b:b:III (The Bachelor Bakes III)

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my greatest baking feat to date:


It doesn't look as nice as I would like, mostly because the frosting isn't as thick as I think it probably should be, but I made the whole thing from scratch (and that's two layers of cake, my friends), so I was pretty impressed with myself. I took it into work and it was devoured fairly quickly.

Of course, those vultures will eat anything.

Which is why I waited a good two hours before having my first slice.
Just to make sure no one kicked the bucket and all...

My luggage went on vacation and all I got was this T-shirt

Well, I've been back from my trip to Colorado since Sunday. My luggage arrived late Tuesday night. I'm not sure why, but judging by my past arrivals in Norfolk, it is now statistically more likely for me to NOT get my luggage when I fly home. Apparently, when I made the layover in Cleveland, my suitcase decided to stick around. And then, rather than fly to Norfolk the next day, it decided to fly to Portland, Maine. After hanging around there for a bit, it finally came home via Newark.
I hope it had a nice time without me.

On the bright side, the trip was really nice. The wedding and reception were fun (and featured, oddly, potatoes shaped like mushrooms), I got to see my parents and some friends from high school, do a little hiking and I got fitted for a kilt.

Yes, a kilt.

Two friends of mine are getting married later this summer and have decided to have a Scottish theme that involves the groomsmen wearing kilts. I give you a preview now (minus several parts of the outfit, but you get the idea):



Ladies, I'll start taking applications to be my wedding date now.

After I arrived home, a friend who had been to the ACES conference in, coincidentally, Cleveland gave me this shirt that she had gotten as a conference gift:

If you know me, you'll get it.

What about me

I really want to like "What About Brian," the new show on ABC. It's got a guy named Brian as the main character and JJ Abrams is the executive producer. The premise is that Brian is a single guy in his 30s surrounded by married or engaged friends, so I figured I should watch to get a glimpse of my future in 5 or 10 years.

Sadly, my future seems to be filled with WB castoffs, doofus guys, predictable plots, fairly one-dimensional characters, not-so-great dialogue and musical montages because JJ Abrams doesn't know how to end a freakin' show without showing snippets of all the characters set to some sappy song.

(sigh)

Maybe my future will go more along the lines of "Life of Brian."

A day late...

Play-Doh bunny
Originally uploaded by commonbriguy.

... my Easter gift to you. I spent the beginning of my work shift on Sunday molding this out of Play-Doh. (Hey, it was a slow night.)

Well, this is awkward

Sooo ....

It's been awhile. I feel bad about that. I meant to blog. Really, I did. I've just been ... busy. But I thought about you all. And I kept meaning to blog, I just didn't get around to it. I know it's not an excuse, but ... well, I'm making it my excuse. So what oh-so-important things have I been so busy with that I've been ignoring my blogging duties, you ask? Uhhh ... well, not much really.

Work is good, but I don't really like to talk about it. Super-secret spy stuff and all ...
I've been playing weekly games of pool.
I'm progressing quite nicely in the video game I've been playing, thanks.
I saw the Orioles lose badly to the Red Sox last week, but it was a fun day nonetheless.
It's definitely spring, which is great. I'm back to playing tennis regularly and hope to do some more hiking and biking and beachgoing soon.
I'm headed back to Colorado this week for a wedding, so that should be fun.

And finally, today is Easter, and in honor of that I wanted to find an audio download of David Sedaris reading his story "Jesus Shaves." (Hey, David Sedaris has just as much relevance to Easter as a bunny that delivers candy.) Sadly, I couldn't find it online. Esquire used to have it available, but now it's in the paid archives section. But someone else in the wide world of blogging was kind enough to type it out, so I hope she won't mind if I link to it. So read it, have a laugh and happy Easter!

A 16,000 word posting

PC120097
Originally uploaded by commonbriguy.

It only took me about four months, but I finally got around to getting a Flickr account and posting some pictures from my December trip with my friend Shutterbug to Moab, Utah. So enjoy.

And speaking of photos, if you haven't seen the Christian Science Monitor's slideshow of photos from Jill Carroll's homecoming, it's quite moving.

The more you know

Today's PSA:
Don't forget about daylight-saving time tonight. Spring your clocks forward because no one wants to wait an hour for you to show up tomorrow ...

P.S. This is not an April Fool's joke, although daylight-saving time does sometimes seem like it.

P.P.S. In honor of today, check out the Museum of Hoaxes, which has a list of past April Fool's hoaxes and promises to update with pranks being made today.