Once while I was walking to the movie theater:

“No, that’s Neil Armstrong. Lance is the guy that rides bikes, you know, the one that had cancer.”

And yesterday while walking through the parking lot to Alberston’s, two teenager girls talking to each other:

“Is he really that attachable to you?”

you should give people cupcakes.

There is actually a warning that the dragees are not intended for human consumption on the package. I’ll be sure to warn my co-workers.

I like this recipe much better than the other chocolate cupcakes I made. I also use a little more hazelnut oil in these to give it that rich background flavor.

Chocolate Hazelnut Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 cup hazelnut oil
1 cup milk
3/4 cup hot water
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 milk chocolate chips, dredged in flour

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Mix the dry ingridents together. Mix the butter, oil, sugar and eggs together. Add the dry to the wet gradually, mixing in a little of the milk/hot water as you go along. Vanilla gets thrown in last. Add the dredged chocolate chips in and mix together. Scoop into paper cups and bake for about 19-20 minutes.

The one cupcake I ate, some of the chocolate chips had sunk to the bottom anyway, so I may need to work out that kink a little further.

Isn’t August supposed to be a quiet, boring summer month? That’s been my general impression of August - a month to wait it out until the fall arrives. It’s been an up and down month for me, mostly because of my job being lame and not being able to pay us on our scheduled paydays, which has been kind of stressful. I’m not as stressed about it as I originally was, if that’s some consolation. Instead I’m trying to keep up with the freelance thing and look for something better and of course, later on this fall I’ll have the partnership to look forward to.

On the upside, I’ve been doing some fun things. This weekend I went over to the Ken Club to check out a band Frank knows, called “Braaiins!“. I got a wee tip tipsy and rocked out and then got really sleepy. It was fun! Braaiins! also had some demo CD’s out and I grabbed the last copy. It actually has this cool insert with comic drawings and the lyrics for their songs. I thought it was awesome. Appropriately enough, the outside cover is of a brain.

I just got the second season of Dexter for my viewing pleasure which I plan on watching some more of soon. But I must make myself work first! And then I’m going to make cupcakes! And then, Dexter, you will receive my love.

I got some kick ass stuff at the cake decorating shop yesterday, including some totally cute gum paste flowers and dragees. Metallic dragees are apparently banned for sale in California… but um, I got some. I’ve seen on websites that they will not ship dragees to California and Wikipedia tells me they stopped selling them in 2003 due to lawsuit against sellers. Well, I’ll try not to report anyone but I’m going to use them anyway. Authories, please do not read my blog. In any case, prepare yourself for some cupcake photos later. Yes!

My co-worker and I have decided to partner up and work together - outside of work. We’re pretty excited to be starting on it all and will get going on it more in September after she gets back from her honeymoon later this month. We have a lot of details to work out and go over but I hope that in a couple of month’s time we’ll be up and running with our new little side business. It should be exciting and cool!

Today I started cleaning out my bookshelfs - getting rid of old magazines I will probably never read again, old books, various CD’s I no longer need and the like. I had no more room for new DVD’s and I cleaned off two shelves in my bookcase. I’m sure there’s more I can purge when I get around to it, but I’m done with it for now. It looks better already and now I don’t have to leave my DVD’s laying around in piles on my desk.

Yesterday I went with my mom to her friend’s house. They were having some sort of remembrance event for her daughter that died a year ago. I used to play with her kids when we were little. I don’t really remember her very well, but she was just a year older than me. I remember last year when my mom told me about it it really made me think for a while about things since we were close in age and I used to know her.

Yesterday I was in an Asian market with my boyfriend, who hardly ever goes into Asian markets and doesn’t really know too much about them or Asian culture. We were looking for some various sauces for a dish he wanted me to make and he said, “Oh, I guess they don’t have soy sauce here.” I said to him, “Oh, no, it’s probably in a separate aisle and has it’s own dedicated section of soy sauces.” Sure enough on the next aisle over was a very large soy sauce section. He looked at it baffled and said, “Damn, you weren’t kidding.”

We decided to not get the stuff to make the dish since it was already late and we were getting tired, so we went out to eat instead. But as we were putting the items we got back onto their shelves and such, we passed by a worker stocking eggs. There was a sign that said “Balut - 99 cents each.” My boyfriend asked the worker, “Are these 99 cents for the whole crate?” (it was a maybe a crate of 2 dozen eggs). The worker said, “No, no, each.”

My boyfriend looked at me puzzled and said, “Why are those eggs 99 cents each?”

I replied with a disgusted look on my face, “Because they’re balut. I bet you have no idea what that is.”

“No, but I do know I wouldn’t pay 99 cents for one egg.”

“I wouldn’t pay anything to eat balut! It’s basically an egg, with a duck fetus in it.”

He look at me with a puzzled expression on his face and said, “Your people have weird customs.”

I laughed.