Camera Free Since July 3!

This will be fast and dirty because my friend Scooter (also fast and dirty) has my camera.

I am not a begrudger, I am not being hateful, but I am absolutely DYING to post pictures of my new window treatments, and since Scooter still has my camera, I am waiting, not so patiently.

I can go weeks without using it, so I had no problem lending it to him, as long as he promised not to take naughty pictures, as I will be the one downloading them. He agreed to abide by the rules.

Now, I know where he lives, but it is really, really far away, plus it is fun to harass him about it.

So, Scooter, if you are reading this, please put my camera in your man-bag and bring it on back to me! I will only keep it a day, then you can have it again. I expect a truly stunning photo documentary from him when all is said and done...

Watch this space!

Twice in Two Days!

Try not to get excited, dear reader. The fact that I am going to post two days in a row is not a renewal of my earlier pledge. I think we have proven that I will not be able to maintain this torrid pace.

I do have more cake pictures to share, so I thought I would put them out there.

This cake was made for my friend the Mangler. Her birthday was June 22nd, and she requested a yellow cake with chocolate icing. She even said I could use the frosting out of a can. A CAN, people! Heresy!

I ended up making her a yellow cake with chocolate frosting, but, being me, I couldn't leave well enough alone. I ended up making a really yummy chocolate frosting. It is basically a fluffy ganache. The Mangler doesn't like super sweet icings, and this one is a bit lighter than the standard buttercream.

Naturally, I couldn't leave well enough alone and just write "Happy Birthday Mangler" on the cake. So dull, so trite! I ended up trying the Frozen Buttercream Transfer (hereafter referred to as FBCT) process that went so horribly awry on the Lizard's Elvis cake. No, I don't learn from my mistakes. I just keep right on making them.

The FBCT process sounds complicated, but is pretty easy, if time consuming. It is a way to get a more complicated picture on a cake without having to draw it freehand. Super if you want to put a character on a cake, or match the napkins for a party, or whatever.

Basically, you take an image and reverse it, then tape it down to something that is sturdy and will fit in the freezer (that is where the "frozen" part comes in). In this case, I took the picture that I wanted, and taped it to the window, then traced over it. This gave me an exact copy, so I flipped my tracing over, taped it to the window again and copied over the lines, giving me my mirror image. Ordinarily, this type of image manipulation is best done on a computer, but I was lazy, and have old fashioned tendencies anyway. Plus, it really freaked out my neighbors.

I then taped my mirror image onto a circle of cardboard and covered the whole thing with waxed paper. I should buy stock in 3M. I don't know anyone else who could run through this much tape baking a cake.

Once I had my circle of fun, I began piping white icing in the appropriate areas of the image. I was lucky in that the image only required three colors. Once I was done with the white, I put the cardboard in the freezer and wandered off to do something else.

Recalled to my duties (I know, I know, I said "duty", but this is the Mangler's cake, so it works), I pulled the circle out of the freezer, and added the medium color in the appropriate spots and shoved it back in the freezer. One more round trip to add the dark color, and I was done!

After I pulled the final image out of the freezer, I peeled the waxed paper off of the cardboard, and peeked under to see what would be the top of my design. I was looking for holes or light spots, found a few and slathered more icing. Back in the freezer until it was cake time.

I had previously torted and iced the Mangler's cake, knowing that I wanted to slap my image on the top, then add a border.

I placed my hand (my freshly washed, super-sanitary hand) on the top/back of the image and flipped it over (cardboard up). I then was able to take off the cardboard, leaving me with a handful of icing covered in waxed paper. I gently centered my icing disk onto the cake and removed my hand.

Now for the tricky part; removing the waxed paper. This is where Elvis had refused to leave the building on my earlier attempt. I took a moment, quieted my mind and entered a zen-like state. I would like to tell you that I grabbed one corner and peeled that sucker off like someone pulling the tablecloth out from under a place setting for 12. What actually happened was that I grabbed one corner with extreme trepidation and tugged oh so gingerly and watched with startled amazement as it pulled free with no impediment. I do wish I had done it with a bit more flair, though. Maybe next time.

To make a long, boring post even longer, I managed to add a border around the top and bottom of the cake and pack it up for delivery.

I took it to the restaurant where we were celebrating the Mangler's birthday. I almost had a stroke when one of the servers started to walk out with it, to cut it, before anyone had even SEEN it. Mercifully, my agitated shrieking stayed his course, and we were all able to stare down at it's unmolested state.

So, here it is.

For those of you not from Louisiana, this is the "eye of the tiger" that LSU paints in the center of their football field. The Mangler is a huge LSU fan. (The colors are purple and gold, but the restaurant was quite dark.)

Hope the pics are worth the 73 pages of rambling prose!

Aloha, Mistress Badtrip

My friend, Mistress Badtrip, is moving to Hawaii. I know, I know, what a hardship.

