After a few days of emails going back and forth, my friend suggested I write a book since she was looking for usable feedback like this, even suggesting the title. I was lazy, so I pasted our emails onto my blog. That’s how books get written these days anyway, right?

So I thought more about why I am so grumpy. And it’s not because she is a *bad* intern, at all — based on effort alone she gets an A. It’s more that I do not enjoy being in charge and responsible 24/7 for her project and my own stuff. It’s the same feeling of annoyance I get when my day is full of commitments that break up the day so I feel like nothing gets done.

So, it’s not her…it’s me. :-P

My career is doomed, isn’t it?

Welcome to my life! ;)

At a certain point you have to make the trade-off between what you, yourself, can accomplish and what you want accomplished as an end-goal.

I can be the smartest person in the world, but I can only do as much as 1 me can do. Even if I could automate processes and be more efficient than 10 average people (I wish!), I can still only do as much as 1 me (by definition).

If I can train 1 person to be half as efficient as me, moving forward, we’re producing at a rate of 1.5 mes. So, the end goal can be set higher than what I’d do myself. And then… welcome to management. I’m worth more training more mes than I am actually doing the work. Still coming to terms with this*. Intellectually, I get it (why CEOs are worth so much). But it’s so not what I want to spend my time doing.

As for your career, no, it isn’t doomed. Well, not necessarily. You’re going to have to deal with this more as a requirement in academia than you will in other careers. So either you tolerate it or you find some way to convince yourself it’s worth the investment. For me, I always have the option of finding a dark corner and going back to my technical work. If you’re headed for research/teaching, you have to convince yourself it’s worth it.

The way I see it, if you want your career in research, you’re definitely going to be in charge of projects 24/7. At least if you want to do anything really interesting. And that means baby-sitting. A lot. But that also means, once you reach a certain level, you’re going to be able to pick the people you want around you to baby-sit the next generation of minions. And then you get to do really cool stuff! :)

*This is all stuff Ian has explained to me on numerous occasions. I just keep forgetting/losing perspective. He definitely has the people skillz in our relationship.

I am the worst mentor/intern supervisor ever. :( I am getting annoyed at little problems because we solved them two weeks ago, why aren’t you doing what we decided to do? WRITE THINGS DOWN. And I realize that I am not an expert at using this software either, but if you have the same problems over and over, but I never do, it’s probably not the software. That’s a failure to do each of the steps in the right order. Remember my suggestion to write them down?

I’m also grumpy because I’ve had to adjust my schedule to accommodate her (her carpool gets her here about an hour before I would like to arrive), and coffee only helps so much. And she is super sweet and really excited and interested, but I just. can. not. hide my frustration, and I don’t think I’m being fair to her at all. I owe it to her to be all “hey, this took me awhile to learn, but writing things down when there are lots of steps turns out to save a lot of problems” and try to TEACH her how to work through these things, instead of hiding in my office with my coffee.

Uggghhh. Suggestions?

A few years ago, we had this intern who did a terrible job following instructions and completing a list of tasks. He would always forget to do a step or only incorporate some untrackable subset of the comments given on a deliverable. We resorted to asking my friend’s mom (a special ed teacher) for suggestions.

Recycled for current intern:

1. Tell her to write things down.
2. Remind her to grab her notebook before you talk.
3. Tell her “you should write this down.”
4. Write it down in your notebook when you talk to her to give her cues for things she should be writing down. (And to document what you told her; more for my kind of work environment than yours, since I need documentation for performance reviews if things escalate.)
5. If you’ve already done these things or this is ineffective, follow up face-to-face talks with emails with the instructions listed out.
6. Have her check off each step on the list before asking you questions.

Basically, use every mode of communication available to you and remind her when she asks questions to follow *all* the steps.

I go through this pretty much every year. I started the cycle again 2 months ago! We get these enthusiastic new grads/interns in… I remind myself that they don’t know anything, teach them to carry a notepad around & when to write things down, and baby-sit them. A month (a week?) goes by and I get endlessly frustrated that they can’t do 2 things without asking a question they’ve already asked 10 times!!??

So, it’s normal. Or at least what I consider normal. ;) It’s good to recognize your frustration. Feel free to share with her that you know you’re frustrated, but you really do want her to learn this or whatever would sound sincere from you.

