I come today, bearing a wonderful gift: My Birthday Cake. This is the cake that my mom has made for most of my birthdays over the last 31 years. I am still trying to perfect the execution, but I'm getting better every time. LOL.
Doesn't it look tasty?
This cake is made with Pistachio Pudding! It's also kind of a weird green color, but trust me: It's delicious.
Here we go...
The ingredients:
1 white or yellow cake mix 1 pkg pistachio pudding mix 4 large eggs (I only had jumbo, but that's just fine) 1/2c orange juice (no pulp please) 1/4c water 1/2c vegetable oil 3/4c chocolate syrup powdered sugar (or, if you don't have any like me, use chocolate frosting)
Combine the first 6 ingredients and mix well (I used my hand mixer for a couple minutes).
Then pour 1/2 - 2/3 of the batter into a prepared bundt pan.
Take the chocolate syrup and mix it into the remaining batter
And pour it on top of the original batter. Don't mix it! Let the magic happen on its own.
Place in a 325 degree oven and bake for 45 - 50 minutes. When a toothpic comes out clean, let it cool in the pan, on the counter for an hour. Then you can turn it out.
When it's completely cool, dust with the powdered sugar. That's the traditional way. But since I didn't have any in the house, I took some frosting that's been in my fridge for about 2 months and melted it down. I drizzed about a 1/4c of chocolate frosting on top.
When you cut it open, you see the magic:
Truth be told, I was impatient and cut into the cake while it was slightly warm, so it was a bit crumbly. It's best if you make this early in the day so it's nice and cool by the time dessert rolls around. lol.
Sorry it's been so long since I've updated. I don't have a desktop PC right now and typing on this little Acer is not the easiest when I've got acrylic nails. LOL. Let's just say the "Backspace" key is my best friend right now. LOL
Work has been going well...if you don't count all the stupid mistakes I've been making. In the grand scheme of things, it's not a whole lot and I've only really made one major screw up, but I still feel dumb because of it. I honestly was wondering yesterday if I made the right decision to go back. I know I haven't done storage in a year and a half and I should give myself a break, but I can't help but beat myself up. I used to be an awesome manager and really knew my stuff, but now I feel like such a newbie and I hate it. I know I'll get past it, but until that happens, I'm going to continue feeling this way.
I did make the decision to stop being so damn cocky, though. LOL. Obviously it's not working to my advantage. I also brought home some homework to help retrain my brain and memorize scripts and policies. Hopefully it works because I am not having fun being babysat at work.
In other news, I got the bright idea to become a nurse or medical assistant of some kind. Of course, this means school and I hate school. Maybe dental assisting. That's something I can just go for without GE college classes, right? I dunno. I think I just want an excuse to wear scrubs everyday. LOL. I'm gonna wait to figure that out until I get my own store. I can't handle school with all this commuting going on right now.
I turn 31 in 12 days and have no children, not husband/boyfriend/partner. This is not where my life is supposed to be. I really feel my youth slip away and my chances of having my own children getting slimmer and slimmer. I know, I know, I'm just feeling sorry for myself, but that's OK, because if I didn't, no one would. Ok, OK, I'll stop. LOL It's just that having kids is very important to me and I'm just losing confidence in ever having any. I am trying to just take things day by day and see where life takes me and hope and pray I'm headed toward a husband and family. ;o)
Anyway...I'm headed out to the A's/Mariner's game tonight with my friend Daphne. She had a spare ticket and asked if I wanted it. Woohoo! My first baseball game of the season. I'm super excited! Of course I'm a SF Giants girl, but I'll root for the A's if I'm at their game. LOL. Just don't ever ask me to root for the Yankees! haha!
Ooh! And I went to the most awesome concert last week! I saw 30 Seconds to Mars at the Fox Theater in Oakland with my friends Amy and Rania. I thought Blue October and NKOTB put on good shows, but this was flippin awesome! I love Jared Leto. At one point I was just 8 feet from him. OMG, he is such a beautiful man!
It was during this part that I was so close...about 5 feet or so behind the person who taped this. If you have time, go through the rest of the videos posted from them. Awesomeness!!
The next show I'm going to with Amy is to see Stix at the Concord Pavillion next week. Not one of my faves, but it's an excuse to hang out with Amy. She's been a good friend and is one of the mothers to my 3 year old twin nieces. Amy's so funny at concerts. She's got cerebral palsy and is in a chair and totally uses it to her advantage to get great seating and special treatment. Plus she's a total flirt and cons stuff out of people. LOL.
