WotLK Cake Pictures

Here are the WotLK cake pictures.

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One WotLK Cake Coming Up

My attempts to work a normal work day yesterday were subverted because it was my nephew's birthday. He wanted a World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King cake. Nothing like picking a theme that the party store doesn't stock! It's actually a fairly regular request from our nieces and nephews to have something out of the ordinary as the theme for their birthday cake. Karen and I always seem to deliver, though. She's very creative about finding action figures and other little toys to decorate the top of the cake. And I'm there as backup to pull some graphic design magic out of my hat when toys aren't available.

That was the case this time. Wrath of the Lich King toys aren't readily available (if even available at all) so I had to come up with something. Fortunately I happened to have purchased the collector's edition of Wrath when it came out. Fortunate because it just happened to come with a book, "Art of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King." How providential is that? So we had a source for artwork that I could use for the cake. I used a huge picture of the Lich King as the main cake top. Then there were small medallions representing a couple of his armor pieces that I made to go around the side of the cake. I took the basic WoW logo and modified it so that it would say "Happy Birthday" in the WoW fonts. I had found a font that mimicked the WoW logo font, but it was flat. The text in the original logo is very 3-D looking. So I had to do some massaging to make the text look like a reasonable facsimile of the original logo. The whole thing turned out pretty nice, if I do say so myself.

The only stink thing was that it took me all day to make the stuff for the cake. So now I'm working this weekend to make up the time. Oh well. I guess it was worth it. My nephew totally loved the cake. I'll post some pictures once they are off the camera.

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Circus Time!!!

Karen and I went to the circus tonight. I never really went to the circus much as a kid (at least that I remember) but Karen likes to go every year. She really likes the elephants. She doesn't quite know why, but she finds them cute. We bought her a stuffed elephant with a pink circus-logo blanket on his back and it now lives on our bed with a couple of her other select stuffed animals. It's pretty funny. Karen wasn't feeling well today and I wondered if we wouldn't wind up canceling. We already had the tickets, though, and I was already skipping the Priesthood session of conference so we figured we should just go ahead and go.

The circus this year was a little less fanfare than I have seen in previous years. I had fun, but the acts were rather ho-hum. The big trick attempt for the trapeze guy was to do a triple somersault. ?!?!?! A triple? Really? In previous years I've seen them do four or five rotations. Hmmmm..... The worst was that the guy only did two rotations. I counted them and definitely only counted two. A woman in front of me heard me say something to Karen and turned around with two fingers held up, confirming that he did, indeed, only do a double. It was pretty funny/sad. Other than that it was a fun time, though.

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Rudy's Moving Day

Judith's nephew, Rudy, moved into his apartment today. His wife, Jenny, is still in St. George. She's waiting to find a job out here before she comes out. They were only moving into a two-bedroom apartment so there wasn't a ton of stuff. Unfortunately their apartment is up a flight of stairs, however, so we had to haul all of their stuff up stairs. That was a lot of fun. Our legs were dead after just a few trips. We worked for about an hour before Jim and Judith showed up. Jim had apparently thrown out his back so he wasn't able to do a whole lot of heavy lifting. We gave him the job of bringing things to the end of the truck so that we could grab it easier. He sent Judith home to get his moving straps to help with the heavy stuff. Rudy had an organ he was bringing in and none of us looked forward to trying to haul that up the stairs.

When Judith came back she brought the straps and the teenage son of one of their friends. It was incredibly nice of him to come and the extra pair of hands was helpful. Jim's moving straps were great, too. I had never used this type before but I'm now convinced that I want to go find some. They are the ones you see advertised on TV that go over your forearms. It apparently took five or six guys to load the organ into the truck, but Jim and Rudy were able to get it up the stairs and into the apartment by themselves. Jim's straps are much better than the ones I use because his leave your hands free. That allows you to stabilize what you're hauling. One of the things I hate moving is mattresses because they are so hard to hold and control. These straps made moving the matress a breeze. We were able to finish up the rest of the moving pretty fast. It only took us three hours, total. My legs were pretty dead for the rest of the day ... and the next day, however.

