The One With The Most Awesome Cake in All the Land

For Ryan's very  special, once-in-a-lifetime, 27th birthday I decided to make him a cake just like he had said he wanted. Chocolate with peanut butter frosting. While I searched the interwebs for a recipe I found one that fit the bill: Chocolate with Peanut Butter Frosting and Chocolate Peanut Butter Glaze on top. Before reading all of the directions and assessing the equipment needed, I pretty much had my heart set on making this cake and Ryan's birthday would be ruined without it. And so it began.

First of all, I should note that I have very limited kitchen utensils and appliances and the ones I do have are of notably shoddy craftsmanship. I try and hold out on purchasing these items for it is a mere 338 days until we get married and, allegedly receive gifts in the form of bakeware and gadgetry. But I digress. I needed to go out and buy all of the fixin's to make this cake from scratch as well as some essential items: a hand mixer, a flour sifter, and a pyrex measuring cup because I thought I would outsmart a double boiler with it. 

I came home with all my goods and got to work. I had forgotten to get wax paper but thought that if I just used enough butter on the bottom of the pan it wouldn't be necessary. So I mixed up my cake batter, put two pans in the oven and sat down thinking about what an amazing baker I am and how I should open up shop. 

35 minutes later, cakes come out, looking all sunken and sad in the middle. This should have been a red flag for me, but instead I just decided that they would cool and it would firm up. I imagined it to be like letting the sauce thicken on Pasta Roni after it's done cooking. 

Wrong. As soon as I tried to take them out of the pan it completely fell apart and turned into a hot mess. There was no way that I could even just load up the pieces with frosting and shove them back together. 

But I would not be defeated. Today after class I stopped and got more supplies and wax paper, and set about remaking the cake. The structural integrity of the top most layer might be called into question, but all three layers are there, frosted, glazed and delicious. 

Cake: 0, Ashley: 1. 

The One With Total Insect Warfare Resumed

I realize my blog has been on hiatus, but, truly not that many interesting things happen here unless I wanted my blog to turn into a customer service gripe-fest, but, I know that the daily happenings of Ryan and Ashley has a HUGE following so I shall do my best to update more frequently. At least until school starts! 

Most of my daily activities include reading wedding blogs, looking at wedding dresses online, forcing Ryan to listen to and act interested in all of my wedding ideas. For the week that Ryan was at his Annual Training in West Virginia I also spiced up my afternoons by playing the Harry Potter video game on XBOX and reading Twilight. Full dork mode. 

One of those days however, while I was getting ready to go to work I saw that we had an unwelcome visitor creeping down the hall away from the kitchen. I frantically searched for the giant can of roach spray and called Ryan in a panic. There was no more roach spray and I suddenly couldn't find my friend again. Ryan told me to trap it under a glass until I came back from work. I did, and there was a lot of squealing involved. 

After work, I marched myself right down to the Harris Teeter, picked myself up an arsenal of insecticides and came home to make sure that Penny hadn't knocked over my glass and allowed my prisoner to escape. She hadn't. So, I lifted up the glass, sprayed the crap out of the bug and trapped him again when he tried to run under our wine rack cabinet. Every 5-10 minutes I liked to lift up the glass again and spray and trap him in a cloud of DEATH. After about an hour I decided he was good and dead and I sucked him up in the vacuum tube, emptied the vacuum into a trash bag and promptly took it outside. 

Currently I am waiting for the exterminator to come since Ryan found a dying roach by our back door this morning. It is clearly time for a full frontal attack! Stay tuned. 

The One With Mr. Jefferson's House, No Jefferson.

This weekend we visited Monticello with James and Jennie. I did not realize that the Monticello was so close to us, but James is in Charlottesville at his JAG course and evidently that is where Mr. Jefferson lived. His house was actually a little more awesome than Mt. Vernon, the only thing really missing was people dressed up in period costumes to make me feel so very excited and so very scared all at once. 

Also, a little fun fact for you: The back of the nickle is the same as the view of the back of Monticello...

The One With Shamrock (cold, wet) Fest

Apparently every year, DC has a huge, giant, St. Patrick's day festival that involves bands and booze. Ryan and I heard about it and were pretty excited to go to it. We purchased some tickets, Ryan got out of drill early and luckily I got off work in time to hit up the festivities. First of all, we road the metro down there and it was insanely packed with people wearing crazy green outfits. This probably should have been our first indication of what was in store. I wish I could have taken a picture of the sea of people getting off the metro at the Stadium-Armory stop, but, I did not and just imagine that it was like when I took a picture of the metro during Inauguration, only more people in green. 