I’ve gotten to the point that I just tell people I’m not naturally a patient person and I’m working on that. If I seem annoyed, it’s not personal and it’s my problem to get over. And they should please look past that and ask me questions anyway because I’ll be even *more* annoyed if I find out later that they could have avoided wasting time doing something wrong.

Plan to set aside half an hour every day, like office hours, to answer questions all at once or walk her through that day’s task for the 20th time. If it’s scheduled into your day, it’s less disruptive and gives her an easy opportunity to re-ask questions that would otherwise bug you when you’re trying to get work done. Do this at her desk/computer so she can walk you through what she thinks she should be doing and you can add in extra steps as needed.

Reward her for doing anything right. Once she’s a little functional, you can pick and choose what’s actually useful for the task at hand. Think behavior modification: reinforcing successive approximations.

P.S. The best thing I did for my engineering career was study psychology. The classes I use more than anything else in my day-to-day life:
- PSYC 3044: Behavior Modification
- PSYC 2044: Psychology of Learning

About 3 weeks ago, I went roller skating for the first time since I was a kid. I ice skated in middle school, but ended up quitting once I got to high school because I didn’t have time. I rollerbladed a few times in the interim, but this was my first time on old-school quad skates. It went pretty well, but I couldn’t stop at all.

A week later, I bought a pair of third-hand (foot?) skates from one of the other girls training for the derby. I’ve been training about 2 hours/day, 4-5 times/week since then. Tryouts were Tuesday night and I found out last night that I made the cut for Fresh Meat Camp!! There’s going to be at least one more set of cuts. But if I make it through the 12-week training, I’ll be eligible to be drafted onto one of the teams. I am *so* excited!

The toughest thing for me so far is getting over my fear of falling. For the most part, I’m geared up in elbow, wrist, and knee pads, plus a helmet and mouth guard when I’m doing anything crazy. So it doesn’t actually hurt that much when I fall. And once I convinced myself of this, I was able to learn new tricks. I even jumped over 6″ cones at tryouts for the first time!

Thanks to Lenny for actually remembering where his rollerblading pads were and letting me borrow them! And thanks to Seamus (Healey’s 7-year-old) for loaning me his elbow pads! And big, big thanks to Ian for making me dinner the past few weeks when I got home at 10pm starving.

Training starts next week… and I’m missing the first practice because I’ll be at a conference for that one evening. Oh well. I’ll be here the rest of the summer.

Oh yeah. And I graduated!

Ian and I visited his brand new nephew on Friday! Declan was born 4/21/2011 at 2130. Mother and baby are both healthy and doing great. He has a displacement of 8 pounds, 11 ounces and has a length overall of 21 inches.

He opened his eyes a little while we were there, but was conked out for the most part. Looked a little angry about the possibility of waking up, as pictured above, so went back to sleep.

Anna had her baby shower last weekend. She and her friends trend toward crafty/functional showers, so we went around baby-proofing the house followed by decorating onesies.

There were some great designs! My favorite was definitely Mr. Yuck, though the dolphin Healey made out of the paint blob one of the kids squirted on a shirt was quite impressive.

At the banquet, we snagged primo seats at the head table and got to talk to the Dean of Engineering and his wife, President of the Society, and the keynote speaker, Astronaut Kathy Thornton (and Associate Dean for Graduate Programs in Engineering). She gave us a sneak preview of her talk for the evening as “space stuff.” Her speech is apparently one she gives often, but it was entertaining and endlessly interesting, so she seems to have perfected it over the years.

NewGirl2 and I had some fun banter with the Dean of Engineering when he found out we were both Hokies, but everyone was a good sport about it, especially since our company was a sponsor and we were recruiting their engineers. We traded stories with his wife who grew up in NOVA and used to teach high school classes on shorthand and typing.

It was a fun time and we got to try out a couple restaurants in downtown Charlottesville, which I hadn’t done before. Had dinner at Basil on Friday night and a snack at Marco & Luca dumpling shop (NewGirl2 had never had dumplings before!). The Saturday night banquet was super fancy at the Farmington Country Club. Got home late last night just in time to miss the dusting of snow that passed over the area.

*Not actually the second new girl in the company since the original NewGirl, but the only one I’ve had reason to mention.

