...and I'm Spent!

Now that the curtain has fallen on Encore 2007, I am off to spend a couple of days of R & R with Jackie (after work today). I'll be back on Wednesday. Try not to miss me too much.

Thanks to all the friends and family who trekked here to see the show. It means so much to me to know that I am so loved and supported.

Here's some pictures of me with my new Encore friends Jessica and Scheherezada, and my old friend Brian (of Beth and Brian).

The "Mighty Mighty Chorus"

I have a handful of pictures from last night's concert up over on Photobucket. And if you go back after tonight, I'll probably have some more up as well. Woo!

And Now, Some Hot Tea

Opening night of "Hollywood..." was awesome. Everything that could sound good did (there's a small handful of soloists who must be good at fellatio... not mentioning any names or songs), and the audience clapped and laughed in all the right places. I'm high on applause right now. This is good, because I'll be able to talk about my afternoon without gritting my teeth and clenching my fists.

I threw my performance dress in the wash last night with some other dark clothes, and we left in in the washer over night so that it wouldn't sit in the dryer and wrinkle beyond redemption over night. I ended up pulling the dress out of the dryer and hanging it up right after Scott left for work, around 2:00. At that point I noticed 2 things: 1) the dress isn't quite as thick as I thought and I wasn't sure whether I was giving a peep show up under the stage lights, and 2) there were lots of strings hanging from random places on the dress.

So I grabbed the closest pair of scissors and started snipping threads. I got to one thread right on the boob dart, pulled it taut to snip it close, and ended up pulling a good 8" of thread right out of the dress, causing the dart to pop. And it was noticeable. My internal monologue went something along the lines of "shitshitshitshitshitshitshit." So after my shower, I made an emergency Wal Mart run.

I know that somewhere in the apartment we have tan thread and we have a pack of sewing needles. I didn't know where they are, but I did know myself well enough that had I called Scott to ask where the needles were I would have ended up yelling at him. So for the sake of my marriage, I bought not only black thread, but also a pack of 45 needles (for $2). I also bought a black dressy(?) shirt just in case I couldn't fix the dart. I figured I'd just wear it with a black skirt. And I got a black full slip just in case I could wear the dress.

Well, I was able to fix the dart with about 20 minutes of work (5 of that threading the needle and knotting the thread, and another 5 trying to stop the remainder of the original thread from unraveling). The seam is puckered and not pretty, but it's presentable. And I'm in the back row, so it really doesn't make too much of a difference. The dress is back in the wash now. I'll be checking my handiwork in the morning to make sure it held.

So anyway, crisis averted. By the way, for anyone planning on seeing the show, I recommend getting to the parking lot by 7 pm. Thursdays are historically our slowest shows (or so I hear), and we were about 2/3 full tonight. Plus, there's an amusing slide show and fun music beforehand.

Opening Night

I'd feel a lot better about this whole 'opening night' thing if our dress rehearsal had gone better. Of course, I fully expect my mother to make a comment about how bad rehearsals lead to good performances. Let's hope that's the case!

Well, I'm off to study two songs from Act 1 and most of Act 2.

Yet Another Post Entitled 'Seriously?!?'

These rehearsals are exhausting. And last night I totally lost my voice right at the grand finale high note. Lovely! Let's hope that doesn't happen again. Today will be spent drinking lots of water and hot tea. But enough about that. I need to discuss ridiculousness (real word? oh well - like I care!) in Oregon.

Two middle-school students in Oregon are facing possible time in a juvenile jail and could have to register as sex offenders for smacking girls on the rear end at school.

Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13, were arrested in February after they were caught in the halls of Patton Middle School, in McMinnville, Ore., slapping girls on the rear end. Mashburn told ABC News in a phone interview that this was a common way of saying hello practiced by lots of kids at the school, akin to a secret handshake.

The boys spent five days in a juvenile detention facility and were charged with several counts of felony sex abuse for what they and their parents said was merely inappropriate but not criminal behavior.

WHAT?!?!? Slapping someone's bottom is a felony? You know, in the workplace, that's called sexual harassment ("and I don't have to take it"). I wonder if there has ever been an adult convicted, or even charged with a felony for this very action.

When I was a senior in high school, I got groped by a guy acquaintance on a newspaper field trip. Out of nowhere, he just reached out and grabbed himself a handful of boob. And I did what I think most of my contemporaries would have done: I slapped him across the face hard enough to leave a hand print. And then he and I got over it. And had I told a teacher (actually, I think one may have witnessed the slapping... good thing I wasn't charged with felony battery!) I seriously doubt the police would have been involved. I don't even think he would have been suspended.