Fortunately, she was to attend one last meeting here in Atlanta before flying off to live perched on the side of some volcanic vomit in the middle of NOTHING.

I can hear you asking, 'Why is she called "Mistress Badtrip"?' The story shall not pass my lips, but I can tell you that she earned it once and lives up to it on an almost daily basis.

I picked up MBT on Friday night, and we met some Atlanta friends for dinner at Shaun's. Let me just say, oh, my, god. So good! There was a watermelon and goat cheese salad with a balsamic vinaigrette on a bed of microgreens that made me practically stab the Lizard in the hand. The frites part of my steak frites were fried in duck fat (?!?!!!!) and were OUTSTANDING. My mouth is watering a little while I am typing this. I am looking for an excuse to go back again, so drop me a line...

Naturally, MBT and I went shopping and then met up with some of her coworkers at JCT Kitchen. They were looking for "Southern food", so I took them there and force fed them collard greens and some of the best fried chicken I have ever had! The service was a bit iffy (they seemed short of bus staff), but the food was delicious. I had herb roasted chicken, served over roasted fingerling potatoes with roasted dates. It was a fabulous combination of sweet and savory. The true star was the dessert that I ordered; gingerbread bread pudding served with a scoop of lemon curd ice cream. I almost cried when my plate was empty. I am toying with how to do the gingerbread bread pudding in my mind. Hopefully, the recipe will spring from my head fully formed.

I don't want you to get the wrong idea; we did do things other than stuff our gullets. We managed to carve out a few hours to waddle over to the new World of Coke. It opened about a month ago, to reports that they spent almost $100 million on the facility. I have to say that I never thought I would spend almost three hours in a product "museum", and that I seem to like the Central/South American Coke products the best.

I cooked dinner for 10 on Sunday night, and managed to burn my fingers pretty severely. I have completely recovered, but I was wearing latex gloves with aloe gel squirted into the fingers for several days. It looked peculiar, and my hands got amazingly pruny and white (think bloated corpse pulled from a body of water).

Fortunately, I had finished MBT's cake prior to the incident. I don't think I could have done the work with burned fingers.

Here they are:

















I have long been fascinated by the Barbie doll cakes, and was looking for any excuse to make one. When MBT requested a chocolate cake, I had a flash of brilliance.

The skirt was baked in a small mixing bowl and one "normal" layer.

I trimmed the layer to match the edge of the bowl cake and iced.

The doll is not really a whole doll, just a torso on a stick. Totally disturbing.

I made a bunch of the royal icing flowers (similar to weird blue/purple ones in an earlier post), but on a much smaller scale. Each flower on the cake is smaller than the end of a pencil eraser. I also wrote "aloha" and MBT's name in royal icing about 10 times. I broke most of them, trying to pick them up, but did end up with one good "aloha" for her hands.

Please note that I am not posting the pictures of the fight over the doll stick thing, or the subsequent icing licking.

It's ALIVE!

OK, people, take a pill.

Yes, I failed miserably with my "post a day for 30 days". Even allowing for weekends, it wasn't much. However, I had no idea that my friends were unable to understand the concept of "30 days".

While no "Contract with America", my attempt at daily bloggery was both reasonable and finite. The fact that I am still expected to maintain a breakneck pace that I never actually achieved or sustained, seems somewhat unfair.

I do have some juicy news to report, and additional cake pictures to share. The cake pictures are not in my camera, but someone else's. When I get them, I will gladly post my pictures for a hamburger today.

Speaking of hamburgers, I went to Ted's for lunch today, and I ate too much. The sun coming through my window is compounding the soporific effect of a hamburger the size of my head.

While we are on the subject of Ted's, I know that they all green and eco-friendly, but can I tell you how much I hate waxed paper straws? They work for about the first 15 minutes, and then they soften up, and the next thing you know, you have sucked your eyeballs into your nasal cavity because it slamed shut mid-suck. That kind of rapid change in cranial pressure is no good, no good at all. Yay for you for having no plastics in the restaurant, boo for my eyeballs.

How about twice a week? Will that work for you, you vultures?

Cheerios, Ensure and Phone Calls after Midnight

My grandfather passed away last night, after 8 pm PST.

Oddly enough, it was exactly two months after the first frantic phone call, saying that he only had hours or days to live.

I know he had survived the last two months on Cheerios and sips of Ensure. It wasn't enough to help him, just enough to keep him alive. He suffered, but the body clings to life, in the face of insurmountable odds.

The last two months have been difficult, trying to get updates, and wrestling with feelings of guilt for staying in Atlanta, and not flying home to San Diego. I would like to thank my friends and family for their support and offers of assistance. You are great people, in spite of your lamentable lack of taste in friends.

I am going to go home now, and try to get some sleep.

Please no more late night phone calls for a while...

All Dairy, All the Time

Since the "making my own butter" thing went over so well, I thought I would confess my most recent experiment in the Dairy Arts.