E2 had her baptism today, followed by dim sum with friends and family. After cake and ice cream, E2 was ready for a jog before the long car ride home.

About a month earlier, we had a blast digging for potatoes with Zina at the potatoes and pancakes event. (That’s how we knew where all the fun stuff would be when we went with EELS.)

Sonny, Anna, and my mom came by to check out the festival and I got their puffmobile race on video:

I lost some of the border to the summer heat. Completely forgot to take a picture before we left and it was a little melty by the time we got to our destination. Misjudged my font size when I started out too and ended up having to cut out “the” to make it fit. Still tasted good though! :)

And then the birthday cake for Alison’s birthday that night:

I was really pleased with how this cake turned out and even got a chance to use some of my decorating combs on it (which were way more challenging than I expected).

So here’s the presentation I put together. I’ll spare you the half-hour lecture, but some additional info on all the pirates are below to explain some of the references in the slides.

Artemisia of Caria
Artemisia of Caria came into power when her husband died in 480 BC. She became the only female advisor and commander to Xerxes of Persia. Prior to the Battle of Salamis, she advised him to attack Greece with a combined land-sea strategy to spread the Greek forces thin and leave their ships unattended to protect the people, but Xerxes did not listen to her and decided to attack the Greek fleet head on at Salamis.

The Persian strategy was to overwhelm the Greeks with a massive invasion force, while the Greeks defended strategic locations, keeping the Persian fleet at sea as long as possible. Xerxes was soon defeated in the Battle of Salamis. Artemisia commanded 5 ships in this battle, standing by him loyally. When she was down to 1 surviving ship, she advised Xerxes to retreat, seeing that their defeat was imminent. Xerxes heeded her advice over that of Mardonius, another commander and life-long friend of Xerxes, and survived the battle.

Xerxes expressed his gratitude to Artemisia by sending her to raise his sons in Ephesus and in return the Caria towns prospered in their alliance with Persia.

Teuta of Illyria
Teuta of Illyria came into power after the death of her husband, King Agron of Ardiaei. She started to treat the neighboring states violently and supported her subjects when they raided nearby villages. As the Illyrian pirates extended their reach, they were soon feared as the “Terror of the Adriatic.”

The Roman Republic felt threatened by this and sent 2 ambassadors to demand an end to the piracy, the brothers Gaius and Lucius Coruncanius. Queen Teuta defended her people, saying that in Illyria, piracy was a lawful trade and “it was never the custom of royalty to prevent the advantage of its subjects they could get from the sea.” Upon hearing this, one of the ambassadors disrespectfully disagreed with the Queen, and as a result, she had her men follow them to their ship and killed the offending ambassadors before they could return to Rome. The other ambassador was held captive.

Once word got back to Rome, they declared war on Illyria, sending their entire fleet of 200 ships. Teuta’s governor, Demetrius, surrendered early and was rewarded handsomely with the Queen’s wealth. Queen Teuta eventually surrendered and was allowed to continue her reign, but with huge restrictions on where her ships could sail and stripped her of her properties. They also required her to pay an annual tax and acknowledge that Rome was the final authority in her land. Queen Teuta was later succeeded by Gentius.

Alfhild
Alfhild was a Viking princess protected by a lizard and a snake. Her father, the king, said that whoever can defeat the guards could have his daughter’s hand in marriage. After many failed attempts, leading to the death of many suitors, Prince Alf defeated the guards by covering himself in animal flesh for the animals to feast on, and using tongs and hot steel in one hand and a spear in the other to attack both serpents at once.

King Siward, however, would only accept a man for her daughter if she agreed to him, which was typical in Norse cultures. Alfhild did not want to marry Prince Alf, so her mother told her to run away. Alfhild proceeded to acquire a boat, an all-female crew, and became a successful pirate. So successful that the Danes sent multiple parties out to stop her.

Prince Alf lead one of these expeditions to stop the pirate, which he didn’t realize at the time, was his run-away princess. After boarding Alfhild’s ship during an attack, Alf knocked off Alfhild’s helmet and recognized her. Alf, again, professed his love for Alfhild and she ended her life of piracy to rule Denmark with Alf.