It's only been 11 years, so please don't try to tell me "the world is a different place." Does anyone out there actually think this matter is being handed appropriately? And slightly off-topic, click on that news story if you have a second. If it were your son on trial, wouldn't you iron his shirt before his hearing? You know what they say about first impressions!

Off!

For the next six days, I get to sleep in past 9 am. I get to watch the noon news. And yet, to my chagrin, I won't get to watch any prime time TV at all.

I'm off from work because there are Encore rehearsals and performances for the next 6 nights. I have a 6:30 call for each of these nights. And given that the show is at Epcot, and there is a bus involved, I'll have to leave here by 5 to make sure I get there in time. And I probably won't get home until 12:30 (again, with the darn buses). It's almost like I'm working more than 40 hours and not being paid for it.

But I'm not complaining. I'm quite certain I'll be exhausted by the end of the week, but I'm ok with that. I'm just excited about waking up without an alarm clock!

Comments Are Sometimes Unnecessary

I have lamented to Scott recently that I feel AOL's practice of allowing comments on all of their news stories is just ridiculous.  The news does not need comments.  The true crazies will call up the news organization (or e-mail them, I guess) and make their comments that way.

It seems that there are an awful lot of people in the world who spend their days leaving comments strewn across the internet.  Why?  Maybe they are people who don't feel they get enough attention in the real world.  No, they don't have an opinion worth sharing on the crisis in Darfur, but they will happily make fun of the guy 5 posts ahead who misspelled Darfur.

Never more has this been more apparent to me than this evening during my lunch.  I was reading AOL News and clicked on a story about the St. Louis Arch power outage (http://news.aol.com/story/_a/power-outage-traps-200-in-st-louis-arch/20070722100709990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001#cmntbgn).  The top 5 comments in a row had been added by the same person (the same comment 5 times) - Tips for Giving Great Head.  And it was step-by-step instructions, as a later commenter pointed out, like they were copied from The Joy of Sex!

WHAT does that have to do with the Arch being without power?  A suggestion, perhaps, on how to kill time while waiting in the tiny tram compartments for 2 hours?  Or just another indicator of society's decline?  Or maybe just a hopeful, lonely guy.

And Tonight, I Sleep!

I finished the book at 3:00 this morning. It turns out that chapter 20 is the point where it gets good, and from there the last 350 pages just sort of swoosh by. I'm still annoyed about the first half of the book. It really read like she refused to let an editor touch the book. I passed the book to Scott, and I just can't wait for him to finish it (luckily I have a few other things to keep me occupied for the next 10 days) so that I can finally talk to someone about it.

And here's the flowers I got at work the other day:

Ooh...Pretty...

Note: I attempted to send this entry last night, but it didn't take.  Let's try that again, shall we?
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I apologize in advance that there is no photo to go along with this long story.  I will add one in the morning if I have time before work. 

So there I was on the phone with a guy booking a private party for this December (dude - I want SO BADLY to be invited to their party!  It's a group of 18 friends who live about an hour away.  They're going to rent a couple of limos, come up here and look at Christmas decorations at some of the local hotels, and then have dinner here.  "Please, mister? Can't I be your friend too?") and one of the servers came in and dropped a bouquet of flowers on my desk.

I thought it was yet another example of something left in the cooler or otherwise unwanted that was being given to me.  Well imagine my surprise when I looked at the card and it had MY name on it!  Who could possibly be sending flowers to ME?

It turns out that the arrangement is from a guy I first spoke to about a month ago who called me up yelling and screaming demanding the highest manager available (which was, at that moment, umm… me) because he wasn't able to book our kitchen table (I believe the word "conspiracy" was mentioned) .  He was a classic example of the "let them get it out of their system" philosophy of conflict management.  He just didn't want to believe me that the one table per night books that quickly.  By the time he finished his rant, I knew about his family, how much money they spend on family vacations every year, and he was threatening to not renew his annual passes because of the crappy customer service at The Restaurant. So I finally got him calmed down and offered him the dates that we had available at the time that had cancellations and no wait list.  I also offered to put him on the wait list for every day for the rest of the year. 

At that point, he was trying to book for Thanksgiving.  I could have booked Christmas for him right then and there, which wasn't open to the public yet, but I was holding my line of "this is when we can book and we don't make exceptions because it's just not fair."  Well, that first phone conversation ended ok.  He had a list of dates to consider, and we agreed to speak in a week.  None of those dates ended up working for his family, but I promised to keep in touch if anything else opened up.  And he was going to try to book the table the old-fashioned way for a date around the holidays.  I called him since 3 or 4 times with various dates, and each time he declined the table, but thanked me for keeping him in mind. 

A strange fluke ended up occurring and the table on New Years Eve didn't get booked.  Of course, he was my first phone call.  I left him a voicemail, and then on my days off I got an e-mail from another girl in the office saying that he had accepted the table and was very excited and thankyouveryverymuch.  Yay!  Mission accomplished!

And today, 2 weeks later, this absolutely gorgeous tropical arrangement shows up on my desk with a card that says, "NEW YEARS EVE, WOW!  THANK YOU SO MUCH" from him and his family.  I nearly peed myself!  And ever since then, I've had a steady stream of people in the office asking if it is my anniversary, if I have a secret admirer, if my husband is in big trouble, if I'm up to something I shouldn't be…  It's great fun.  And I'm still in shock.  This is no bouquet of daisies (which I still would have been shocked and thrilled with). 

When it comes down to it, I was doing what I have done for lots of other people.  In this job, I'm lucky when I get a thank-you e-mail.  Little does this guy realize, but he's given me motivation to keep plugging along and busting my butt for our new and repeat clients.  Oh - and he's also given me a mandatory OT shift.  NYE is a Monday, and I've already been told that I'll have to make an appearance and thank him in person.  And really, I have no problem with that at all.  I called him tonight and gushed at his voicemail, but I think a personal greeting is certainly appropriate.

So anyway, I'll try to stick in a picture tonight or in the morning, but no promises.  I'm going to Wal Mart tonight with Cat to buy Harry Potter 7 at midnight, and my posts will probably be pretty minimal for the next few days until I finish the book.

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So that's yesterday's entry.  I took a picture this morning, which is safely stored on the camera.  I was up until just about 5:00 reading HP7, and woke up at 9 for work.  I'm just about halfway through the book (finished 18 of 36 chapters) and so far, I'm not loving it.  Yep - 363 pages of "meh."

The Week of Potter

Well, most die-hard Harry Potter fans have already seen the movie (it premiered last week... I think). I just finished re-reading book 5, so Scott and I are going to see it today. Right now, I'm in the process of re-reading book 6 so that I'm fully refreshed when book 7 comes out this Friday at midnight.

Of course, I'm still looking for someone to go stand in the "loser line" at Wal Mart with me. Scott is working late that night.

Sometimes it's fun to be swept up in the hype. And I doubt that, in my lifetime, there will again be this much hype over a series of books. Besides, I can't risk not reading the last book right away, because I don't want to hear who dies or how it ends from anyone else before I can read it for myself.

In other book news, one of my favorite non-Potter books in recent years, Sammy's Hill (by Kristin Gore... yes, that Gore) has a sequel out called Sammy's House. I'm really excited about reading it - the blurb seems to have all the elements that made the original book so funny. Oh - and according to Amazon.com, Sammy's Hill is now under film development. Yay!

Off to the movies...

The "Super Secret Project"

As you may remember, I spent a few days last week at work with my camera taking pictures of everyone that would hold still long enough for me to focus and click the button. Whenever asked what I was doing, I would just smile and say I was working on a Super Secret Project. This basically tipped people off a little of what I was doing - something related to our party on August 1. (oh yeah - there's a party on August 1 - we closed the restaurant for the night. more accurately, I closed the restaurant - I had to call the people who already had reservations and reschedule them for other nights.)

They all assumed I was working on some sort of slide show presentation for during the event. Nice thought, but I didn't have time to take a year's worth of candid pictures, and I doubt our managers want to spend the extra bucks for a projector.

The SSP was actually nothing more than invitations to the party. It seems that everything involving The Restaurant is (on the surface at least) formal and stuffy. And I had to beg The Boss to let me try an invitation design that wasn't boring. In the end, we both got what we wanted. I got an invitation that was fun and inviting (and with a bonus collage of everyone on the inside), and he picked the color for the background - shades of a beige-ish, olive color.

So far the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive (Girl Chef told the cooks to say thank you to me, and they obey her every command. ha!). And hey - taking pictures and designing something on the computer is a great way for me to blow time at the end of my shift.

