this evening, I’m planning on spending today by myself.  I have not been overly well and I’ve got a large backlog of work for TPF, which I would love to make a dent in. Tomorrow I plan to attend the Perl 6 Hackathon.

It shows ingratitude and a lack of imagination to spend the life we’ve been given stamping, literally or metaphorically, on the lives of others, or sneering contemptuously at how they have chosen to make sense of theirs.  It is a harsh world, indescribably cruel.  It is an gentle world, unbelievably beautiful.  It is a world that can make us bitter, hateful, rabid, destroyers of joy.  It is a world that can draw forth tenderness from us, as we lean towards one another over broken gates.  It is a world of monsters and saints, a mutilated world, but it is the only one have been given.  We should let it shock us not into hatred or anxiety, but into unconditional love.

— Richard Holloway, Between the Monster and the Saint

I was late.  My conference day started at 7am when I went looking for breakfast, though thanks to the joys of jet lag I had been awake since 4am.  It was now nearly 7pm and all I wanted to do was sleep.  But instead I was walking up a steep hill, hoping I was going in the right direction.

Even with my terrible sense of direction the event was easy to find as I could follow the sounds of animated conversation.  When I arrived it was like walking into a cocktail party full of extraverts. Everyone was chatting, drinking, and looking relaxed. There was no doubt that the event was going well.  I was impressed: this wasn’t a group of extraverts or a group of old friends, but a mixture of new attendees and Perl luminaries.

I also felt nervous as I don’t like large groups of people.  But Paul Fenwick, someone I do know, came and greeted me, and it wasn’t long before people that I hadn’t met came up and started chatting.  The conversations followed a similar pattern, the person introduced themselves, talked a bit about how they used Perl, and went on from there.  Afterwards I was told it was suggested that this would be a good way to introduce yourself to others, and it did work.  There is no doubt that it’s easier to talk to a stranger if you have a plan as to what you should talk about.

The VIP event was created to give first time attendees the opportunity to meet other conference attendees – VIP standing for “Very Important to Perl”, and referring to the new attendees.  This is the second time that Yaakov has run this event at YAPC::NA, and I believe that it has become very important to the conference.

Marty took most of the cupcakes into the office on Monday morning.  He didn’t put as much effort into decorating them as we had planned for Sunday, but he still had fun.

 

 

I had to cancel the cupcake party.  I didn’t want to, but I was ill on Sunday.  The forlorn cupcakes spent the day in the fridge before being taken to Marty’s office on Monday.

 

It’s the weekend of my cupcake party.  I’m scared.  I was insane to think that we could bake 100 cupcakes and decorate them all before 4pm on Sunday.  But, armed with an oven that can hold up to 12 cupcakes and a spreadsheet to manage the ingredients required to make 10 different flavours of cupcakes, I’m going to give it a go.

7pm:

The carrot cake cupcakes have failed.  I was using an American recipe and mistakenly used the wrong type of flour.  They taste like soda carrot cakes.  They are also a bit damp.  It could be that my cup of pineapple contained more liquid than was imagined in the recipe.  (I hate using cups as a measure.)

8pm:

Marty has arrived home from work and has declared that the carrot cake cupcakes make his top three list.  He doesn’t care that they taste like soda bread, he thinks that’s a bonus.  I’m still not going to use them for the party.  I’ll make another batch tomorrow using the correct flour.

9pm:

I’ve started to put together the dry ingredients needed for the chocolate chip cupcakes.  I must remember to label these as I plan to make cake mixes for more than one type of cupcake.

11pm:

The vanilla cupcakes have risen into little mountains.  They are supposed to be for fairy cakes, but Marty has declared them troll cakes.  Actually one looks awfully like that mashed potato sculpture from Close Encounters of a Third Kind.

1am:

I need to go to bed.  Marty is dyeing marzipan red to make apples to put on top of the toffee apple cupcakes.  The food colouring looks like blood and it’s dripping. I need to breathe deeply.

I survived the morning and I am still in a good mood.  The afternoon may change that, but I’m going to try to keep this baking experience as stress-free as possible.

1pm:

Grating vegetables is boring.  Marty is making it more interesting by occasionally throwing carrot across the room.  He claims this is accidental.  Actually he’s decided that after grating just one carrot and two aubergines that there must be a way to get the food processor to do this for him.

2pm:

Marty found a way to get the food processor to finely grate the carrots.  Well, he says finely grated but really it’s mush.  And since mush is not the texture I require for all my cakes he’s still having to do some grating by hand.  He’s happy enough as he gets to eat the parts of the carrot that won’t grate.

Tested the strawberry cupcakes and so far so good.  The jam in them works well and you can’t taste the aubergine.  (I’m still concerned that my desserts will come out tasting like dinner.)

3pm:

Amused that the orange flavoured cupcakes are also orange coloured as they are made with Japanese eggs, that tend to have dark orangey yokes, and carrots. Marty won’t let me test the chocolate chip cupcakes. I suppose he has a point, I made these during the week and know that they taste good, but surely it’s better to be safe than sorry?

4pm:

Getting tired.  I managed to push the eject button on my electric whisk while whisking eggs.  I now have cupcake batter in my hair.

A chocolate chip cupcake escaped from the muffin tin and landed on the floor, but I’m still not allowed to try these.  We did try one of the fairy cakes.  Marty complained that they were heavy, but I pointed out that they need to sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes when they come out of the fridge.  He agreed that was the problem and then continued to eat the rest of the cake.

5pm:

Losing my will to bake.  I’m going to take a break for a couple of hours.

Cupcake count: 77

I really want to get all the cupcakes baked before I go to bed.  I’m not looking forward to decorating them tomorrow morning, but I’m hoping that Marty is better at decorating than I am.

5:30pm:

I’m sure that I had a plan to take a break.  But instead I decided to make the ginger cupcakes.  After that I will have to stop as I don’t have all the ingredients for the final three flavours.  We’ve ordered dinner from the local Chinese restaurant as the thought of cooking makes me went to go to bed now.

10pm:

Carrot cake cupcake attempt two is a failure.  I used the correct type of flour but the fruit was too heavy and has made them sink.  I used fresh pineapple tonight, as I can’t get the American tinned variety, and I drained the excess liquid.  But still the buns are a sticky mess.  I will name them Titanic Cupcakes and throw them in the bin. Let’s hope the apple cupcakes currently in the oven don’t share their fate.

11:58pm

Finished the apple, tiramisu, and chocolate strawberry cupcakes.  The final set, the cheesecake cupcakes, are now in the oven.  Soon I’ll go to bed.

Cupcake count: 117

Most of the baking needs to be completed today, as tomorrow we decorate.

8am:

Starting to clean up the utensils used yesterday evening.  There’s going to be lots of dishes to do today as I only have one set of most things, so will have to clean while each batch of cupcakes is baking.

10am:

Got completely distracted by my email and computer.  I was supposed to be looking up the Sticky Toffee cupcake recipe.  Marty is still sleeping.  Now that the shops are open I need to go and buy eggs.  I’ve managed to run out of the one ingredient that appears to be in every cupcake.

Noon:

Marty is finally awake.  He appeared bleary-eyed about 30 minutes ago wondering why I hadn’t woken him.  I thought it was better for him to sleep as a sleep-deprived husband doesn’t handle a stressed-out wife very well.

Cupcake count: 18