Grace O’Malley
Grace was daughter to chief of the O’Malley clan. Her first experiences at sea were accompanying her father on trade expeditions. She married Donal O’Flaherty to strengthen their alliance with a neighboring clan. They had 3 children together, Owen, Margaret, and Mourrough. Donal was somewhat of a war-mongerer and was killed in battle trying to take land from the Joyce clan. Grace avenged her husband’s death and took Cork’s castle back from them, no referred to as “Hen’s Castle.”

After Donal’s death, Grace returned to the sea to make her living. She rescued Hugh de Lacy his shipwrecked ship during a storm and nursed him back to health. He became her lover and was later killed by the MacMahon family. Grace took her revenge on the MacMahon clan by burning their ships, killing the family, and taking Doona Castle from them.

Grace next married her nephew, Richard “Iron Dick” Bourke, and had a son with him. After a year, according to the Brehon law of the day, a marriage could be dissolved, having lasted a trial period. Grace divorced Bourke, but kept Rockfleet Castle, giving her complete control of Clew Bay.

In 1593, Grace’s sons Tibbot Bourke and Murrough O’Flaherty, and her half-brother, Donal-naPiopa, were taken captive by the English governor of Connacht, Sir Richard Bingham, who had also killed her eldest son, Owen O’Flaherty. Grace sailed to England to petition Elizabeth I for their release. They agreed to a list of demands, including removing Richard Bingham from his position in Ireland and Grace agreed to stop supporting the Irish Lords’ rebellions. After returning home, Grace found that the agreement was only partially fulfilled. Cattle and land that Bingham stole from her was not returned and Bingham was removed from service, but only temporarily.

Upon Bingham’s return, Grace realized that the meeting with Elizabeth had been useless, and went back to supporting Irish rebellions.

Lady Mary Killigrew
Lady Mary Killigrew was married to Sir Henry Killigrew, a former pirate, who was later named Vice-Admiral by Queen Elizabeth I and tasked with suppressing piracy. Whenever her husband went to sea, Mary engaged in piracy using the staff of her castle (Arwenack Castle in Cornwall) as crew.

In 1570, Mary captured a German merchant ship off Falmouth and her crew sailed it to Ireland to sell. However, the owner of this ship was a friend of Queen Elizabeth who then had Lady Mary arrested and brought to trial.

According to sources, her family either bribed the jurors and was acquitted or Queen Elizabeth arranged a short jail sentence. After being freed, Mary gave up pirating and took up fencing stolen goods.

Anne Dieu-le-veut
Anne Dieu-le-veut was married to a pirate, Pierre Length, who was killed in a bar fight by Laurens de Graaf. Anne challenged Laurens to a duel, drawing a gun while he drew a sword. He then declared that he would not fight a woman and proposed marriage instead. Apparently, she accepted, but, since Laurens was already married, they had a common-law marriage.

In 1693, Laurens raided Jamaica and was awarded the title of Chevalier – the equivalent of knighting in French. A year later, Anne and her 2 daughters were taken prisoner by the English in retaliation and held hostage for 3 years.

A few years later, Anne and Laurens attacked a Spanish ship and Laurens was killed by a cannon ball. Anne took command, but her crew was outnumbered and was overtaken. They were imprisoned, but Anne’s fame was so great that, while in captivity, the French Marine Secretary of Pontchartrain heard of her capture and wrote to Louis XIV of France and asked him to make the king of Spain intervene. Anne was then freed as a special service between kings, and she was never heard of again.

Ingela Gathenhielm
Ingela Gathenhielm and her husband, Lars, were granted permission from King Charles XII to attack and plunder any enemy ships in the Baltic during the Great Northern War. As reward for protecting Sweden in the war, Lars and his brother were both knighted.

Ingela took over the pirating business after Lars passed away, but eventually ran out of ships to plunder when Denmark and Russia signed peace treaties with Sweden. After the war ended, Ingela married her lieutenant, Isak Browald.

Anne Bonny
Anne Bonny was the illegitimate child of her father and his servant. After her father was kicked out, he married the servant and moved to Charleston, SC. Her father was wealthy, a lawyer and then a plantation owner, who wanted her daughter to live an honorable life. Anne, however, rebelled and married James Bonny, a small-time pirate, and moved to the Bahamas.

In the Bahamas, Anne had an affair and left James for Calico Jack. James threatened to have Anne flogged for cheating on him and offered to allow Calico Jack to buy her off him to save her from the flogging. Anne refused the offer, saying she would not be bought and sold like cattle.

