Well, kinda:
Sorry about the censorship; I’ve picked up a half-assed stalker or two over the years. ?
Now, my project done for the day, it’s time to kick back with a cocktail and read while the mister watches the Masters. I’ve just started “Housekeeping” by Marilynne Robinson. Maybe I’ll pick up a few tips. You?
Open thread!
PaulW
(stalks Betty Cracker)
AHA! I FOUND YOU!
NOW MAKE ME A ROGUE ONE BIRTHDAY CAKE!!!!! NOW!!!!
Elmo
I need to stop getting all my stuff online. I just spent the whole day breaking down boxes and organizing them for recycle, and I’m not done – there are still boxes in the garage.
It’s possible that I’ve let this go too long.
Bg
#BetterthanPublix
Steeplejack
Yeah, you nailed it, Betty! Anybody complains, give ’em a smack in the puss.
Jim Parish
I haven’t read “Housekeeping” yet (though it is on my shelves), but “Gilead” is brilliant and “Home” almost as much so.
schrodingers_cat
Nice! You has a talent. I thought it was going to be in Shrek’s shape! You should bake your sis a birthday cake with her in the roach costume. That was your best post evah.
Major Major Major Major
Greetings from Guangzhou.
Sure is 5am and humid.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: Are you going to blog about your trip?
Betty Cracker
@Jim Parish: Loved “Gilead.” Got “Home” on the list.
@schrodingers_cat: That’s a great idea! She’d laugh her ass off!
Steeplejack
@Elmo:
LOL, I have that same problem. There’s always at least one box where I cringe: “Jeez, I still have the box for that?!”
One excuse: there is a small part of me that always pipes up with: “You should save this box for when you send something to someone else.” Yeah, right, which I never ever do.
Shell
Looks great. And you didn’t have to use too much green icing.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: I could. I don’t know that I’ll have much to say. I’ve never been good at travel writing. But pictures and stuff, yes!
Iowa Old Lady
@Elmo: So far, we’ve loaded up my car three times with collapsed boxes and taken them to the recycling center, and we are not done. I don’t want to think about the plastic peanuts and bubble wrap Mr IOL has accumulated.
Iowa Old Lady
Nice cake. I want some. Instead I am drinking wine, which is also nice.
efgoldman
Wicked good, Betty.
Reminds me of the Oscar the Grouch cake mrs efg made for daughter’s third or fourth birthday. But she actually made it in Oscar/trash can shape.
As I recall, getting the trash can the right shade of grey was hard.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: Tell us about what you are eating and seeing. Lots of pictures. I has a jealous.
ArchTeryx
I was going to say, don’t worry about ending up on Cake Wrecks. They only “lowlight” the oopsies of professional bakers. Amateurs by definition are learning, so they are never classified as “wrecks”.
(Though extremely talented, skilled amateurs do sometimes get highlighted in Sunday Sweets, which is always worth checking out! Some people are just amazing cake decorators. Most of us can only aspire to those heights).
efgoldman
@Iowa Old Lady:
Bubble wrap is at least fun to play with, if you’re four years old. Or feel as if you are.
Olivia
Wow! Good job!
schrodingers_cat
@Iowa Old Lady: They are good for putting in big planters that you don’t want to be too heavy to move.
Elmo
@Iowa Old Lady: I bought my wife a new minivan Wednesday to replace the old pickup truck. Loaded the minivan floor to roof with flat cardboard, and there are easily five loads left.
I order *everything* online, including canned goods and other nonperishables. Also the liquor store insist on giving me my purchases in a wine case box – those are hard to break down!
JPL
@Betty Cracker: She is such an excellent writer, and I really enjoyed Gilead.
The cake is lovely. Do you bake pies, also?
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: so far it looks like an airport lounge with a broken coffee machine and the Las Vegas stock show on the tv.
Elmo
@schrodingers_cat: I know that trick!
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: When my brother was little, he is six years younger than I am. I would dress him up as a princess and then we (my neighbors and I) would “abduct” him and then rescue him, make up elaborate stories. My mom had no idea.
Steeplejack (phone)
@efgoldman:
Yes, gray cake icing is an underappreciated art.
Iowa Old Lady
@Elmo: OMG, you win.
I hadn’t thought about the using the peanuts in planters. We don’t get many of them any more. And really we don’t get fun popping bubble wrap. It’s all the bigger air pockets which don’t make a satisfying noise when you pinch them.
Aleta
That’s the cutest Shriek I”ve ever seen.
ETA Yesterday spell check was completely quiet and I thought it was leaving me alone now. Today it’s changing
things for no reason at all. Mysterious.
