30 Before 30: #28 and February Girls Meeting

This past weekend was crazy busy. On Friday and Saturday, I was out of town for Lay Speaker training. I am now a Local Church Lay Speaker so half of #28 on my 30 Before 30 list is complete. To become certified I will have to take another training course in a year. You can see my spiffy new certificate and the training manual for the course I didn't take (we were short on books in mine) in the picture below.

After the training ended, I hit the road and drove for a little more than two hours straight to my friend Crystal's birthday party. I was tired and still fighting the effects of sudden caffeine deprivation, but I still had a great time. I got home closer to ten than to nine and didn't stay up very long before crashing. I had to be up early on Sunday to print the church bulletins and have them ready for service. That afternoon, we had our monthly gathering of the girls. Ros was our host. Sadly, this was the first meeting that all six of us were not able to attend. Fun was still had by all. The theme? Pasta!

So this is the end of this rather short, rather boring post. Enjoy this picture of the sunset I could see as I drove home from Ros's.



Crystal's Cake

A couple years ago, I started making my friend Crystal's birthday cake. It's a tradition I love (and hopefully she does, too). This year, I found the cake I was going to make in November. In its original form, it was a cake made to look like a Christmas present (and it was chocolate-mint flavored, which is yucky in my book). Last year I modified the cake I made to fit Crystal's tastes. I had planned to do that this year as well...and then I ran across this cake and had a moment of indecision. So I sent Crystal to my Pinterest cake board and she said she loved the look of the tuxedo cake but the snickerdoodle cake she saw sounded good. So, I had my solution: to make the snickerdoodle cake look like a present.

As you can see, the cake is quite large. This is how I did it: I made two batches of the snickerdoodle recipe using two 9x9 pans per batch (four layers total). I added a box of vanilla pudding to the cake recipe because the test cake I made was dry even though I baked it for less time than called for. I also doubled the frosting recipe. I know the icing doesn't look professional, but I keep forgetting to get an offset spatula. I think that would help. This was my first-ever time working with fondant, and I think it looks pretty good when you consider that. I made the bow without any kind of pattern or tutorial and, while it is simple, I was very pleased with the result.

Success? Well, I enjoyed making it and people seemed to enjoy eating it. It literally could have fed a small army.

Now I guess the only question is what I will do next year.

30 Before 30: #6 Cook Something With Yeast

I crossed the first thing off of my 30 Before 30 list, and unsurprisingly, it was an easy one. My story begins this past weekend when I went with some friends to one of the Mardi Gras parades that they have in Shreveport, LA. I took my two oldest nieces because my friends have daughters the same age. All and all there were 6 children to 4 adults. (Good thing they didn't realize they had us outnumbered.) It was quite a day of driving and waiting in the cold and sprinkling rain, but by the time the parade got to us, the rain had quit and we were ready for beads.

I was surprised by how much fun I had. The parade lasted about an hour but didn't feel that long at all. The floats were paced far enough apart that we had a little breathing room between each one. The girls all had an absolute blast! (As evidenced by Ms. Caroline, below.)

Anyway, the point in all this was that even though Mardi Gras is not particularly high on my radar as a holiday, I was in the mood to celebrate it. One of my other friends turned 40 last week, so I suggested having a Mardi Gras-themed celebration complete with a king cake (which I offered to make). On Monday, the party was postponed but I had already gotten all the stuff to make the cake, was in the mood to make it, and it had the added bonus of helping me cross something off my list. So, make it I did.

Now, by far, #6 was the item on my list that has gotten me the most ridiculed. "You've NEVER cooked with yeast?" No, I haven't. In fact, if I am reading a recipe that sounds awesome and realize that it calls for yeast, I move on. It's just one of those things that seems easy to mess up and kind of scary to try with no one there to offer guidance. Especially when the recipe has such "clear" directions like "Between 3-1/4 and 3-3/4 cups of flour." Sigh.

I soldiered on and started my king cake. I got the yeast dissolved and the flour and other dry ingredients added. Then came my first moment of panic. At this point, I had used 2 of the aforementioned cups of flour. The instructions told me to "Add additional flour until a soft dough forms. Dough will be sticky." Here was my pickle: With just the 2 cups of flour, the dough seemed soft and was sticky. How much more was I supposed to add? Gulp! So, I ended up adding to the minimum amount of flour that the recipe called for and then added a spoonful for good measure.

Is this right?! Panic!!!

The next instructions were to knead the dough for 6-8 minutes until "elastic." I set the timer on my oven for 7 minutes and called it a day when it went off, hoping against hope that it was elastic enough.

