Modern Hell

I have seen modern hell and it is not pretty.  I went to Ikea yesterday to get some random stuff, for a party I’m holding to look at furniture, the usual.  I went to check out and there the problem began.  There were only self-serve registers – no other choices were available.   I started the process.  One of my items was from the As-Is section, this had to be rung up manually.  I then accidentally double rang an item, for which I needed help.  No bags were in sight but the screen helpfully asked me, “how many had I used?”  Well, none yet, but I guessed one might be sufficient.  There was no paper to wrap more fragile objects.   People were standing behind me just waiting for me to leave so I dumped  everything back in the cart to drag it out to my car.  I put everything in my car and then continued on with errands.  Well, when I got home, I had a mess in the trunk and one of my serving platters was chipped.  I absolutely blame the shoddiness of the check-out for this problem.  Now I am debating whether it is worth the $10 to try to return it or just write it off as a lost cause (and not go back to Hell-kea again).

Forced Change

I don’t know why it bothers me, but it does.  Whole Foods no longer offers plastic bags.  Apparently this is a company wide change, though my local store just started.  I just envision a future when the youth won’t even know what a plastic bag is and how plentiful they once were.  I know it’s better for the environment, blah, blah, blah.  I just don’t like change.

Devil’s Food Cupcakes

I used a Devil’s Food recipe from the blog of David Lebovitz to make cupcakes and they were outstanding. I baked them for approximately 20 minutes and it made 22 cupcakes (plus 1 unbaked bit of batter-y goodness). I used Scharffen Berger cocoa powder for the cake and a mix of Scharffen Berger and Ghiradelli chocolate for the frosting. I think these are my new favorite cupcakes. I only have two left, I think might change to only one left in a moment.

Chatting

I realized that it has been about 15 years that I have been doing online chatting.  Today, it’s with gchat (gmail chat), but once upon a time it was with bulletin boards and freenets.  The topic came around to chatbots.  And I remembered Maur.  I went looking for the dragon so I could chat with him (and have him toast me), but he seems to be gone.  All I could find were old references to a website in Canada that no longer works.   Sigh.  I feel nostalgic.  I hope he’s still around somewhere.

Falling Apart Cupcakes

For the 4th of July, I made Devil’s Food Cupcakes from the More from Magnolia Cookbook. The vanilla cupcakes and buttercream frosting I previously made came from this book, so I thought this should be fine. This was one of the worst recipes I have ever made. The cupcakes completely fell apart and had no consistency. Plus the taste was off, it just wasn’t the chocolate devil’s food I wanted. To accompany this, I made the suggested caramel frosting. The authors warned it would be gritty at first due to the brown sugar. It was definitely gritty and it didn’t seem to get any less gritty upon sitting as was suggested. The flavors tasted okay together, but the whole thing was just off.  And they didn’t look very pretty so I didn’t take a picture.   I had previously tried the chocolate cupcakes and chocolate frosting (not blogged about) and they were just mediocre.   I  am beginning to think that best recipe from the book I found online for free and that all the other ones are going to be sub-par.

Chocolate Cupcakes

For Memorial Day, I made some chocolate cupcakes. I used the Magnolia Bakery cookbook.

Anywhere, USA

I am currently visiting my parents, and it could almost be Anywhere, USA.  We went to the mall yesterday.  It felt just like any other shopping center I go to.   There were only a few things that made it seem like it had a specific city location, instead of literally being anywhere.  The hottest talk of the town is our basketball team in the NBA Finals.  Workers at stores, people walking about were talking about it.  However, if this wasn’t occurring right now, there would be much less information to determine where in the country you were.  There was a new store that was opening and it was generating a lot of excitement.  But since I live somewhere that already had that store for many years, I would guess I was someplace other than the coasts.  The ethnic mix of the crowd indicated I was in the midwest.  It was a more upscale shopping center, so I knew I was in a large enough metropolitan area to support multiple, niche malls.  Beyond those features, I really felt I could be in many cities.  How did everything become so homogenous?

Observations while driving

For work, I had to drive some precious samples to south San Jose a few times and there were a few interesting tidbits from the trip.   I saw an original Mini Cooper and it was tiny, I could barely see it out my side window and my Saturn is small.   There were several Toyota Priuses on the road, they seem to be multiplying at an alarming rate.  I have been dreaming about getting a convertible.  I seem to notice the Mustangs the most, I’m an American girl at heart, I guess.

Online Invitations

I have been using Evite since 1999, which is an eternity in the online sphere. I was an early fan and even got a free Super Bowl Party kit in the snail mail when there were a dot com with too much cash. I was in love. But times have changed and now Evite Sucks. They redid the backend (to make it flashier?) and completely destroyed its functionality. I was not able to copy an old invite and the reminder system was hosed.  It also wouldn’t save my changes. And the ads have been getting overwhelming. Evite, I am officially breaking up with you. In the web world, I have many paramours (Google, TWoP
, etc.) and I am faithful to none of them. But this change required me to find an alternative website. I needed a replacement. I didn’t want a social networking site, just something simple and easy to use.  The best current option I found is mypunchbowl.  I will let it court me and see how it goes.  So far, there are no major gaffes.  I think my friends a little uncertain about the change.

Mannequins

I have been noticing a lot of nipples on mannequins lately.   Some stores (Ann Taylor) have none and some have mixed populations (Macy’s, Nordstrom).  I have yet to find a store that exclusively has nipple mannequins, but that might be for a lack of observation.  I mentioned this to a female friend and she commented that her fiance had pointed it out to her.  I wonder if more would go shopping if more mannequins had nipples.