I have been making homemade ice cream.

Now, since you can buy ice cream at the store, just like you can buy butter at the store, I am expecting the same hailstorm of derision that accompanied my last confession.

Before you can put fingers to keyboard, let me just tell you that it was good, good, GOOD!

I started with a lemon ice cream, made to accompany the Elvis cake for the Lizard's birthday. I actually liked the ice cream way more than the cake. It was very tart, yet creamy. Lizard said it tasted like the middle of a lemon meringue pie. I don't know if that is a good thing, since you can buy that crap in a can for $1.50 at the grocery store, but I thought it was yummy.

I also made some banana-coconut ice cream this weekend, as a thank you for taking me to pick up my car, after the brake light fiasco (brake lights wouldn't go off, drained the battery, just what I need in the morning). I haven't heard from him, but the unfrozen portion was pretty good, but more banana-y than coconut-y, if that makes sense.

Finally, I made some cassis sorbet yesterday. It was delicious. I can't tell you what it reminded me of, or Lizard will start yapping about pictures from the place that starts with an eff and ends with "rance". It was quite light and refreshing, after the artery clogging, but creamy, earlier versions.

3 flavors down, at least 28 to go!

Where has the time gone?

I can't believe it has been a month since my last post.

If you had tracked me down in a dark alley, shoved a gun up my nose, and demanded the length of time since my last post, I would have sworn it was two weeks, tops.

Guess it is a good thing I don't hang out with gun enthusiasts. Or in dark alleys, for that matter.

Updates:

My grandfather is still hanging on. No new news. He is still under hospice care, still not eating much.

I did manage to put together an Elvis cake for my friend Lizard. It didn't turn out exactly as hoped, but that can be a whole other post.

I still haven't heard anything from Oklahoma, but we are expecting something from them early next week. Let's wait until the tornado season really gets into full swing!

We were in Boston last weekend, also for the aforementioned Lizard birthday. It rained the whole time we were there, there was a postponed baseball game and some bad scallops. Other than that, it was super!

Sweet Georgia Brown Dog and I don't have a lot of plans for this weekend. I ran out for brunch and a movie today, while she held down the sofa, under the ceiling fan. We will probably run out tomorrow for errands and a furniture auction. She comes along in her little sack. I look like a lunatic with a dog in a bag, but she seems to like it.

I think I have posted some pictures on my mobile blog, the address is: http://edacious-j-mobile.blogspot.com/

More later, and again, my humble apologies for stringing my reader along.

eJ

Oklahoma, O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A, Oklahoma, OK!

Well, it was bound to happen eventually.

Someone has finally agreed to accept one of my many Request For Proposal (RFP) responses, and now I am moving forward to the next step.

Basically, what has happened is that I sent a response to a request that they wrote, addressing their concerns and requirements. It was due on the 10th of this month, and they required 11 copies, so apparently, there was a large group of folks reading my persuasive prose.

They called us this morning to indicate that they would like to enter the next phase of the procurement process (sounds naughty, doesn't it?), which would be to have the City Council vote on our proposal. The City Council will convene on May 8th. If they approve it (the procurement folks make the recommendations, so I don't know that any of them will read the proposal. Rather, I think they just take the purchasing folks' word for it), then we can begin "negotiations". We made a really great price offer, so I am not sure exactly what this process will entail, but we have to get through it in order to be officially awarded the contract.

This contract represents 1.1 million units of the stuff that my company handles, so that is almost 15% of our annual quota. Yay!

I am not taking my group out to lunch yet, that will be when the contract is officially awarded, but this is a positive step. They didn't tell us no...

Now I am humming "Oklahoma". I will see if I can change the words around a bit and come up with something apropos to the situation.

Woo hoo!

Another Update on my Grandfather

First of all, let me say thank you to all of my friends that have been so helpful and supportive during this strange time.

My grandfather is still alive, in spite of all medical expectations. He is under hospice care, and still at his regular nursing home. He is bedridden, and unable to feed himself or focus on things like books or television.

He is eating a small bit, and his kidney function appears to have improved slightly. This weekend, I heard he ate a thing of tapioca pudding and 6-10 Cheerios. Clearly, this is not enough food to sustain him.

The hospice doctor is supposed to check in on him later in the week. I hope to have more information then.

His living will states that no "heroic measures" be taken, to extend his life. This means no feeding tube, although he is still on a cocktail of medications, including blood thinners and diuretics, and oxygen via a nose cord thing.

It has been almost 2 weeks since I got the phone call that he had had a second heart attack and was not expected to live. His prognosis at that time was 3-5 days. I am horribly conflicted, as I don't want him to suffer, but at the same time, can't bring myself to say, out loud or in writing, that I wish he would pass away. He has no quality of life, to my eyes. I know that I would not want to be in that situation.

This has been a rough couple of weeks. I haven't been sleeping well, and that is adding to the emotional toll.

