"But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake." ~ GLaDOS
What difference does it make? You know you can't make chocolate cake, if ain't nobody ever showed you how. ~ Prince, "Chocolate Box"
I'm a snarkygurl attempting, and currently failing, to become a snarkybaker.
My background includes jobs in both the culinary and semiconductor/computer industry. But with our current economic situation, my dream of working my way up the pastry ladder has been hijacked by financial obligations, which is how I found myself providing support for people who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near electronics.
I’ll cop to adding the green stickie, but the content came from Pax_Empyrean. Followed quickly by:
One two, one two, and partway through, the vorpal blade went “snik-snak.” “Shit…could have sworn I just put fresh batteries in this thing.”
Warning: The final image is not appropriate for children–especially if they’re honor students.
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The special of the day in my work cafe.
And no, I didn’t try it. I’ve already been told that it’s a reference to something that was said in the Avengers movie, but since I won’t get to see it until this coming weekend–I don’t want hear any spoilers!
I’ve been temporarily reassigned to a different department for three months of QA testing. This reassignment has me sitting in a training room in a small section of my building. This little area has its own break room, and last week I found a bottle of tea in the fridge with a note on it…
… I’m trying to figure out how they added the sticky note if they were still stuck in the hole (actually I’m just jealous I didn’t think of it first).
I ordered some cool little magnetically mounted iPhone lenses for my SIL’s birthday (don’t worry, she doesn’t read my blog). The invoice listed the lens set for $48.99 and a Rawwwwwwwr! for $0.00. I just brushed it off thinking someone was trying to be cute…
…and they were. This little guy was stashed in the bottom of the packaging where I didn’t notice him until later. He’s now my UAT buddy for the next several months.
*** NO CHILDREN ALLOWED ***
This is the inappropriate for children image.
It belongs to a mini cooper in our parking lot at work. I try to park my car as close to as possible in an attempt to absorb some of it’s coolness until I can find the perfect bumper-sticker of my own.
There are no words for how much I love this bumper-sticker.
Good thing it’s just about a book.
It all started when somebody put up a link to an excerpt of Jenny Lawson’s upcoming book Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir). Up until then, I had somehow missing hearing anything about The Bloggess. I have no idea how as this is the sort of thing I love. I’m sharing that link because it was not only very entertaining, but it had me going to her blog and working my way back through her archives (I’ve only gotten as far back as February 6, 2008 as of today).
What I found in her blog was enough for me to pre-order her book through iTunes. At that time, the book had not been released yet, and I’d never pre-0rdered anything through iTunes before (my coworkers may see where this is going…).
Then they announced the book tour would hit Austin. As all the best book signings are at Book People, this would be a perfect excuse to spend time at one of my favorite places in Austin (I don’t do this very often because the visits also tends to be expensive. I mean come on! You can’t expect me to walk into a bookstore and leave with only a few books).
Now I had an important decision to make. Do I purchase a digital copy of the book for $12.99 and have it the same day it’s released; or wait another week until the 25th, rush out after work to fight traffic getting downtown–hoping I can make it to the bookstore within 45 minutes–and pay $25.95 for a hardback version of the book just so I could have Ms. Lawson sign my copy? It may sound like an simple choice, but not only do Steve and I like to support authors we enjoy, we’ve had great experiences at past book signings, and sometimes someone is worth the full price of a hardback. The downside was that Steve wouldn’t be going with me because he’ll be out at Maria Bamford’s show that same night for the Moontower Comedy Festival. And my friends, whom I know would enjoy this book, will be at that show with him. So now add going to the book signing alone as another reason that just purchasing it online was beginning to sound better and better.
So for the past few weeks I’ve been waffling back and fourth between the two. Steve thinks I should go, as does one of my co-workers (but that’s because she says it’s easier for her to borrow a physical copy of the book from me), and all I’m thinking about is how much I hate driving in traffic, feeling rushed, and attending functions alone that really aren’t as much fun by yourself.
And then last night the decision was taken out of my hands.