Betty Cracker
@JPL: I do occasionally bake a pie, but hubby is really the baker in the family.
donnah
Nicely done, Betty! It’s adorable.
I was out of town for my birthday in March, so my family celebrated today. My oldest son got me hand sanitizer called “Cleaner than Shit” and a cute pair of socks that shows a girl holding a cat and it says, “my cat is cool as f*ck”.
And a raspberry swirl birthday cake with buttercream frosting. It’s no Shrek, but it was really good.
Villago Delenda Est
Whoa, Ms. Cracker! You’ve got some Crocker in you, it seems! Nice job!
FlyingToaster
Lovely cake. No, you don’t need to bake me one, I can’t afford the calories.
We just survived the second WarriorGirl performance in a week; last Sunday was her Suzuki violin book graduation, and today was her spring recital. One repeated weird-ass bowing (look, the piece is complicated enough, and then she decides to add pairs of slurs for no good reason whatsoever), but sounded fine. And at group class this morning, they announced the group piece for May, and worked extensively on it. Bach Minuet in G, as arranged for violins, with the book 3 kids playing the B-flat minor add-in (blame Shinichi Suzuki, we all do).
No performances for 6 weeks! Then two more in a week. Oh well.
Aleta
@Major Major Major Major: Do you get to spend the night?
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
Cake looks great.
@Major Major Major Major:
Yes please on the pics, stay safe and enjoy your trip.
JPL
@donnah: Happy Belated Birthday!
JPL
@Major Major Major Major: What an amazing journey you have planned, Enjoy!
Major Major Major Major
@Aleta: nope, two hours until wheels up to Bangkok.
Aleta
@Betty Cracker: Drop dead gorgeous peach pie. And yet “No comments.” Weird
hovercraft
Has anyone seen Love Is A Many Splendid Thing, starring Jennifer Jones, William Holden and Torin Thatcher? It’s on PBS tonight, and I might watch it. Thoughts?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this cracked me up
Hungry Joe
Bill Forsythe’s movie adaptation of “Housekeeping,” with Christine Lahti, is beautiful, low-key, sad, funny, offbeat, unforgettable. I saw it when it came out 30 years ago and I still have complete scenes in my head.
Mary G
@Elmo: I was an enthusiastic and early adopter of online shopping, which is God’s gift to the disabled. I joined Amazon so early that my first user name was actually MaryG. I still wish I had obeyed my instincts and bought some stock when they went public. I know they are a major abuser of their labor force, which I email them about all the time, but still, I remember when Christmas shopping was a nightmare and now it’s fun.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@hovercraft: Right, pics or it didn’t happen.
JPL
@Aleta: I was drooling and I can’t believe I didn’t remember when she first posted it.
JPL
@hovercraft: You should watch it and see. I saw it a few times on TV, but that was the late sixties, early seventies. It was a favorite of mine, and according to my TV listings, it’s not on here.
I was in my teens so at that age you view things differently.
efgoldman
@FlyingToaster:
If she stays with it thru high school, and she’s good, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Elmo
@Mary G: My disabled wife wholeheartedly agrees with you.
hovercraft
@JPL:
One of the benefits of living in metro NY is that I have 4 PBS stations, NJ, Long Island, NY and Connecticut, so apart from regular stuff like Masterpiece, I usually have four options. Thanks.
FlyingToaster
@efgoldman: I remember my own HS career, thanks. 38 years past and not nearly long enough.
Her teacher asked WarriorGirl to join the touring group, which she declined before I had to exercise my veto. Between school, violin, swimming, and the new item for next year (aikido — HerrDoktor won’t let her date without a martial art — I won’t let her go to HS without it), a touring group is SO NOT HAPPENING.
Yes, I was shouting. Certain unnamed Suzuki teachers need to listen (not her teacher, two of the others).
SiubhanDuinne
@ArchTeryx:
Have you ever seen this amazing video of decorating a cookie to look like Hungarian lace and embroidery? Simply astonishing and beautiful.
Raven
@hovercraft: Interesting movie and I’ve always liked the theme song. I’m sure some people won’t like the fact that Jennifer Jones plays a Eurasian woman.
Raven
@FlyingToaster: I was at a conference this week where they showed a toaster with a camera on it that made selfie toast!
SiubhanDuinne
Betty, that cake looks wonderful!
Jerry
Speaking of reading, if you are looking for some good sci-fi, you can do no worse than Cixin Liu’s “Three-Body Problem” trilogy. This sweeping epic will knock your socks off. I finished the series just before Christmas and I am just now able to read something else without my mind drifting back to these books.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Aleta:
That link is to the picture that goes with the post. Click on the “Back to Turkeys, Turtles and Pies” and it’ll take you to the post, which has 223 comments.
