Quick post
Nov. 4th, 2009 09:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snousleRecap of the previous week:
The scramble to get everything done week before last seemed not so bad at the time, but it demanded a lot of recovery. In some ways it was harder afterwards. The stress actually hurt me in multiple identifiable ways that I didn't fully recognize until well after it was over. Facing the kitchen presents formidable emotional obstacles that are getting in the way of the product. Certain, seemingly arbitrary activities feel "bad" for no discernible reason and having to force my way through them has proven traumatic. I wonder constantly about how to fix this problem but have no answers right now.
Pizza production: It is strangely disheartening to be successful at this. I struggle to get two pizza batches in per month, and they sell out within days. The shop owner is constantly pestering me for more, but the work does not pay enough to be really motivating. Every indication points towards raising the price, but I am having a hard time making myself do this. I attempted to make a batch of ravioli at the same time as the pizza, but whereas two production batches in one day is not too much "work" per se, it upsets the finesse required to make the ravioli, and the result was a batch that was entirely unsellable. Bill helped with the baking, and dropped one pizza on the ground - I realized that this one "oops" erased the profit from a full hour of work.
Billy gathering: A welcome and necessary respite, which I took as an opportunity for introspection and deep relaxation. Not that it started so easily. It took FOREVER to get out on Friday morning. Pizza packaging, packing for the trip, getting things together for various errands - I thought it would never get done, but I did get there in time for lunch. The Billies (a gay men's new-agey sex-friendly club vaguely like the Faeries) had a retreat at Saratoga Springs for halloween, and I figured I would give it a serious try. That is, participate without cynicism in all the hippy-dippy touchy-feely activities and see how it went. The answer was "very well".
Friday night was "The Journey", a simple, heartfelt multi-media event with cardboard cutouts, a spooky and dramatic narrative, various musical instruments, spoken word, and vocal parts scattered throughout the audience. All sat on mats in a circle on the floor, about 80 of us in all. I have come to truly appreciate things that are created with more sincerity than technical skill; for so much of my life, it's sincerity that has been the elusive part. I would say that through the magic of tribal bonding, this was among the most engaging and emotionally affecting performances I've ever seen.
Boy, did I sleep a lot, about ten hours that night. Sleeping in a bunkroom with lots of other men is an incredibly soothing thing for me. It feels very secure.
Saturday, I did the heart circle thing for the first time in, like, fifteen years and found it not at all tedious. Very interesting, actually, once I stopped paying attention to my own thoughts and made a point of listening attentively.
The costume dance that night was an incredible eye-popping wonder. Never seen costumes like that before, and nearly everybody was wearing something interesting, many of them having raided the stash of high-camp glitteralia the Billies keep for such occasions. I took the opportunity to wear my fully pin-encrusted RMC overlay, not a "costume" per se, but something I have decided it's OK to be proud of. ;-) People found it fascinating.
Met a couple of guys that seemed real familiar, and in both cases it turns out they had been visitors here, during QBT. Guess I should have made more of an effort to get to know them then! One in particular had been really silent at the time, but on chatting with him he proved quite interesting and articulate. I'd been so wrapped up in getting things done during his earlier visit that I'm not sure I even greeted him properly. Sigh.
Sunday morning I left the gathering to head to SF, where I spent time at the Eagle and the Hole with Rich (who I have been seeing lately), ran into a few friends, and later treated him to dinner at Chow, which was delicious but pricey. It seems necessary to eat out at least once a month, somewhere really good, to calibrate my own culinary sense. I feel like my work drifts if I don't have some high standard to compare it to.
Monday morning was for picking up supplies, including lots more duck for confit, and a big bag of dried shiitake. I found, at last, a reasonably good Chinese market in SF, in an area where it's easy to park. My aversion to parking is out of proportion to the actual difficulty - given what it costs to go into SF at all, I might as well get more out of the visit by just paying for a freaking parking-garage spot.
This week I've got 200 little appetizer plates for a mushroom festival event, and appetizers fora private party of 30 the next day. This is the LAST time I want to serve back-to-back events like this. There has to always be a non-event day in between, or it's just too stressful.