Again, thanks to my friends and family. I know that I have been even more lachrymose than usual, and I appreciate your tolerance and support.

Remain Calm! All is well!

Sheesh, people!

First I get the circling of sharks for a piece of red velvet cake, then the picking about daily posts, then FedEx requests for cake, now someone wants to know if the butter is homemade and when are we getting homemade ice cream???

I think I have created a small horde of monsters.

First of all, the cake is gone, but not forgotten. I actually feel a little sick, as it was super rich. The icing alone was enough to send most of Gwinnett County into a sugar coma. I am pretty sure that I singlehandedly slowed our corporate production this afternoon. First, there was a cake line, second, consumption of said cake, and finally, the contented snores of the comatose. Yay for me! Here is a picture of it, prior to the swarm of locusts.

Item the second: I am posting now. Sigh.

Third: There is no way I am mailing a cake to you, Baroness von Pinkenevil (don't think that you can remain "Anonymous" with your snarky comments). I am including a picture that I found online from a woman who did FedEx a cake (and paid over $90 to do so!).

Apparently, it was an airplane. I can kind of see that. Anyway, this is Exhibit A for why I am not mailing you a cake.

Finally, regarding the dairy items, laugh it up, you jackals! I did think about making my next buttercream icing from my own butter, and I am now officially jonesing for the ice cream maker attachment for my KitchenAid mixer. Those who make snide remarks will not be invited to the party. Which brings me to my next item:

Anonymous comments....grrrr.....

I might not know who you are now, but I will find you. The Baroness tipped her hand today, and I will eventually track you down via your own lamentable grammar, stunted vocabulary or rudimentary typing skills. Sure the Internet is a great big place, sure it is fun to taunt your friend without fear of recrimination, but know this: I will find you.

Sugar High

In an attempt to take my mind off of other issues, I decided to play with my cake stuff this weekend.

I haven't made my cake for class this week yet, I will probably do that on Monday.

What I did was make a batch of royal icing, and practice drop leaf flowers. Royal icing is the stuff made out of sugar and egg whites, and it dries really hard. Know the letters or flowers that you can buy at the grocery store to put on a cake? They are usually pixelated? Those things are royal icing. Super sweet, and very crunchy.

Drop flowers are made with a star tip. While squeezing, the tip is rotated about 45-90 degrees, making the stars swirl into little flowers. I tried this in class last week, and couldn't do it to save my life. My teacher said that I needed to stop squeezing. I thought I had, but apparently the stress is such that I am just squeezin' the hell out of my pastry bag, completely unaware.

Fast forward to Saturday night. I tried to color one part of the icing blue, and one violet. Unfortunately, the blue looked gray, and the violet came out screaming purple. Oh well. Next time I need flowers for a mortician or a drag queen, I am set!

Here is a picture of a few of my first, sad attempts. The one in the middle is "pre-swirl" for whatever reason. Note the horrid blue-gray color:




After a while, I got the hang of it, and created at least 75 reasonable facsimiles of a flower.

In case you want a closer look, here is a representative flower.

After I got all of the mess cleaned up, I proceeded to make another mess tonight.

Instead of icing, I decided to try my hand at meringue "cookies". I put the quotes, because they aren't really a cookie, per se, but they are small and sweet and baked. Basically, it is just meringue that is baked in a very slow oven for a very long time. Since today was so cold, it seemed like a good thing to do.

I am taking a dozen of them to work (I went through them like Grant took Richmond this evening watching the Padres game. I finally had to take them downstairs and put them in the car, how sad is that?). Come on over to my desk and see if there are any left. Who said there would be no reward for wading through this drivel?

Update on my Grandfather

I am posting this here, just to keep everyone updated. I can't remember who I have told what, and I am too tired to keep up with it. A spreadsheet might help.

My grandfather was moved back to the assisted living place via ambulance yesterday. They can have one hospice person there and luckily (?) that person just passed away, so he can go back and be with people that he sort of knows.

Per the doctor yesterday, he was worse yesterday than the day before, which is to be expected. The expectation is numbered in days, rather than weeks.

Since my dad is on Spring Break right now, they are doing all of the arrangements ahead of time. They went to the funeral home yesterday, to arrange for cremation, then interment at Fort Rosecrans, the military cemetery in San Diego. It is right on Pt. Loma, with a beautiful view of the bay. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate.

They are also visiting lawyers, as my grandparents had a living trust for their properties and business, and dad will need to unwind that, then redo their (dad and Jody) wills to reflect the changes.

I still don't know what to do, flight-wise. Dad and Jody are telling me not to come, that he won't know me, he doesn't know them, and that it just upsets him. I feel like I 'should' be there, but don't want to be in the way, or cause him any additional distress. There is literally nothing I can do for him.

Phone Calls in the Middle of the Night

When the phone rings after 11, I am always convinced that something awful has happened. Chalk it up to my "worst case scenario" outlook.