Anywhoodle, I should also note that it was cold, and rainy, but we had already paid for our tickets and the beer was included so we figured why not. (The website also had mentioned several fun INDOOR and outdoor events, so we figured we would be able to go inside and get dry if need be, but I will discuss what this "fun" "indoor" event"s" really entailed. 

The event also included, evidently, carnival rides. Is it just me, or does it seem like an incredibly bad idea to include carnival rides (particularily those gravity ones like the kids from the Sandlot threw up on) at a beer fest? Needless to say, we did not partake in the rides, no need to get vommed on in the name of St. Patrick. 

Overall it was a really cool event. Had it even just been sunny, even if it was cold, I think it would have been an A+ event. There were a few different stages (the website had claimed 9, but we found 4) and lots of little booths (where we purchased more clothes when we started to freeze our fannies off) and food and such. 

The indoor event that we encountered was actually a sideshow, and involved a girl putting herself in a straight jacket and trying to escape, and a guy who swallowed swords and bent up hangers. The latter was kind of eerily fascinating, but I had to look away when he swallowed a 2 ft sword that went all the way into his stomach. Thanks but no thanks. 

Hopefully next year it will be sunny and we can recruit some friends to attend with us, although Ryan did stalk and befriend a guy wearing an Oregon sweatshirt...

The One With The Most Magical Shirt In All The Land

Today was the best day ever because my magical Barack O'Unicorn shirt arrived in the mail. Behold the magic: 

The One With The Washington Monument

Ever since we moved her I have been wanting to go up inside the Washington Monument. Actually no, that's a lie, because originally I did not even know that you could go inside, but once I found that out I was really wanting to go. You have to get tickets ahead of time though, because evidently it is very popular and they sell out quickly. Caitlin and I went down there this morning, and barely made it in time for our 11 AM tour. I was pretty confused as to how it works, so rather than wait in line like everyone else, we just squeezed through the barrier and went up with the first group. I feel like that was a pretty good decision because it was very cold and a little windy outside.Anywhoodle, it was about as cool as I thought it would be, only it might be a little cooler if it had been nicer out! Whoooo wants to go back on a sunny day?! 

The One Where We Shaved Penny

Every couple of months we like to take Penny to the groomer to get her nails clipped and her bedroom slippers trimmed. We always try to be pretty careful to make sure that they clip her leg hairs a lot because they get really long and bushy. I also like to have her ears trimmed so that the hairs are shorter and she looks younger. It makes her oh so much more lovable. 

Today I dropped her off at the groomer, and they asked me a question which I thought was "is she a cocker spaniel?" so I said yes. Evidently the question truly was "would you like us to give her a reverse mohawk and make her look incredibly stupid?"

I understand that the typical cocker spaniel hair cut invo

lves shorter hair on top and then long hair on bottom, but literally there was no hair on top, and what was basically a grass skirt made of hair on the bottom. 

We went in to pick her up and they make you go pay at the front counter, so I waited in the grooming section while they brought her out and Ryan went to pay. When I saw her I 

could not stop laughing and barely concealed my look of disgust as laughing at her having bows in her hair. I wish I could have taken a picture of Ryan's face when he walked back in, because he was clearly horrified and trying as best he could to hold it in.

As soon as we walked out of the building the consensus was: "What the eff did they do to our dog?!?!" At what point did they look at how Penny was groomed, clap their hands and say "Welp, it's been a good day at the grooming salon!" and think that they should leave her like that. 

We decided to remedy the situation at home, and are now the proud owners of $50 grooming sheers and a naked dog. 

The One With All The Snow

I waited all day on Sunday for the promised snow storm to hit. It started snowing in the afternoon but the ground was so wet that it wasn't sticking at all and I was pretty disappointed. I woke up this morning to a pretty decent amount of snow, and was pretty excited that I would not have to take my Anatomy exam this morning.

Then I checked the school website and it had an alert that the campus would be open at 12 PM due to the snow. My class starts at 12:30. Bollocks. So, I emailed the professor a couple of times to see if he planned on having class anyways, and was THISCLOSE to stalking his home phone number when he wouldn't respond to me, when I noticed that the college website had updated that they would be closed all day. Huzzah! 

Penny and I celebrated by drinking a lot of coffee, catching up on The City on demand, and then falling into a light afternoon coma. I decided that she should be aloud to play in the snow in the courtyard. I opened the door and she ran out, and then stood there by the door so confused that she a) wasn't on a leash and b) wasn't getting yelled at for escaping. I had to tell her to go run around about 5 times before she did, then she ran amuck and came back inside when I told her to. Penny loves snow days. 

