Chris' Birthday Party

Just celebrated Chris' birthday party this past week - basically we reserved out half of Matteo's and then ran over to our apartment for drinks and cake afterwards.

So how many people can you fit in a 20 square meter room? Apparently at least 16.

Mushrooms

You know Fall has arrived when the mushroom guy starts showing up at market. Right now they only have some cepes, but the other varieties should be coming out soon.

I did take a look on the Internet to see how difficult it is to raise mushrooms on your own...turns out it's not too bad. You have to be a little bit of a botanist and microbiologist, but you can raise some pretty whacky mushrooms in your basement.

Pumpkin Soup

Still not 100% sure what I'm going to do with a huge slice of pumpkin, but I thnk it has to be a soup. I'll keep you posted.

Time to think about a Christmas Goose

We're already starting to make plans for Thanksgiving and Xmas dinners - so we're thinking about doing the goose thing early in December. I'm sure Laurence has done something like this before, so it can be done - the key is finding the right farmer at the market.

Official Validation Complete

This is probably a bit boring, but 50% of the people at Lilly who run around signing documents finds this to be significant.

Turns out with the final completion of GBIP and the validation of the data loads, 20,000 people need to sign a document saying that everything has been validated. Now we just have to see if it all works.

Cuckoo Clock Hell

With Patrick's mother in town, and the Black Forest a mere 45 minutes away - we had to do the cuckoo clock hunt this past weekend.

It actually wasn't as bad as the trip that Patrick Green and I took a couple of months earlier (thanks to no road construction) - but I think we did end up going to at least cuckoo clock stores.

Also found out in this trip that the Hummel company went out of business shortly after 9/11 - apparently all the American tourist dollars dried up, and the company couldn't stay in business. I was kind of surprised.

Tea

While suffering from a rather bad cold/flu/virus thing (it lasted two weeks), Patrick went to a tea shop and found me some amazing tea from China. It wasn't cheap, and it was the last she had (it usually arrives in Spring one time a year); but it spanked my sore throat.

Doing a little more research, I've found that Chinese Tea is about as complicated as French Wine - including good years and bad years, controlled regions for specific varieties, and very seasonal.

Go Live Gets Closer

Well, the Go Live for our project is getting closer. We just had a five hour dinner with the Supply Chain leaders, and here is the after picture. It was a nice evening, even with the one hour project of everyone doing an introduction.

Official Go Live date is October 2nd. Cross your fingers.

Toilet Paper for Napolean

Now this is chic-chic - and would probably make a good item for 'What is this?'.

Apparently Napolean had to go to the bathroom too, but he at least did it in style. As he was running all around Europe conquering it, he needed a little toilet paper to go. Not sure if the TP was as soft as charmin back then, but the carrying case says, "I'm an Emperor".

Flowers of the Week

Dahlias are in - still don't know the french word for them. But they are a welcomed change from all the sunflowers and daffodils that seem to be in the markets now.