Wordless Wednesday: Broke My Pencil

F2: Top This

Welcome again to Friday's Feast¹. Today I'll be talking about my wedding cake topper— or lack thereof.

Participants in this weeks Feast are as follows:

• The Crazy Coxes @ My Own Brand of Crazy
  Who Likes Cake— a wedding post were they serve five different kinds.
• AngieB @ Ballard Boys
  June is graduation time too, here's a graduation feast for you.

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When I got married, my sister volunteered to make the wedding cake as a gift. Who could refuse— since she recently got a culinary degree and had a small side-line business making cakes.

It was a delicious cake that had cashew butter icing and chocolate ganache filling in between the layers. We were only expecting around one hundred people, so the cake wasn't huge. My sister came early to set up the cake and there were no disasters in assembling it at the hotel.

Picture of the wedding cake

There is a tradition that you save your cake topper in the freezer and eat it on your first anniversary. The next morning we asked around to see if we could get our cake topper. We even went searching through the kitchen only to find out from the staff that because people were asking for more they served up all the cake.

My sister offered to make us a cake topper, but by that time she was preparing to move out to California and I didn't want to busy her with one more task.

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June means weddings to me. I'm sure that there are a lot of weddings that are going to take place during this month. Also, many of you have either participated or attended weddings so you should know what is served. Do you have any food related stories that relate to weddings? Was the spread less than what was expected? Are there any particular foods the must be served in order for the wedding to be a success?

June is also Father's day. Does dad like to grill… perhaps you can snag a recipe from him. Do you take dad out for Father's day— if so, where did you go?

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¹ If you don't know what Friday's Feast is all about, please read the Friday's Feast page for a more detailed explanation. If you want to join in on the feast— be sure to leave a comment and include the URL to your post so I and others can know of your contribution. Also, if you want to see a particular topic— feel free to suggest it as well (I'm always looking for new inspirations).

Writer's Workshop Spin: Eye Daubing

In honor of Mamma Kat's Writer's Workshop I have decided to tackle prompt #4:
Who first told you that it’s not nice to stare? Write about a time you stared when you maybe shouldn't have, or a time when someone stared at you.

Also, since this week's Spin Cycle is a free spin, I thought I would spin it up a bit as well and "turn it on it's head"…

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I heard it said that if you are in a stand off with a mean looking dog to stare it down and wait for it to turn its head away. Once they do, you have the upper hand and can safely walk away. Armed with this misinformation I took this knowledge one step further and came up with eye daubing.

What I would do is stare straight at someone and wait for eye contact. They say the eyes are the window to the soul and it is that thrill that you get when you make eye contact with them. Most of the time when they happened to make eye contact with me across the room they tended to look away out of embarrassment— I then felt to myself that I had the upper hand and had won.

However… all of my eye daubing was when I was a young and stupid adolescent. I think I finally stopped when I realized that someone may just continue to make eye contact with me, walk straight up to me and slap me silly.

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F2: Don't bother me now; I'm digesting

Welcome again to Friday's Feast¹. Today I realized that I have missed my posting two weeks in a row due to lack of content. Perhaps I'm trying to figure out how best to cook up this meme so that others can participate and enjoy the feast.

Much like a good meal, we all need time to digest. I think that I have been cooking up this meme for over a year and am unsure how to spice it up. So to you my faithful readers, here is your opportunity to by my sou-chef. So leave a comment and let me know…

How can I make Friday's Feast better?

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¹ If you don't know what Friday's Feast is all about, please read the Friday's Feast page for a more detailed explanation. If you want to join in on the feast— be sure to leave a comment and include the URL to your post so I and others can know of your contribution. Also, if you want to see a particular topic— feel free to suggest it as well (I'm always looking for new inspirations).

RTT: Bites and Series

It's that day of the week— time to Join Keely over at The Un Mom for some Random Tuesday Thoughts…

Bites Bite:

At the end of the past two weekends I have found the knuckles of my hands littered with mosquito bites. Really don't know why they decide to target my knuckles, but it is very hard to ignore and even more painful when I do scratch the bites.

So often I scratch to the point where the area around the bite swells up and it hurts like a bruise. I look at my hands and it looks like I have arthritis with my joints so swollen up. It even stings when I put anti-itch cream on the bite. Looks like the bites really bite.

Series Bites:

Lately I have been following the Stanley Cup series. I normally don't watch hockey since I never understood the game. I had a neighbor when I was in college who was on the school's hockey team and he tried to explain how it is played, but I never quite caught on. However, since the Hawks are from Chicago I like to show my support.

After the last two losses over the weekend I begin to wonder if the whole series is fixed. I've seen it before when the Bulls played in the NBA finals where you can tell that they just aren't playing the same and lose games that they should be winning. I always suspect that the TV stations just want more advertising revenue, so they fix it so that it goes on for seven games.

Bites Series:

I'm getting a little tired of all the Vampire Shows on TV. It kind of reminds me of all the Reality TV shows that suddenly appeared during the writers strike several years back. After a while you just get tired of the same thing rehashed over and over again.