While on Calico Jack’s crew, Anne met “Mark Read,” who she later found out was Mary Read. There were rumors that Anne and Mary also had a relationship, but sources were inconsistent.

In October 1720, Rackam’s crew was captured by Jonathan Barnet, working for the governor of Jamaica. The crew was too drunk to fight back, but Anne, Mary, and an unidentified man held off Barnet’s troops briefly. They were eventually all captured and sentenced to death.

When Rackam was taken to be hanged, Anne said to him, “I’m sorry to see you here, Jack, but if you’d have fought like a man you needn’t hang like a dog.”

Anne and Mary were given a stay of execution because they both claimed to be pregnant. It’s unclear whether Mary actually was pregnant, but she died in April 1721 from a fever, which some sources said was related to childbirth. Anne Bonny was rumored to have been ransomed by her father and descendants of Anne indicate that she gave birth to Rackam’s second child in South Carolina.

Mary Read
Mary’s grandmother believed that Mary was illegitimate, so refused to support her. When her brother passed away, her mother raised her as her deceased brother in order to get financial support from her grandmother.

Mary joined the military to make her living until she met her husband and confessed to being a woman. They opened an Inn together, but he died young, so Mary rejoined the army. She soon quit because there were no opportunities for advancement in times of peace

Mary was on a ship to the West Indies, when it was taken by pirates – Calico Jack’s crew. Disguised as “Mark Read,” she joined Rackam’s crew. Anne Bonny took a liking to her, forcing Mary to reveal her true identity. There were rumors that Anne and Mary also had a relationship, but sources were inconsistent.

Mary fell in love with an artist on Rackam’s crew. He got himself into a duel, which he would have certainly lost, but Mary started a fight with the offending pirate and challenged him to a duel. During the duel, Mary revealed to the other pirate that she was a woman and he was so stunned, she gained the upper hand and was able to kill him.

In October 1720, Rackam’s crew was captured by Jonathan Barnet, working for the governor of Jamaica. The crew was too drunk to fight back, but Anne, Mary, and an unidentified man held off Barnet’s troops briefly. They were eventually all captured and sentenced to death.

Anne and Mary were given a stay of execution because they both claimed to be pregnant. It’s unclear whether Mary actually was pregnant, but she died in April 1721 from a fever, which some sources said was related to childbirth.

Ching Shih
Zheng Yi found Ching Shih at a brothel in Canton when she was a teenager. She agreed to marry him even though she didn’t particularly like him because it gave her the opportunity to leave the brothel.

Zheng Yi had a long family history of pirates and used his influence and family reputation to build an alliance between competing pirate fleets. Ching Shih took over command of the fleet when Zheng Yi was killed by a tsunami.

She continued to build the fleet by offering captive sailors the option to join them or be killed. The fleet grew to such a size that the Chinese Navy decided they must step in. However, this was a mostly unsuccessful attempt. The Admiral of the Chinese Navy, Kwo Lang, committed suicide when being faced with the prospect of being captured by her forces.

Ching Shih eventually accepted amnesty from Chinese government and retired from piracy. She and all her crew were permitted to keep all their pirated possessions and her crew was offered the opportunity to join the Navy.

Ching Shih later married her leuitenant and adopted son, Cheung Po Tsai, and spent the remainder of her life running a brothel/casino

Other Pirates
- Sayyida al Hurra controlled the western Mediterranean Sea.
- Jacquotte Delahaye was known as “Back from the Dead Red” because of her red hair and return to piracy after faking her own death and hiding dressed as a man for several years.
- Rachel Wall accused of robbery and confessed to being a pirate. She was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging.
- Johanna Hard was Sweden’s last pirate. She was arrested with her crew for boarding and murdering the crew of a Danish ship. Evidence was insufficient for Johanna, but the rest of her crew was imprisoned or sentenced to death. After her release, Johanna was never heard from again.
- Sadie the Goat was known for headbutting her victims before taking their money.
- Hon-cho Lo was known for attacking villages and fishing fleets, and selling women prisoners into slavery. Her fleet was intercepted by a Chinese warship, destroying 40 vessels. Lo Hon-cho escaped, but was turned in to authorities by her crew in exchange for clemency.
- Cheng Chui Ping smuggled thousands of Chinese immigrants to the U.S. and Europe. She was convicted in the U.S. and sentenced to 35 years in prison and is due for release in 2030.

