Oscar Party 2011: Seattle Edition

The Annual Oscar Party took place in Seattle this year, with the gals who helped start the tradition many years ago - my old roommates, Yanaj and Nicole. Words cannot do justice to the successful disaster that was The Official Oscar Cake this year, so please to enjoy a photo journey of our adventure in creating our first 3D Oscar Cake:

Ingredients

Mix.

Eat funfetti frosting while Nicole mixes.

Be slightly puzzled at why the cakes bubbled up all funny.

Cut cake into completely uneven sections.

Dye frosting black and gold.

Spread frosting (read: sticky stuff to hold the base in place) on the cookie sheet.

Start building cake.

Hold chunks of cake while Yanaj figures out how to build it.

Realize that your cake is looking more like a cheeseburger than an Oscar.

Continue shellacking and stacking cake. Insert kabob skewers for support, which really won't lend any support whatsoever because you don't have any kind of secured base, except for cake.

Just keep adding skewers.

Realize that your cake looks more like a Transformer than an Oscar.

Determine that it's leaning...

...so add more skewers, and hold it while you begin to sculpt

Begin dirty icing. Feel smugly proud of yourself because you watch Cake Boss and you know what the term "dirty icing" means. And since you watch Cake Boss, your Oscar cake cannot fail.

Continue slapping icing on in a manner that would make the Cake Boss fire you on the spot.

Use icing bag with star-shaped tip to do fancy frosting.

Oh, did I mention that somewhere in there, you realize Oscar is leeeeeeeeeaning so you add skewers on either side for support?

The finished product, pre-car ride.

And post-car ride. He barely survived the trip.

Not bad for our first-ever attempt at building a 3D Oscar cake, if I do say so myself.

Note to self: Watching Cake Boss does not a cake boss make.

It's Official: I'm Old

My little brother turns 27 today. TWENTY SEVEN. My LITTLE brother. In my mind, he's 19-20ish. Not 27. In my mind, I can still beat him up and put him in a headlock.

This makes it official that I am old, because it means my birthday is in a month, which means that I am one year closer to being 40.


Happy Birthday, little brother. I'm looking forward to the day when you get engaged and leave me to be the only single person left in our family.

Derby Hurts, Even Though it Looks Like I Just Cut Myself Shaving

Derby Week 7 was tough. The whole day had been crappy, with me spending 8 hours in a certification class where I was the only girl, and no one wanted to sit by me. Well, someone sat by me and first, and then got up and moved. So, I already felt super awesome about myself, and by the end of the day, I felt too pissy and angry to fail more at derby. But, we went and I'm glad we did.

By the end of the night, I was drenched in sweat, red in the face, and completely out of breath. Kind of like right after I eat a Whopper. We started doing some of the skills testing, which did not go as well as I'd hoped.

It's critical to be able to pass the skills test because...gulp...our first official public scrimmage has been set for April 2. When they announced that, I pooped my pants a little because I'm nowhere near ready to make my public debut as a top spinning out of control. But it means I still have about five weeks to get up to par.

The skills testing consisted of us skating around the track while our Fresh Meat Mamas called out different things for us to do: falling on one knee, the rockstar fall, the baseball slide, weaving, squatting, jumping...and I'll tell you how many of those things I felt confident doing. Exactly one. After seven weeks of training, I finally feel comfortable going down on one knee and popping back up. The other falls? Not so much.

I skated off to the side and watched as my fellow tofutti cuties and the vets were circling around, effortlessly throwing their bodies down to the track and getting back up again, doing baseball slides and rockstar slides. Over and over, they went around and around and I just stood there and watched, looking like a scared kitty in the river, clutching to a branch to prevent getting swept downstream. I gnawed on my mouth guard and pretended to adjust my laces so that no one would think I was just giving up. But the Fresh Meat Mamas are way too smart for that, and they immediately called me out on it.

England's Glory (who's butt is totally my inspiration to keep going - have you seen that thing? Amazing!) called out to me and asked if I'd learned how to do these falls. I said yes, technically I'd "learned" them, but I just couldn't "do" them. All in a whiny, helpless voice which totally solidified the scared-kitty-in-the-river feeling I had. Then Wanton and Daisy skated over and I knew I was about to get chewed up and spit out right back into the river.

The Fresh Meat Mamas are all so incredibly nice, but firm. They don't put up with half-assing it, and you're never allowed to say "I can't" to them. They could see the apprehension on my face, and Wanton said, "I don't expect you to be perfect, I just want to see you TRY." And Daisy chipped in with, "Here, I'll skate along with you and we'll do it together. You just need to get out of your head, and think "seduction..."

Seduction? What part of baseball slide says 'seduction'? My version of the baseball slide was skating as fast as I could (read: not very fast at all) then throwing my body down until I eventually come to a stop in a heap. Daisy's version was skating as fast as she could (read: really really fast) then gracefully laying herself across the track like a pin-up girl posing on a couch. It was incredible.

So I gave it a few more tries, using my mental version of seduction, and I don't care how I actually looked in the end - in my mind, I looked just like Daisy. Watching the veterans and mentally making my body move just like theirs gives me more confidence. And yes, I DO know that my mental-me and my reality-me are very very far apart.

