A rainbow of color June 27, 2010

About a week ago, I could not decide what color to paint my nails.  I have too many colors and I just could not decide.  So a friend told me to line up all my nail polishes and take a picture.  He could help me decide what color to go with.

I think this is 24, but I missed a little bottle in my round-up

He ended up picking the sparkly purple on, third from the right.

Since then, I got 2 new colors.. a pretty dark navy color and a shimmery sort of pink.  It was after another friend saw this color was that it was noticed how many shades of pink I have.  Turns out, half of my nail-polishes are pink!

Guess this means I need to take another shot.

And set them so that every other color is pink.

We shall see. 😉

Cupcake socks

On Wednesday, May 26th, I finally finished the class portion of my pastry certification.  Since then, I have been doing unpaid apprenticeship hours at a local cakery.  For those of you who have been following my tweets, you will notice in an increase of my mentioning separating eggs and frosting cakes so much I’ve developed a callus on my right index finger.

But, what I wanted to show you all was how… despite my feeling that that month wasted on that final class was all for nothing, I was able to redeem it all with one good deed.

You see, I spend a lot of time on an irc chat server for an adult shared interests community site.  And on there, there is another lovely lady who has just begun her studies in Restaurant management.  With similar fields of study, we talk constantly about our daily things.  Who else could be excited for you when you say that you were able to slice something so beautifully that your instructor cried?  (OK, that isn’t what we talk about.. but you get my point!)  So when she was having difficulty constructing an HACCP  flow chart on how to properly handle every ingredient in a chicken salad, in my brain.. I could already visualize what it was that she needed.

The thing was, she had spent her whole afternoon perfecting it but could not figure out how to place the final 3 bubbles on the chart as she had to get 10 bubbles to join into one and then flow down into the other two stages.  At the time she told me of her problem, I was chatting through my blackberry and she could not forward me the PowerPoint presentation for me to see what she was having issues with.  But I promised her I’d help her when I got home.  Good on my word, I saw the slide and knew how to fix it.

HOW?

Because I had just spend the entire month learning how to design arrows, autoshapes and how to color it all together and separately for the past month!  As much as I laughed about how it was pre-school but on Microsoft Office, I knew that if I was able to successfully arrange the flowchart to her liking, than that month of my life was redeemed.

Half an hour later (it only took that long because I’m a perfectionist and I had to be sure every arrow was evenly spaced), the flow chart was complete and my friend was sobbing in relief.

“Name what you want!  Anything!”

“No, no.  I was glad to help.”  I told her.

“No!  I need to give you a gift!  Create an altar in your honor!”

“But really!  I just wanted to help.”  I assured her.

“You like socks! Give me your address. I’m sending you socks.”

How could *I* of all people, say no to socks?!

Well, I didn’t say no and about a week later, I had my socks on my feet with a heartfelt thank you.

Ahhh the greatness of helping fellow cooks and bakers.

The munchkin’s prom weekend.. Day 3

After a day of rain, the final day saw us having breakfast and taking some sun.  My mother said she did not want to go back to work looking paler than she was originally.  I, however, had enough sun and wanted to enjoy the air conditioning while we still had it.  Then after checking out, we still lounged at the pool and hotel until we grew bored.  I had already finished the 10th Sookie Stackhouse book and had moved on to the third Percy Jackson book.

See, the munchkin got plenty of sun.

Since we had spent the past few days being tourists at the hotel, we kept the streak going and visited the Rincon Lighthouse.

So we did what any good tourist does and posed in front of it!

Then we continued the random photo shoot with lots of thoughtful and lovely shots of each of us in turn…

But… dern, don’t we all have great skin? lol

THE END!

The munchkin’s prom weekend… Day 2

Yes, I know.. the last post was a picture packed entry about just the Friday of Memorial Day weekend that we spent at the fine hotel for my lil bro’s prom weekend.  But we did so much.. I didn’t want to overload everyone with just one post.  I mean, I would have to cut back on the commentary and just show pictures… and who would want me to do that?

Anyway, Day 2 had us sleeping in until just enough time to get ourselves dressed and downstairs for the breakfast buffet.  I’m rather surprised that we don’t have a picture of it.  I believe it may have just been a matter of my mom having the camera in her purse and not me… because if not, there would be so many more shots of our food than of ourselves.

The most notable thing about this Saturday in paradise was how much it rained.

Not like it stopped us from having our fun.

Well... some of us could still have fun

Mom hid out in the hotel room… but the sun would intermittently come out.

Mom caught up playing in the sunshine from her view on the balcony of our room.