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Three Cheers for the Finished Blanket

It may sound lame, but I'm cheering big time for finally finishing the baby blanket for Nadine. It feels like I've been working on this blanket for !@#$-ing ever. Karen and I guess it took something like seven months. Seven Months?!?!?! Sheesh! I have no real clue why it took so long, either. I actually picked the pattern because I didn't think it would take too long. Boy was I wrong. I'm so totally sick of making baby blankets. I've only got one more on my list to do right now and I've already gotten a good start on it. We've decided that there is one particular pattern I'm going to use from now on because Karen thinks it went really fast the last time. I don't really recall, but I will say that it seems to be going much faster. I've only been working for a few days and I'm already almost half done with the body. I don't want to give the same pattern to a family twice, but I will definitely use this pattern as a first blanket wherever possible. Or maybe save it for when I'm in a time crunch. The baby this blanket is for was born a couple days ago so I'm a little under the gun. My goal is to always have it done before the baby is blessed. I totally failed on this last one, but I hope she understands. I was going to have yet another blanket to do after this one, but it appears like that one might have been taken off my list this weekend. No complaints here....

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Weekend Recap

Here's the recap of our whirlwind weekend. I don't know how much of a whirlwind it was, but I was definitely tired when Sunday night came. Friday night started out pretty quiet. We went out to Chili's for dinner. It was a nice little dinner, just the two of us, followed by a trip to Target to see what was there that we couldn't live without.

At the end of our dinner I got a call from Jim to ask me a question about his Varsity Scout program. I don't really know much about Varsity Scouts but I gave it my best shots. I guess there are pins that you earn as part of your participation in things and he was trying to get his scouts awarded a bunch of pins for the things they had done over the last year. This was the first time he had gotten stuff together and tried to award pins so the process was new to him. The advancement chairman in his ward, though, didn't want to let him award these pins because the scouts hadn't also earned merit badges for these things. Jim and I were of the belief that these pins were completely different things from merit badges and the former does not require the latter. I suggested that he talked to Bill, who is my reference for the Varsity and Venture programs. I called Bill first and confirmed that we were exactly right. I relayed the information to Jim and he called Bill himself to chat about other things Varsity Scout related. By that time I was sitting outside Target waiting to go in. So I went ahead in to do some shopping.

They had some "Tribute to the 80s" DVDs that were fun to look at. It was basically just movies from the 80s that they were re-releasing but there were several that we liked that we didn't already own so it was, of course, required that we get some of them. After that we went home and got to bed. I stayed up playing video games, but there is nothing new about that.

I got up nice and early on Saturday morning to mow the grass. The actual mowing went pretty smoothly but the trimming had problems. Part of the wire assembly broke on the trimmer so I need to go buy a new assembly. I didn't actually get a chance to buy it this weekend, so it's still on my t0-do list.

Karen and I ran over to Costco to get some needed things. There was a show setup at the entrance for Roland pianos. I have been thinking for a little while that it would be nice to get a piano. Neither one of us play but it would be nice to learn. I sat down at one of their digital pianos and saw that it has a whole teaching program built into it. It's kind of cool how it works. It has a variety of songs at different levels built into it and it shows the score as well as a keyboard graphic. As the music goes along it highlight the note in the score as well as the keys you should be pressing on the keyboard. You can then slow down or speed up the tempo of the song to match your playing ability. It actually does this for any song that you load into it. It's just that in the "teaching" mode it will grade your performance. You can apparently load any song you want in MIDI (I believe) format. Then you can slow it way down so that you can follow along at your own pace. The thing I liked most is that it looks like a regular upright piano. It doesn't look like a techno-keyboard thing. It even has a way to slide the key cover just a little bit and cover all of the buttons so that it looks identical to an upright. Also, the sound that comes out of it is just gorgeous. There is a setting to have it mimic the sounding board of a grand piano. It sounds beautiful. I thought it was really cool but wasnt' going to buy it because I figured it was too expensive and unnecessary. I did the rest of my shopping and went and found Karen. I told her about the piano and it turns out that she has been wanting to get one. She wanted to ask me to make that her birthday present. She wasn't looking for the big, expensive piano like I found but definitely wanted something. She took a look at the piano they had and agreed that it was really nice. I figured we should go ahead and spend the money as this would be something that could meet our piano needs for years to come. So we went back and bought it. It's going to be delivered in about ten days. The sales-lady is even going to give us an in-home demo and give us a ton of MIDI files to use with it. She even agreed to give us free delivery because she didn't have any more of those pianos on hand. Karen and I are both pretty excited. Here is the site that has all the info about the piano if you are interested.

After Costco we ran home and I changed clothes to go out and play Amtgard. I only had a couple of hours to play as Karen wanted me back by 3:30. When I got there there was only a couple of people there. One of the Golden Lions, Hannibal, was there which I was glad to see. I went ahead and petitioned them last week. It still felt weird because I only know Hank and Marleah. Hannibal moved here this week, though, and now I'll have another Golden Lion to hang out with. He looks to be more regularly active than Hank and Marleah so that will be a good thing. If I'm going to join this company it will be nice to have one of them around on the battlefield on a regular basis. After a little while of being there some more people showed up so we were able to do some reasonable ditching. By the time I left I really wished I could have stayed but that's the way things go. I got to be out for a little bit at least.