Series Series:

Some of you may be here for the Random Tuesday's Thoughts regular series. I also have a weekly series you may want to "partake" in called Friday's Feast. If you don't know what Friday's Feast is all about, please read the Friday's Feast page so you can join in on the feast.

That's about it for my randomness— so if you want some more random click that button… (I know you want to)

Runnin' down the drain

Recently I was inspired by a post by Sprite's Keeper called I believe torque is involved in some way or another. In it little Sprite lost her Little Mermaid down the toilet. This reminded me of the time I lost my Captain (no, not Captain my Captain) down the drain:

I'm not sure how many of you remember the Playschool wooden people— you know, the ones with the round heads on top of what looks like a sewing spool. When I was little, Playschool just came out with a house boat that you could play with in the water. This was the first time that I remember them making their wooden people out of plastic.

So, here I am playing with the boat in the bathtub and having a grand time. I'm sure that many of you jerry-rig your tub drains so that they don't clog and they drain faster. Being the age of 5 at the time, I was well familiar with how to pull out the tub plug to make it drain faster— what I was not familiar with was how the wooden/plastic people float in the water straight up and down.

The next thing I know the captain of the ship did not only go down with the ship, but he went down the drain as well. This probably wouldn't be a problem, but we lived in a ranch style house and who knows how you could access the drain to get something that went down it. I could just picture the captain stuck in the u of the pipe and causing the drain to not drain properly again. I'm sure that my dad just grabbed the drain-o and poured it down the bathtub drain to get rid of the clog— poor captain…

Spin Cycle: My mePhone

This week's Spin Cycle is about Technology. I posted this in April of 2009, but have decided to re-post it as a Spin Cycle entry since it seems to fit with the theme. This is a tongue and cheek look at how technology could go too far…

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Do you have that new mePhone yet…

THEY SAY I MUST BE CRACKED
Until the brown paper parcel landed on my welcome mat
Even the pretty secretaries who wouldn't even
Let me HANG MY HAT
All recognize my handwriting
And return to sender as a matter of fact ¹

Lately I've been receiving mail indicating that I have won a new cell phone which got me to thinking… What if they actually sent you the phone instead? I currently do not have a cell phone— nor am I going to fill out those forms to get the one I just won. Of course you have to realize that many new phones have GPS built in for E-911 tracking purposes— which makes you wonder what else is being tracked. I'm curious what would happen in a world where they forgo the application form and just send you the phone instead…
Come jump in my adjective dementia dimension machine and I'll take you to that world:

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When I got home from work my wife lets me know that there is a package on the front stoop with my name on it and jokingly asked if would I please take it inside before the neighbors call the bomb squad again. As I open the box there appears to to be a green glow emanating from under the packing peanuts. I start reading the promo letter that came with the package:

Congratulations, you have just won a new mePhone.
There is no need to activate this phone because it has already been activated for you. Service is free to all mePhone subscribers. All we ask is that you use our service and enjoy your new mePhone.

I try to empty the box of the packing material and accidentally spill the phone on the floor and the glowing stops. My wife picks it up and says I broke it and hands it over to me. Instantly the green glow reappears the moment it touches my hand and the glow starts to pulse as well. I quip back… "it's not broken— it's just sleeping".

I snickered a bit when I saw "11G" on the case (4G is so passe— I guess it goes to 11 now). I tried calling a friend to test out the reception and got the following automated message:

******** is currently on the phone with ******…
If you want to leave a message, press 1…
If you want to page this person, press 2…
If you want to leave a text on their phone, press 3…
If you want to locate this person, press 4

Intrigued, I pressed 4 and was instantly displayed with a map. Not only that, but the balloon indicator was moving rapidly across the map as if the person was in a car traveling along. Unwilling to continue, I hung up.

A few minutes later, I got a call from the person who I tried calling earlier…

Friend: Hey, I didn't know that you got a new phone
Me: Uh, I didn't even leave a message—
Friend: That's OK, pretty cool how it said it was you and that you were looking for me— how sweet.
Me: Yea, just trying to figure out the phone.

I hung up and was instantly asked to give an audio prompt to identify this caller for future reference. I spoke their name and pressed save and turned off the phone. I then wondered how it knew how to find this person and instantly the phone came back to life and proceeded to ask If I wanted to find ********… and repeated the name I just spoke using my voice. It was at this point that I knew something strange was happening.

If I were you I'd change my name again
They don't care what they do to you believe me ²

I put the phone down and decided to take the dog for a walk. Funny how I kept seeing a plain colored Civic with a strange tripod on top silently turning the corner every time I walk down another street with the dog. And why is it that all through my walk I kept thinking the phrase: "If you would like to make a call— please pick up and try again"… I think I'll return the phone now.

I'll write this story down, but you'll never guess the
Final Twist
Blow the whistle on the whole design
As they find my name on that fatal mailing list
I hear the clatter of a typewriter
Another rookie eating up the reams
I think it's time to place my feet under the desk
And PLACE MY MARK ON ANOTHER MAN'S DREAMS ³

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^{1, 2, 3} Excerpts from the Elvis Costello song: "King of Thieves" from the album Punch the Clock.

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