Archive for Aug 2006

Thu Aug 24 20:18:37 2006

The Husband intimated he would like a cake like the "Sponge Cake with Fruit and Cream" I made Dad the other week. I used the "Yellow Cake" (mmm ... tastes like uranium) recipe from Better Homes and Gardens' New Baking Book (Meredith Books, 1998) and filled it with lots of raspberries and cream. It seems to have gone over well with The Husband.

I keep feeling like I need to do more for or better by The Husband. That I'm too often irritable or short with him. Or that I take his niceness too much for granted. Sooner or later, surely, he is going to tell me to piss off and die.

The Husband has been very good about my under-employment and does the whole shore-my-up-and-tell-me-how-great-I-am thing when I'm feeling insecure and freakish, but I can't help wondering how long this can last. How long can he keep being sweet and supportive before our relationship starts to sour and we turn that quietly vicious couple I deal with at work? All smiling, but hissing at each other through those smiles? How can they stand to be married to each other? How did they get to be so unhappy?

(Of course, it might just be the library that's doing it. They might be perfectly happy and lovey outside our fine institution. We just have that effect on people this time of year).




Mon Aug 21 16:08:06 2006

Dear People Who Design Library Software and the Like:

Feeling particular regarding how dates/barcodes/telephone numbers should be formatted in registration forms? My darlings, couldn't you please tell me so before I enter all the information and hit the submit button? Pop-up boxes after the fact are just a trifle annoying.

Indeed, dear hearts, could you not provide an example of proper formatting at these particular data entry points? Or accept the data any which way and format it yourselves? Surely, (what with you l337 software designing skillz and the wheelbarrows full of money we have given you) you can do this for us?

We would love you and bake you cakes, if only you would pretend you did not hate us.




Thu Aug 17 22:16:21 2006

Dad's been complaining it's too hard for him to think up cake ideas all on his own, so I let him borrow two cookbooks to help him along. They came back to me full of bookmarks and little notes on preferred variations. His selections are rather interesting in their diversity -- everything from "Lemon Coconut Layer Cake" to (four layer!) "Pecan Cake with Tangerine Cream Frosting" to a brandy soaked fruitcake (aged for two months, no less) -- but not especially complicated and my worries involve ingredient procurement more than likely technical problems.

I'm looking forward to the fruitcake. Like the Battenburg, it's one of those things I've wanted to try, but haven't had sufficient reason to. I'm going to get my fruits from the King Arthur catalog as I'm generally pleased with their products and the brandy will be whatever Dad loves best. But, I'm getting ahead of myself, here.

August's selections was "Sponge Cake with Fruit and Cream" from Mary Wilkinson's Desserts: Mouthwatering Recipes for Delectable Dishes (pages 172-173, Anness Publishing: 1997) and it was as it sounds. Split sponge cake filled with sweetened whipped cream and berries then topped with more cream and berries. Strawberries are starting to look a bit crap again (out of season) so I used raspberries, instead, with good results.

The cake recipe called for filling a saucepan with hot water set over low heat then putting the eggs in a heat proof bowl which nested inside the pan without touching the water and (using an electric hand mixer) beat the eggs, sugar, and vanilla together until the mixture was very thick. I don't have an electric hand mixer, so had to whisk it and I'm pretty sure the cake batter never quite reached the right consistency. I mean, it tasted just fine in the end, but seemed a lot slimmer than the recipe indicated it ought to be -- not enough aeration, I guess.

I'm also guessing that I could have substituted any old cake batter recipe with just as good results. Any cake filled with fruit and cream is bound to taste good. Mmmm. A chocolate sponge with cream and raspberries ... that would be good ... or lemon with blackberries ....

Next month: "Lemon Coconut Layer Cake" from Mary Wilkinson's Desserts: Mouthwatering Recipes for Delectable Dishes (Anness Publishing: 1997).




Wed Aug 09 18:32:11 2006

Last week I went for my yearly stab and swab physical and (surprise!) my blood pressure was a bit high. High enough my GP freaked out and ordered up a bunch of tests which will mean me not eating breakfast some fine morning so I can pop down to the hospital and have some vampire highly trained phlebotomist suck me dry take a couple vials.

