For my birthday
Dec. 6th, 2010 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdymonkeyThe first email of the day (at home) was from a complete stranger who is either illiterate, for whom English is not her first language, or who was deliberately pushing my buttons by writing in Engrish. (It was 6:10 AM. On my birthday. I have friends that evil. I'm allowed to be paranoid.) The writer "wanna make junihitoe." This is not the sort of email one should ever have to read when barely awake. I sent her a brief, polite, "Here, check out these links," note later in the day. All you junihitoe pattern are belong to us.
The first birthday greeting of the day was from JAF, to whom it had only just occurred to ask for an explanation as to why he knows me as "Makiwara" (still my handle over on the Tousando) and why nobody else seemed to know who he was addressing at the GWW sake tasting. The IM exchange was, considering my lack-of-awakeness at that hour, rather, OK, I'm gonna say it. Cute.
Got a lot of notes over on FB, and a phone call from my Mom, Dad having called me last night to tell me Wolf Hall is in the mail. Mom used to be appalled when he'd wrap up a book he'd recently read and give it to me for my birthday or Christmas, on the grounds he was being cheap. OK, maybe it is cheap, but it's also, "I read this, I think you'd like it." In most cases I usually do, though Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is one recent exception. I just couldn't get into it. So I started doing it back. Reminds me, should have a look at the paperback pile and pick something to send him. Hmm, maybe the Murakami. The Windup Bird Chronicle was pretty out there.
Fellow Birthday Boy Dave Brubeck turns a swingin' 95 today.
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no subject
Date: 2010-12-07 04:38 am (UTC)(wow I typed like a drunken cat)
HPYBTHDY2U!!!!!!
Date: 2010-12-07 05:48 am (UTC)(I hadn't forgotten, this is the first time I've had a chance to be near a computer all day.)
no subject
Date: 2010-12-07 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-07 01:36 pm (UTC)I was going to post a comment the last time it came up, but I got distracted and forgot.
I like Red Velvet cake/cupcakes because:
(1) They're usually moist and tender (in recent years I've had better luck with Red Velvet than with Devil's Food in that respect);
(2) The "canonical" frosting is cream cheese, not buttercream or <blech> whipped cream;
(3) Unlike most other types of cupcakes, which get a ziggurat of icky frosting on top, Red Velvet cupcakes usually get a relatively thin layer of cream cheese frosting, sprinkled with chopped walnuts (or sometimes cake crumbs);
(4) They're pretty :-)
We make them at home, using a gluten-free recipe that works well for us. I'll admit that the red food coloring is kinda scary; it is worth noting that for a while we used a recipe that called for puréed beets, which did give a lovely burgundy color, but also a bit of a veggie "foretaste". (Maybe we should revisit that one and see whether it's still a problem....)
no subject
Date: 2010-12-07 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-07 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-07 04:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-07 09:35 pm (UTC)Take 5... Dave on piano... with Paul Desmond on alto sax!
Date: 2010-12-08 04:19 pm (UTC)