A wonderful Saturday

So first the "bad news" out of the way (just so you can view my wonderful Saturday in context) - my work is letting me go because my migraines are keeping me from being available during the hours they need me.  I'll keep working there till they find a replacement.  I learned this on Friday morning, took it remarkably well (haven't cried once), though Friday night I slept about 4 hours and the rest was laying awake in bed because I couldn't stop thinking about it.

So yesterday morning I got up at 7:30, did laundry and dishes, ate breakfast, did some chores.  Around 9 I tried to watch some stuff Joe was watching but I just wanted to get stuff done!  He was like "just sit down!" and I was like "not yet!!!!"

So I was busy doing house stuff till 11 or so, then Angela and I went to Safeway so I could grab some ingredients for Joe's birthday cake.  Then she came over, we had lunch, and we worked on the cake together!  There's a lot of ingredient prepping to do, and four separate things that make up the cake (four layers of cake, buttercream frosting, orange curd made as an ingredient for the frosting, and ganache).  It's messy and time consuming and uses up a lot of dishes.

Angela followed behind me with a dishcloth for when I spilled chocolate batter on the floor; she waited patiently for every mixing bowl and then handwashed it so I could use it again.  Probably the silliest thing was, I read the directions wrong and thought one particular mixture had to be in the electric mixing bowl, but it turned out it was a different bowl...and then I was wrong about that one too...we had to transfer it twice and Angela did all the transferring and re-washing!

She also did the ingredient prep so I could do laundry and stuff.  And it was just such a nice experience to get that much of the cake out of the way!



Baking question: Bekka, ugh, there are four layers to this cake, and the first two layers I baked probably 1 minute too long and they are a little dryer than I want them to be.  The next two layers I baked exactly the same way except maybe one minute less, and one came out PERFECT and one came out uncooked in the middle.  They were in the same oven.  They were cooked the same manner as the first two.  What the heck happened?  Is it my oven?  Is it the cake?  Is it me?  Is it chance?

The rest of the day

Angela left around 3.  I finished the curd and the cake layers, then Joe and I went on a walk.  But it started to rain right when we went out, so we just went around the block.

I was sleepy from not sleeping last night so I took a half hour nap on the couch, till my dad called because he'd heard about my work letting me go.  Chatted with my dad for a bit.  Then I took Joe to Ishtar, greek restaurant in Kent a block from our old train house, because there was a Groupon.  It was surprisingly good!  That corner spot has always been the joke of the neighborhood because no one has been able to keep a restaurant going there (which is why we never dared try it when it opened as a Greek place).  But the food was good, the service was great, and we had a Groupon!

Then we went to the $3.5 dollar theater in Renton and watched Skyfall.  Kind of a different Bond movie than I've ever seen before.  I liked it.  Not enough to watch it again, but enough to watch it because it's $3.50 and I get to snuggle with my hubby with chips/candy/water that we snuck into the theater.

Came home and goofed around on the computer for a couple hours, then bed!

And now it's Sunday morning, we left the blinds open last night so I'm just sitting here in the sun and the cats are loving the light!  My MIL picks me up in an hour for Sunday school (and then Joe and his dad will come later for the service).  I am going to do my Sunday School homework now!