Remember where I said I pre-ordered the book on iTunes? For some reason I thought that iTunes would ask you if you still wanted the book before downloading it to your device (shut up). I was obviously wrong (I don’t want to hear it). I was at our weekly D&D game last night and went to pull up one of my reference books on the iPad and saw a full copy of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened ( A Mostly True Memoir) in my library (seriously, if Jes hears about this I will STOMP you). So now I had a copy of the book and I didn’t have to worry about the rest of the mess.
Then I started reading the book. Late last night. Really, really late because it had to wait until after our D&D game. I made it to the chapter called “And Then I Got Stabbed in the Face by a Serial Killer” before I gave up and went to bed because I knew I had to be up for work in a four hours (the chapters are not numbered, so they have to be referred to by the title. And I have no idea of they should be italicized or not. Please bare with me or blame Ms. Lawson. Either is fine. Did I use the correct form of “bare”? Crap, I can’t tell).
So here we are. I’ve ended up staying at home today since my husband is still sick and has made it to the point where he does better if someone is around. I haven’t read anymore of the book yet since I wanted to get this written out because I realized a few important things as I was prozacing the cat and getting ready for bed this morning (can you use prozac as a verb?).
1) I’m not even quite halfway through the book, and while Ms. Lawson’s writing style isn’t any different than her blog–I’m thoroughly enjoying myself. The book reads like one of those late-night bull sessions we had in college where we’d sit around, dipping wildly unhealthy snacks into tub of whipped cream mixed with powdered cocoa, and share stories with each other about some of the funnier, weirder, and sometimes even emotionally devastating things that had happened in our lives…although in Ms. Lawson’s case, I can honestly say that so far there’s a lot more dead animals, anxiety disorders, and alcohol than I remember ever having in ours.
2) The book is entertaining even when she makes you cry. I have a few friends who won’t make it through the chapter “If You See My Liver, You’ve Gone Too Far” with dry eyes. You have been warned.
3) I don’t work on Wednesdays. So there won’t be any rushing around after work trying to get to the book signing on time. I have no idea how I could have forgotten this as I haven’t been scheduled to work a Wednesday for about eight months now.
4) Steve still owes me $50 in books from Book People for making all the banana pudding for the Southern Culture on the Skids concert last Friday.
So yeah. I’ll be at Book People on April 25th with a hardback copy of her book for Ms. Lawson to sign. I may feel a bit out of place not knowing anyone there, but if she’s willing to take a chance on sharing so much with complete strangers–albeit in a very entertaining fashion–then I can handle a little personal awkwardness.
…which sounds much better than “too tired and depressed to write a cohesive or even coherent post”.
My writing has stalled. I put off a lot of what I wanted to say because I have a huge backlog of cake competition photos to sort through, organize, and post. I wanted to wait until I was completely caught up on that before talking about anything else, but then life, hockey, cat-sitting, and my soul-sucking job keep getting in the way.
And if it wasn’t one of those things, there’s cleaning up cat pee or foaming prozac-flavored cat drool. Seriously, if you let the prozac dissolve in your cat’s mouth instead of getting it straight down their throats–they will sit there, foaming at the mouth, while staring at you until you start to feel guilty about drugging them because you’re tired of all the territorial pissing in the hallway. Nemo has the whole “I’m suffering because of youuuuuuuuuuuu……” look down while the ONE time we dosed-up Molly–she went bat-shit insane and tried to rip us both apart.
So cake show photos will have to wait until whenever I get around to them.
Hockey won’t be in the way much longer as the Texas Stars decided to SUCK this year and didn’t make the playoffs. In fact, we came in dead last in our division. I’m not saying that I no longer love my players. In fact, we just renewed our season tickets for the next season. What I AM saying is that while I don’t know if it’s the players, the coach, or a combination of the two– they’d better suck a little less next year.
That’s all I’m asking for… just a little less suckage.
Work is mind-numbing. I’d go on about that, but I’m done thinking about it for the day.
