Christmas in January...I guess that's just called tardiness

The last few days have been insane! The phone has been ringing non-stop, except for the two times that the construction workers down the street hit our phone line and knocked it out. I've been meeting with wine distributors to try to find some great wines for Après, although it's turning out to be really tricky to find dessert wines, because most distributors don't carry many of them. One of the strange things about getting a liquor license is that after you have one, you aren't allowed to buy alcohol from a retail store anymore, instead you have to buy it from a middleman called a distributor. Call me cynical, but I suspect that the state is making some money off this arrangement. The problem is, each distributor sells specific wines, so you can't just pick out a bunch of wines and make one phone call to get them. You have to look up which distributor sells each of the wines, apply for credit terms with them, negotiate pricing, etc. For a place that wants to have a small but ecclectic wine list, this system is a pain in the aspic.

In addition to being on the phone almost every minute, we've been receiving deliveries multiple times a day (often from the same FedEx guy, which is confusing to me). We've got new equipment, plates, decorations, tables, gadgets, and silverware coming in from all over the place. That part has been fun. A few days ago we received our mini-grills that will be used for the Make-Your-Own S'Mores, and we tested them out:

We decided maybe the flame was a little too high in this test...