For Tomorrow We Dine

on cake.

I spent forever on this and it's ok.  It's not great.  I think next year I should just donate plasma and then pay Lori to make her own cake.  She makes awesome cakes and then for her own birthday, she gets this.

The shiny part between "Birthday" and "Lori" should disappear - it's where I did some patching with warmed frosting.  I used a tool as a guide for the letters, but I pressed too hard and it pressed into the cake.  Though, sadly, to look at the letters, you might wonder if I really did use a guide.  But this was my first time piping small letters and one of my only times smoothing frosting, so I guess it's not all bad.  I know the cake is good, I used Lori's cake-smoother-majiggy.  It's a taught wire connected to two legs with rubber tips.  There's a handle and you hold the thing in place while you move the cake around underneath it on parchment paper and it slices off the top of the cake so that you get a flatter cake.  Which we ate with frosting.  Frosting Lori made herself.

I probably spent almost 2 hours on it.  And this is why I don't like trying new stuff because I'm a perfectionist and this isn't perfect.  But it's still a labor of love and did I mention it's going to taste great?

Happy Birthday, babe.  I love you.

6/25/99 - 9:19 a.m.

Ten years ago tomorrow.  Wow.  That's one old email.

So back in June of 1999, one of us sent the other an email.  We were still dating and who even remembers what it was about.  Well, that email has gone back and forth since then for 10 years.  There's been gaps (she had written to me in October and I didn't respond until today because it was lost in my inbox) and near losses (I made the people at Warner Bros. retrieve it from my inbox there after I got laid off).  Times like tonight the long gap meant there wasn't a lot still left to reply to, but still, we've sent the email back and forth for nearly 10 years.  (We delete the non-relevant pieces, but we've kept the last few dates of responses at the top.)

So by my count since we started that email we've gotten married, had two children, gained two cats, lost two cats, adopted and later gave up one dog, purchased two homes, lived in 5 apartments (two simultaneously before we were married), had countless jobs, owned at least three cars.  Weird.

Years ago I had planned to purchase a new computer as a gift to Lori on the anniversary of the email, but that never happened.  (Sorry, Lori, maybe next year.)

another twenty5

-=reposted from facebook=-

I keep getting tagged! I must owe like 100 more things now. But seriously, who wants to see things like:

67. Apparently, I don't like closing doors all the way and often leave most doors unlatched.

97. I believe with enough money and enough smart people willing to hear me out and then tell others what I've told them, I could orchestrate putting someone in the White House in 20 or 40 years.

Since I'm sure no one does, let's mix it up a bit.

25 reasons why I love my wife. (In no particular order.)

1. She's really smart, but doesn't flaunt it.

2. She's much wiser and smarter than me, but doesn't make me feel dumb.

3. She takes the kids to story time every Friday, and lets me reserve books on her library card and goes and picks them up from the library for me.

4. She has a great sense of humor, and also gets mine.

5. This one's actually none of your business.

6. This one, either.

7. Together we've made some really fine looking kids.

8. Helps me to understand the holes in my logic when I go on a rant and demand change in this or that.

9. Doesn't complain even though I'm constantly signing her out of Facebook or Gmail so that I can sign-in myself.

10. She's more outgoing and social, which encourages and inspires me.

11. She bundles up the kids and they all come and bring me lunch at work every week.

12. She is really involved and engaged with the church we're currently attending.

13. She's endures a lot with far less complaining or whining than I would in many situation. I don't want to say she "suffers silently" but that she has a much larger comfort zone than me.

14. We have a single email that we've been sending back and forth (we delete a lot of stuff off of it) for almost 10 years.

15. She introduces me to TV shows that I end up liking that I would have never watched otherwise.

16. She's not afraid to try new things like changing her hair color just to see what it looks like.

17. If I take too long in doing something, she eventually does it herself, often without complaining. I don't do this on purpose, I just have a tendency to put stuff off.

18. She does all the household budgeting.

19. She's incredibly patient and forgiving. This must come as no surprise to anyone who knows me.

20. She's willing to drive a minivan (I think she said 3 years max).

21. She has not only brought me coffee from Starbucks, she's actually started drinking some herself.

22. She agrees with me that Dairy Queen Blizzards are an almost perfect food.

23. She's very clearly shown that she will not let anything come between her and her family.

24. She cheers me up when I'm down.

24. The way she lives her life is an example to me and causes me to strive to be a more Godly parent and spouse.

24. She gives great gifts.

24. She does a lot of housework and rarely mentions how much she misses having Leticia come every other week.

24. She gets along very well with my parents and actually wants them to move closer.

24. This one's also none of your business.

24. She is a great cook and cooks a lot and is always trying new recipes with great success.

24. She hasn't given up on her mom but has also allowed me to stay out of that picture.

24. She sacrifices a lot to stay at home with our children and to allow me to work at a non-profit, never doing "If only you had been able to stay at the studio... Imagine how much you'd be making now."

24. She reads parenting books and magazines and emails and forwards me stuff she finds interesting or pertinent or relevant, so that I can be more involved/educated even though I don't think I have the time to read the vast collection of work she does.

24. Her Sudoku skills astound me.

24. She's a great writer and copy editor. Things I used to think I was good at, I can't hold a candle to her skill in that arena.

24. She is a humongous Disney-fan.

24. She supports my need for familiarity / constant / routine / ritual / rut (restaurants, Blizzard flavor, hotel chain) but would also be supportive if I suddenly had a spontaneous streak.

24. She supports me in my life-long ban of bad companies like United Airlines and Sprint.

25. She's hot.

originally posted on facebook

Walking in the Wind

Lori and I talked last night. She expressed interest in participating in Cake2, but didn't want to wait until March. So we decided to go ahead and start today. I'm still hoping to get a few more people to join in. She had a few questions I need to clarify in the rules and spotted a few typos that I still need to correct.

Nevertheless, even though we laid in bed last night talking until midnight, I got up by 6 this morning and rode the exercise bike and walked before work. It was over 50 which was nice. It was windy when I started, but the wind died down pretty quickly. The sound through the 30-foot-tall evergreens was really amazing. And then I put on my headphones.