46 posts from 2008

I wonder if this is really accurate?  Each dot is 100 people.

It's pretty awesome.

Also, I don't know how to embed Vimeo videos into my blog.

This weekend my friend had a birthday party and I built her a cake.  A coconut birthday cake.

It was a coconut cake with a meringue/sour cream filling and there was supposed to be a meringue frosting but I killed it and then therefore vetoed it for vegan butter cream frosting.  Which is a little bit of a misnomer because vegan butter cream frosting does not have butter or cream in it.

I completely changed the recipe because that's how I roll.  Basically I wanted to make it taste MORE coconutty so I added 1/2 cup of finely shredded unsweetened coconut to the batter and cut down the flour by 1/4 cup.  Also, I don't like to use self-rising flour so instead I used regular flour and baking powder.  I made the recommended filling and frosting, but I didn't really like either one on it's own.  The filling was too liquidy and strange.  The meringue frosting tasted pretty much horrible so I combined the filling and frosting, which had a better texture and tasted a lot better, and used that in between the two layers.  And then I made two layers instead of three, which I think makes it more moist because they layers are thicker.  And of couse, I frosted the entire thing with vegan butter cream frosting which is made with Earth Balance vegan margarine, Earth Balance vegan shortening, and So Delicious coconut yogurt.  Coconut yogurt!  No soy and no dairy!!  Amazing.

So....pretty much I completely changed the recipe.  There is a possibility that I will write up my recipe.  Later.  (Read: possibly during a fit of procrastination)  Everyone seemed to like it.  I was worried that there were going to be a lot of allergies, or that generally coconut is a very polarizing food.  Some people love it, and some people HATE IT.

It should also be noted that nice green frosting is very difficult to make if you do not know the trick.  And the trick, is to add a drop of red food coloring.  After a lot of mixing and quite a few drops of green food coloring into the white frosting, I realized that the lurid fluorescent green color was not improving.  Not only did it look horrible and inedible, it was totally going to clash with the nice purple I had already made.  SO I added a drop of red and voila!  Pretty green.  I shoved the frosting into a sandwich bag and used my mad steady hands skillz to make a strange green curly decoration thing.  Decorating the top part of the cake is my favorite part.  It would be really fun to have a real pastry bag, but sandwich bags work pretty well.  There was even a request for an encore baking of this cake, so I was pretty psyched.

Saturday we went to ROLLER DERBY.  My FIRST roller derby match ever!  IT WAS AWESOME.

 

I have crafted some more felt.  This time I chose a more intricate design.  And do not point out my two glaring mistakes.  I DON'T CARE.  And neither will The Boyfriend when he gets his cool-ass passport holder.

I still need to stitch in one of those snap jobbies into the inside so that the precious passport is more secure.  But I still have 21 days.  Plenty of time to procrastinate.  Also, yes.  That is GOLD embroidery thread.  Bling bling.

I got a Wii for my birthday, which is pretty exciting.  Not only because now I will definitely never be able to finish my PhD, but also because I have the greatest friends in the world and they totally decked me out with games and accessories.

One game that I really really wanted is DDR.  And the lovely boyfriend man got me Hottest Party 2!!  It's been really fun.  I was playing it last night like a maniac and I got stuck on this one song where I had to get 50 perfects in a row.  So I went to youTube and looked for some inspiration.  Wow.

This one is really cute because obviously they spent ages perfecting this.  I wish they would show you the score:

Then I found this, at a legit tournament:

I hate this article.

It makes me sad.  Then, very very very angry.  THEN, I bask in the glory and say GOOD RIDDANCE.

From the NYT:

“It would be difficult for an African-American to be elected president in this country,” said Cornell Belcher, a pollster who worked for Mr. Obama’s campaign and studies racial voting patterns. “However, it is not difficult for an extraordinary individual who happens to be African-American to be elected president.”

From another article:

"The boomers didn’t win any wars and that business about being self-involved was not entirely unfounded. On the other hand, they made the nation get serious about the idea of everybody being created equal. And now American children are going to grow up unaware that there’s anything novel in an African-American president or a woman running for the White House."

"The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults," - Alexis de Tocqueville.

I am sooooooo excited and so happy, I can't even put emotions to words.  The best way to describe how I feel is to go over to this awesome blog post.

(Image from Andrew Sullivan)

In darker worries, I fear fear fear....

Freshly lifted from The Guardian:

President-elect Barack Obama will soon be one of the most heavily guarded men in the world, if he is not already.

As the first African American to be elected president, Obama is likely to face unprecedented threats on his life. Indeed, police and federal officials have already broken up at least two assassination plots, although it is unclear how serious either was. The secret service began guarding Obama in May 2007, the earliest ever in an election season.

In an indication of the level of protection Obama can expect, the stage on which he gave his victory speech in Chicago last night was shielded by a canopy of bullet-proof glass.

Obama recently remarked that he dreams about driving a car, something he has not done in more than a year.

I think The Pope should give Obama his bullet-proof Pope Mobile.  This would allow me to sleep better at night.

I wrote this almost two weeks ago!  I guess I might as well publish it...

********

So the VP debate is tonight.  I will not be making rotted apple/cherry pie or chocolate/vanilla swirly cupcakes, but I guess I will force myself to watch the cringe-fest that will occur in Missouri at 9pm EST.

But let's forget all that and talk about happy things!  Like the fact that my iPod is DEAD.  Like, totally dead.  As in, my computer did not recognize it when I plugged it in.  And when I did plug it in, it had this faint eerie glow without anything showing up on the screen--not even a sad Mac.  And I tried holding down the buttons and all those tricks you're supposed to do.  But it made this weird whirring clicking sound when it was plugged into power and I pretty much knew the end was nigh.

That was on Monday, when it had been working just find previously during the weekend.  Obviously as soon as I could, I went to the Apple Store to take it to the Genius Bar for them to state the time of death.  But it was very busy and there were no more reservations to be made that night.  I was able to ask a Manager about my iPod, but all he did was try the same things I did and then just recommended that I make an appointment for Tuesday.

I cannot survive without my iPod.  I listen to it when I'm loading PCR samples, when I'm in the mouse room, when I do confocal microscopy, when I drive to Providence...so I Tuesday I bought this:

My very own purple 2GB shuffle!  Very cute and extremely convienient with its clippy-ness.  But I still had that appointment that night at the Apple Store.

The shuffle is really great.  And now I don't have to worry about dropping it and it's awesome because I don't have to go through an annoying process to change the songs while I'm doing my experiments like taking my big iPod out of my pocket, taking off my gloves, etc.  I'm not terribly impressed with the sound quality, but it's good enough.

Love the clippy!

I went to a friend's apartment for a debate party this past Friday.  Here is what I was doing pre-debate party:

And baked t