Elastic? Let's hope!



I let the dough rise, punched it down, rolled it out, added cinnamon-sugar, formed it into a crown shape, let it rise again, then baked it. All the while, I had a keen sense of nervousness. I don't like doing things without having a clear understanding of how to do them. But, the timer for the oven went off, I pulled the cake out, and lo and behold, it looked like a king cake and smelled like one, too.

Prettier than I expected!

At this point, I came to a realization. I did not have purple decorating sugar. When buying my supplies, I had forgotten to check my sugars. I made due with black sugar and just explained to everyone that I had forgotten. For the baby Jesus, I searched the toy section at my local Wal-Mart for something small enough to use and ended up buying a My Little Pony playset that had a tiny koala bear in it. My friend Michael ended up getting the piece with the "baby" in it. Hail, Michael! May you have good luck for the coming year!

The glaze ran everywhere.

I did it!

Now I don't know about you, but for the last several years I have given up drinking anything but water for Lent. I am hardcore about it, too, and don't count the weekends as free days (like you apparently can). I will not have anything but water between now and Easter. Let me tell you, it is difficult but rewarding. Any time I think about how much I want a coke or tea or really anything else (like when I had my blazing headache earlier), I really do think about how insignificant my sacrifice is when compared to giving your life for something you believe in. At the same time, I don't belittle my sacrifice either. It is difficult and it is an accomplishment when I make it to the end and can say I did it. So, on Tuesday as I contemplated the weeks ahead, I tried to decide what I wanted my last non-water drink for awhile to be. I opened my refrigerator and realized that I still had the rest of the Asti that my aunt bought to celebrate the end of the election last week. What remained amounted to a large glass, so I poured it, sat down with my slice of king cake, and celebrated. I crossed something off my list!

Cheers!

Reflections on Losing

On Tuesday, the election for the office for which I was a candidate was held. I lost. The weird thing is that I don't feel anything about it. It is what it is, and I am neither happy nor sad with the outcome. People have been coming up to me to console me. It's nice of them but completely unnecessary. I didn't want to lose, but I had made my peace with the idea of losing long ago. I didn't campaign much to speak of for a variety of reasons. In fact, if such things are measured by who puts forth the most effort and money, the guy who won deserved to win. I wasn't even in the game.

When I initially decided to run, it was a couple days after Daddy's funeral. After much thought, I followed through with my intent. I had a plan. I had a dream. Wherever he was, I was going to make Daddy proud. And then life happened. If it had just been a matter of losing Daddy, I could have held it together and campaigned my shy little heart out. Instead, in the middle of my first official campaign stop, I had a devastating, terrifying family emergency. And then another. With Daddy gone, I had no center to help me deal with these things. Suddenly, the wind was gone from my sails and any thoughts of campaigning stuttered to a stop. Eventually when I felt like I couldn't take any more and my hands were visibly shaking from the stress of my entire world coming down around me, I retreated to heal. I took stock of my life and thought about the things that really matter to me. Personal growth and self-reflection were not goals I necessarily had in mind when I quit my job to run, but they turned out to be fringe benefits.

I am glad that I ran because I learned that I absolutely want to be in politics. Eventually. I also learned a lot about myself. I learned I have opinions and some of them are quite strong. At first when asked a question, I floundered. In many ways, I still feel like I am in that stage between grown and grown up. Why should what I think matter? I wondered. And then I came to a point where I wondered why it shouldn't. Even more than that, I realized that I know exactly what I think about a lot more issues than I thought I did.

Basically, losing wasn't the worst thing that ever happened to me. My heart and soul weren't in the election, and I expected the outcome I got. The bottom line is that if I had it all to do over again, I would even if the outcome were the same. Obviously, I would have preferred to win, but it was not to be.

The whole affair is not entirely emotionless for me, however. Specifically, two things happened that really got to me:

1. My aunt text messaged me to tell me about this picture.
2. I read the headline "McDaniel to be sworn in Wednesday."

Now I am very, very sad. Not because I lost or because of who won but because, as of yesterday, the period of stasis ended and life moved on. My dad just became a quickly dimming memory at the capitol. He was replaced, soon to be forgotten. Or that's how it feels anyway. There's nothing unique or unfair in it. It's just the way things are. It's still excruciatingly difficult to deal with.

So, to wrap it in a neat bow, this election gave me time to reflect on true loss. I will run again sometime in the future, stronger and wiser because of what I learned this time around.

I Aim To Misbehave...