What really triggered this rambling mess was hearing from one of my classmates from culinary school today. He’s moved back to Austin and is planning on going back to get his Patisserie and Baking certification. I’m so freaking jealous. We both took the culinary side of things because neither of us quite realized what we really wanted to do when we started (I had an feeling that baking was the way I wanted to go, but the baking-only program didn’t include the courses needed for the associates degree or the cost control classes that can make or break a successful business).
Since graduation, we’ve both done everything we could to figure out things on our own. The difference between the two of us is that he’s still cooking and baking for a living, and I’m dilly-dallying. To be blunt about it – I feel like a complete failure.
I know that it’s stupid to feel that way, but right now I can’t think about anything else.
…and I just noticed that the cat I’ve been cuddling with while typing this has a large wet dingle-berry hanging off his scraggily drugged-up ass. This is gonna be fun.
Dr. Jim Marshall died today at the age of 88.
Marshall was a larger than life figure with a taste for single malt Scotch whiskey and Cuban Montecristo cigars. Even in his 70s, when he was already suffering from some serious health problems, he thought nothing of hopping a plane to catch an Iron Maiden concert.
It's the only image I own that fits
UPDATE: News like this made its way quickly through work today. Honestly, I think the majority of the people at the Austin site for my company are either involved in the music industry in some way, or are audiophiles, or both. Most of my knowledge of the Marshall stack came from trying to keep up with the music gossip at the office, listening to my husband, and my own research when making that little Spinal Tap cake.
Here’s my favorite article so far… from the LA Times.
This is for you, Jeremy.
I spent quite a bit of time last Wednesday driving all over Austin. Whenever I’m in the car for an extended period of time without Steve, I replace our car’s iPod with my private playlist.
A song from my playlist called Ghost of Old Highways by Lovett caught my attention, and a story with zombies suddenly jump fully-formed into my head (yes, I know zombies are pretty much over-exposed at this point, but it’s not much stranger than what Lovett did with this song*). These imaginary music videos are nothing new, as some songs set me off and then I obsessively work out a mental storyboard–listening over and over to that one song–until I have it worked out to my satisfaction (and then I listen some more, still playing out these little videos in my head).
I rarely share these with anyone, although I’ve attempted to explain a few of them to Steve. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to put what I see into words and so he’s always unimpressed.
Anyway, after Wednesday, I jokingly mentioned tap-dancing cowboy zombies to Jeremy, not thinking he’d be interested. In fact, I’m not sure he’s being anything other than polite, but it’s giving me a chance to try something a little different. I’m going to publicly share some of the weird shit that goes through my head.
First of all, you need to listen through Ghost of Old Highways.
Now, play the song again, but this time follow along with what I’m seeing:
When the song starts, I see an exhausted soldier staggering down an old highway in the middle of Texas with the sun and dust all around him. Through the first few verses, there are washed out and abrupt flashbacks to various stages of a progressing zombie epidemic taking down both his family and civilization during the Civil War. This carries all the way through the bridge of the song, going back and fourth between his present and his past until he finally finds himself alone on the road with nothing other than a his few remaining weapons.
After the bridge (2:14), he notices multiple figures on the road slowly walking towards him through the glare of the sun. As they get closer, you can see they’re zombies.
Yeah, here’s where it gets kinda weird, but I swear it works. The zombies move with a forward movement that’s a cross between syncopated shuffling and slow tap-dancing, going along with the beat of the song (starting off with steps every few beats). As they get closer, they pick up speed (steps every beat to several steps to a beat). The man also starts walking faster towards them (2:30) as well. Then (2:45.05), he pulls his weapons and begins to run towards them as fast as he can until they crash together violently (3:05). That’s when the stylized dancing/fighting begins with blood, limbs, and internal organs flying through the air (seriously, I can see intestines bursting through the air like streamers) in a blended strobe effect of slow motion and normal speed set to the song’s tempo. I’m still working on how to end it, but I’d rather he didn’t survive the experience.
Now that I’m done, I’ve just realized that putting it together this way was rather fun. A little frustrating, but much more fun than I expected. While I’ll probably never share any of my other storylines–I think I’d like to learn how to use some sort of storyboard software so I can play a bit more with my lovely little obsession.
