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.