Typically, it is a drunk friend, or someone who doesn't understand the concept of time zones.

Tonight, the phone rang at 12:15, and it wasn't good news.

My grandfather, who has been in failing health for several years, has had another heart attack, and is not expected to live more than another day or so. His heart is failing, and now his kidneys are shutting down.

So here I am, 2000 miles away, while my last grandparent is dying in a hospital at home in San Diego.

I know that I am supposed to remember the happier times, and that I should be glad that his suffering is coming to an end, but I am still sitting here crying. I am always amazed at the fact that I can know something, intellectually, but my emotions run riot, in direct opposition to that knowledge.

My grandfather could always be counted on to take me to a baseball game, or the circus or to the store for an ice cream. I never left his house without him trying to slip me a little money, even after I had a job. He whistled incessantly, but he would take requests. He liked to drive a new Lincoln, and smoke cigars by the pool.

I love you, Gramps.

Nag, Nag, Nag

My friends are tyrants.

I have been reprimanded by two individuals formerly considered my friends. Not that I am naming names, but one of them is a bit reptilian, and the other translates Latin. Apparently, I haven't been posting to my blog with sufficient frequency.

So, I thought I would post a quick recap of my last few days, so you can see where I have been, and cordially remove yourselves from my back.

Friday, April 6th - Braves Home Opener
We went to the Braves game after work on Friday. Technically, we went to a bar, then the Braves game, then a bar again, but who wants to get technical?

Sure that sounds like fun, and very relaxing, if you don't factor in the facts that the Braves lost by a lot (something like 11-0) and we were outside, and the temperature was down in the mid-40s. As in 45 degrees. COLD. Plus, there was some sort of Arctic wind, keeping the flags and pennants standing straight out. I managed to stick it out until the 8th inning, then went back inside.

Saturday, April 7th
I did almost nothing. It was AWESOME! I slept in, walked the dog and vegged out all day.

Sunday, April 8th
I realized that I had a lot to do, and since I had done almost nothing on Saturday, Sunday was a busy day.

I baked the two layers for the cake that I would need to assemble for my cake decorating class on Tuesday. I wrapped them in plastic wrap, and stowed them in the fridge.

I sifted two pounds of powdered sugar, and made a HUGE bowl of buttercream icing. Just smelling it now, makes me feel vaguely sick. I have been smelling sugar for over a week now.

I also did a lot of laundry, but that is even less interesting than the sifting story.

Monday, April 9th
I whomped up a mixture of half buttercream icing and half Smuckers raspberry fruit spread. So yummy.

After that, I outlined one layer, with a barrier of buttercream icing, then filled in the resulting pool with the raspberry cream, and slapped the other layer on top.

I crumb coated the cake, which is a very thin layer of frosting, that helps keep air out of the cake, and seals all the crumbs in, so the next layer of frosting won't show any crumbs or bleed through from fillings.

Tuesday, April 10th
I packed a bag and dragged my cake, and all cake-related paraphernalia to the office (22 miles), then to the class (13 miles), then home again (9 miles). By the time I take it back to the office tomorrow (another 22 miles), the damn thing will have over 65 miles on it...

In class today, we covered a lot of information, since it is just me in class. We covered writing, dots, stars, and lines. We also skipped ahead and did the rose. More on that in a minute.

Since we are able to move quickly, we aren't going to have the final class, so next week will be my last class of this series. Next week, we are covering things like shell borders, sweet peas, drop flowers and piping figures. I can take the next class, Class 2, which will teach me how to do several more flower types, including violets, pansies, daisies and several more.

- - -

I feel like I have been sticky for DAYS. Every time I have to touch icing, it means that bags, couplers, tips and spatulas are dirtied and have to be cleaned. I am not even really looking forward to eating the damn thing tomorrow. Hopefully, familiarity really will breed contempt.

Any hoo, if you made it through all of this whining, here are a few pictures of my cake, in various states of completion.


Here they are, in their little plastic wrap jackets.

Instead of a plastic wrap jacket, here is the cake in its crumb coat.






Explaining why this cake says, "3 days old" is a whole different post. I will try to do it tomorrow.







Here is a rose that I did today. I think it was my fourth attempt.

The earlier ones really did look like a wad of toilet paper. This one does bear a slight resemblence to a flower.

There's No Place Like Home...

Here I am, at 8:45, still sitting at the keyboard.

By all rights, I should be going home, but I wanted to take a second to dash off something for my blog. I got an arch remark from The Lizard today at lunch about skipping Tuesday. I thought crashing a class, albeit cake decorating, was enough to get a pass, but apparently not.

"Why are you still at work, J?", I hear you asking yourself.

The short answer is that the Oklahoma City bid is due on Tuesday, and I wanted the "luxury" of taking this to Kinko's, so I don't have to bind all 13 copies myself. Naturally, this means that I have to get something done early, which is not how I roll. If it wasn't for the last minute, I don't think that I would get anything done.

