potentialities

As is traditional, I decorated a birthday cake for my little brother with a thing that he loves. Last year, I was super-lazy and just plastered the cake with these (admittedly both adorable and delicious) 8-bit Mario candy strips, so this year I decided to try something overly ambitious that just barely managed to stay together.



See, that terrifying orange structure that looks like it is going to slide apart at any moment is a city piece from The Settlers of Catan. I have placed it at the intersection of three resource hexes, namely ore (purple rock candy), bricks (red licorice nibs) and wheat (toasted coconut haystacks, made with yellow-tinted white chocolate). The cake is carrot and the frosting is cream cheese, which are delicious, but hardly ideally suited to cake sculpture; this is why on all those television shows their so-called cakes are composed almost entirely of fondant and molded rice krispie bar. Still, everyone enjoyed it, even though I had to explain it again to every new wave of arrivals.

(Danny's real birthday isn't until Thursday, but we observed it over Memorial Day weekend since Danny and several of his friends were in town.)

Arrived safely in South Dakota. At a rest area in Iowa, there was an enormous raccoon sitting in front of the doors eating a burrito, seemingly willing to tolerate our comings and goings, so long as we did not mess with her burrito.

I love my new camera. So do my second cousins, who have taken more pictures on it than I have so far. Some of these pictures do not have Zach's fingers blocking the viewfinder.

My brother tells me that he has a friend at school who writes Harry Potter fanfiction. Apparently he is supposed to write her a story and review one of her own stories. And, like all of his other homework, I'm supposed to help him. :D:

25010 / 50000 words. 50% done!

It's not ideal, but it's something. We'll see what our Thanksgiving is gong to be like.

Every year it falls to me to me to decorate my little brother's birthday cake. My task is to produce a gloriously geeky creation, earning the acclaim delight of Danny and his many guests, in spite of the fact that when it comes to artistic ability, I have two left hands, and I am not actually left-handed.

This year, using one of the Dark Knight posters as my inspiration, I created the Joker cake:



A boy and his cake. Danny didn't actually know what I had planned in the way of decorating, but he was wearing his Joker t-shirt fresh from the boy's department at Target anyway.

( Three more pictures under the cut )

Today was 50s day at my little brother's school. He elected to go to school ( wearing a poodle skirt. )

My mom and I thought this was fabulous. My dad just shook his head and wondered where he'd gone wrong.