And did I mention there's a party? That will be the cap on quite a strange week here in the ParkHopper household. I took vacation days for the Encore! show (tickets on sale now), so I'll be off Mon-Sat, I work Sunday, off Mon-Weds, party Weds night, and then back to normal on Thursday the 2nd. And in the midst of all of those days off, Jackie is flying down on Saturday and I'm spending my days off with her.

Meow! (the sound of cattiness)

Scalzi's Weekend Assignment: Humiliate your pet! Show a picture or tell a story that features your pet doing something that's goofy or silly, even for dumb animal. If you don't currently have a pet, you can tell a pet story from a previous furry pal of yours, or pass along a pet humiliation story someone once shared with you.

Gee... it's awfully difficult for me to pick just one "stupid pet trick" here. After all, while the most ridiculous thing I see regularly is Kilo sucking on his back foot (we think he was weaned too early), I don't have any photos or video of that. Same for ZoePig running laps around her cage at 1 am. What I do have photos of is Milo's penchant for squeezing himself into places he shouldn't be.

Especially boxes. The box he is sitting in here (pretending to be comfortable and casual) is the length and width of a standard DVD case. What is that? 5" x 7"? He eventually managed to curl up and take a nap in this particular box. I don't know how - or why - he does it!

It's not just boxes though. I've shared my picture of him in the fridge in the past, and I may have already published this one of him in the basket. That particular photo session got much funnier when he tipped over and it took him a few seconds to get his footing and get out of the basket. This is what makes housecleaning so much fun!

And Milo often helps me see the silver lining in a crappy situation. Last spring when my Wicked Step-Mother sent me most of my childhood (you know... everything that wasn't valuable or desirable to her), she sent a total of around 20 boxes. And in the time it took for me to invest in plastic storage bins and sort through 25 years of mementos, Milo certainly made the most of the situation!

Extra credit: Do you think your pet is actually humiliated? Umm...no! In fact I'm the one who should be humiliated. After all, I turned these pictures and a bunch of others into a "Cats in Boxes" calendar, which I then gave to family members for Christmas. Because who doesn't want picture of someone else's cats hanging on their wall right above their important reminders?

What's in the Picture?

No, the camera phone isn't equipped with a flash. Yes, the picture was taken at night.

Can you tell what you're looking at there? That would be my back left tire, or what's left of it. There was a screw in it (well, it's still there) and somehow this caused the tire to fail catastrophically. Then I drove on it for about a mile, trying to identify the new thump-thump-thump noise in my engine.

WHAT??!? Don't judge - I've never had tire problems before. I have however had really strange engine noises and car shakes!

So the car is at Port Orleans. It turns out I do have a spare, but I don't have a jack or a lug wrench, and Scott's lug wrench doesn't work on foreign cars.

I called the over-priced Disney mechanics, who quoted me a total cost of $86 all-inclusive. Sure, that's a bit much for just one tire, but the other option is to buy a lug wrench, put the spare on, and drive it to Wal Mart for service tomorrow. Given that I work at noon and Scott has a super-late night, we CAN'T car pool tomorrow.

Needless to say, I'm cranky already. It's going to be a loooong day!

Geometrically Speaking...

Scalzi's Monday Photo Shoot: Picture something that shows off something geometrical. Squares, cubes, vectors, right angles, tangents and so on; basically, any picture that shows geometrical forms and shapes in an interesting and obvious way.

OK, so the theme is geometry. Is anyone at all surprised that my photo choice is a close-up of Epcot's Spaceship Earth?


Amazingly enough, I couldn't find another picture of the whole sphere in my archives (but here's one from Photobucket.com for reference - a pretty night shot). But that's ok - because this particular picture shows off many of the triangles that make up the surface. Here's some facts for you about the structure:

• Spaceship Earth is 180 feet high
• It is a geodesic sphere
• 11,324 triangles make up the exterior
• The exterior was designed so that when it rains, no water pours off the sides onto the ground. (All water is "absorbed" through one inch gaps in the facets and is collected in a gutter system - and finally channeled into World Showcase Lagoon.)

And possibly the best news of all, the ride is currently closed for refurbishment, during which time they will remove that eyesore Sorcerer Mickey hand from the outside.

