"The floppy is from the last century."

Chef Stephanie doesn't have to wear a toque over her curly locks, nor an apron: she's in tailored slack and striped blouse, but we're all required to be in uniform, including hats and side towels. The sun comes out when she says she's fine with beverages in the classroom, but food can make the keyboards messy. (Actually, beverages can be a problem, also: I remember when Danny Lemos spilled his take-away margarita on the computer at the radio station where he was working...)

Chef has a thick Swiss/French accent, and, appropriately, she pronounces "hit" as "eat," as in "'Eat' the enter key." Right at the beginning of class, she acknowledges the possibility that some of us are already fairly proficient in Word and Excel, but she promises to provide "one or two tips per day that you haven't seen before." Sounds good to me.

Travis and Jim aren't in class this morning, though they're on the roster. Everybody else, sleepy-looking, has returned from Spring Break. Andrea has a big bandage on an index finger where she sliced off much of a nail while cooking at home. She admits that there was wine involved. Derrick wonders if she can get a discount on a nine-fingered manicure.

We'll spend the first half of the three weeks on Software Applications, then move into Kitchen Math and Purchasing. Sounds like that class will require "a big project" but we receive no more informationon that today, except that what we learn about Word and Excel will be essential. We have a quiz every day, worth five points (half a grade, on the 100 point scale!) plus a "compentency" every day: an in-class project of varying complexity. Today, we had to copy a letter and a menu from our syllabus, two pages in total, and correctly format them in a sans serif font. When we're finished, we can leave, so Tashana, Andrea and I stroll out at about 11am, while Rudy is still trying to figure out how to change the font on the entire document, rather than the word he has highlighted. Other competencies will involve recipe, menu, and resume writing.

So I did learn some things today, about Word:

* Did you know that you can use control+scroll wheel to change the page size percentage?

* You can double-click in the blue "margin" section of your ruler to open the Page Set Up window. If you put your cursor in the blue section, and get the double arrow icon, you change the margins manually. Hold down the "alt" key to get the exact margin dimension.

*If you right-click on a word, you'll get a drop-down list that includes "synonyms."

Chef Stephanie described a serif font as having "implied connectivity between the letters of the word." I thought that was a very poetic way to describe it.

And she showed us a couple of QuickTime movies, one of Bill Gates being cream pie'd in Brussels, one of a man in a cubicle literally beating up on his computer. She said we should ask questions before we start abusing the equipment.

And to save our work, we should bring a flash drive: "The floppy is from the last century."