Black forest
Dec. 2nd, 2009 04:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyToday a delivery man left a parcel in the office. Nothing unusual about that, until we opened it and found a box from The Cheesecake Shop (guess what they sell!*). It turned out to be a black forest torte for our morning tea, as a thank you from one of our doctors who has just passed his exams. So that was nice.
I read an article about end-of-year parties today, and it gave this advice about small talk: Stay away from conversation killers: Are you contemplating having an affair? Do you owe $10,000 in back taxes to the IRS? Getting a mole removed next week? Don't talk about medical procedures? Really? That cuts out ninety percent of my family's conversation. It's going to be a quiet Christmas. My great-aunt Claire won't be able to say a single thing.
Speaking of medical matters, news from my mother. A patient asked her the other day for something he could use to clean his ear: 'A little piece of wood, perhaps, like those things you pick your teeth with.' (She gave him a cotton bud.) Who cleans their ears with toothpicks? (That man, obviously.)
My mother also reports that there is a recipe going around the nurses for a three-ingredient Christmas cake, which involves soaking a kilogram of dried fruit in a chocolate Big M (flavoured milk, basically), then stirring in some self-raising flour and baking. That sounds vile.
* Cheesecakes. And some non-cheese-based cakes too.
I read an article about end-of-year parties today, and it gave this advice about small talk: Stay away from conversation killers: Are you contemplating having an affair? Do you owe $10,000 in back taxes to the IRS? Getting a mole removed next week? Don't talk about medical procedures? Really? That cuts out ninety percent of my family's conversation. It's going to be a quiet Christmas. My great-aunt Claire won't be able to say a single thing.
Speaking of medical matters, news from my mother. A patient asked her the other day for something he could use to clean his ear: 'A little piece of wood, perhaps, like those things you pick your teeth with.' (She gave him a cotton bud.) Who cleans their ears with toothpicks? (That man, obviously.)
My mother also reports that there is a recipe going around the nurses for a three-ingredient Christmas cake, which involves soaking a kilogram of dried fruit in a chocolate Big M (flavoured milk, basically), then stirring in some self-raising flour and baking. That sounds vile.
* Cheesecakes. And some non-cheese-based cakes too.