short takes

[cellio]

Erik has been more clingy than usual lately. I'm vaguely thinking "for about the last month"; I wonder if it's been since Pennsic. I didn't notice it immediately, if so. I wonder what it means. (He is especially clingy when I am working at the computer, alas.)

Last night Dani and I went to the Coldstone Creamery for the first time. (Yeah, we're slow -- but let it never be said that we are slaves to fashion. No, I don't think you were going to say that anyway.) The ice cream was good but maybe not as good as the price would suggest. We couldn't help thinking that while it would defeat their gimmick, a blender would speed up processing of the customer queue.

Seen at work: "Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."

Today was our company's annual retreat, where we close the office and go do company-focus-building stuff in a secluded cabin or the like. It's a good idea, but I don't think we actually needed to go as far out of the city as we did this time. (This was a new location for us.) It took almost an hour to get there. I'm really glad I hitched a ride, because some of the signage was quite poor and I probably wouldn't have found the place on my own.

We actually have budget for conferences; I wonder what it would be most beneficial for me to attend. (I didn't get my act together for SIGDOC this year, which is happening as I write this.)

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Coldstone Creamery has been attempting to break into the Boston market.

I find this hysterical. See, Boston is the toughest ice cream market in the country, with the possible exception of Madison, Wisconsin. The cheap ice cream brand around here is Brigham's, which is sold as a premium ice cream in other parts of the country. The Coldstone Creamery gimmick of mix-ins was invented in Boston by Steve Herrell in 1973. The cheap neighborhood ice cream shops around that DON'T make their own ice cream -- and frankly, a good chunk of the small independents DO -- tend to use Richardson's Ice Cream, from Richardson's Dairy, which has been a dairy farm in the Richardson family for about three hundred years, and has been making ice cream for about a hundred of those years.

As far as I can tell, Coldstone is having even less success in Boston than Krispy Kreme is.

[jducoeur]

Krispy Kreme is at least thoroughly *different* from Dunkin Donuts, and there are a fair number of us who are partial to the occasional artery-destroying fix of the stuff. But yes -- Coldstone really has nothing to recommend it over the scads of high-quality independents around here. I mean, when you have to compete with Herrell's and Tosci's, that's quite an uphill climb...

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

And Christina's, and Richardson's, and Lizzy's, and. . .

I liked Krispy Kreme okay the few times I've had them, but I grew up with Dunkin' Donuts, and so, fundamentally, what I'm looking for in a donut is what DD used to be back when Fred the Baker said that it was "time to make the donuts." If a chain started up that baked cakey-type donuts fresh every half hour, I think THEY might do reasonably well. Honeydew Donuts at least tends to bake on premises, which is why I tend to patronize them over Dunkin' Donuts. Krispy Kreme does make fresh donuts throughout the day, which is something they've got over the competition, but, as far as I'm concerned, they're making the wrong KIND of donut fresh throughout the day.

[jducoeur]

I'm actually quite fond of KK donuts, much moreso than the DD cake ones. Only thing that keeps me from eating them regularly is the unavoidable awareness of how mind-bogglingly awful for me they are. (Some foods you can fool yourself about. This is not one of them: it tastes every bit as fattening as it is.)

OTOH, my wife can't stand KK -- she likens it to biting into a stick of butter. Very much a matter of taste...