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Check out Short Street Cakes in the Citizen-Times, again!

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You're all invited to check out my first attempt at guest blogging over at the Short Street Cakes blog!  Surprise: it's about cake!

As soon as I returned home from my trip George got sick - George never gets sick.  Then a week later, I got sick - I never get sick.  We're both about 75% recovered at this point.  George got the crazy chills/coughing/not-getting-out-of-bed-for-a-few-days-sick.   I got the nose-so-stuffed-your-eyes-don't-want-to-open sick.  

We put the seedlings in the garden and the sunflowers are loving it.  The peas are grumbling about it.  The cucumbers are undecided.  I think the kale might be dead.  (They were pretty scrawny, whispy starts.)  It's been over 80 degrees here everyday for about the last week so I'm not too suprised about the kale and the peas.  

The proof is in the cake.

Billy's birthday cake
Originally uploaded by lady grey cupcake

Simple cake frosting is not rocket science - as it turns out. All it takes is a somewhat steady hand, frosting, and cake. Maybe some magic. By far the most challenging part is centering the writing on top. As Jodi pointed out to me, that's what flowers and stars are for.

I'm in Portland for the week visiting Liz. After harmless threats of "delays" and "grounding" I actually made it here on time. Boarding was delaying in Charlotte, then we sat on the runway for about 40 minutes (almost for another hour, but thankfully didn't.) Next it was running through Newark to a gate number in the hundreds (!!!) and being the last one on. Neither George nor I fly very often and neither of us like it all that much and we especially are not fond of any airline aside from JetBlue. I mean, my own little tv to watch? New planes that aren't gross and broken? Pleasant flight attendants? No questionable warm food from a flimsy plastic bag? Why do people bother to fly on other airlines at all? Well, JetBlue can be a little pricey I guess. Somehow I had a lapse in judgment and ended up on Continental. It was fine, no jerks on the plane, the staff was fine, the iceberg lettuce was fine, the movie was fine, but the one breaking point for me? The leg room. I, by no means, have long legs but by the end of the 5 hour flight I couldn't handle it anymore. My ankles ached, my back ached and most of all I was afraid my knees were permanently bent or if I tried to stand up my legs would simply snap off at the knees. And I had an aisle seat.

The sun is out this morning - something I was 90% sure I wouldn't see this week. Everyone is asleep still but my clock says it's lunchtime.

work : fun

garden beds / sweet jump
Originally uploaded by sawyer.george

After another ridiculous week at BRB (Blue Ridge Biofuels) I realized my work to fun ratio has been leaning far to heavily towards the work side of the equation. For the past month or so my schedule has consisted of working at BRB from 9-5, and then coming home to do CAD drawings for Artful Shelter, or designing a house for our friend Ryan (I'll post more about it later).

I set about re-balancing the equation by dusting of my trials bike, thinking I'd finally go out and buy a new seat-post for it. But, before getting to the fun I had to finish raking out our load of compost, and build a bin for the new stuff. As I pushed the black soil around I noticed a nice red mound of dirt at the end of the garden, stuff that Scott had shoveled out from under the house and left there.

A lightbulb flashed above my head, I put down the rake, and shoved my bike to the top of the hill. The first run was a little rough on the garden bed, and the jump needed some reshaping. Within an hour or so I'd built up a couple of berms to protect the beds, and a nice little kicker right at the crest of the hill. I spent the rest of our 70+deg weekend hitting my sweet jump, and laying around in the hammock.


It's supposed to snow tonight...

Fancy meeting you here.

Dying
Originally uploaded by lady grey cupcake

Today I've had three cups of coffee. It feels like it's been overcast and raining for weeks (months), there was a brief reprieve yesterday afternoon and it might clear up by Saturday only to turn gray and cold by Monday. I think I deserve my three cups of coffee. It was even gray and chilly while Cynthia and Leland were here which made us cancel our trip to Chimney Rock and spend most of the time in coffee shops and puttering around the house. On one of the only sunny days George managed to talk them into helping dig up our garden space, which is pretty much just solid clay, and then into getting a load of compost and shoveling it off the truck. (The convincing wasn't all that hard - someone in the group is mere weeks away from being a Harvard-educated landscape architect.) The morning before we shipped them off back to Cambridge we dyed some Easter eggs. It was pointed out to us that all the eggs we had for dying were brown, not white. We decided to dye them anyway and, as you can see over at Flickr, they turned out surprisingly well. I think if we'd been prepared with more rubber bands and a little more of a strategy they all would have been incredible.

There's only one more piece of furniture to move in and the house will be fully functional. Unfortunately it's the biggest, heaviest table IN THE WORLD and I'm too short to be of any use moving it. OH! I lied! There's another piece of furniture: a bed frame! Asheville craigslist finally came through for us and Saturday we'll go pick it up and (assuming the mattress is dry from the thorough bleaching it's going to get - mold, again) then we'll sleep on a real bed like real people. When you get down to it (or up off it) it's not the sleeping on the floor that I don't like, it's that sweeping the room is a huge pain and seriously, how great is it going to be to have space to store things under the bed? Wicked great.

We told you about the biofuels grant, right? Our blogging has been so scattered and inconsistent I can't remember. George and our friend James have applied for grant to start a biofuel refinery in Vermont. Word on the street is that they're one of three finalists and hopefully will find out if they got it or not late next week!

Meanwhile, my sweet job at the cake shop is totally sweet. Not only literally, but in that hip slangy way too. Jodi and I joke about how it seems I was thrown in the deep end - handed a recipe, talked through it, and left with the mixer. While it may have been a little jolting (my last job I spent a week, literally - a week, standing and watching someone before I was allowed to do it myself, and even then, supervised) it turns out: I know how to bake. I can confidently use my judgment and experience. One of the best parts is that Jodi trusts me and when time allows would rather I sort of figure it out for myself. (Because either a) she's pretty sure I'll get it or b) she's confident that it'll turn out at least acceptably, which is fine because she has at least one million other things to take care of) Regardless: my job rules and I'm going to kick ass at it. Honestly, there have been a couple little stumbling points for me, but I think they're being ironed out. The most important thing to remember: cake can smell your fear. It's not even a joke, if you don't assert yourself as the alpha that cake will dominate you.

Be bold little bakers.