Raven
Selfie toaster
http://www.hammacher.com/Product/87141
Betty Cracker
@Raven: OMFG!
FlyingToaster
@Raven: Jeebus! Though I’m likely to tape a small picture of the flying toaster with the hula-hoop over the camera lens and make THAT toast ?. Though in my search for a toaster emoji (none ☹️), I found an emoji toaster: From the AV Club.
Lurking Canadian
That ‘s a great cake. I can make baked goods that taste good, but they never look like much.
I got to play the season’s first golf today. I did not miraculously get good over the winter, which is kind of a shame, but I don’t seem to have gotten any worse, either.
Since I am expecting some very bad news Monday that is likely to send me into blackest depression of unknown duration, it might also be the last golf of the season, so it’s good I got to play at least once.
ThresherK
@efgoldman: We have had some items shipped to our place with biodegradable packing peanuts, and our cats have discovered that they’re almost food-like.
They are starch, which melts when wet. But it’s still weird to see them eat one.
PS Betty: Good looking cake. I have no decoration skills myself and am a bit jealous of those who do.
zhena gogolia
@hovercraft:
It’s enjoyable. William Holden is always worth watching. It wouldn’t pass current casting standards (a white woman plays a part-Asian woman, or as they say in a scandalous whisper all through the film, “Eurasian”), but it’s a fine tearjerker.
Shana
Hubby and I are cleaning the house, moving Passover dishes up from the basement, clearing out the stuff that has accumulated in the living and dining room recently as our projects for today. I made one of my main dishes today, lamb with honey. Tomorrow it’s a last trip to the grocery, move stuff from the kitchen fridge to the basement fridge, make chicken fricassee with meatballs, clean the fridge, polish the silver, try to remember what I’ve forgotten. Typical pre-Passover, thankfully on a weekend this year.
JGabriel
Betty Cracker @ Top:
Let us know how it is when you’re done. I like the movie, but haven’t read the book yet.
Hungry Joe
@Jerry: I got about 50 pages into the first book and gave up. The prose was flat (probably a translation problem), but the characters were, too, and the story was taking too long to kick in.
Betty Cracker
@Lurking Canadian: Yikes! Hope the news is better than you expect. Let us know if there’s anything we can do.
JGabriel
@Steeplejack (phone):
But a necessity for Death Star cakes.
MomSense
Shrek cake is great!
JGabriel
@Raven:
I do not want a Selfie Toaster. I do not want to eat my face.
This is why I’m a Democrat, and not a member of the Leopard’s Eating People’s Faces Party.
Major Major Major Major
@JGabriel: wouldn’t that only be a problem if you were a leopard-person?
efgoldman
@JGabriel:
I think that’s one of those appliance dustbin of history things, along with the web-enabled refrigerator
MomSense
@Lurking Canadian:
I don’t like the sound of that bad news. Please let us know if we can help.
Denali
@Lurking Canadian,
Trite but – plan for the worst, expect the best.
rikyrah
Good cake?
debbie
@Jim Parish:
Her newest (as in 2014), Lila, was very good also.
debbie
@hovercraft:
Sure it’s good. It’s got William Holden.
danielx
@JGabriel:
Perhaps it should be identified as the Face-Eating Monkeys Party, so as to eliminate ambiguities.
debbie
@JGabriel:
It’s no longer available, but I would have loved to get one for my Trumpster family members so they could eat their hero every morning.
debbie
Betty, the detail on the vest tie is a nice touch.
Obdurodon
If this place had a “like” button I’d be mashing it. Well done, Betty.
Lurking Canadian
@MomSense: You all have my thanks for your kind words.
PaulW
@Bg:
BLASPHEME.
Jean
@Hungry Joe: yes! The movie also followed the book quite nicely. I loved both.
satby
@Lurking Canadian: I hope the news isn’t as bad as you expect. And come back and let us know how we can support you if it is.
dnfree
@Jim Parish: I was going to recommend the series that starts with “Gilead” also. “Gilead” was my favorite, “Home” was okay, but the one that just came out, “Lila”, was stunning. If you liked the first two and haven’t read “Lila”, waste no time.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
I used to be able to move my hands with the skill that requires (not doing that though!) but no more. Day by day the tremors get just a little worse. That cookie would look like a drunk trying to draw a mobius strip and that would only be the first line.
Ramalama
@Hungry Joe: I feel the same way about this movie. I watched it numerous times way back. It was so different and moving and good. And the movie stands up nicely to the book (I liked them both a lot).