So, here I am, finished, and on my way to Kinko's.

Let's see, anything fun to discuss today?

Lizard did get an Easter basket from her sister today. It had a candle shaped like a chocolate rabbit in it. Being the take-charge kind of person that she is, she lit the candle at her desk, right under the sprinkler in the ceiling. If I had done something like this, the rabbit would have smoked like a chimney, the sprinklers would have gone off and I would have been responsible for ruining hundreds of thousands of dollars of electronics. Well, maybe tens of thousands, my laptop sucks.

Anyway, there she was with her rabbit candle. Adorable. I snapped a pic with my camera phone and sent it to my "mobile" blog. A mobile blog is a cool thing that will automatically upload text or photos from your cell phone, and create a blog posting out of it. Sort of an instant way to communicate something funny or embarrassing. Click here to see my mobile blog, complete with rabbit candle (the questionable pool in front of the rabbit is melted wax, I swear), small brown dog and pollen pictures. It is truly worth the 15 seconds of your life that you will never, ever get back.

That is all for me tonight, kids. I have a date with a minimum-wage employee at Kinko's...

The Icing Cometh...

Whew! This "posting every day" thing is exhausting!

I didn't post last night, because I was on my way to crash a cake decorating class.

I am going to pause a moment to let that sink in.

Take your time.

I have been wanting to take a cake decorating class since my grandmother made me my first Barbie doll cake, with the skirt made of cake. The idea of a legless Barbie, wearing only a frosting bodice, is probably something that will need to be worked out with some intense therapy, but at the time, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Cake decorating is one of those things that fascinate me. I can stand in the Publix, and watch the women decorating cakes for hours. The cakes spin, the icing flies, and shells and flowers appear as if by magic.

I don't know what started the most recent drive to take a class, but I decided that I was going to take the class that started yesterday. Classes are four weeks, one day a week, for about 2 hours. Not a huge commitment.

Historically, I think I have always thought about signing up mid-month, and by the time the next class rolls around, my hummingbird-like attention span will have moved on to something else (oh, look, shiny!). This time, the timing appeared to be right.

I was at a local Michael's last weekend, intending to register, but found myself in line behind a woman who was attempting to return an entire grocery bag full of beads and jewelry parts. Her receipt, no joke, was about 7 feet long. The clerk would take one little packet out of the bag, then begin to scan down the receipt to find it, circle it, and place the item to the side. Next item. I waited for about 3 minutes, almost had an aneurysm, and decided to do it later.

Since I had the calendar, I decided to call from my desk a few days later. I did call, and was told that all class registrations had to be done in person. Fine.

I finally made it back to Michael's this weekend, intending to register for the class that started on Tuesday. Naturally, by the time I arrived, the class was "full". Grrr...

I was more than a little annoyed, as I had spent some time online that weekend, looking at various cakes and techniques, and was excited about the class.

Yesterday at work, on a whim, I decided to call a different Michael's, and see if they had availability in their class.

They did have a class starting that day, and there was availability, but they weren't sure that they had an instructor (?!?). I asked if I could show up, on the off chance that an instructor appeared, and was told, sure, if you want to.

I presented myself at the Michael's and found that not only was the instructor there, but that the class was 40% off ($18 instead of $30) and that I was the only one in the class. This poor woman schlepped in all of her stuff, baked a cake, made icing, and I was the only one to show.

Woo hoo! Not only do I get to take the class, I receive personalized instruction!

Last night was the intro class, so we discussed the tools, tips, bags and recipes that would be required. I learned the difference between thin, medium and stiff icing, and the uses for each. I got tips on filling and frosting layer cakes, crumb coats and smoothing icing. We colored icing, using gel colors, which don't mess with the icing's consistency like liquid colors do. All in all, it was interesting, but not hands on. That is next week, WEEK TWO.

For week two, I need to bring a cake and a big batch of frosting. I am also supposed to have an apron, but I don't know where I am going to find one of those. Next week, we are going to actually start with stars and flowers. It should be very exciting. I will take my camera with, and post pictures of my progress here on my blog. I am sure that the results will be laughable, but hey, I get to play with my food, and that is always fun!

If you click here, you will see a link to the Wilton page about the classes. There isn't a lot of info there, but you can see the box that contains all of the tools for this class, and the pictures on the front of the box show some of the things that we will be learning this month (stars, shells, dots, people, leaves, roses). The cake on the cover is the one that I will be able to make in my last class.

Watch this space!

The Coughing Terrier

I think if I were ever to open an old-timey pub in a place like Williamstown or Salem, Mass, I would name it The Coughing Terrier.

My life has been completely derailed by my 11.2 pound dog and her coughing fits.

It started, as these things always do, in the middle of the night. I was soundly asleep, and was awakened by Bridge coughing pretty violently for a dog of her size. Even in my sleep-befuddled state, I sprang into action, grabbing her, and sticking my finger down her throat, to check for obstacles. It really did sound like she was choking on a piece of rawhide chewy or something.