So Wanton and Daisy made me get back out on the track and at least keep trying. Which I did, far be it from even close to passing the skills test, but I tried. Sometime during the night, I did a fall and cleated my left shin with my right skate. I figured it was just a bruise and kept going. Later, I got my skates tangled with another girl and flipped ass over teakettle and accidentally went right into a baseball slide! So I didn't really get hurt on that one.

When I got home, I realized that by cleating myself, I'd actually managed to draw first blood. My shin was swollen like a baseball and turning green all the way around. Of course in pictures, it looks like I just cut myself shaving, but trust me, it's green. Hopefully it will get more colorful and the pictures will turn out better. But I promise, it's not from shaving.



Ok April 2, here we come!

You Be The Judge

So, I'm having a fight with my sister on my Facebook wall. It goes like this:


Bone Junior: My sister wants me to love The Vampire Diaries, but my heart belongs to Puck.

Bone Senior: It's okay, you can love them both...Vampires are on on Thursdays.

Jr: But Puck loves fat bottom girls...he sang it, so it MUST be true. What do vampires love? Blood, that's what. Blood, and being pale. Neither of which appeals to me.

Sr: Let's just see what happens when Damon shows up at McKinley and gets ahold of Puck. What's he going to do, sing a stake through Damon's heart?

Jr: Puck won't even need a stake to put through Damon's heart, because men's hearts crumble when Puck sings.

Sr: I got nothing. Maybe they should do a mash up of Glee and Vampire Diaries just so we can compare abs.


Hopefully by now you know that I'm talking about Puck from "Glee", not Puck from "The Real World" like fifteen years ago. Gross. Also, if it came down to a battle of abs, I think my head might explode.


I don't know if my sister and I will ever agree on which guy is hotter, but here's what I do know: Lady is a master designer. Thanks to her, please to enjoy my Valentine's Day Portrait, which encompasses all that I love.

Roller Derby: Week 5

You may be wondering why there's no post about week four, and the simple answer is that week four, I played hookie from derby. That day at work had been one of the most frustrating, feeling like I'm banging my head against the wall, with no one taking my input or opinion seriously; and I was just so burned out that derby seemed like a hurdle I couldn't clear. Everyone tried to tell me that I should still go, that it would be a release for my anger and aggression; to which I replied that sure, if I were good at skating and derby, I could see how it would be a cathartic release for my anger. But, given that I still stink at skating and still get extremely frustrated with myself during practice, I felt that "skating out my aggression" would be about as fulfilling as slamming one of those doors that has the catch mechanism on it, so that you literally CANNOT slam the door. And that makes me even more mad.

Long story short, I was on the verge of a meltdown, and the last people I want to melt down in front of is these bad ass, tough as nails Red Rockettes. I'm still trying to convince them that I have what it takes to be a derby girl, and I didn't think that having a throw-down-bawling tantrum in the middle of practice would pretty much ruin my street cred. So, no derby for me last week.

Week five was really fun, we almost never stopped skating around the track, practicing all the skills we've learned so far. My Fresh Meat Mama, Wanton, wasn't there, so our OTHER Fresh Meat Mama, England's Glory, took over and was very patient with us newbies.

We skated laps, laps, laps, and more laps. We were supposed to alternate sprinting (skating as fast as we can) and "regular skating", which is really more about coasting along for me. I practiced gliding on one leg, stopping, jumping - which really did not go well - and some of our falls. Last time I tried a one-knee slide, I felt like my quad ripped in half and then I couldn't get back up, so I was pretty apprehensive about trying it again this week. But, my sister's words echoed in my head: "Don't be scared!", and I just went for it. And guess what. I got back up! I went down on one knee, came to a complete stop, and I GOT BACK UP! I was so stoked that I even tried it a few more times. Score one for the Bone.

Then we learned how to hit, and how to take a hit without losing control or getting penalties. You're supposed to use your hips and upper body to bump the girl without losing your balance, tripping over their skates, flailing your arms, or falling. I was able to successfully bump girls and achieve all of the things we were trying to avoid: losing my balance, tripping over skates, and flailing my arms while falling.

The best part of the night was the pace line. We skate single file around the track, keeping pace with the girl in front of us, while checking over our shoulders for the girls behind us. The last person in line had to weave in between each girl ahead of her, and give them a hit as she passed. Skating in line and keeping pace was the easy part, and even taking the hits wasn't too bad. Then it was my turn to weave in and out and give the hits. That's when things took a turn for the worst.

I did ok weaving in and out of the first few girls. I was about halfway through the pace line when I tangled with a tall girl and she totally took me out. I flipped ass over teakettle, one of my legs went under me and my butt landed square on my skate wheels. That didn't feel too good, but I got up and caught up to the pace line to keep going.

Not too long after that, I skated up along side one of the tougher girls and tried to give her a hit. My skates got tangled in hers, I started to lose my balance, and in trying to save myself from going down, I was frantically grabbing at whatever I could. And by "frantically grabbing whatever I could", I mean "I pretty much violated all of her naughty parts in the process." So my sincere apologies to Becky for grabbing just about everything in her no-no square.

In all, it was a really fun night of skating and although I'm sore today, at least I'm able to walk. Now I just have to worry about passing the skills test next week...