Posted by barb on Mar 8, 2006 in
Random Thoughts Last weekend, Andrew and I stopped in at Build-a-Bear Workshop, and I had an inspiration. I’ve been thinking about having a birthday party this year (okay, so it’s months away at this point, but I can plan early, right?). I turn 35 – I didn’t do anything special for my 30th birthday, and I don’t want to wait another 5 years for my big four-oh to celebrate, so why not have a party this year?
So, the inspiration was to have a party at Build-a-Bear. I love their bears, and I love picking out outfits for them. A party there would entail all of the guests building their own bear, and picking out an outfit and accessories (all on us). Andrew thought it was a weird idea – that none of my friends would have fun building a bear and dressing them. I think he’s crazy. Can any of my “girls” correct Andrew? Or am I just high?
Tags: birthday
Posted by barb on Mar 6, 2006 in
Games,
Random Thoughts Andrew and I wanted to do as much of nothing this weekend as possible, so we rented a couple Playstation 2 games, bought bad-for-us food, and played video games for much of Saturday and Sunday.
We rented Ribbit King, a silly game where you play rounds of frolf (frog golf) on different courses on different worlds. The game can be played either in “story mode” where you’re trying to get ribbinite by playing rounds of frolf against various computer-players. The game can also be played with two players playing rounds of frolf against each other; however, unless you also play in story mode, the number of worlds/courses are limited. Andrew and I both had fun playing, which is difficult given that I’ve played a lot more video games that him, and am generally better at the games, and look for more challenging games.
We also rented Tak 3: The Great Juju Challenge (warning: the web page has music, but it can be turned off), which promised 2-player simlutaneous mode. Unfortuantely, we were unable to figure out how to invoke the 2-player mode until late yesterday. By then, we were mostly gamed out (and Andrew wasn’t feeling particularly well), and the Oscars were close to starting (which I always watch). It’s too bad we didn’t get to play much, because the little bit we did play was pretty fun. It feels a lot like Sypro, my favorite series of games, so the fact that Andrew and I could play Tak 3 together could make it a good game for us to own.
In between playing games, we also did a bit of shopping. The cruise is coming up quickly (two weeks from today we leave for Italy!!!), so we went out to get a few things for that: new walking shoes (which we both found at Timberland – they have an awesome shoe with soles that feel really, really comfy right out of the box – I highly recommend these for anyone looking for good walking shoes), money belts for each of us, a document wallet, a watch for me, and a new memory card for my camera. We also looked for jeans for me, but the only thing I could find were “stretch, flared” jeans – ick – so I made a quick Eddie Bauer order.
We’ve consulted a few web pages on what to pack for a cruise, like this one; but, if there’s anyone out there with some suggestions that either might not be on the list or that you can’t understress the importance of, please leave those in the comments.
So, a productive and relaxing weekend. (Not a usual combination!).
Posted by barb on Mar 3, 2006 in
Random Thoughts I’ve got it bad already. 17 days to the Mediterranean — Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and a total solar eclipse to top it off. Eeeeeeeee!
Tags: work
Posted by barb on Mar 1, 2006 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts This time around I decided to try Bitch, PhD’s suggestion of using colored sugars or rainbow sprinkles anchored in the horses with butter. (I had thought about using colored sugar, etc., but couldn’t figure out how to make it stay in the horses – I might be able to do complex integrals, but anchoring sugar in a cake pan with butter is just too hard to figure out on my own.)
I tried lots of different sprinkles to see what would turn out best – several colors of sugar, rainbow jimmies, rainbow nonpareils, rainbow sequins. After loading up the horses, I put the pan in the freezer for a few minutes while mixing up the batter. This kept the sprinkles in place when I put the batter in the pan.
I’m not sure it turned out better than the colored batter attempt:
The jimmies, nonopareils, and sequins all ended up melting into the cake, though they did still keep their colors basically in the shape of their respective horses. The sugars seemed to slop all over, despite my best efforts to clean up the pan before adding the batter. The purple actually looks pretty good, and the blue and purple show up much better than the pink and green. Hmm…I didn’t have any of the crystal-type decorative sugars…I wonder if those would have worked better. I have one other idea to try, too; though, I’m beginning to think I might be stuck frosing the horses after baking.
