How can Tolkein and Soup be relevant?
Tolkein and Diana Krall? Well, there you are, reading and wondering, and here I am, knowing and typing. I have the answer. Read on. (Notice the unmentioned, slightly concave muffin. I’ll save that for last, claiming my feminine right to Be Mysterious).
It was a Dark and Stormy Night. The windows rattled in their cages, the children cried with cold and hunger. So, mustering my chutzpah, I slung my knapsack over my shoulder, coiled a length of good rope over my arm, and took the most direct route to Scarborough. In pursuit of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme. Barefoot. I hoped also to unearth a coney (that would be a rabbit completely out of time) and a few taters along the way.
I am a Dilbert fan, partly out of sympathy. My husband, Frank, has spent a significant portion of his life in an office cubicle; even now that he is a consultant, I believe he spends most of his time in client’s cubicles. And I played a brief stint as a research clerk in an earlier life, where I shared a small, file-laden office with two other ladies… there was just enough room for three desks and miniscule aisles between. More than enough room for “office life”. Anyway, I definitely get Dilbert. We used to live just a couple of miles from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation; local communities teemed with engineers and scientists of every stripe (with their appellate clerks and secretaries and technicians). Cubicle careers were the norm (and so was unimaginative, efficient architecture). One of Frank’s cubicle co-workers went a little crazy and started a cake decorating business, creating quite a stir at the office– a lot of heel-kicking and potlucks: any excuse for a cake. I saw the cubicles, their uniquely personal and sometimes furtive adornments: coffee mugs, framed photos of loved ones, certificates, euphemisms and comic strips, little gags perched on top of computers. Rarely did the adornments outreach the confines of the partitions, and if they did, they didn’t stray far or make much of an impact on the community at large. 
Another Memorable Moment on my Quest for the Perfect Cake. My cake-making reputation is, well, rather sad. Or at least compromised. I have made a few delicious cakes, but they looked terrible. I’ve made one or two ok-looking cakes, but they were dry, or weird tasting, or the ganache I used as frosting was so hard the cake beneath was obliterated when we tried to cut it. Yes, quite a few dry cakes, and even more cratered cakes. And I’m not a victim of circumstance or bad luck here; this has everything to do with my choosing to be a cake maverick, a confectionary loose cannon. A cookie jar cowboy. Traits I inherited from my dad…hmm. Well, maybe that does make me a victim.
Remember the jacket, pictured on my dining room table a few entries ago? The jacket that I indicted as matronly and sentenced to dismemberment (“off with its arms! and its collar too!”). And then abandoned while I soliloquized about opera. Which was fun for me, but probably did nothing for the jacket.
Groundhog Day today. My daughter Meisha came home from school full of anticipation for spring. We’re all full of anticipation for spring. It’s a February thing, which started in January (when it was a January thing). But Meisha’s optimism, because of the groundhog ritual (and despite its outcome), can embrace and then look beyond whatever is left of winter—however long it might linger—because she is that certain of the eventuality of spring. She wanted to celebrate. So we picked up Chinese, watched Groundhog Day, and nibbled on the remnants of my most recent Pear Danish attempt (this time, the pears were swimming in sauce made with lemon, lime, and pineapple juice infused with lavender. Promising). 
I shouldn’t say eleventh hour. It’s more like the ten and a half-th hour. I can write that, because it’s my blog and for some reason, no one ever writes or calls to say Hey! You spelled something wrong! Or Hey! What are you? A grammatical deviant? I fear no repercussion.