The scramble to get everything done week before last seemed not so bad at the time, but it demanded a lot of recovery. In some ways it was harder afterwards. The stress actually hurt me in multiple identifiable ways that I didn't fully recognize until well after it was over. Facing the kitchen presents formidable emotional obstacles that are getting in the way of the product. Certain, seemingly arbitrary activities feel "bad" for no discernible reason and having to force my way through them has proven traumatic. I wonder constantly about how to fix this problem but have no answers right now.
Pizza production: It is strangely disheartening to be successful at this. I struggle to get two pizza batches in per month, and they sell out within days. The shop owner is constantly pestering me for more, but the work does not pay enough to be really motivating. Every indication points towards raising the price, but I am having a hard time making myself do this. I attempted to make a batch of ravioli at the same time as the pizza, but whereas two production batches in one day is not too much "work" per se, it upsets the finesse required to make the ravioli, and the result was a batch that was entirely unsellable. Bill helped with the baking, and dropped one pizza on the ground - I realized that this one "oops" erased the profit from a full hour of work.
Billy gathering: A welcome and necessary respite, which I took as an opportunity for introspection and deep relaxation. Not that it started so easily. It took FOREVER to get out on Friday morning. Pizza packaging, packing for the trip, getting things together for various errands - I thought it would never get done, but I did get there in time for lunch. The Billies (a gay men's new-agey sex-friendly club vaguely like the Faeries) had a retreat at Saratoga Springs for halloween, and I figured I would give it a serious try. That is, participate without cynicism in all the hippy-dippy touchy-feely activities and see how it went. The answer was "very well".
Friday night was "The Journey", a simple, heartfelt multi-media event with cardboard cutouts, a spooky and dramatic narrative, various musical instruments, spoken word, and vocal parts scattered throughout the audience. All sat on mats in a circle on the floor, about 80 of us in all. I have come to truly appreciate things that are created with more sincerity than technical skill; for so much of my life, it's sincerity that has been the elusive part. I would say that through the magic of tribal bonding, this was among the most engaging and emotionally affecting performances I've ever seen.
Boy, did I sleep a lot, about ten hours that night. Sleeping in a bunkroom with lots of other men is an incredibly soothing thing for me. It feels very secure.
Saturday, I did the heart circle thing for the first time in, like, fifteen years and found it not at all tedious. Very interesting, actually, once I stopped paying attention to my own thoughts and made a point of listening attentively.
The costume dance that night was an incredible eye-popping wonder. Never seen costumes like that before, and nearly everybody was wearing something interesting, many of them having raided the stash of high-camp glitteralia the Billies keep for such occasions. I took the opportunity to wear my fully pin-encrusted RMC overlay, not a "costume" per se, but something I have decided it's OK to be proud of. ;-) People found it fascinating.
Met a couple of guys that seemed real familiar, and in both cases it turns out they had been visitors here, during QBT. Guess I should have made more of an effort to get to know them then! One in particular had been really silent at the time, but on chatting with him he proved quite interesting and articulate. I'd been so wrapped up in getting things done during his earlier visit that I'm not sure I even greeted him properly. Sigh.
Sunday morning I left the gathering to head to SF, where I spent time at the Eagle and the Hole with Rich (who I have been seeing lately), ran into a few friends, and later treated him to dinner at Chow, which was delicious but pricey. It seems necessary to eat out at least once a month, somewhere really good, to calibrate my own culinary sense. I feel like my work drifts if I don't have some high standard to compare it to.
Monday morning was for picking up supplies, including lots more duck for confit, and a big bag of dried shiitake. I found, at last, a reasonably good Chinese market in SF, in an area where it's easy to park. My aversion to parking is out of proportion to the actual difficulty - given what it costs to go into SF at all, I might as well get more out of the visit by just paying for a freaking parking-garage spot.
This week I've got 200 little appetizer plates for a mushroom festival event, and appetizers fora private party of 30 the next day. This is the LAST time I want to serve back-to-back events like this. There has to always be a non-event day in between, or it's just too stressful.