Naturally, there was nothing there, and she was more than a little annoyed that I had disrupted her coughing with the whole finger-down-the-throat thing. As I came into a greater state of consciousness, with a terrier-spit covered finger, I went from scared to annoyed to concerned.

She continued hacking Friday, and Saturday morning I called the vet, to ensure that her Bordetella (kennel cough) shot was up to date, as she was boarded for a day while I was in Oklahoma City. The vet tech said she was current, and I made an appointment to bring her in on Monday.

The weekend was spent thumping a small back, refilling water bowls and saying things like, "there, there".

I dropped her at the vet this morning, and she (the vet, not Bridge) called around lunchtime, to give me the prognosis. It could be kennel cough, it could be bronchitis, it could be allergies or it could be collapsing trachea (normal for small dogs). Bridge is going to get antibiotics, in case it is kennel cough or bronchitis. If that doesn't clear it up, I now know how much children's Benedryl she can have (not very much). If that doesn't work, the vet suggested giving her cough syrup every night before bed. I am really rooting for the antibiotics.

About 2 hours after this 20 minute conversation with the vet, I get back to my desk and there is another message from the vet stating, "She didn't get a hold of rat poison, did she? That could also make her cough."

I know that having a pet isn't like being a parent, but, I am pretty sure that I would mention, in the course of conversation about my dog's health, WHETHER OR NOT SHE ATE RAT POISON!!! And I damn sure wouldn't wait until Monday to bring her in.

I must run. I have to sit in traffic to pick up the Muffin before the vet closes.

I don't know which is more disturbing, the cough syrup, or the rat poison.

Enraged by a Quizno's Commercial

Has it really come to this?

I am being driven into a rage by a Quizno's commercial that has been playing on TNT and USA with the frenetic frequency usually reserved only for presidential campaigns and monster truck rallies.

It is the commercial for Quizno's new prime rib sandwich. It sounds innocuous enough, even appetizing for one of an edacious nature, such as myself. Unfortunately, it follows to its inevitable conclusion, which is a woman, holding a sandwich, UPSIDE DOWN, saying, "It's not lackin' any meat. And that's what real women need."

As if the offense to the sandwich wasn't enough, and the ridiculous delivery of completely trite innuendo regarding said sandwich, she follows all of this up with a truly horrific laugh. I have probably seen the commercial at least 40 times in the last two weeks, no exaggeration for storytelling effect, and every single time, that laugh makes me want to drive a spike through her forehead. Maybe through her throat, so she couldn't make that noise any more.

Anyone stupid enough to take a bite out of the wrong end of a sandwich certainly shouldn't be recorded extolling its virtues, especially if the nature of the discussion is unscripted.

Since I can't vent my rage on the instigator and her hideous, enraging bray, my only other recourse is to hurl a brick through the window of the closest Quizno's.

Tragically, this will probably remain an unfulfilled fantasy. Simply thinking about getting dressed, going to Lowe's, buying a brick, coming home, going online, finding a Quizno's, getting in the car, driving to the Quizno's and hurling the brick seems like an awful lot of work.

I knew my indolence was innate, but I never imagined it would keep me out of jail.

Wednesday Night - Kickin' it with the SGBD

I can't possibly be out of topics, on my second day! That would be entirely too pathetic.

I guess I will just ramble a bit, and see what bubbles up from the dank cauldron of my mind.

I did intend to pass along this link: www.goodsearch.com. It is a Yahoo! search engine, but they donate half of the ad revenue that they receive to a charity of your choice. By using their search engine, rather than Google (sorry, Crevice) or generic Yahoo!, you can support the non-profit of your choice. It comes to something like a penny a search. I am personally responsible for the Atlanta Humane Society receiving upwards of nine cents this week. At this rate, they can count on almost $5 this year. My philanthropy is reaching Carnegie-esque levels. The fine print is that they only get the money annually, but every little bit helps, I guess.

- - -

I am feeling grateful that I didn't take a lot of crap about last night's great butter experiment.

Since it went so well, I am going to further confess that I found some compound, or flavored, butter recipes online tonight, and they sound fabulous! How about ginger-peach butter on a bran muffin, orange cranberry butter on French toast or herbed butter on grilled steaks?

- - -

SGBD is sleeping here on the foot of my bed. She is snoring quietly, and her fur is ruffling slightly in the breeze of the ceiling fan. While I was in Oklahoma City last week, she was an overnight guest at Wagalot. Since she was looking a little disreputable, and the weather is warming up, I had her groomed and her fur trimmed to summer length. I know this will come as a shock, but I think that she looks absolutely adorable!

- - -

OK. Clearly not a lot on my mind this evening. Technically, it is just after midnight, but I am still counting this post toward Wednesday. So there!

What could be better than bread and butter?