I went back home and got cleaned up so that Karen and I could go out to the races. Jim was bringing a bunch of his scouts so he needed us to give his kids a ride. We went and picked them up and headed off to the races. The race track is really close to us which is nice. In California it was a really long drive. Here it takes us less than half an hour which is very nice. It was an okay evening of racing. There were a lot of cautions during the figure-8 which was kind of boring. The figure-8 is definitely one of the most exciting races that they do. We went home around 10:00. I stayed up playing video games again (no surprise) but I actually had a purpose this time. A new game, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, went into open beta on Sunday. So I stayed up until after midnight to see if I could get in. Unfortunately I couldn't so I wandered off to bed.

Sunday morning I got up and immediately went to try starting the download of Warhammer before I got ready for church. I was able to get in this time and the download started. I went off to church anxiously awaiting the time to come home and get into the game.

Church was just whatever today. No terribly interesting talks/testimonies or incredibly insightful lessons. I got to chat it up with a few people which was nice. I'm still trying to get to know people in the ward so it's good to have that chance. I had a scoutmaster's conference to do right after church so that got me out of doing a fast-offering route. I hadn't planned it that way, but that's the way it worked out. I don't really mind taking a youth out on their route, but I'm just as happy to not do it, if you understand what I mean. This time I had a SM conference so I wasn't available. I enjoyed having the conference with this particular scout. He's one of those youth who is just a joy to have around. I wish all of my scouts could be like him. I've said before that if I did have kids I would want to take parenting lessons from his parents. He's such a great young man. Once the SM conference was over I went home so that I could take Karen over to one of her visiting teaching lady's homes. It was her birthday and Karen had a little present for her.

Once we got back from the birthday delivery I was finally able to play Warhammer! My first time into the game there was a glitch which made me worry that the game wasn't going to work on my computer. I started the game again and everything went fine. I got to play for a couple of hours. I'm not terribly over-whelmed with the game right now, but it's fun to be doing something different. I'll give it a chance and see how it goes.

I got a call from the scoutmaster of the older guys hassling me about the fact that I wasn't willing to award Tenderfoot to a scout that had only been with me for three meetings. I don't really know who was pushing, but it really ticked me off. I think they were thinking that I would count the stuff he did when he went to half of the 11 year old scout camp. They never really talked to me about it. I even told the dad during our last committee meeting that the new guys wouldn't be getting anything at this court of honor. Yet I get a call from the boards of review trying to push this kid through. I was really ticked off. I try really hard to keep my nose out of the program for the older guys and here was their scoutmaster trying to meddle in mine. I am going to have a sit-down with some folks and hash this out. I'm not going to continue this way.

After all of this fun stuff I spent some time getting Karen's printer and label-maker setup. She's been wanting me to do it for a while and I haven't gotten around to it. It's not that I have been actively avoiding doing it, it's just that I don't think about it during those times when I could do it. Regardless, I have set them both up for her and made certain they were working correctly. The label-maker has all sorts of fun options so I hope she will enjoy that.

Hank and Marleah and kids came over for dinner Sunday night so that we could watch Burn Notice. We truly didn't know if they were still coming over. They have had lots of drama at their place so it wouldn't have surprised us if it just didn't happen. They still came over, however, and we had a nice evening. After they left I went up to play some more Warhammer but I kept falling asleep. It was only 9:30, but I was ready for bed. I went in to read a little and fell asleep around 11:00.

There you go, that was our fun weekend. I'm going to go and do real work now.