So, the park we went to watch the meteor shower from was about an hour East of Annapolis with no cell signal within a couple miles of it. We were meeting a few people who had also never been to this park before. When Ian and I didn’t find the field we were advised to use on our first pass through the area, we decided to go find the map he looked at online the day before.

We backtracked to the last place we had consistent signal and used my phone’s internet connection to tether the shiny new [hand-me-down] netbook Anna gave me (Ace). We looked up the map, downloaded a local copy of it, and then called the people we were meeting to make sure they had directions to meet us at the site.

A little while later, we were happily star-gazing! I used my compass app to position our blankets in the direction of optimum meteor sightings. And, as it turns out, the sky map app on my phone works without signal/GPS activated! It takes your last known position or you can enter in a position and it’ll show you the stars in the sky from your position.

Technology is the best! :)

I tried a few times to take pictures, but my camera doesn’t have the option to leave the shutter open as long as I needed. This was one of my best pictures. ;)

We made our way to the signs pointing to the terminal we needed… took a shuttle that dropped us off outside some locked doors. After waiting a few minutes for someone inside to notice us, a security guard let us, and our 20 new friends, in. We followed the signs, again, to the direction of our terminal. Only to find that we were now outside the secure area and had to go through security again.

The place was a mad house. They were moving people through pretty quickly, but it was still really crowded. I went through my bag trying to find the liquids I had gotten out since the Copenhagen airport and put them back in my ziplock bag. Found the 1/2 liter bottle of water I refilled past security in Copenhagen, which I needed to be rid of. I wanted to keep the bottle, though, in case I wanted water later. So, I started chugging while taking off my shoes and digging out my laptop… Ian took pity on me and had a swig of water to help me finish it off. Made it through security and booked it over to our gate… which got moved! Fortunately, it only moved a couple gates over and the line was being held up by a big group of American teenagers.

The flight back was pretty uneventful. Each seat had a TV in front of it, so we had our pick of movies and TV shows to watch the entire flight back (watched How to Train Your Dragon, Date Night, Inglorious Bastards, and a couple episodes of the Simpsons). They kept getting interrupted by announcements though, which were incredibly difficult to understand. At one point, I realized I understood more of the French than I did the English. And when I mentioned it to Ian, he didn’t even realize they were speaking English!

Finally made it back to VA! Ian and I very diligently documented all the items we brought back on the customs form, so we would be ready when we arrived. When we got up to the customs agent, he asked us what food we brought back. Various Danish candies, crackers, and other snacks. The guy looked at us like he was trying to stifle a laugh. He waved us past and we were on our way!

Lenny was awesome enough to pick us up from the airport, so we got a chance to stop in and say hi to Steph and the nieces. E2 was so happy to see Ian! And E1 was excited to show me everything that had changed while we were gone. It was nice to see them, but we were tired and so ready to get home. Steph was nice enough to send us home with some fresh fruit though, so at least I didn’t need to worry about scrounging up snacks later.

Headed straight home, lugged all our stuff up to our apartment… and then discovered that we were locked out. While we were gone, we had Steph’s uncle in doing some contracting work for us, so we gave him one of our keys. We gave our other key to Yenny so she could water our plants. We can buzz ourselves into the building with our phones and our front door has a mechanical punch lock that doesn’t require a key, so we figured we could get home and then retrieve the keys from people later. Except that we also have a deadbolt that we don’t use… but after the last time building management locked me out of my apartment, I started carrying that key around just in case. And so that “just in case” key was used and we had no way in.

Tracked people down… The construction guy had the key, which he dropped off in the uncle’s mailbox since the uncle was out of town, and I went to pick it up from his house. And an hour later, we were finally inside our home and everything was as it should be (plus a fancy bathroom!). Until we did our first load of laundry and the washing machine flooded the kitchen again.

Home, sweet home.

Today was Ian and my 1-year anniversary!  So, it was pretty fun to be up with all the family for the banquet the night before.  We met up with relatives for dim sum takeout for breakfast and to have an early celebration for grandpa’s birthday. Then we spent the afternoon in the car with my sis coming home.  Spending the rest of the evening at home and just hanging out.  :)

A week in advance: Ian’s shopping trip.
- 8 pounds of butter
- 6 pounds of cream cheese
- 6 pounds of cake flour
- 5 dozen eggs

Already had the sugar, 20 lemons (zested and juiced), and pre-ordered:
- 9 lb white chocolate
- 6 lb semi-sweet chocolate
- 10 oz lemon oil

A week in advance, made a double batch of lemon curds. Made simple syrup (unflavored). Pre-measured all the dry ingredients and pre-cut parchment paper for pans.

On Tuesday, I bought the final ingredients: buttermilk, heavy cream, and blackberries. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, I baked all the cakes for the wedding and rehearsal dinner and made a double-batch of frosting.

Thursday morning, Ian helped me load up the car with all the cakes, fillings, frostings, and decorating supplies to bring over to his parents’ house. They were kind enough to offer me access to their 2nd fridge, as well as their dining room and kitchen for cake assembly.

I spent Thursday leveling, torting, filling, and frosting the cakes. I also plated the blackberry chocolate cake and made ganache to cover the cake. Surprisingly, I finished 3 hours earlier than I expected according to my schedule!

Friday, I was back over bight and early for a day of decorating. I started with the bottom tier, but was unhappy with my decorations so I ended up starting over 4 or 5 times before deciding the cake had been out too long and should go back in the fridge.

Out came the middle tier… I looked up a few pictures of baskets and different basket-weave cakes for some inspiration. I decided my weaves were spaced too far apart, which was why it looked unrealistic. I also tried applying more pressure to the tube so the frosting would come out more evenly instead of gapping everytime I hit an air pocket. This was also around the time I experimented with the textures on my chosen tip… and deciding, again, that the cake had been out too long and needed to be re-chilled.

After all the practice, the top tier went very smoothly. I tried out a border that I was happy with and then I made some little flowers using frosting and the lemon curd filling. I did learn from that though… put the border on last! Every time I made a flower I didn’t like, I had a tough time re-smoothing the cake while trying to avoid the border.

Once I had the pattern set from the top tier, I took a second shot at the bottom tier. It went *so* much quicker the second time around! After that, the middle was a breeze!

I did the bottom border on the bottom tier and called it a day. I was relatively on schedule for the day, but hadn’t planned for transit time back home to change before going to the rehearsal dinner. We were also bringing plastic & paperware for the event, so I figured we should probably get there on time/a little early. So, I grabbed the undecorated chocolate cake and headed out!

Saturday: The Big Day!

Two weeks earlier, I made Ian do a dry run with me to his parents’ and then to the restaurant to time the route and do recon to check if we’d be faced with stairs, obstacles, etc. I took those times, added some margin, and estimated how long it would take to load the car based on Thursday’s loading time.

Ian’s mom was kind enough to loan us her Honda Fit — super cute and really roomy with efficient design. We were able to load up the car with all the cakes and supplies in under 15 minutes.

We took the scenic route to the restaurant and still got there 20 minutes earlier than the event planner said she would be on site. After the designated time had come and gone with no sign of the event planner, I wandered into the kitchen area of the restaurant from the loading dock.

I found the manager who was incredibly helpful and got me set up with a cart to move the cakes, an area out of the way for assembly, and some space in the fridge to store the cake when it was complete. Ian helped me stack the cakes and went in search of other entertainment while I worked on the final decorations.

It took about an hour to finish up, with plenty of spectators passing through throughout the process. (Ian was bringing by tour groups to get a behind-the-scenes look.) As we were wheeling the cart over to the fridge, Ian spotted a digital scale. I could definitively answer my question of how much the completed cake weighed!

I made a spreadsheet of all the ingredients for the whole project and associated weights for each ingredient, including average weights of eggs and egg yolks. The maximum weight of the cake based on all the ingredients was 40 pounds. Final cake: 30 pounds!

Once the cake was safely put away in the fridge, my responsibilities were complete! The staff set it out on the pretty table and whisked it away after Sonny and Anna did their cake-cutting ceremony and took care of serving it.

From Sunday brunch:

The wedding:

Sunday brunch:

I’ve got a bunch of videos from the wedding too, but have to get permission from people to post up!