Celebrity Treatment

As I mentioned yesterday, Scott and I went over to The Hotel today for a free portrait session. This is a service they are going to start offering to Hotel guests at the end of the month, so this week they were seeking employee guinea pigs. In exchange for trudging across Hotel grounds for 20 minutes with a photographer-in-training (already knows how to take pictures of course - just learning which places make the best pictures), we received a free photo CD with our pictures.

Our session ended up yielding 21 pictures, and of those pictures, 20 were really good (3 are already in frames). Of those 20, here's a sampling of the images:


(if you can't get this to play, click here)

After our session, we had lunch and despite the bad service (thank you, Javier... and you should thank your employer for that automatic 18% gratuity), we had a really good time. I would definitely say today was a good day. And we have all of those photos to remind us of it!

Behind the Scenes

My poor blog has become quite the victim of neglect in the past month or so. And it's a shame, because there are lots of things in my life that I find fascinating and exciting (or at least worth writing down and remembering) but those things take a lot of time and energy - my blogging time and energy.

Encore, of course, is a huge piece of that. Rehearsals take up 11 1/2 hours a week, not including travel time. It's mentally draining - I'm starting to freak out about all of the music needing to be memorized. We only have 3 choir rehearsals left, then 2 choir/orchestra combo rehearsals (1 of which I probably won't be able to wiggle out of work), then 2 dress rehearsals. And we still have one song we haven't learned yet! Physically, it's also draining. For popcorn movie music, it is some of the most difficult I have ever learned. It's definitely the highest I've ever had to sing.

Work is actually slower in the summer (something about 90-degree weather makes people not want to eat for 3 hours straight... go figure!), but my special project workload has gone up. The Boss has given us the green light to have engineering pull some countertops out of our office built into the wall from when our office was the cash control office and do a little rearranging at the same time. Little Boss and I are really excited about it, even though it's going to require coming in on a day off in jeans and doing lots of manual labor. The goal: a neat and streamlined space that looks more like an office than a supply closet. Dare to dream!

In ScottLand, he's almost able to see the light at the end of the tunnel of those super-late shifts he's been working. It'll be fun to see which newbie gets stuck with those late-night closing shifts. This is good for me as well, because if he's not home, I rarely fall asleep before 2.

In cringe-inducing news: I almost ripped the nail off of my left pinkie toe today. I was sitting cross-legged on the bed, and when I went to straighten out my legs, the nail somehow snagged on the seam of my jeans. It didn't come off. It did, however, bleed. I am going to refrain from posting a picture. You're welcome.

Tomorrow Scott and I are going out to The Hotel for a fabulous portrait session (a new service they're rolling out, free this week for employee guinea pigs) and then to lunch (not free). Perhaps I'll have some pics to show off tomorrow.

1,000 Words

This, as you can tell, is a picture of me. It started out as a picture of me and one of our servers, but I figure I'll keep him anonymous, so he got "the crop."

Anyway, back to the picture of me. This picture totally encapsulates the fish-out-of-water-ness of me and The Restaurant. There I am, messy hair, casual twin-set made even more casual by pushing up the sleeves, crooked name tag, sitting at the table with 3 pieces of crystal stemware, gold-embossed charger plates, and real silver. It's an even better contrast with the server, all dressed in his vest, tie, and tails.

I was wandering around taking pictures of everyone I could today at work for a "super secret project" I'm working on. The Chef let me interrupt his 3:00 meeting to take pictures of all of his minions, and then I busted into the servers' pre-meal meeting and The Boss let me pester everyone there. Anyway, the only reason I ended up having my picture taken at all was because the one server was sitting apart from everyone else and I made the comment, "that's because he wants his picture taken with ME!" So there we are.

Also since I had my camera today, and since we had a proposal in The Restaurant, I got to get a really good picture of our ring-in-the-rose proposal set-up. Our seater sets this up. I'd never actually seen it before tonight (though I describe it an awful lot), and I just thought it was the most beautiful thing ever. We didn't have the guy's ring yet, so we just used mine in the picture.

They send this out to the table under a silver dome so that it looks like just another course... until they lift up the lid and voila!

By the way, the girl said yes. How could she not with a presentation like that?

What Is He Wearing This Time?

Mom asked if I was still going to see Dr. Ponytail. Well, the short answer is yes. The longer answer is "yes, because I would like to go through life showing the inside of my hoo hoo to as few people as possible." Besides, he's really nice. And I love his black scrubs and goofy Converse sneakers.

