THE WEISS CHRONICLES

Wedding Cake Problem and Potential Solution

The catering company has a contract to serve a Wedding reception (actually it is a lesbian wedding that for some reason has to be kosher).

The party requires a 4 level (the image is a 6 layer) meringue wedding cake w minimal margarine. The problem is that without a high margarine content, the bottom meringue surfaces are very soft and easily deformed by the layers on top of it.

I found a possible solution in a Martha Stewart e-book. It uses meringue mushrooms to place all around the cake thus disguising any deformation in the surface. Also it uses wooden dowels to provide support to each layer with more dowels in the center of the cake.

The Martha Stewart site is here.

Follow Up.
The caterer redid the bottom layer, put a design of meringue beads around the joint between layers and some white flowers on the parts of the crust which were marginally lower.

posted by Martin Weiss # 5:05 PM

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

New Phones to Replace Old ones

We suffered a near lightning hit on June 11. It took out the cable box and various other things, including the phone line (actually the phone didn't show any visible damage).

After phone service was restored, we realized all our phones had been damaged and the static made all calls impossible to hear.

G got us new phones today (similar to phone system on left)

After the new phones were in, I checked the incoming calls. About 20 incoming (about 60% without a voice message and five of these were 410 844 5524) in the 6 day period.

posted by Martin Weiss # 6:54 PM

Sunday, June 15, 2014

San Francisco Shafskaufest

I was in San Francisco June 6 to 11.

The first image is riding a Segway near 30th Ave just north of Golden Gate Park. Glen Kruser (other guy in image) and I rode from about 30th ave to the Pacific Ocean (west of 49th ave) and south to the edge of the park then to about 8th ave on the east of the park and then to the north edge and then back to 30th ave again. We made some detours along the way to see gazebos and waterfalls and pagodas and so forth. The temperature was in the high 50s and the wind was pretty strong near the ocean but it was probably about 5 to 10 degrees warmer on the east portion of the park.

The second image has me, Glenn, Dave Kroes and Gerry Berg and is taken at the park just south of the Golden Gate bridge. We walked across the bridge about half way and then walked back. Walking along the bridge gave us a great view of the city (it was pretty clear that day) but it is very noisy and windy.

The third image was taken in Muir Woods (that's a redwood tree in the background). From L to R is Adrian Ivancevitch (who I hadn't seen in about 40 years), myself, Gerry and Glenn (Dave took picture). Adrian gave us a ride to the park and around other parks of Marin county (he lives about 20 miles north of Golden Gate bridge).

We also saw pretty much the whole waterfront from pier 49 to pier 8 also the bay and we walked to Coit tower (quite a walk - about 250 feet vertical in 1 mile).

Obviously we played a lot of cards (Sheepshead).

Some other interesting things:

-we were not the only people playing cards in the Hilton Lobby; there was a game of Skaut (played with a german deck) on two days and some French speaking people were playing bridge on three days and there was a couple playing some two handed game also.

- when we were near the golden gate bridge, a couple saw that I was wearing my Sheepshead.org shirt and they recognized the game (they were from Wisconsin); however they were staying at a hotel a mile from us and couldn't join us for cards

- in addition to the Muir Woods Ewok battle and resemblance of the fat sea lions to Jabba the Hut and the resemblance of the cargo handlers at the Port of Oakland to the Imperial Walkers, I noticed that some of the panhandlers looked like Jawas (the gang that captured CP3O and R2D2 on Tataween).

- on the way back from the Segway riding, we took a trolley that went through the less prosperous parts of SF. At one point a crazy person got on and told jokes about the driver and one of the passengers laughed each time although the jokes were the pretty much the same joke told twice.

posted by Martin Weiss # 3:57 PM

Sunday, June 01, 2014

Another Dream

I had a dream last night. In the dream, George was little again (the image shows George in January 1987 at Pinewood Lake in Virginia when he as about 3 and a half or so).

We had suspected George of unauthorized consumption of chocolate chip cookies.

We held a trial and Cookie Monster testified against George who then threatened Cookie Monster with not watching him again.

I think this dream was brought on partly by the fact that the previous Shabbath was the first in at least 4 sabbaths that we did not have chocolate chip cookies. Also, one of the TV shows I sometimes watch (Family Guy), has Cookie Monster making guest appearances in side jokes. Also, George has been in court a lot in the past few months.

I'll post this also in the long term memories blog.

posted by Martin Weiss # 9:26 PM