Tags: baking
Posted by barb on Mar 1, 2006 in
Random Thoughts I’ve probably mentioned that I’m a part-time contractor and a part-time grad student. The excitement of being a contractor is that every 5 years or so the contract is put up for bid, and I have the choice of either working in my current position for the winning company or finding a new job. To add to this excitement, I’m a contractor for the government, which means that that my job is hinged on the national budget and how it’s allocated to my particular corner of the world.
But why am I bringing up these specific joys of my job right now? Because both of them are currently in play, and I’m not sure first of all whether I’ll even have a job in a couple months, and secondly, if I do have a job, what company I’ll be working for.
My project got hit very hard in the budget submitted to congress a few weeks ago, and it’s going to be a struggle for it to keep above water. (Though, the man in charge of this particular project said that we could either look it as terrible or “not as bad as it could have been”. In other words, the project was not zeroed-out in the budget, so it might still be possible to recover if next year the budget for this project grows.) Translation: they have already made a few cuts, and my position is not exactly critical to the mission. We’ll see what happens in the next few weeks.
On the other side of things, we had a meeting with our new overlords this morning, and I need to get my resume in order so that I can “apply” for my position (which might not exist soon). Sigh. I’ve got to finish my PhD so that I can figure out what it is that I really want to do when I grow up.
Tags: suckitude, work
Posted by barb on Feb 26, 2006 in
Random Thoughts Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever let the supply of Gas-X with simethicone in the house run out. Ever.
Especially when my loving, caring husband is going to be out of town for a week and I’m going to be stupid and have spicy Chinese food.
Tags: health, suckitude
Posted by barb on Feb 21, 2006 in
Random Thoughts I know things have been light around here – I took most of January off, and since then have had only light, fluffy posts. I must confess that I’m tired. There’s been some “drama” at work the last couple weeks, and I’m struggling with apathy in my chosen profession, so when I get home I’m tired, and the last thing I want to do is think about what to post on my blog. Instead, I’ve been doing Sudoku, scrapbooking, and vegging in front of the TV. I’m not necessarily proud of this, but it’s what I need to do to keep going right now. I don’t know when things will pick up, but bear with me if you can.
Tags: admin
Posted by barb on Feb 21, 2006 in
Crafty Me,
Pictures I spent much of this long weekend scrapbooking. Saturday Sandy and I got together with Laurie to introduce her to the fine world of scrapbooking. Though, we didn’t actually get much scrapbooking done – we spent almost all of our time together shopping (!).
Sunday, though, I started working on my “Wedding Odds ‘n’ Ends” book (honeymoon, bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner, girls getting ready, etc.). My previous wedding books were all done in blues and yellows (our wedding colors), but this album I finally got to start using some of my other fun papers. Here’s a picture of Sunday’s creation (it says “Becoming Beautiful…Isn’t Pretty):
That spread took forever to make – I’m noticing that each spread I work on is getting more and more elaborate. I’ll need to start dialing it back if I expect to ever get caught up in my pictures!
Yesterday was a government holiday, so I spend the day scrapbooking and watching 24 DVDs. I finished 4 more spreads (working nearly all day!):
Tags: scrapping
Posted by barb on Feb 20, 2006 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts I tried baking with my carousel bundt pan again – this time I didn’t make the mistake of topping it with powdered sugar, and I think it turned out better than last time. Instead, this time around, I took out some of the batter before filling the pan, colored it, and then put the colored batter into the horses. Then I filled the pan with the uncolored batter, and baked it. I think the horses came out a bit better, though the colored bits slopped out of the horses.
I have one other idea to try, and I might do that next weekend. Any other suggestions out there?
Tags: baking
Posted by barb on Feb 20, 2006 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts Last weekend:
This weekend:
