In which I wear a funny hat

Yeah. That would be the hat that's part of my uniform. Think Pillsbury Doughboy. Or, as Other Half said when she saw me in it, "Oh! You look just like Bad Girls." Seriously, though, I'm loving school! It is crazy, and busy, and exhausting and exciting all at the same time.

Yesterday we spent most of the day learning about the bakeshop and nasty things like math and formulas. Oh yeah, and we got our cool toy chests (pastry kits). Today we dove right in and got baking. I got to demo hand mixing some muffin mix to the whole class, and learned how to round and roll baguettes. I egg-washed some soft rolls, and had adventures with scaling (in pastry chef-ese, scaling is basically weighing, instead of measuring, your ingredients. And we follow formulas instead of recipes). Did some time in the dish bin (aka the pot sink). Tried to be helpful. Not sure how that went. This afternoon the GYDs had our other classes, Career Management and Food Sanitation. Neither will run the entire trimester, though in Sanitation we have five class meetings and then self-study on the other days.

I feel like a pack mule. This is what leaves the house with me every morning: chef's coat in a garment bag; messenger bag with laptop, notebook, and other supplies; pastry kit; textbooks; water bottle and breakfast for eating in car; bag with change of clothes for work/non-lab classes; knitting bag on work days. When I'm feeling ambitious, I come home at night and half-pack the car. I'm hoping I'll get better at this figuring out what I really need each day. But, I want to have my laptop on work days because Syl lets me use her wireless internet. We have to keep a portfolio with daily journal entries and typed up class notes each day. I'm going to try to stay on top of this as much as possible, so that I'm not playing catch-up the night before our practial.

And a note: the shoes are *really* uncomfortable. I ended up buying insoles tonight, because my heels hurt so badly. Basically, there are no arches in these shoes. OK, it's not even 8 pm and I really need to go to bed now....