Category: General

I can’t bake. But if I could I would totally make these:

Beer Cupcakes

Cake

• 1 cup Guinness
• 1 stick, plus 1 tb, unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 2 cups dark brown sugar
• 3/4 cup sour cream
• 2 eggs
• 1 tb vanilla extract
• 2 cups flour
• 2 1/2 tsp baking soda

Glaze*

• 8 oz cream cheese
• 1 1/4 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1/3 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350; butter a muffin tin.

Combine the Guinness and the butter, chopped into 1-inch chunks, in a large sauce pan, and heat to melt the butter. Remove from heat, and whisk in the cocoa and sugar. In a bowl, whisk the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla, then add to the beer mixture. Sift together the flour and baking soda, and fold into the batter. Pour into muffin molds and bake for 25 minutes, or until inserted cake tester comes out clean. Let stand 10 minutes, remove from muffin tin, and cool completely on a rack.

Using a mixer, whip cream cheese until smooth, sift in sugar, and beat. Add milk, and beat until smooth. Spread glaze over cooled cupcakes.

*To create a thinner glaze, use a tablespoon or two more milk; for a topping more akin to icing, use less milk, and perhaps more sugar. In either case, add a little sugar or milk at a time, mix, and check for desired consistency

Just thinking about them, I feel the same way Homer did when he invented Skittle Brau. Except I didn’t invent these.

Hey, I just found SkittleBrau.net! That rocks. I should send them the recipe for Beer Cupcakes!

Ken and I were cleaning out his new cubicle. He handed me a box, a large one. It felt mostly empty.

“Just drop it in the corner,” he said.

I turned in place, and, smiling, dropped it from waist height.

BAM!

I turned back to him, smiling. Ken looked shocked.

“There… there was a computer in there.” He said it slowly, unbelieving.

My smile froze on my face. I thought it was papers and stuff, not electronics.

As that thought was sinking in, I felt a hand on my shoulder. One of the Emergency Management folk, with whom we were sharing our new space in the basement of the Multnomah Building, was standing behind me, leaning over slightly. She was a woman in her 50s (I’m guessing), tall, thin, wiry. She had just returned to county employ after serving several tours of duty in Iraq, and, I believe, as a training instructor in the concentration camps at Abu Graib and Gitmo.

She spoke in a friendly whisper. “It’s OK, you’re all right. No problem.” She sounded controlled, but winded. “Now that I know you’re just moving boxes around, it’s OK. I’m still getting used to it. The other day Pascal dropped a box, and I jumped out of my chair.” She shook her head at the memory. “If I’d had a gun… well… But I didn’t.” She chuckled. She was trying, and failing, to come across as collegial and warm.

“Oh… right.” I was frozen into place. I was still processing the fact that I may have damaged a perfectly good computer just for being a smart-ass, and now I realized that I had startled this woman into some kind of post-traumatic stress reaction. I was already more than a bit empathetic for her serving multiple terms of duty for an illegal and immoral war. And knowing the black arts of torture that have been perpetrated on the humans in those prisons, many of whom were tossed in there just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and are even now being denied the most basic of human rights… and knowing that this woman was part of the bureaucracy that enabled and sustained it… and hearing her try to shrug off the extreme reaction she had just had to the sound of a box being dropped…

I felt my empathy clouded through fear. “Right” I said “Iraq.”

She laughed again, a release of stress that I could only imagine. “Yeah!” She straightened up, her hand still on my shoulder. She towered over me. I wondered if she needed the contact as much as I was now repulsed by it. “That box just sounded like small-arms fire!” Her hand dropped. “I’m OK, I’m OK. I just fell out of my chair. No problem.” She got up, and instead of crossing the aisle back to her desk, she left the room.

I turned to Ken. “That’s great.” I pantomimed typing while I faux-dictated a memo to my boss: “Dear Stan, Ken and I are mostly moved in to our new area. And by the way, I may need to requisition a bullet-proof vest for the next few weeks. The end.”

This week at Firefly at the Mission, I discovered that Matt, the guy who spit on me two weeks ago, worked at Stream, just like I did.

Huh. Small world.

I also saw the girl who doesn’t have an iPhone, but didn’t get a chance to talk to her. Apparently she’s a huge Firefly fan, too. Maybe I’ll talk to her next week.

Very small world.

