I can hear the mailman putting mail in the mailboxes through the wall in my living room and he's definitely singing loudly off-key. It makes me giggle a little. Tee hee!

What would I do without the internet? I can e-mail people and get a reply in little more than a minute later. I can find all sorts of information like recipes for a Christmas dinner or how to thaw a turkey. I can even track the enormous amount of calories I'll be intaking over the holiday. And, while I'm at it, I can keep massive lists of things I need to do, groceries I need to buy, gift ideas for people I care about. It makes me wonder what people did before all of this information was so easily accessible. Without the internet, I would have a much harder time keeping my thoughts and to-do's organized. For those of you who like to make lists, I highly suggest Gubb.net. It's free and you can make list after list. Plus, you can print them an apparently access them on your phone.

Just the other day I was flipping through the channels and they introduced a cop and I thought it was odd that they introduced him as a cop instead of a police officer because the show in general seemed more formal. But that got me thinking "Why is cop short for police officer?" So I looked it up.

Thinking back to when I was younger, and I had to write a paper, I always used an encylopedia for things. I suppose this was both good and bad because it made plagiarizing more difficult, but it also made getting a wider variety of sources more difficult.

Last year for Christmas, John's sister gave me a blow-up penguin lawn ornament. I finally decided to get it out this year. Sadly I picked the night before one of the windiest days of the year. But they looked really cute when I first put them up!

I came home and they had blown into the corner of my patio and deflated. So I had to take them inside. Now they are just a sad lump in my living room...waiting to go back outside. Maybe after the sleet tomorrow the weather will be a little better and I can put them back out. But we'll have to see.

Apparently there are these cute little machines that will do all the hard work and cut out things for you, like shapes and letters. I didn't even know they existed two weeks ago and now I have apparently purchased one.

I've finally started working on my scrapbook for my trip to Europe. Yes, I know I went in 2005. I know the pictures are on Flickr and I need to renew my pro account. Anyway, now that I have a job and I'm making money, I can afford to scrapbook again. Seriously, this stuff gets expensive. You want 15 sheets of that cool paper? 47$cent; per sheet, please. And some are more expensive than that. You want alphabet stickers so the titles on your pages look cool? $2 to $5 per set. And you'll probably only use half of them because they don't give you enough of the common letters and I really don't need four Q's or three X's.

Anyway, I was talking about the enormous mess I made in my living room with my cousin and she mentioned she was working on a scrapbooking project herself. However, she has a machine that cuts stuff out for her. Yeah, I didn't know they made those either. I started doing a little research. There are a variety of machines on the market. Xyron makes a couple. Cricut (pronounced like cricket...yeah, I pronounce it cry-cut in my head) makes a few. And a company called Graphtec makes one. All the Cricut machines and one of the Xyron machines require that you buy cartridges you plug in the front of the machine. Then you use the keys and screen on the machine to determine the size of what you want to cut and you can only pick from what's pre-programmed on the cartridge. I could see that adding up fast. The machines got great reviews on every site I read. I have no idea how people made peace with buying a new cartridge every time they wanted a new font or a new set of shapes. Everything I read about the Craft Robo and the Xyron Wishblade said that they were the same machine. You plug them into your computer and essentially "print" to them, except they cut out your stuff. They were both made by the same manufacturer, but the Craft Robo wasn't marketed in the U.S. The only people who didn't like them were the people who couldn't figure out the software. However, I thought both the Craft Robo and the Wishblade sounded cool because you can create whatever you want on your computer or use any True Type font and it will cut it out. Sounds better than buying cartridges for a minimum of $40 a piece.

So, how did I manage to accidentally buy one of these gems? Well, Microsoft is trying to get people to use their search engine by offering cash back on specific web sites and items. So I used their search to find the Craft Robo (which is priced more than $200 less than the Wishblade). I went on eBay, because I could get 25% cash back on my purchase and while I was looking, John sent me a coupon code. If you click the "Buy it now" button, it shows you a sub-total before you buy it. But I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing and I wanted to enter my other coupon code. Especially since it was supposed to save me another 20%. So I clicked the button to go to the next screen and I get the lovely message "Congratulations! You've purchased this item!" Well, shit. Ok, I hadn't exactly decided I wanted one. I was still trying to figure out how to get it cheap and if I was sure I would use it, that it was the best one, etc. So, now I've purchased it.