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Happy Birthday to Me

My birthday was yesterday. I turned 35. Karen worked really hard to make the entire weekend fun for me. All throughout the weekend things would occurred related to my birthday. It was kind of fun. On Friday evening we went to the ham radio store to buy me my first ham radio. I didn't actually get it until my birthday party, but it was fun to pick it out. I finally got to play with it a little bit this morning. It's very confusing and the instructions seem to be very wrong at times, but I'm trying to learn. I'm certain it will get better. After the radio store we went to See's Candies. Apparently they are only five minutes apart from each other. That is a very handy thing to know. In my mind the radio store was way out of the way. We go to See's every month or so, so it's nice to know that we can just swing over to the radio store if I need. After getting some yummy chocolate we went over to the Church bookstore. I wound up buying a couple of books that interested me. To be honest, I haven't found this bookstore as interesting to browse around as I did the one in San Jose, but I'm certain that's just me. They have a bakery attached to this store and there was a great smell when we came in. They were selling orange rolls at half price because they had a bunch of them to get rid of. We wound up getting a dozen. Later on when we tried them we realized why they were having a hard time getting rid of them. They were nasty! We had already given half ours away by that time and I think we're looking for someone to take the rest of them now. It was quite disappointing. After the bookstore we drove over to a nearby mall to see about getting some dinner. We had never been over there before and it turned out to be a happening little mall. We didn't actually go into the mall, but I have since heard that it is a very nice mall to walk around. We're going to have to go back there and check it out. We decided on eating at PF Chang's, but this particular one was too busy so we headed out for one of their other locations. We ran into a really nasty accident on the way. Traffic was backed up pretty bad. We also ran into some rain which really annoyed Karen. She had just gotten the van washed and now it was raining. Doesn't it just figure? We made it out to the other PF Chang's and had a really wonderful dinner. We've become very fond of their lettuce wraps and they didn't disappoint. We had a couple of other dishes that were somewhat new and they were quite nice as well. Add into that the atmosphere and the company and it was a really nice dinner. Afterward we went next door to Border's Books. Like we hadn't had enough bookstores for one evening, right? :-) I don't know that I had been to that particular Border's before, but it definitely won me over. They had a great science fiction section with a few rpg book options. They even had some of the Munchkin card sets which really surprised me. We were able to find a few things worth spending money on, so it was a good time.

On Saturday I got up early and mowed the grass. This may not sound fun, but it made me happy. Mowing the grass is definitely work, but I love the feeling of accomplishment it gives me. I love looking out at our yard and seeing it nicely trimmed. It's weird, I know, but it makes me happy. I had decided a couple of months ago that I would mow the grass every Saturday morning. Doing it once a week keeps it looking nice and makes it not that tough to maintain. Unfortunately circumstances had conspired to make me unavailable the last three Saturdays so it didn't get mowed. I could have mowed it during the week, but that would have missed the whole point of me making my Saturday mornings available. Silly, I know. Regardless, by the time this Saturday morning came our grass was looking pretty bad. The back grass was especially thick. I probably could have gotten it done in under two hours, but our neighbor came over to chat in the middle of it. It was nice to chat with him but it did throw a little wrench into our schedule. Especially since Karen was feeling a little bit of a time crunch on the day. I got everything done except for the trimming in the back yard and we decided that could wait. We got cleaned up and headed out for the day. Our first stop was to the office supply store. Where else would a guy want to go on his birthday weekend? hehehe. I actually did want to go there. I had some office organization stuff I wanted to pick up. Again we found plenty of things to spend money on, so the trip must have not been that bad. After that we went to Macy's so that Karen could get some more make-up. We found out that they stopped making her old make-up so she had to try to find the equivalent in the new stuff. She played the smiling customer while the little make-up lady picked out just the right hydration cream, foundation, blush, red dye number five, weed whacker, post-hole digger and cement mixer that we just couldn't live without. I dutifully guarded the purse and smiled and nodded at all of the appropriate places. I'm just joking, though. It didn't bother me at all and Karen seemed to be enjoying herself so I was happy. After that we went over to get the balloons and cake for my party on Sunday night. It was an ice cream cake so we had to run it home before we could do anything else. After securing the cake we went to a place called Boondocks. It is one of these mini-golf/video game/go-kart/laser tag/everything-under-the-sun-to-entertain-kids type of places. We had never been there before but it sounded like it would be fun so I chose to go there as one of my birthday activities. Our friends, Hank and Marleah, came with us along with their kids. It was a lot of fun. We had to duck out early as we had a family birthday dinner at Olive Garden.

On Sunday morning I had to hop up and prepare a lesson. I was teaching for the first time in Elder's Quorum and hadn't prepared my lesson yet. I got it finished and ran off to church. I think the lesson went okay, but nobody really said anything so I can't be certain. As Karen said, I guess we'll know if they don't ask me to teach again. After church I went home teaching. I like my families and I like chatting with them so home teaching isn't really much of a chore. Even though I put it off as if it were. After I got back home it was almost time for people to show up for the birthday dinner at our place. Karen fixed a wonderful dinner of turkey and mashed potatoes. I loved it. The birthday cake was my favorite ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins. We did the whole present opening thing where I got way more presents than I deserved and then everyone went home. Karen and I did a little bit of cleaning up and then went upstairs for some well-deserved sleep. It was a long weekend. Whew!

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