My arms were wrapped around her waist, in the cold night, on the darkened street, my lips still warm with her kiss, feeling a mixture of happiness, concern, fear, recognition and gratitude as the next-to-last woman with whom I’ve exchanged vows of love sadly smiled and told me of how happy she’d become after seeking out therapy and being put on prescription anti-depressants.

…I think I could go all Marcel Proust and spend the remaining years of my life trying to capture and describe all the events, feelings, memories, and sensations that led up to, and have descended from, the moment described in the preceding sentence.

I don’t know why, but that moment, just a few short years past, is stuck in my head tonight. I’m not even sure what connection it has with my present mental state. Although, being human, I’m sure if I think about it long enough I can find one (or create one out of whole cloth).

Instead of writing it all out, though… I’m going to stop with the single, albeit complicated, sentence, and hope that the feeling leaves me now that I’ve written it out.

Since Hollie asked – no. Smacky has not come home.

I guess it’s remotely possible he still might, so I should add “yet”. He’s chipped, and if anyone finds him and brings him to a vet or shelter they should be able to read the chip and return him to me…

Revisiting the To-Do list I posted on Friday:

• 5000 words on my as-yet unfinished NaNoWriMo novel.

I did about 1000 words. I really had a difficult time overcoming my internal resistance to starting this. I spent most of the afternoon Saturday at Backspace, with the file open and staring at me on my laptop, but I kept surfing around instead. Then today, I tried writing at the local coffee shop, and again, surfed instead. Finally tried to open the file in WriteRoom, a full-screen editor that’s supposed to block out all distractions and let me concentrate on just writing… and discovered that I had uninstalled it. Had to go find it and install it, then had to configure it… yeah. I was all distracted. I finally went back and re-read what I had written before, started laughing at my hilarious writing, and then got going for a bit. So… 1000 words, give or take. I got started.

• Do the dishes in the sink. ALL the dishes.

I did half the dishes. Another partial completion.

• Outline of two other novels kicking around in my head.

…um, no.

• Start running again (haven’t run in two weeks).

Yes! I ran 3.5 miles on Saturday, and I rode my bike for over an hour (two trips, one to Fred Meyers on Johnson Creek, and once to the QFC for groceries). So, exercise has begun again. Just hoping the endorphins will kick in soon.

• Probably get really really drunk at some (or several) point.

Check. Saturday night.

So, um, mission partially accomplished. Yay, me.

Tonight I watched some stuff that had been automatically recording and piling up on my DVR hard drive. Walked up to Video Lair to see if there was anything interesting to rent (nope) and ate three donuts that I didn’t really need (chocolate iced creme-filled, raspberry jelly filled, and glazed). I’ve got a book I’m reading about happiness; not a self-help book, but an amusing pop-science look at how people look for happiness and why our brains work against us in that pursuit called “Stumbling on Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert.

Finally got up the nerve to ask the coffee shop owner her name (again). It's Nicole.

I’m warming up for my blast of writing, the writing that’s going to finish the first draft of my novel “Impoverty”, started last November during NaNoWriMo, and begin the long process that will catapult me to fame and fortune. Or something. Here’s some tidbits I noticed around town as I made my way to this comfy blue couch on which I shall spend the afternoon.

• Three friends (or rather, four friends, but two of them are married to each other so it’s three separate groups of friends) have gone camping for the weekend (to different places). Two of the friends are still texting me, however, so I’m questioning just how much they’re actually “roughing it”. But the friends who aren’t texting me don’t normally text much, so maybe they still have cell service and they’re just busy and having fun.
• The mannequins at the Victoria’s Secret store don’t have much of an ass. Really kind of flat, though heart-shaped. Not much booty.
• There are still crowds around the iPhones at the Apple Store. I guess the coolness doesn’t go away after only a month. Yes, I had to touch the iPhone.
• Backspape, the coolest place in Portland ever, just got even more cool: as part of their August art installation, they’ve put in a freakin’ treehouse. It overlooks the also-new stage for musical and other events. I asked the cute barista and she said that it’s probably permanent. Yes. Simply… yes.

This weekend…

• 5000 words on my as-yet unfinished NaNoWriMo novel.
• Do the dishes in the sink. All the dishes.
• Outline of two other novels kicking around in my head.
• Start running again (haven’t run in two weeks).
• Probably get really really drunk at some (or several) point.

…annnnnnnnnnd that should get me through to Monday. Busy, busy, busy.

Hurts to struggle though the day.

Hurts more to ask for help… and be refused.

Who hurt whom?