I had to figure out how exactly I was going to pay for it. That required remembering my username and password for PayPal. I managed to get logged into my account...no small feat since the last time I logged in was 2003. I started updating my information. You know, address, phone number, new credit card, all that. And I went to update the e-mail account and I used gmail's lovely feature where you can add a +blahwhatever before the @gmail.com. Very handy. I'm trying to do this fairly quick because I have to finish the checkout process within 60 minutes or I don't get my cash back and that's a good $71. I got checked out and I receive the e-mail from eBay saying that I've earned cashback points and I try to log into that. But the link they sent me was for their German website. Yeah, good work guys. I finally figure out how to sign into the cashback site and it says that my e-mail address is invalide (because it has the +words in it). So, I have to go back into PayPal to change my e-mail address to remove the extra text. And I'm told that there is already an account open with my e-mail address. I realize that I've set up another account. I have two of them. Awesome. So, to change the account information on the newer account, I have to add a new e-mail address, confirm it, and then set the other e-mail to the primary e-mail, then delete the original e-mail. And every time I do this, I get an e-mail from PayPal. Then I had to go into my other account, and you aren't allowed to change an e-mail, you have to go through the add/delete process all over again. So I pretty much filled up my inbox with e-mails from PayPal.

I finally got the whole thing ironed out. I should be getting my cash back fairly soon. And my purchased ended up being only $40 more than the least expensive Cricut machine (the cheapest of all of them I could find) and I won't ever have to buy cartridges. After reading a bunch more reviews (after purchasing the thing), I haven't found anything bad about it so I'm hoping it's as awesome as the obsessed scrapbookers seem to think. It was delivered today, so I'll pick it up after work and check it out. I do feel pretty dumb ordering something on accident and I'm sure I could have called someone to cancel the order, but it's not going to break the bank and I don't want to screw up my eBay rating. Plus, it could be really awesome. I just need to not make a habit of accidentally buying things.

Today John and I have been dating three years. So, a couple weeks ago I decided I wanted to make a cake. We've both played Portal and we reference the companion cube in the game in conversation on a somewhat frequent basis (yes, we're kinda nerdy).

Companion cube in the game, for reference:

I was reading reddit and saw a companion cube cake that someone had made. They decorated it with fondant. I'd never tried using fondant, but thought it could be fun. Little did I know that I was in for very long messy process. So, following is my adventure making fondant, and using it to decorate a companion cube cake.

I had to do some research to figure out what fondant was, then figure out how to get some. I found a great website that describes everything you'd ever want to know about the stuff. I probably read the entire "Fondant 101" section four times before deciding to try it and making a list of things I needed. It's surprisingly simple. The main ingredients were marshmallows and powdered sugar. I needed to buy some pyrex mixing bowls because mine weren't microwave safe and the idea of putting marshmallow's in the microwave in a non-microwave safe bowl didn't sound fun. I purchased that and a fondant rolling pin.

Friday, I started the whole cake/fondant "process". I put the marshmallows and a little water in the microwave to slowly soften it up. Then, once they were melted, I added the powdered sugar. It sort of got all over. I kneaded it for awhile, using Crisco to prevent it from sticking to the counter and my hands. I had a LOT of Crisco on that counter and my hands were very soft by the time I finished the first set of kneading. I had a pretty big mess to clean up after the initial creation.

I wrapped the fondant in saran wrap, then put it in a plastic bag to sit overnight in preparation for adding coloring. The when I was out getting supplies, I had purchased some gel food coloring. Saturday afternoon, I started to color the fondant. I split my double batch in half, then split one of the halves in half. I used the entire tube of black gel icing on the big portion. But I couldn't figure out why it wasn't getting much darker. Then, I used the entire tube of pink color on my smaller pink section. It was barely pink. So, I wrapped everything back up and drove back to Mangelson's.

I was in a panic when I saw that they had no black gel color left. I started looking for other options when I came across what I had anticipated finding during my first visit. In my research, I had seen little jar-like containers for the coloring, but when I first looked, I purchased a tube of color. As I was looking in the cake section, I found the jars I'd seen online. I purchased more black and more pink color. I also came across a happy circumstance while I was there (on top of finding the right coloring) and purchased a cake circle and a cake box. I had been worried about how I was going to cover it and what I was going to put it on so the extra $1.50 solved those two problems.

I made it back home and got back to coloring. The new stuff was much more potent. I barely used any and got a much darker grey out of it. Same with the pink. After more kneading, another big sticky mess on the counter, and the new food coloring, I had my lumps of colored fondant. One big dark grey, a smaller light grey and a smaller pink.

I put the fondant in the fridge to keep until decorating time came.

Sunday, I made the first of two cakes. John's favorite cake is the Pillsbury funfetti cake. One box makes two 9" round pans. I mixed it up and let them cool. Then put them in the freezer. Freezing cakes makes the stacking, layering and cutting processes much easier. I repeated the process on Monday.

Tuesday I made a recipe of cream cheese frosting. I used Mascarpone cheese, whipping cream and of course cream cheese. I would challenge the average (non-cheese snob) person to find Mascarpone cheese in the grocery store. I walked all over HyVee the first time I tried to find it. I had to ask someone and then they followed the same hunting steps I had taken and had to ask a manager. In the process of making the cream cheese frosting, I had to whip heavy whipping cream. Let me tell you, if you want really good whipped cream, the stuff you get from whipping heavy whipping cream (say that fast 10 times) is amazing. I was also surprised at the lack of horrible things in heavy whipping cream. The only downside to making your own is that it takes a really long times. I don't have a stand up mixer, so I got to stand there with my hand mixer for a good 15 minutes. But, it did turn out yummy. I tried a little before sticking the frosting in the fridge.

Finally, Wednesday I did the big assembly and decorating. I only needed three layers. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the fourth one. I started by frosting the top of the bottom layer, then stacking the other two on top of it.

Then I measured the height to determine how wide to cut the square. I cut the sides off, shaping the cake into a cube, sort of.

I had a bunch of pieces left over.

After I had cut my shape, I frosted the entire outside of the cake. The fondant won't stick to the cake without some frosting to help.

Then I had to shape the fondant. I can't even count the number of times rolled the whole thing out and then tried to pick it up using the fondant rolling pin. I got so much stuff stuck to that stupid counter. When they say to use plenty of cornstarch, they weren't kidding. By the time I was finished with all the fondant, I used 1/3 of the box I bought.

When I got the fondant rolled out, I had to lightly roll it onto the fondant rolling pin. Think of rolling fabric. Then, I picked it up and draped it over the cake.

I needed to even out the sides and top. I carefully pushed the fondant flush to the outside of the cake. I carefully cut around the bottom to remove the excess fondant. I probably made too much, but I wanted to err on the side of having too much, rather than not having enough.

Then, I went about adding the "decorative pieces" to the outside. I used a little water to get the fondant to stick to itself. Cutting took a lot longer than I anticipated. It kept sticking to my knife.

When the cake was complete, I put it in the box. Putting a cake in a box...feels so official!

Then, I had to start cleaning up my mess. I had cornstarch everywhere! It took almost an hour and a half to clean it all up.

So, there's my fondant adventure. Hopefully John will like the cake. I think it resembles the companion cube. The hearts and circles stretched a little so they ended up being slightly bigger than planned. Hopefully the fondant will taste ok. I tried some, and it wasn't bad, but I'm not sure I could eat a lot of it.

For those of you who don't know, Jeff Detweiler was killed in a motorcycle accident last week. He was my friend's brother. Prayers for the family are greatly appreciated. The Journal Star paper published an article about him last Friday. The article is as follows.