I, of course, think this is much ado about nothing. High BP? No. Just needed to pee. Desperately needed to pee. The peeing in the cup drill occurs after the taking of the BP so it is not surprising my BP was high as, at that particular moment, my whole body was desperately locked in an epic struggle with my bladder muscles. Of course my BP was high.

Anyway, today I went without lunch and hied myself off to the hospital clinic where the happy phlebotomist took not one or two, but three vials of my precious blood. And, because I am an adult, I don't rate the cute Snoopy bandages. No, I get a folded up square of gauze and a bit of that horrible white tape that is probably sold in other markets as a depilatory aid, I kid you not.

I expect there is nothing (much) wrong with me. It would be so ironic, wouldn't it? If it turned out that, now I that am exercising, eating better, and generally living a more healthful life, of course now I will develop heart disease or something equally exciting. I mean, I'm almost thirty. Surely, it's time for something to fall off or auto-destruct?

Yipee.




Fri Aug 04 18:32:11 2006

This week? So not the best week of my life. But, hey, what can you do? Everything seems out of sorts and I feel as if I have no control over anything and this turns me into Super Bitch and then I feel bad for bitching at people whose only sin, after all, is being in the same universe as me this week and so I look for ways to make up for my bitchiness or, at least, work through my bitchiness and so ...

I baked my mom a cake. Yes. It sounds completely stupid, but it made me feel better. It's hard to feel cranky and scared and lost when my hands are busy. It's horrible to admit, but that dreadful substitute teacher we had in fourth grade was on the right track. I don't believe busy hands are necessarily happy hands, but they are certainly distracted hands. Some days, distraction is all I can hope for.

Anyway, let's talk about cake. I made the "Angel Food Roll" from Aimee's Adventures and it came out pretty damned well. I used raspberry yogurt and french vanilla pudding with just a couple drops of red food coloring to give the filling a nice blush color. I've always been intimidated by jelly rolls ... it's the whole rolling without cracking shtick that bothers me. My luck, it would break at every turn. Well, the trick is to follow the directions. Do what the recipe tells you to do and it comes out fine.

Yes, I know the whole roll is full of nothing but preservatives and chemical flavorings and other nutritional no-nos, but I can only make my mother fruit salad so many times before we all start flinching at the merest glimpse of the compote dish. Anyway, you need to understand my mother's own dessert skillz turn toward sugar-free jello and cool whip -- this was going to be right up her alley.

And it was. Happily, my mother liked the roll so much she ate two slices and kept the leftovers.

My bitchiness level? Subsiding.




Wed Aug 02 16:03:29 2006

So <Bookstore>'s website disappeared early last week and its web hosting company has been completely uncommunicative -- since last week, no-one has answered the phone, staffed the "live" support chat, or responded to my help tickets. On the other hand, would you respond to a help ticket like the following:

Ticket Information
Ticket ID: QIS-930507
Department: Support
Priority: Critical
Subject: recent unexplained and continuing website outage

What happened last week? Where did our website go? Why weren't we notified? Why was there no news posting for this event? Is it going to happen again? Why does no-one answer your phone? Why is live support offline? Can we get a refund for the remaining time on our account?

It is, perhaps, not as erudite a message as I would normally aim for, but I am cranky, tired, and heartily sick of the whole "Helpdesk Ticket Support" interface as it is neither helpful nor supportive and, indeed, makes me want to go out and kill me something.

Also, in my defense, I wrote this ticket as a last-ditch attempt to remedy the situation with the webhost. I don't expect an answer and "help ticket as stream of consciousness" seemed better than "help ticket as stream of profanity," anyway.

And now, of course, I need to find <Bookstore> a new web host, because surely it cannot continue to live on a machine in our basement. Hrm. Why not? It's safe in our basement. No-one is going to fuck with it in our basement.

I think I shall go drink a beer and ruminate upon cake recipes until the desire to cause harm to others has left my system. This may take many beers.




last updated: Sat 17 Nov 2007 08:19:03 AM EST