The sign is up; the concrete is coming out

We've hit a small snag in the construction: after pulling up the floors, we discovered that there is a layer of very old, pitted concrete throughout the building. We have to have all of it removed and carted off to wherever concrete goes to die, and that's going to take a special crew of workers and another few days (and more than a few dollars). But the good news is, our "coming soon" sign is up!



We haven't decided where our permanent sign should go. I have negative feelings about the awning, but it is true that it has good visibility. We're open to suggestions!

Meanwhile, Jill and I have been working on setting up our accounting systems and finding a credit card processor, neither of which tasks fall into my "most favorite jobs" category. To balance that energy drain, I've been testing recipes: I baked some tasty chocolate-orange sweet rolls over the weekend, and today I made a very nice chiffon cake, which is tricky at high altitude. I baked the chiffon cake at the restaurant where I work part-time, and it wasn't until I finished the batter that I realized we didn't have a tube pan. I had to improvise by turning a champagne flute upside down in the middle of a springform pan, and covering the exposed part of the glass with a few layers of aluminum foil. It actually worked really well (no broken glass), except that I had to cut a chunk out of the cake in order to extract the glass (the glass had a flared rim, so both the top and the base were wider than the middle). Despite the unconventional baking equipment, the cake rose nicely and tasted good. Apparently my dog Biscuit also liked it--I had brought home the chunk I cut out and left it in a baggie on my counter, and when I came back later all that was left were a few wisps of plastic.