The One With Mr. Washington

As you all know, this weekend was a holiday (for some, and evidently a bitter point of contention for others). We celebrated President's day on or around George Washington's birthday, presumably because he was the first president and set the precedent for all other presidents after him and was an all-around good guy except that time it was totally his fault that the French and Indian war started. (Yeah, a little FF fun fact for you). 

Anywhoodle, Kyle and Nicole came to visit this weekend and it was really fun. I really wanted to go to a Revolutionary War re-enactment, but we didn't quite make it to that on time. We did, however, make it to Mt. Vernon in time to wish Mr. Washington a very-special-once-in-a-lifetime 277th birthday. 

We were waiting line outside of the mansion for the tour, and Kyle went around to investigate and see if he could locate Mr. Washington. He did, and reported back that there was a) no line, b) the actor playing Mr. Washington looked like he was using his real hair and c) was very serious and would not break character. 

I was really excited to go see him, so Nicole and I went over and creeped up on him and just sat down next to him in some chairs on the back porch of the mansion and didn't say anything. Mr. Washington asked us where we were from, and when we said Oregon, he said he did not know where that was, because of course he was in George Washington times and America stopped at the Ohio River. 

Essentially, it was probably the most awkward I have ever felt in all of my life (which is saying a lot, considering the amount of awkward situations I find myself in), and I am sure it was quite painful for Mr. Washington as well. I am not satisfied with the way that encounter went at all, and plan on studying my GW facts so that Nicole and I can give him a pop quiz the next time we visit him at his home. 

Ugh. 

Trapped in the AOL vortex

Remember back in about 1996 when everyone had dial up AOL on their computers and it was so awesome to sign in with your screenname and chat with people. And then AOL evolved and it was more just chatting with people on your buddy list in high school and college and everything was rainbows and butterflies? Well, now I am an adult, and adults use gmail, and chat with their parents and friends and coworkers on gchat all day and it is all much more respectable. So today I decide to clean up my gmail inbox and had to delete some 600 emails from the last year or so that were no longer pertinent. I am down to 30 in my inbox and feeling pretty good about myself. 

As a curious individual I decided to see whatever happened with my AOL mail account. I logged on, and low and behold I had approximately 4,000 emails, dating all the way back to May 2006. All of the e-mails were complete junk, so I decided I better just cancel the account entirely and free up some space on the ol' AOL server...

First I looked in the AOL help section about canceling accounts. All they had in there was about canceling acounts that you pay for and converting them to free. I didn't even know that people still paid for AOL, and kind of felt like if they still did than maybe they didn't deserve to have free ones and were also possibly living in a cave and using their etch-a-sketch as a computer. No word on how to cancel your free account, so I went to google. All I could find was how hard it is to cancel and how you have to do it by phone, mail, or fax. I chose phone, because I am such a people person and love to dialogue with customer service representatives. I feel it adds a nice cultural aspect to my otherwise vanilla day. So, I call and spent about 10 minutes with a very polite automated menu system. Unfortunately, he cannot locate my account information and sends me to a "counselor" to help me...enter: Simon. 

Simon: Thank you for calling AOL, My name is Simon, how can I help you?

Me: I would like to cancel my AOL account.

Simon: I am very sorry to hear that, but certainly...what is your name?

Me: Ashley Joyce

Simon: Hi, can I call you Ashley today? Like I said before, my name is Simon.

Me: Yes. 

Simon: Great, now you mentioned that you wanted to cancel your account? Is this correct?

Me: Yep.

Simon: Ok, can you spell your AOL SCREEN name for me, one character at a time.

Me: (I really tried to enunciate because this is where the automated system got confused) A-S-H-A-N-N-E-2.

Simon: Hmm...you said A-S-H-A-N-N-E-Number 2?

Me: Correct.

Simon: Why do you want to cancel it? 

Me: Well, mostly on account of I haven't logged into it since 2006 and when I logged in today there were over 4000 junk emails and it is just ridiculous.

Simon: But you don't pay for it?

Me: No.

Simon: Then why do you care?

Me: Because I do not use it. 

Simon: Then just ignore it, don't even worry about it. 

Me: Oh, ok. 

Simon: I don't think it is even active. 

Me: There was a lot of junk mail.

Simon: Yeah, well, don't worry about it and just don't even go look at it. 

Me: Ok...

Simon: Well, it has been a pleasure helping you today. Good bye! 

No, no, Simon. The pleasure was all mine. 

I would like to make an observation about AOL's alleged spam filter. However it is not filtering my mail that well, considering I had 4000 junk mails in the inbox, and only 20 in Spam.