I was feeling a bit bad about my blog entry today. I was thinking that just making the announcement and bludgeoning all of you into supporting me wasn't exactly a post. I thought about bitching about the pollen or my taxes, but something happened to upstage my normal bitchy topics.

Traffic was awful, awful, awful tonight on the way home, so I stopped at the Kroger to kill a bit of time and get some food for the pantry. Their bakery had fresh crusty baguettes, and they smelled so good that I had to get one. I was thinking about the bread and butter that we got in France (I know, I know...), and how soft the butter was there, spreadable and so yummy.

Our landlady at the medieval goat farm B&B brought butter up in this little crock every morning. It was a small white porcelain ramekin, and the butter was always perfectly level with the top. You could see where she spun the back of a knife across the top, creating a small swirl and tiny point where the knife was lifted. I stared at that butter every morning, marveling at the difference in delivery, substance and taste.

It was with the memory of that butter, that I decided to do something that will, I am sure, strangle the life out of any last claim to cool that I ever possessed; I decided to churn my own butter tonight.

I know that several of you have laughed right out loud, and I can hear Lizard hooting with derision, but let me just say, DAMN was it good!

Before you start picturing me in a sunbonnet with a wooden churn, let me just say that the tool at work today was Tupperware.

This wasn't my first foray into the Dairy Arts. I remember in 3rd grade, my teacher, Mrs. B., sat us all in the grass, and put some cream in a Mason jar, and we all took turns shaking it. After what seemed like a lifetime to an 8-year old, we had butter and ate it on saltine crackers. I don't remember why we were doing it, but I remember the boredom and the fresh taste of the butter and salty crackers.

I thought I would try an updated version of the same process tonight. I bought a pint of heavy cream, and came home and put it in a small Tupperware container. Don't tell Peaches, the Queen of Canning, but I don't have a single Mason or Bell jar in the house. I wasn't sure how long I would have to shake it, and at several points, I thought my arm would fall off. The whole process only took about 15 minutes.

Initially, it was very sloshy, and the shakin' was easy. After a few minutes, it became sludgy feeling. After about 10 minutes, I opened the lid, and it was the most beautiful whipped cream. Very shiny and smooth. I put the lid back on and continued to shake, even though it didn't really feel like there was much movement inside.

I vaguely recalled from the elementary school example that at some point, actual chunks of butter would appear, and I kept looking for any sort of solid, but it still felt like shaking an empty container. All of a sudden, mid-shake, it turned into a solid, with a lot of liquid. It was crazy!

I kept shaking a bit more, to get one big clump and a decent amount of buttermilk. I drained most of the buttermilk, and squeezed the butter a bit in a piece of cheesecloth, to remove more of the liquid. I stirred the butter smooth, and added a bit of salt.

The whole process took less than 20 minutes, including the mid-salt sampling and exultations.

The fresh baguette, topped with a smooth and creamy butter, took me right back to old stone building on a hill in the South of France.

Jumping Back In...

For some weird reason, I always feel like I have to have some big long entry. Something deep and meaningful.

Since that hasn't been the case for TWO MONTHS, I am going to try a different approach. I am going to post something EVERY DAY for a month, just to see if I can do it. I am already going to qualify this and say Monday through Friday only, since I don't always take my PC home on the weekends. Let's agree to give me bonus points for any weekend post that struggles to life.

The irony of this, is that right about the time I stopped posting in January, I got a new job, which requires me to write. A lot. Every day. I think that is why taking finger to keyboard for something else seems so overwhelming.

I am going to leave this post as is, just an intro to my daily post. From my fingers to your screen.

Please feel free to leave comments, snarky or otherwise, to help me on my daily post.

The Undead Past

I have taken a bit of a hiatus from my ramblings. To my reader, I apologize.

It has taken me a while to come back to this, as I didn't think I had anything "post-worthy". It finally dawned on me that NONE of my historical rants were particularly worthy, so I am just going to bite the bullet.

The bullet this Sunday afternoon is one of a past that will not stay in the past.

I received a postcard notifying me of my 20 year high school reunion in Saturday's mail. That is horrifying enough, but the cherry on this little sundae was another email from yet another ex-boyfriend. Between these two blasts from the 80's, I am waiting for the third portion of this unholy triumvirate.

Does this happen to other people? Do your exes rear their heads periodically, checking on you? It must be a mid-life crisis thing. The email this weekend is from a guy that I didn't date past about 1991. I haven't heard from him (maybe 7 years) for longer than we originally dated (maybe 3-4 years?).

His email address had a college domain name, but not the one where I thought he was comfortably ensconced. It feels mean spirited, but part of me is tickled by the thought of him in a small Midwestern town, probably snowed in right now. Maybe that is why I got Googled; cabin fever.

I replied to his inquiry. It was one of those, "Hey, J, is this you?" emails. I responded in the affirmative, but didn't say much else. Let's see what happens, shall we?