Lincoln man dies in Omaha crash
By The Lincoln Journal Star
Friday, Sep 19, 2008 - 02:49:18 pm CDT

Jeff Detweiler was never good at keeping secrets from his girlfriend, Alyssa Elwood.

“He would just blurt something out and then say, ‘I shouldn’t have said that,’” Elwood said.

About two weeks ago, Detweiler blurted out another secret — a really big one.

“He told me he’d started saving for an engagement ring,” Elwood said.

But Detweiler never got the chance to buy that ring and propose to his girlfriend.

Detweiler, a 2005 graduate of Parkview Christian High School, died Tuesday morning in a three-vehicle collision in Omaha.

According to Omaha Police, Detweiler was driving a motorcycle west on Leavenworth Street around 7:55 a.m. when he ran a red light at the intersection with 50th Street and struck a black Chevrolet Blazer driven by Catherine Hammer Ortiz, 66, of Omaha.

The Blazer, which was northbound on 50th Street, was pushed into a southbound Silver Honda CRV driven by Jodi Gentleman, 38, of Omaha.

Neither Hammer Ortiz nor Gentleman was injured, but Detweiler was taken to the University of Nebraska Medical Center, where he died from his injuries.

There is no indication alcohol or drugs were factors in the collision, and no charges are expected police said.

Elwood has known Detweiler since they were in seventh grade, but they became good friends around their junior year in high school, she said.

“It’s kind of funny — I was dating his best friend and he was dating my best friend,” she said. “Neither one of those relationships really worked out, and somehow we ended up together.”

The summer after their sophomore year in college, Elwood and Detweiler ran into each other again at a friend’s house, Elwood said.

“For some reason we really hit it off, started hanging out all the time, and less than a month later we were dating,” she said.

Elwood remembers being impressed with how much Detweiler hanged changed and grown up.

“He taught me how to strike out on my own,” she said.

Detweiler was majoring in architectural engineering at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, and he had an internship with the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

He really enjoyed his job, said his mother, Beth Detweiler.

“He realized you have to graduate, but he said he was learning more in work than he was in school,” his mother said.

Detweiler loved outdoor activities such as snowboarding, fishing and riding ATVs, said his father, Gary Detweiler.

Jeff Detweiler was “a real gentle soul,” and people didn’t always realize how bright he was at first, his father said.

“As he started to mature he put a lot more of his horsepower to work,” Gary Detweiler said. “I think we’d only seen a small part of what Jeffrey could accomplish.”

Funeral services are at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Calvary Community Church, 1st and Superior streets.

Detweiler would have turned 21 on Saturday, his father said.

“We’re going to celebrate his going to Heaven instead,” his father said. “That’s what makes this bearable is knowing his eternal destiny was secure.”

Seriously, since when is putting an entire apartment's worth of furniture in the parking lot blocking garages that cost extra to use a good idea? What a bunch of inconsiderate assholes. Yes, my garage is blocked by the furniture. They managed to not block anything with the UHaul, but then they spread their furniture in front of five garages.

Moron count of the day is definitely four as that's the number of people I've seen moving around the crap in the parking lot.

I invested in some at-home exercise equipment. I bought some dumbbells, a Bosu, an ab ball with a stretchy band, and a medicine ball. I didn't realize how girly it all looked until I got it all together.

The dumbbells are decidedly girly. Even the manufacturer thinks so. As I was opening each of the boxes I noticed that the two pound and three pound dumbbells had photos of a woman on both sides. However the five pound and eight pound dumbbells had a picture of a guy on one side and a woman on the other.

Is this not the girliest set of equipment you've ever seen?

I was really glad that the Bosu came with a foot pump and the ab ball came with a hand pump.

The weights and the medicine ball also came with suggestions for lifts. I have four hand weight posters because one came in every box. I also have a poster for medicine ball exercises.

Oh well. Even if it is girly, I've got plenty of exercises I can do. It should help since I spend most of my day sitting now. At least it's something to laugh at.