little compton weekend

I love Little Compton. Quite possibly my most favorite place on earth. It's so good to me, I bought coasters of Little Compton for my new apartment. I am excited about my coasters.

Luc and I headed up to RI on Thursday for a long weekend with my parents and their friends at the beach house. Despite rather hazy/foggy weather, we had a good time. We had brunch at the Commons (a breakfast/lunch place in the village), went kayaking, beach exploring, bike riding. Quite the nice weekend.

There are pictures up, as there usually are when I do things of interest. Some of my dad's friends from lacrosse also were there ... so we had a full house. Here was the guest list:

Poppa (grandfather)
Lois (grandfather's girlfriend)
Mom
Dad
Me
Luc
Skip (lacrosse friend)
Ellie (wife of lacrosse friend)
John (lacrosse friend)
Tracy (wife of lacrosse friend)

They weren't all there every night, but they were all there on Saturday night at least. It was qutie fun. Full of good food, drink and revelry. We should do it again. And next time Mart should come too (she was in Virginia visiting Travis).

cake woes

I wanted to bake a cake. It was going to be Luc's birthday and I felt that baking him a birthday cake would be a great idea. I am a great girlfriend, after all. I thought I would impress him with my awesome baking skills. Skills definitely needed to bake a cake out of a box and frost it from a tub of store-bought frosting. It would be delicious and wonderful looking. A work of art. Mart always liked how I decorated her birthday cakes. This was a great idea.

Or so I thought.

Baking the cake was the easy part. You just mix stuff and throw it in the oven. Voila. Easy. Cooling the cake, an even easier step one might think, wouldn't cause trouble ... but it did. After putting it on the cooling rack I put it in the fridge, since my fridge contains only butter, milk and turkey ... therefore there is plenty of room for a cooling rack with two cake layers. This became a problem when Luc called up and said he was coming over to cook me dinner. A nice gesture, to be sure, but definitely what I didn't need at the time. Due to my lack of cleverness, I came up with no excuse. He was headed over. I opened all my windows and tried to fan out the "I just baked a cake" smell. I took the cakes out of the fridge (for he would surely see them there) and put them in the linen closet. Yes, I cooled a cake in the linen closet.

Luc came over and was none the wiser. Cake was successfully cooling. My plan was succeeding. That night, we went with Tom and Jess to see the newest Harry Potter movie (quite good, by the way). After the movie we had about 30 minutes before we were going to rendezvous at the D-Bar for Pub Quiz. I cleverly told Luc I had to back to my apartment to do the dishes (which I did have to do) so I could go alone and frost the cake (still in the closet).

Now, here was the biggest problem of the evening. You see, my mom gave me a tip to frosting cakes years ago. I always remember that she gave me a tip, but I never quite remember what the tip is. It has something to do with how to stack the layers, and inevitably, I do it the worst possible way. The funny thing is, if I were to go by my intuition, I think I would get it right, it's fairly obvious, but because I am thinking too hard, I do it wrong. This time, I did it wrong by thinking the flat bottoms of both layers should be apart (this may seem like a crazy way to do it, but I have tried 2 other combinations before this as well which had failed, I was sure I was right this time). Here was my theory:

I put the bottom layer with the flat side down so it sits evenly on the tray. I put the top layer flat side up so it is even on top, and match the touching sides so they sit evenly (usually they bake lopsided, so this was the point of the tip ... I thought). Perfect cake ready for frosting.

So, I put the first layer down, frosted the top, and placed the second layer on top. I then immediately noticed that the sides of the cake were about two inches apart. This was not going to frost well. Then, in my infinite wisdom, I carefully picked the top layer up, thinking I could just flip it over. That was a bad idea. The middle stuck to the frosted bottom layer and pulled a chunk out of the top layer. Now I had a hole in my cake. I thought this was even worse, so I put it back as it was and tried to frost my mistake. It was not coming out well at all, so I carefully lifted the top layer and pulled more middle out. Great. Whatever. I flipped it over. Now I had one seriously frosted middle. I was worried I would run out of frosting. The sides were now touching (good) and so I frosted the rest of the cake. I put a huge glop of frosting in the middle to try to hide the hole. It worked, or so I thought.