Well, that's about it for now...I'll try not to stay away for so long next time. ;o)
My birthday weekend went pretty well, I have to say. ;o)
Friday night, after Jenn got off work, we headed up the street to the Contra Costa County fair. I forgot my phone at home, so I wasn't able to Twitter about all the awesome trashiness we witnessed. LOL. First, not 2 minutes after we walked in, we saw Jenn's ex who now looks super scary (too much sun, gained weight, had a front tooth rot out of her head, probably is doing drugs now). She came up to us and said hi and acted as though there hasn't been a year since we've spoken. Weird. There was also the hugest police presence I've ever seen anywhere in my life. Seriously - you couldn't walk more than 40 or 50 feet without seeing a group of 3 or more Antioch cops or county Sheriffs. It was weird. For dinner, we had foot-long corndogs. They were so freakin obscene, but damn tasty. There were only 2 beer booths, too! Ghetto! OH!!! And they had a shark display - a 10x30 foot tank with 3 sharks in it. It was really quite sad, to be honest. There was also a live Giant Snake booth and a live Monkey booth, both of which you had to pay $1 to get in and see what they were hiding. I chose not to encourage either of those things. There was the usual fair stuff, though - the Midway games, ferris wheels, and other rides, the livestock, the craft rooms (where we saw some AMAZING quilts!! I'm gonna have to start one now and get myself entered for next year!! lol), and the live band. The band was a general rock cover band who had a second singer that was a Tom Petty impersonator. Ooh! And we got a funnel cake! I definitely got my $8 admission's worth of entertainment at the fair.
Saturday was my actual birthday. I tried to sleep in, but was up at 9am anyway. LOL. I laid around and fell back asleep until a little past 11am. I just hung out on the computer and waited for Jenn to get off work at 4. I did wake up with a migraine, so I worried that I was going to implode. Once that passed (it was completely gone around 3pm), I got up and started getting ready to go out. When Jenn was off work, she changed and we headed out to The Outback Steakhouse for dinner. I got my usual Ribeye (medium rare!!) with the mushroom & lobster sauce. I ate my fill, then took the other half home to have for lunch (which I did today. LOL). Once we got home, we laid around for a bit, letting ourselves digest and preparing to head out of the house. LOL. Once it was late enough, we headed out to Pleasant Hill BART to pick up who was coming in for the weekend, then got to Shauna & Cole's house to grab everyone and head to Masse's (a pool hall/bar). Of course there was much drinking, a bit of food, and some pool playing. We had a good time. Everyone laughed and carried on. Cole invited his now former boss to come hang out with us as Travis had just been let go from his job and could use an excuse to hang out and party. We shut the bar down. LOL. Travis drove us all home (in 2 shifts), where we hung out and were up until about 4am. Surprisingly, I didn't wake up with a hangover, but I did remember that at some point during the night (at the bar, not at home), I humped Angel's leg. LOL. Oops. ;o)
So Sunday was pretty lazy. Jenn was kind of ambitious and ran out for donuts before everyone else was up. At around 2, we finally got our acts together and the 5 of us (me, jenn, shauna, cole, and angel) headed out for club sandwiches and a beer at the bar around the corner (which were disappointing!), then went to get frozen yogurt. Yumm!! After that, it was pretty much time to get Angel back to Amtrak so he could get back home, and so I could get home to change so I could get to work. Work ran late last night as we had to change the ENTIRE store, plus a couple people had to leave early and there were a couple no-shows. I didn't get out of there until about 1:45am. But it was a fun atmosphere, so it didn't really seem like we were there that long.
I had a really great birthday weekend. It definitely wasn't what I had planned out a month or more ago, but I'm happy with the way things turned out. Sometimes smaller is better!
Thank you to everyone who sent me birthday wishes!! So far my 30's are awesome. Hopefully they will continue to be that way. LOL.
So my birthday is in 3.5 months (May 30th). It's my 30th birthday. That's kind of a big deal, I suppose. I won't actually be here in town for my birthday as I will be in Oregon with my good friend helping her with her brand new baby (she's due May 27th). I decided I'm going to celebrate my birthday in the middle of May with my friends here in town, I just don't know what I want to do.
Earlier today, I had the brilliant idea of having a wine party at some point at our house since we have about a dozen bottles of wine stacking up on our rack. With that we could do fondue. But I'm not sure I want to do that for my birthday, maybe just a random Saturday evening at any time. Shauna's doing bowling for her birthday next week, so I'm not sure if I want to duplicate that.
So I need suggestions. I have no clue what to do. For a long time I was dreading the big 3-0, then I welcomed it, and now, since I won't be home for my actual birthday, I'm kind of feeling very blase about it.
Hmm...Maybe we can do Dave & Busters in Milpitas and rent hotel rooms to stay the night so no one drives home drunk.
I'm a recently-turned-30-something-who's-starting-life-over-and-has-no-idea-where-I'm-going-or-what-I'm-doing. This blog has changed its purpose several times in the year or so since I've started it, but it's all just the journey of my life. I don't know where the journey's taking me, but it's an interesting ride.
