The Dino-Aspie Ex-Café (for Those 40+... or feeling creaky)

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Lurking again. Okay, this...



... is a photo I actually took myself, as opposed to pinching one off the Net. I decided to recreate my old avatar in 3D in polymer clay, and that was the result.

How cute!

Oohh! Nice!...Maybe I should get into Polymer Clay art..

The kid found a cookbook at a library rummage sale a week ago. It was an old one, at least 50 years out of print. And in it she found a recipe for "General Robert E. Lee Cake" from the 1860s - 1870s.

So the kid, who never made anything that didn't come out of a box, went to the store and got all "the fixins" and made a General Robert E. Lee cake from scratch. Took 8 eggs, several oranges, several lemons, at least a pound of butter, I don't know how much sugar (a lot). She made boiled lemon filling for it in a double-boiler (more butter, eggs, and sugar). Made orange and lemon icing with coconut pressed into it. The cake was four layers, with the tart lemon custard in between each layer. It really looked nice. And it was, in effect, a sugar bomb.

Holy jeeezus, it was sweet!! Really good, but sweet. My teeth almost hurt. We both had the thinnest slices I could make and both of us are now dealing with the sugar rush. She's taking her medication, testing her blood sugar, and swearing never to do that again (the eating part) and I've had half a quart of milk and am feeling a bit dizzy. (Hell yes, we had to eat the whole slice!)

If that was how they really ate back in the 1870s I cannot imagine how they didn't drop dead from the buzz. Or how they had any teeth left. But then, it would have been a very "special occasion" cake as they'd have to have had the lemons and oranges and coconut shipped in at some cost. The set that would have eaten that cake would not be those who engaged in heavy manual labor, so they'd not have burned it off. Maybe they had a secret we don't have anymore for dealing with all that sugar. Wooo.

You know, the first cake I tried to make on my own was a simple pound cake. One loaf pan, no icing. The kid just jumped right in there because nobody told her it was one of the hardest cakes to make. And she pulled it off. Four layers. Homemade lemon custard, boiled icing. Wow.

Hope the guys at work tomorrow have a large pot of coffee brewed, because that's where that cake is going in the morning.

http://culinarytypes.blogspot.com/2007/ ... -1879.html

^^wow didn't they eat the cake at those cotillions where they danced the night away? I remember Lau saying that English sweets were REALLY sweet compared with those in the States, and isn't the South, where they would develop a 'Robert E. Lee' cake famous for it's almost lethal doses of sugar in their 'sweet tea?'?

yeah, i bought some cake and cookies for the family when we got back from England, but nobody really liked it, they were too sweet,
but they looked really nice !

http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbv ... l_cake.jpg

Maybe that's it. They danced or walked it off.

It's fun, watching my co-workers going into sugar overload. We have one that reminds me of a very large chipmunk on the best of days, always buzzing around and chittering. That person has now got chittering going so much that it sounds like a very faint buzz saw in the background and there's a large contingent of people standing around the coffee pot giggling.

Who'd a thunk it?

Yeah, when I was in England the sweets were well more than I was used to, so I didn't buy much. The bread and savory pies, now, oh my. Oh my oh my. It's a good thing it's cool there and that people walk a whole lot, or with carbs that yummy they'd all weigh a ton each.

Glad you like him, Richie. I still consider myself entry-level when it comes to polyclay art. There are people doing amazing things in this medium, and not all of them are women, either. Your metalworking experience would be a huge asset. It could allow you to come up with ideas that, say, a fibre-and-textile artist or a traditional ceramicist might not think of.

It's the kind of hobby where you find yourself looking at ordinary household objects, such as garlic presses and toothpicks, and odd bits of junk such as pieces of flyscreen (or practically anything with an interesting textured surface) in a whole new way.

that really is a cool little lizard, sleepy!

Cheers, Nan.

Recent experiment with transparent Fimo, violet ink and (believe it!) L'Oréal nail polish.

oooooh. . .pretty pretty. . .

ok, it's THAT time again.

we got one of those "transmits the temp and humidity" things that we have out on our balcony, under a patio umbrella so it's not in the direct sun. it transmits to "weather boy", a receiving unit in our den that shows humidity, temp, trends, air pressure, etc.... this morning the kid said she was watching it at about 9:30 and literally saw it going up a degree every minute as she stood there. she went ahead and went to the gym when she saw that happening, as she knew if she waited too long she'd be trapped in the house. by the time she got home a half hour (or so) later it was well into the 90s. she said weather boy said it was 105F on the patio mid-afternoon and something like 12% humidity. tomorrow is supposed to be hotter. so much for that nice, cool fall we were praying for. she's sleeping on a mattress we dragged out to the living room. i'm still trying to sleep back here in my room but it's not going well. it's cooler out now, so i've got the fan on sucking in the night air, but it's so dry and it's not all that cool. i guess if i can't sleep soon i will have to just go try to sleep on the floor in the living room. i'm not going to be worth a damn at work tomorrow, i can say that right now.

rancho palos verdes (up by long beach) is on fire. pendleton's on fire. another one just broke out this (ok, last now) evening out by hemet. the moisture in the dead brush is at about 4% and is less than 60% in the live brush. can we say "tinder?" yep, i knew we could.

