IrenicEmbers

Nick turned 39 years old yesterday and for a few weeks before that I had a plan on making him a home cooked, from scratch meal. The plan was roast chicken, cesar salad and a cake. But, not any cake… THE cake. A cake that so perfectly melds his two most favourite things on earth: chocolate and peanut butter.

Deb from Smitten Kitchen was the inspiration. See her cake here.

I had everything planned out, what I didn’t plan was Nick deciding to try his hand at making chicken cacciatore the night before his birthday. He was watching Throwdown with that inscipient red head Bobby Flay and the throwdown was who could make the best chicken cacciatore.

I didn’t want him to have chicken two nights in a row and that was when everything started to down the hill. I switched out chicken for steak. My salad was switched out for creamed spinach and during the cooking, I realized that that wasn’t enough. I had some potatoes and a new hobby of mine is roasting garlic…bingo! garlic mashed potatoes.

Now, the cake was coming together. All three layers baked really well and were all the same size. That’s because I measured EACH pan as to how much cake batter I put in them. It was a painstaking process. I have never ever been so patient with anything.

Now, in roasting garlic, I had set the oven to 500 degrees. A 500 degree oven does not ‘work’ with frosting. I wish that I had realised this while frosting the cake. Slowly, the layers started sliding off of each other. Panicked, I put it in the freezer, punched the temp up in the fridge and hoped for the best.

Alas, when I opened back up the fridge after walking the dog, this was what I saw:

My three layer cake suddenly became a pit in my stomach. I didn’t say a word to him but just had dinner. When it was time to eat the cake, he just grabbed me and kissed me and said that he was more in love with me because of the patience that I had with it to that point. He, more than anyone, understands my impatience.

At least the damned thing tasted good.

He still wants to be my husband though and he said that he had a wonderful birthday.

I have the Google toolbar on my Firefox, so whenever I want to search for something, I just put it in the search bar and it spouts out results. The problem with the toolbar though is that I have it open the search results in a new tab. Why this is a problem is that I continue to work in the new tab, or work in both and forget that the search words are still in the toolbar.

Then much much later, when I see the words, “dog urine” in the toolbar it catches me off guard. Forgetting of course, that 12 hours earlier I was looking for a way to remove the smell of dog urine.

This is as exciting as my life is these days.

I am feeling melancholic and somewhat yearning for the past. I did a search in the Wayback machine and found references to this ole blog since 1996. I remember the first time I blogged or more yet, “wrote” anything on the Internet was in 1996 when I had my first AOL account. From that came Blogger.

This was on Yahoo! this morning and I am such an emotional wreck that I just sat there and cried while reading it.

I’ve been putting aside planning for this wedding but it’s going to come sooner than I had realized. I just know it. There are so many things to consider… so many different ideas that I want. So far, only the date’s set. Everything else has been left to the wind.

A couple of weekends ago, a friend from work invited me to a muay thai boxing event. She is into kickboxing and several folks from her school was going to take part in an event. At few months back when she told me about kickboxing, I had not a clue what muay thai was and knowing that, she sent me a link to a YouTube video of Gina Carano fighting.

I was blown away.

I also wanted to grab someone and beat the snot out of them after seeing that video.

Anyway, so at this Battle in Bellingham event, I was uber excited but even more so when I realized that there were going to be kids beating the snot out of each other. It was midway through the kids fights that I realized that I left my memory card to the camera at home. Always a good place to have a memory card.

The first little girl, pigtails and all

One of the things that I like about muay thai is the symbolism and the pageantry almost of it.

Prepping the little guy.

Talking strategy

They were really going at it. Grappling

Grappling

I used the Auto-Fill feature on my browser to put in my name and email and such when I leave a comment on someone’s site. Well for some odd reason, in the email field, the word “lamburger” popped up as an email choice.

I don’t know why and frankly I don’t know how it got there … but now I’m wondering if I should create a website for lamburgers. Maybe it’s a sign.

Yes, the economy has rendered me temporarily insane.