After enough sun, we went back to the room to chill out and rest.  Before going to the hotel the day before, we stopped at Borders and picked up the newest Sookie Stackhouse books, Dead in the Family, and I was trying to read it every chance that I got.

Talk about focus and interest!

That evening was supposed to be an all-white beach party.  Everyone was supposed to dress only in white and enjoy the surf and the breeze for the rest of the evening.  But the weather did not behave and after dinner, the event was relocated to an indoor bar.  Mom and I decided that we would skip this event, feeling no need to get soaked in white clothing and let our goblin have his fun.  Still, after eating, we ventured out to where the party should have been.

I don't think any of the pictures appropriately captured how stormy it was.

So this evening was one spent reading and going to sleep early.  The bombshell needed her beauty rest because everyone knows that sharing a bed is really bothersome and the key is to fall asleep first and have everyone accommodate themselves around you.

{To see the third and final day, click here}

The munckin’s prom weekend.. day 1

So, I’m about a month behind on all this… but I posted about my lil bro’s graduation here.   Well, because my lil bro goes to the local Catholic private school, and apparently that makes everyone there snobby, for a graduation prom event weekend, we went to Rincon to stay at a lovely beach-side hotel.

He got a neat gift bag waiting in the hotel room... and he wanted to use up the free wireless more than do anything else when we arrived.

Mom was very happy to find the balcony for our hotel room and often enjoyed the pleasant breezes coming in off the ocean.

We did eventually venture out into the sunlight after we changed into our bathing suits and wanted to explore our surroundings.

There was a weather front passing through for the weekend so we knew we had to take advantage of every moment of sunshine.

And since we arrived nice and early for check-in and the dinner and dance event wasn’t until later at night, we got some time to soak in the water and soak in the sun.

Yes, that cute little two piece is my bathing suit.. and that was me dipping my toes to see if the water was too cold. It wasn't, so I kept going on in.

We’ll fast forward this though to about…. 3 hours later and a solid hour of primping.

We make this look good.

While everyone arrived and people were settling in for the prom.. the room was distinctly divided by the girls in their colorful short dresses and the boys in their button shirts and ties, my mom and I snuck out to the pool bar for some liquid patience.

I had a Green Flash, which was the name of the pool bar. It's a vodka drink with blue curacao, peach schnapps and sour apple.

Mom had a classic margarita... which seems to be her drink of choice whenever we go out.

Once we got back inside.. the event began in earnest.

We had to endure while the parents patted themselves on all their hard work to make the graduation and prom a success, and then there was a little award ceremony where they gave this little trophy to every grad.  With the trophy, they sort of gave each of them a title as to what made them distinctive.  This was easily done given there were only about 40 grads in this 8th grade class but when they started with titles, my mom and I looked at one another with dread and alarm.

What could they POSSIBLY have to say about our lil goblin?

He wasn’t a joiner.

He only got into the school 2 years ago.

We wondered if they even know who he was.

Mom and I started tossing out ideas what title he would end up with…

“Most likely to forget to arrive for his own death”

“Invisible child”

“Honorable mention”

“Most likely to be the next unibomber” (this was my mom’s suggestion, btw)

After a lot of laughing, we decided that with our luck, he was going to be the one child that didn’t get a little trophy.  So we waited anxiously to see if they would call him up and silently dreaded the possibility that he wouldn’t be called at all.

We were wrong... he was titled the "artistic" grad

My mom and I looked at one another stunned.  Where could they have possibly have gotten that title for him?

True, he was the only one with a hat that night… making him look very eclectic.

But I decided that when they sat down to make the titles, it went something like this:

“Jeremy E.”

“Who is that?”

“He’s in the graduating class?”

“Yeah!  You know him!”

“The chubby one with glasses?”

“Yeah!  You know!  The one who draws in all the science week thingies.”

“Oh!  He’s the one that does the posters and stuff for competitions?”

“Artistic one he is!”

After eating and having to endure watching the milling 8th graders not dare to dance, I decided that 10:30pm was my cut-off time to go back to the hotel room.  There was free internet and my computer needed updating.  But as the camera was then passed on to my lil brother for the night, I got a good idea on what I missed out for the next 2-3 hours.

There were still the boys on one side

And the girls on another side...

Eventually they did join together to dance and limbo

I was told that our little goblin did dance.

If shuffling one inch to either side is dancing, my mom said.

And all the girls kept stealing his hat to wear it.

I’m the only one that makes it look good, he told me.

But in the end, he had a blast.

So I guess that is all that matters.

Even though I got frantic txts from my mom about how I ditched her.

{To read about the next day, click here}