WARNING: Geek quotient high, proceed with caution

Today I went shopping and ended up looking at Shun knives. I didn't buy any because that's some serious cash, but now I know what I want so I can save up for it.

I got home in time to handle my on-call shift for work. Fortunately it was a quiet shift so I spent some time in the kitchen. I made french onion soup and an angel food cake. The soup was ok by itself, but once I added the cheese toast it became quite good. I think that my substitution of mead for the white wine resulted in the soup being a bit too sweet. Next time I'll use something drier. The cake came out quite well (I've been making it a lot lately) and we topped some with strawberries and macadamia nut liqueur. That was quite a treat.

In other food news I've been practicing making coconut cake. I've made it three times. The first was an unequivocal disaster (the cake was dry and the frosting thin resulting in the cake absorbing the frosting overnight effectively un-frosting the cake) so it went in the bin. I got it right the second and third times, but I think that it can be even better with some tweaking. I really like the 7 minute frosting, it's easy to make and quite tasty, not heavy like butter cream.

Work has been going very well. My project is approaching beta launch which is very exciting. I'll be down in the bay area in a few weeks, anyone want to hang out?

I made another cake tonight for Julie's Granny's birthday. I had some left over cake from leveling it so I made some petits fours and then covered them with ganache. I'd never made ganache before but it's so simple and so tasty that this will not be the last time. Next time I think the entire cake will be ganached :)

I weighed myself this morning and I am down 40 pounds so I went shopping for clothes again. I found that I'd dropped another size. I'm down to a 30" waist according to the fine folks at Carhartt. Though there were no double fronts in the right length in stock so I bought another belt instead.

In other news:

• I'm getting my money back on the dead console server.


• I bought Metroid Prime 3 and it pretty much rocks


• micahbird pooped on Niko's head today and she was mightily pleased.


• I'm making Peach upside down cake
  

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Just for the record, I actually did get over to the gym on Friday and work out for 25 minutes. I think that it helped my energy level for the rest of the day. I felt pretty good and more eager to get stuff done. I just did 25 minutes on a bike while listening to my iPod. Included with my membership are two consultations with a trainer to set up a plan to get fit. I need to get that done so I can have a routine to go through in the morning.

Let's see... I had a terribly exciting friday night. I stayed at home and baked creme brulee custards and played with meringue trying to make cookies. The custard came out great... not so much with the cookies. Oh well.

Saturday crankygirlie and I went over to her aunt and uncle's house to bird-sit for them. crankygirlie's little brother came over too and spent the evening whistling to the bird, who absolutely loved him for it. We watched Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow which we'd not seen yet. I was pretty impressed actually. The characters were so stereotypical and the acting was a bit overdone, but that actually helped lend to the comic book feel. The visual effects were perfectly matched to that feel. I loved the plot too, it was so 50's comic book ridiculous.

Today we got up and did a bit more bird-sitting. I left early to come home and ride my old bike down to Tacoma for my dad. He's buying it from me so he can save on gas riding it to work. I nearly didn't make it as I rode the less than 2 blocks to the gas station and back, killing the engine but leaving the high beam on for a couple of minutes when I got back. The bike hadn't been really run for a couple of weeks so the battery was low to start with and that did it in. I tried a few more times before I called for roadside assistance. After I got off the phone with them I tried one more time, and of course it started. A quick call back to cancel the jump start and I was off.

Riding the Suzuki after being on the BMW for a couple of weeks was interesting. I really do like the BMW more, but there are some things that are nice about the Suzuki. It's lighter and revs much higher, so it's a totally different feeling bike. I missed the tourque of the BMW though :)

Got down to Tacoma without incident and put the bike in my parent's garage. I showed my dad some of the finer technical details of how the bike worked before we took off for Seattle. We had dinner at the tasty place with mimsy, ibexris and xsorin. My dad was a little puzzled by the selection of food, but I think that he liked it. I must have been hungry because I finished off my meal.

We got home and my dad tried on my old riding gear and I let him borrow it. I also managed to get rid of some bicycle stuff from the garage. My dad left with some tires and pedal clips. More-room-in-the-garage++