In the vast universe of fandom, I place myself somewhere quite a bit north of the average viewer and waaaay south of the crazed shippers. What I mean to say is that I am not afraid to be a little dorky about my television. To that end, I was more than a little excited to go to the Sci-Fi Expo that was held in Irving, TX, this past weekend. Four members of the cast of Firefly/Serenity and Eliza Dushku? Yes, please. And before you ask, no, Nathan Fillion was not there. That was fine with me, though, because Sean Maher was (Simon was my favorite character). And so was Jewel Staite (a/k/a Kaylee). And I took a pretty decent picture with the two of them (see below). So, yes, good times.

Also in attendance from Firefly/Serenity were Adam Baldwin (who seems supremely nice) and Ron Glass (who was the reason my dad finally agreed to watch the show for the first time). I had previously met Adam Baldwin, so I didn't get his autograph this time, but I met a girl while waiting in line to get into the panel who had just met him for the first time and was overwhelmed because he gave her an autograph when she told him she had run out of money (hello, run-on sentence). This sparked a conversation, and I spent the next hour getting to know her and some of the other people in line. I didn't really mind the wait because my brother was in line for the Eliza Dushku photo-op so I had no one to hang out with. Plus, it paid off when they let us into the room where the panel was and I got front-row seats. I have seriously never gotten such good seats for anything (and I had some awesome ones at the Duncan Sheik concert I went to a few years back).

The Firefly/Serenity panel was a lot of fun. Favorite moments? Well, when asked what his favorite memory of Firefly or Serenity was, Ron Glass said, "The moment before my final breath." Cue laughter. Then Adam Baldwin piped in, "That's funny. I was talking to Joss, and he said the same thing." From then on, Shepherd Book's death was the butt of many jokes. Other moments? The whole American Express Platinum card exchange. Jewel Staite saying that she and Sean wanted Simon and Kaylee to have a baby. The hilarity over a mispronunciation of Alan Tudyk's name. Really the whole thing was great fun. I am sure that by now there are various YouTube videos up. If you are a Browncoat, it would be more than worth it to check them out. If you just have a passing interest in the actors or show, it would still be more than worth it to check them out.

The Powers That Be did not empty the room between panels, so I got to keep my awesome seat for Eliza Dushku's panel. It wasn't just pure fun because there were several awkward and inappropriate questions asked of her. She handled them all like a trooper, though. Mad props to her. (As if I needed another reason to like her.) I personally like this picture and am not sure why. The guy beside her had read something about her wanting to play D&D so he had brought his...uh...I'll go with...character sheets (I have no idea if that is what they are called). She seemed to enjoy it. Her boyfriend Rick Fox came over and took a picture of her hamming it up with him.

All in all, it was a great weekend.

30 Before 30 List

The past year has been rough for me. I lost my dad. Other things that I won't get into happened. I was looking up party ideas and came across a suggestion for doing a 30 Before 30 list (i.e., 30 things to do before I turn 30...I would think that was self-explanatory, but I have found it is not). I thought, "Why not?" It turned out to be much harder to compile the list than I thought it would be. Eventually, I hammered it out. My last change was a few minutes ago, but I am finalizing it now. Here goes.

1. Visit Jackie in NYC
2. Hike to summit of Black Mesa
3. Actually read Crime & Punishment
4. Start and continue piano lessons for at least six months
5. Lose 75 pounds
6. Cook something with active yeast as an ingredient
7. Take a cake decorating class
8. Enter one of my poems in a contest
9. Finish the novel I am working on
10. Pay off my student loan (This one has the option of being changed to 'pay my student loan down to...')
11. Get my concealed weapons permit
12. Hike the entire David Boren trail
13. Complete a half-marathon
14. Visit Alcatraz
15. Sew Crystal an apron
16. See the Grand Canyon
17. Get ten new National Park passport stamps
18. Buy a nice dress coat
19. Climb the silos in OKC
20. Learn to drive stick shift
21. Go to a hot-air balloon festival
22. Plant an oak tree (or trees) in memory of Daddy
23. Buy a new (at least to me) car
24. Go "caveing" in Kentucky
25. Write a business plan for the business I want to start
26. Make my will/financial plan
27. Complete my "Thanksgiving Project"
28. Finish lay speaking training
29. Attend a minimum of three concerts
30. Have awesome 29th and 30th birthday parties

Some of these have back stories that will be explained as I cross them off my list. I tried to be fairly reasonable with what I was putting on the list. When looking at other lists in an effort to get inspiration, I found that often people put goals that they really had no control over (such as getting published, getting married, having a baby). I wanted my list to push me but at the same time to be attainable. I think I did a fairly good job of that.