Just a typical Monday night...

At FHE the other night, Garrett came up to me and said, "I have some strawberries I need to get rid of, so I'm going to bake a chocolate cake." That is impeccable logic, and one of the reasons Garrett and I are friends. We had a brief conference over whose house to bake it. My apartment kitchen had still not recovered from the 4 batches of cupcakes I made the week before, but Garrett's house is the site of a nightly P90X workout.

For those of you following Challengers of the Unknown, you may be familiar with Charlie, or tonganterror, as he is known in the blogosphere. In addition to bearing a striking resemblance to the Rock, Charlie is in the midst of doing P90X with his buddy Rudy. Another interesting fact about Charlie is that he is Garrett's roommate, and the nightly P90X workout is his.

Imagine, if you will, the juxtaposition of hardcore yoga with cake baking. That was my Monday night.

I did not get any pictures of the yoga part, so you'll just have to trust me that it was going on. Charlie asked that his picture not be taken, and I respected his wishes, as he is in the process of "bringing it" and I did not want to be the reason it was not brought. Rudy, more of an exhibitionist, would have happily allowed me to take pictures, but I chose not to interfere with the integrity of the event.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, we were baking cake.

I brought aprons for everyone to wear. Here's Garrett tying his while he talks on the phone.

Here's a shot of the batter. Isn't it gorgeous?

This cake was odd in that it had a layer of frosting, and then another layer of ganache icing.

Here's a shot of the frosting. It was similar to the stuff inside Oreo cookies.

Here's Stacy cutting up strawberries.

And Stetson. He's an accountant. Tax day was three days later. In this picture, he is melting chocolate for the ganache. And, yes, he is also wearing one of my aprons.

While the cake was baking, we played Scum. Yoga was still going on. In fact, yoga finished at the same time we finally got to start eating the cake.

We were all sinking our forks into the decadence when Rudy and Charlie started "Ohm"-ing in unison. It's a pretty good thing I didn't snort chocolate cake.

Even good chocolate cake is bad when it comes out your nose.

A Quick Trip to Provo

Sometimes I get lucky, and a trip that's meant to be about business ends up being more about pleasure, like Chicago or San Francisco.

Sometimes I try to organize pleasure around a business trip, and it implodes on me. That's what happened last weekend.

I was lucky enough last weekend to be interviewed for a visiting faculty position at BYU, the same BYU that I attended for six years. It was, to date, the scariest thing I have ever done-career-wise.

I arrived in Utah on Friday. My parents drove up from Las Vegas the night before, and I called my mom to find out what the temperature was like. She replied that it was a little chilly, but I could probably get away with a light jacket. Imagine my surprise when, as the plane touched down, it started to snow. Fortunately, the snow did not stick.

I'd had what I believed to be a cold a few weeks earlier, and felt like it was coming back the night before I left Lubbock. With the stress of preparing for a big job interview, I can't say that I slept all that well that week. However, it was decidedly worse on Sunday when I woke up unable to talk. I had made plans to hang out with Anne and Lisa that afternoon, and had to cancel them. I ended up skipping church and passing out on Melanee's couch.

The interview started at 7:30 on Monday morning. I have no pictures of this because I believe that trying to capture the experience with my camera would have undermined my credibility. The most stressful part of my day happened at 10:00, when I had to give my research presentation. Halfway through, I began coughing pretty hard, until one of the faculty members left the room and returned with a cough drop.

The interview finished up on Tuesday morning, and I had lunch with Melanee and the kids before heading to the airport.

I have lived in Lubbock long enough to learn a few things about flying there:

a) There are only four airlines that fly to Lubbock.

b) The best is Southwest. The worst is American.

BYU booked my flight on American Airlines. I didn't complain because I didn't have to pay. However, when my flight was scheduled to take off at 4:45 from Salt Lake to Dallas, and it ended up not leaving until 5:45, I remembered some other information about flying to Lubbock:

c) There aren't that many flights from Dallas to Lubbock in a day.

d) If you miss the last flight to Lubbock, you can get stuck in DFW overnight.

That's exactly what happened. My flight to Dallas arrived 20 minutes after my flight to Lubbock took off, and it was the last flight to Lubbock of the evening. Fortunately, American Airlines put me in a hotel room for free, and gave me meal vouchers. My flight left DFW the next morning at 7:30, and I arrived in Lubbock at 8:20. I went straight to a meeting with my advisor, wearing the clothes I'd had on the day before, having washed my face with hotel soap, and brushed my teeth with one of these fabulous disposable toothbrushes my mom gave me for Christmas called Wisps. I received many dental hygiene products this Christmas, which I think must mean something. I had to change clothing and fix my hair and makeup in my office in between meetings and class because I was supposed to see six clients that afternoon. It was 9:30 before I got home.

The next day, I went to urgent care, where they diagnosed me with strep throat.

And I'm pretty sure that, somewhere in the midst of all that coughing, I broke a rib.

I am never leaving my apartment again.

April Fools!

I didn't make cupcakes for the meeting we had on April 1 because I wasn't feeling great (it turned out to be strep throat, and then, later, a possible rib fracture. Another story).

However, there is a cupcake place across the street from my apartment that I have been dying to try, and, as it happened, they had created some special cupcakes for April Fools' Day. So I bought a few to take to work.

Bagels with lox. I think the bagel was actually a donut. Reminds me of the episode of Seinfeld with the Peterman Reality Tour.

Spaghetti and meatballs. The noodles are buttercream; the meatball is a Ferrero-Rocher chocolate, and the sauce is strawberry jelly. The actual cake was red velvet.

Then, there were the mashed potatoes and gravy. The gravy was caramel, and the butter pat was a lemon Starburst.

This one was supposed to be popcorn. In retrospect, I should have gotten another spaghetti and meatball one. I didn't think this one was as impressive.

But they were all good ideas for next year.