* When I started looking for a copy of Ghost of Old Highways on YouTube, I discovered Lovett had already made a short film based on this song. It’s described as “a man pursued by an invading army as he hunts down previous versions of himself amidst the purgatory of a fractured consciousness.” Yes, it’s classier than what I came up with, but I didn’t write the song either, so my interpretation is just that–my goofy interpretation of something someone else created. But it’s a damn fine song either way.
http://lovettmusic.com/
Step One: Read Buzzfeed’s Most Disastrous Facebook Spelling Mistakes Ever.
Step Two: Realize that my friends on Facebook can actually spell, so there’s no snarky fun in correcting them.
Step Three: Realize that I disabled my Facebook account a few months ago because it pissed me off, so there’s no way I could correct them anyway.
Step Four: Find a new way to entertain myself.
Current culinary school students. Open to all styles.
***As with most of the divisions and categories, I didn’t photograph every entry. (In fact, I only photographed three entries from this group, not that there were as many entries as last year anyway.) These are ones I liked or that caught my eye for some reason.***
Special Occasion/Novelty Tiered Cakes: Cakes with two or more tiers. Can be stacked or tiered. Novelty/ special occasion cakes does not include wedding or anniversary cakes. Any sugar mediums or techniques may be used.
1st Place Title: Celtic Tree Ladies by Shana Newell
Wedding Tiered Cakes: Cakes with two or more tiers decorated specifically for weddings or anniversaries. Any techniques or sugar mediums may be used.
1st Place Title: “Der Spaziergang” (The Stroll) by Pascal Simon
2nd Place Title: Peonies by Hope Williams
Each teen must bake, ice and decorate their own entry. Open to all styles.
* As with most of the divisions and categories, I didn’t photograph every entry. These are ones I liked or that caught my eye for some reason.
There were some problems with showing the winners for the first few divisions, so I only have info on three of the winning cakes in this division even though I know I have images of some of the other winners. If you have any clarification or additional information, please let me know and I’ll update this post (hopefully Capital Confectioners will have the information on their site soon).
Teen Special Occasion/Novelty One Tier: Any non-tiered cake with a theme such a Birthday, Holiday, Wedding, etc. Any sugar mediums or techniques may be used. Title: Leaves of Fall by Angel Reynolds Title: A Slice of the Berlin Wall by Lauren Luke
Sculpted Cakes: Shaped or carved cakes, 2-D or 3-D cakes and sculptures. Entries must be real cake. Minimal use of Styrofoam allowed to complete entry. Any sugar mediums may be used. Must submit 3 in-progress pictures with NO identification as to the entrant. Title: Rapunzel’s Tower by unknown (I didn’t want to reach over someone else cake in order to flip the paper over with the name). By the time I saw the cake on Saturday, Prince Charming had already toppled over, so I’m not sure if he made it to judging or not. By Sunday, a large chunk of the tower had fallen down. Title: Exploring New Lands by Angela Lewis
Special Occasion/Novelty Tiered Cakes: Cakes with two or more tiers. Can be stacked or tiered. Novelty/ special occasion cakes does not include wedding or anniversary cakes. Any sugar mediums or techniques may be used. 1st Place Title: Castle Cake by by Evelyn Santos 2nd Place Title: “Alice an wonderland” by Evelyn Santos Title: I heart 80s by Unknown (I didn’t want to reach over someone else cake in order to flip the paper over with the name). I found it funny that this showed up in the Teen division. Although Berlin Wall cake would apply to this as well. Title: The Texas Cake by Hailey Shuster Title: Fruit Ninja by Maya Ware
Wedding Tiered Cakes: Cakes with two or more tiers decorated specifically for weddings or anniversaries. Any techniques or sugar mediums may be used. 1st Place Title: Southern Bliss by Tyler Gary I was so amazed by the work on this cake that I definitely remember he won first place for it. He was also the divisional winner for Teens. Title: Simply Sweet Wedding by Shelby Kisiel While I’m normally not a big fan of purple, I love the tones she used for the flowers.