I put the cake away (again, hidden in my closet so Luc wouldn't find it) until morning. In the morning, I took it out to put candles in it and saw that while flipping, not only had I created a hole, but I had created cracks in the top layer. Cracks that had settled during the night, letting frosting seep through. The cake looked like it had been through a war zone. I failed in my ability to impress with my baking skills.

It was still a tasty cake though.

Pictures from the evening and Luc's birthday outing to Dave & Busters in New York City can be found in the usual place. Oh, and for those of you who were wondering, my mom's tip was to place each layer with the bottom side up, matching the lopsidedness so it settles evenly. ... that way the sides touch, the top of the cake is flat, and the halves don't slide apart (that can happen with another combination: flat sides together).

moved

That is it. I have moved. New address is

1 Lawrence Drive
Apt. 301
Princeton, NJ 08540

for those of you who haven't looked to the right of the screen yet where I normally display my address. Please note the zip code has changed. Even though I moved only about 1 mile from my original domicile, it placed me outside Princeton Borough and inside Princeton Township. Now, don't even get me started on the differences between the borough and the township (the township surrounds the borough, because the borough seceeded from the township in 1895 due to a dispute over school taxes ... the line between the borough and the township cuts the campus in half, including some residential buildings).

There are a few new pictures up, some of the move, some of other things. It is another slow picture taking month. There will be photos of the new super swank apartment when it becomes super swank. Right now, I would just call it swank. So be patient.

finally, the beach

I finally went to the beach for the first time this summer. It took too long for me to get there. And let me just say, I went to the beach, not the shore. I was home this past weekend and Luc, Sue and I went to Little Compton for a fun day at the beack. Pictures of our kayaking adventures have been uploaded. Look at them, see what we did. It was fun.

had to share

July 5, 9:18PM ...

"Here I am in some of Travis' gear."

... oh Mart.

fireworks and things

I know. It's been a while. This could be strictly due to the fact that nothing interesting that warranted reporting has happened to me. What has happened since I got back from Colorado? Well, I go into lab every day. Then come home, eat dinner, sometimes Taekwondo, sometimes a bible study, and then go to bed. And guess what, I do it all over the next day. Why the rant? Because people keep commenting on how I haven't written. You know who you are. I will write when I have something to share.

Like now. I have something to share.

I spent the fourth of July sitting in rain at a minor league baseball game ... and it was fantastic. For real. We were kind of under an overhang, but all that mean was that we got the big fat drips on our knees. Never fear, we used the free t-shirts we acquired at the entrance to shield our knees from the elements. Shirts were soaked, but knees were dry.

The game was quite comical to watch. It was the Trenton Thunder versus the Altoona Curve. What is a curve, as far as a mascot is concerned, I have no idea. I couldn't even tell what the mascot of the Thunder was. Could have been a bird. Could have been a dinosaur. No one could figure it out. The game was delayed 1 hour by the rain, but then it cleared up a bit and they played 2, maybe 3 innings. Scoreless. No one on base. Rather boring, but I was content with my ball-game food. Then, the Thunder just ran away, scoring 7 runs in one inning. It had started to rain again and the Curve were slipping and sliding and dropping balls all over the place. We thought they were doing so poorly because of the rain, but no, it was just because they were terrible. When Trenton took the field, they did fine and got three quick outs, then scored 3 more runs in the next inning, making it 10-0. After that, they called the game. 4.5 innings total. It was raining quite hard, but they still had fireworks. Now, these were no Pawsox fireworks, but they were decent enough. Still enjoyable.

So that was my fourth of July. I uploaded a few pictures from the event and also a few previous photos, and by a few I mean 3. I know, I haven't taken many photos lately. Oh well. It happens. You can find them in the usual place.