Well my last office visit was July 3, and the whole office was decked out in red white and blue. And rather than wearing his usual black scrubs, Dr. Ponytail was wearing this ridiculous American flag button-down shirt (like you'd see at a chili cook-off only with the US flag instead of the Texas flag). I mentioned this to Scott, and he asked if the good doctor had flag-pattern Converse to match.

No... not quite...

His Converse sneakers du jour were covered with a $100 bill pattern. I guess the picture of Ben Franklin tied it all together with the holiday?

(I'm sorry for the crappy picture, but this is the ONLY one a google search and a Photobucket search turned up.)

Short & Sweet

Scalzi's Weekend Assignment: Share a joke. Make it funny.

Why does the Little Mermaid wear sea shells?

Because "B" shells are to small!

Yes, I know, that one works better when spoken. But it really is one of my favorite jokes. Anyone else have a short joke? Leave it in the comments.

Fireworks and Other Randomness

So I learned some things last night about my workplace:

1) The second floor gift shop (home of the "cheap" $5 batteries) is an excellent place to watch fireworks from. Of course, I was only in said shop at fireworks time because I was leaving work early to beat the firework crowd out of the area so I didn't stop to watch.

2) The lot where I park my car: also an excellent place to watch the show. Plus out there you get the bonus symphony of 18 car alarms going off at once every time a large shell explodes. Nothing says "God Bless America" like an 18-car salute!

3) A lot of people park in very stupid places (along a 6-lane highway? sure... why not?) to watch fireworks. Why not just park in 30 minute parking and go down to the lagoon? Duh!

So I really only caught a couple disjointed seconds of the big fireworks last night. That wasn't such a big deal to me - they're the same every year. Of course, then I pulled into my apartment complex and it was exactly as Scott had warned me ahead of time - like a war zone. There were 4 or 5 different people around the complex shooting fireworks up into the sky (I was under the impression that anything that launches is illegal... but what do I know? I grew up in a state were sparklers were illegal). Our actual street was filled with delightful sulfur-tinged smoke. And Scott kept watching the drunken morons across the street waiting for them to blow up their own truck. It never happened.

Since I worked yesterday, I have a bonus day off today... until 6 when I have to leave for choir. I started today with a little blog-cleaning. I added and removed some of the blogs on my side bar and did some other minor tweaking. Also on my agenda: trip to Wal Mart to buy cat litter. Stat!

What a thrilling life I lead!

My Gynecologist Likes My T-Shirt

...and I'm rather fond of it too!





Yes, that's actually all I had to say. I just thought the title of the entry was worth actually taking a picture to go along with it!

Elvis Has Left the Kitchen

Does anybody know what today is? That's right, it's pot luck day! My plan was to make 2 loaves of banana bread to bring to work, but then Scott made a puppy dog face, so I got enough bananas for three loaves.

Last night on my way home, I stopped at Wal Mart for a secret ingredient. That trip was mercifully quick. Thank God for self check-out! No waiting if you're willing to "beep your own."

I got home, changed into shorts, pulled my hair back, and commenced the baking process. Three batches worth. That's 6 cups of flour, 6 eggs, 9 bananas, and some other stuff. Also, because I wanted to make sure everything was even, I used 3 bowls to keep the batches separate. Please don't judge - this made sense to me.

By the time Scott got home, the three loaves were in the oven. Two had the secret ingredient and one didn't. And all of my dishes were in the sink. Whosagoodgirl???

Well, something went wonky with my bread. One, despite the Clean Toothpick Seal of Doneness, was clearly not. I left it in for another 10 minutes, but was concerned that the cheap disposable loaf pans might cause the bottoms to burn. It turns out the only real problem with the disposable pans is that there are two in the pack and it turns out you should use them together as one because they're flimsy and don't support a full load of batter. Both pans buckled/bulged in weird places.

So that one with the clean toothpick? I waited 15 minutes after they came out of the oven, turned that one out onto a plate, and cut into it. And it thought it was a lava cake! Ooze! Damnit!

I'm fairly sure that the center of the loaf in the other cheap pan is also not done (note the dent in the top). I figure I'll slice up both of those and put them in a container to take to work - that way I can trim out the un-done parts.

So what was the secret ingredient? Peanut butter chips! I have to say, the chips elevate the bread to a whole new place. Really, ask Scott. It's fabulous. The bread is so much richer, and is definitely more suited for dessert than for breakfast. Not that I didn't have any for breakfast... but I probably shouldn't have.

Next project: figure out how to incorporate bananas into peanut butter cookies. But for today, I feast!