sigh. i'm going to be just a wreck tomorrow, wondering if i can make it home in time if there's a fire nearby, or what we'll do if the power goes, or... etc., etc., etc. [just like every year.]

we're supposed to have until october to get ready for this. i guess if nothing bad happens tomorrow i'll go tomorrow evening when it's doable outside or early on saturday empty the car trunk, and make sure the emergency stuff is in there, and go ahead and get the "make a run for it" boxes out of storage to keep in a closet for in case.

on the good side, they say property values are starting to creep up, so perhaps eventually i can sell my place for what i owe on it. at this point, we're waiting to get the kid run through all the medical hoops (and we are STILL waiting for the paperwork to go through for that second set of tests). once we have that all done and squared away, and if i can find work somewhere else where the climate is more ... tolerable... and if we can convince the bank to just take the deed back if we can't sell it, we're outa here.

hopefully we won't have another nasty fire season this year. i just don't think i can stretch that far. between the kid and the job furloughs... no, no fire stuff this year. already got nothing left for that. all used up before we even start.

Well, Nan, if you don't mind frequent cloudy days, and rain as often as not, I can recommend the Pacific coastal region, north of Weed and extending up to the Canadian border (assuming you don't want to leave the US), between the ocean and the Cascade Mountain range. The temps tend to be lower, and the moisture higher. (Don't move to east of the mountains, or you start running into the low humidity and summer fire problem again.) The Seattle/Tacoma region of Washington can have costs as high as SoCal, but there are other, less expensive regions.

On the down side, there's snow in the winter sometimes, and the unemployment rate is in the 9-10% range over most of the state (with some areas going higher than 12%), so it's not all Yakima Valley wine and local roses...

I'm ordering my schoolmaterial for next Tuesday, school begins

accidentily (I wanted to know what kind of material something was) I came across this website,
very creative woman if you ask me, beautiful colours, inspiring models (mainly jewelry, textile/fimo and mixed)
here is one I thought very beautiful

http://basbleu.canalblog.com/albums/fim ... n3211.html

and this one too

http://basbleu.canalblog.com/albums/col ... odees.html

and here is the main page (it's in french Bijoux=jewelry, colliers=necklaces, the textile necklaces are really special and inspiring, you can also click the messages, lots of colours there too ! !)

http://basbleu.canalblog.com/

yeah, deacon, it's pretty up there. but...cascadia subduction zone ring any bells?
10% unemployment is lower than what we gots down here....


i'd love to live in canada, but they won't let me. i'm too old.

i'm still thinking new england might be the way to go, for the kiddo.

i have dual eu-usa citizenship, but the kid does not, so that kind of puts a crink in going there.

Last edited by Nan on 29 Aug 2009, 3:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

ok, it's hot all day(108F on the porch) and i'm pissy and really tired tonight, so here goes.

we had the kid working with the local voc rehab to get job interview skills, etc. all seemed to be going well enough. they shuffled her off to a coaching agency to work on interviewing skills. kid gets to her appointment last week and the woman had quit with no notice, and someone totally unqualified and who didn't know diddley about aspies or her health issues was trying to fill in. it was kind of a failure of a meeting.

this past monday around noon rehab lady sends the kid an email telling her she should go to a workshop on tuesday afternoon. kid gets the email at about 10 at night, as that's when the room gets cool enough for her to go to sit at the computer and get her email. temp for tuesday was forecast as low to mid nineties. workshop was from 2-4pm. bad for kid to be out and about, dangerous, given her health stuff. there wasn't time, given the late notice, for her to make arrangements with friends to take her over and pick her up, or for me to take off work. not enough lead time.

so, kid wrote back to rehab lady that it was dangerous for her to be out in those temps, and was there another workshop available during a cooler part of the day, as she'd like to attend it.

she got a slamming email back today - "the building is probably air conditioned." "if your car is air-conditioned [it barely is] and you can't get from a car to the door when it's hot, how are you ever going to get a job?" "have you applied for social security disability yet?" [she'd never discussed that with the kid] and "if you can't go outside when it's hot, perhaps you are unemployable."

rehab lady just got one back from me that took me four hours to carefully hone down to some very sharp, pointy paragraphs. the kid's issues with work have nothing to do with heat. she can sit in an air conditioned office and type 54 wpm, no problem. and has done. it's not 100F at 7:00am on the way to work, and ... well, anyway, i just did my best to rip rehab lady a new one.

if i don't hear what i should be hearing from her in her next communication, it's going up the chain of command until i hear what i should be hearing. that was totally inexcusable. and i told her so.

this was from the woman who was supposed to be helping her find work and learn how to fit in better. the kid was in tears.

as the kids say "oh no she DINT!" the kid's been working really hard on all that stuff, going through the "job interview" hypothetical questions over and over, trying to learn the body language stuff, and then this. oh, no. nope. nada. nyet. not appropriate and going to be protested loudly.

anybody know the name and email addy of anyone on the inside near the head of the california dept of vocational rehab? i've got copies of some very interesting emails they should see.