Today we went to visit Maya’s brother and father. Her brother, Panda Bear, is twice as big as she is. Even when we went down to pick her up at 8 weeks old, he was already twice as big and twice as heavy as her. I just didn’t think he’d get this big! It’s hard to believe that they’re both part chihuahua.

“Can you believe we’re from the same litter?!”

I think her brother is secretly a smaller version of the shaggy dog.

When it gets closer to an election date, we see an increase in the number of calls to our house. Recorded messages, pollsters looking for feedback and wanting us to answer surverys, and people trying to get us to vote for so and so. The other day, someone called and told me to vote for Brian Bilbray, who’s running for Congress to replace Randy “Duke” Cunningham’s seat. I told him, “Sorry, we all voted already and we all voted for someone else.” He tried to sound sad about it, but it sounded more like he wanted to tell me to go screw myself.

I went to Pasadena this weekend to visit Alyssa. Saturday can pretty much be summed up if you read Alyssa’s post on her web site (food, movie, bookstores, food, bingo, white russians, movie). At Auntie Em’s we both had these delicious open faced sandwiches. The sandwiches are the only food I forgot to photograph using my new phone’s camera. Alyssa got a bacon and egg one and I got a steak and egg one. The sandwiches were so big we each only ate half and tried to eat more but couldn’t. We couldn’t resist getting one of the softball size cupcakes though – we both chose red velet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. They were delicious.

After a movie (The Notorious Bettie Page) and tromping around some used bookstores, we went to Bento-Ya. Bento-Ya most likely used to be housed in a walk-up Mexican restaurant. They had a walk up building and a few outdoor tables that were well etched with the past affections of then in love teenagers. Alyssa got a Chicken Teriyaki Bowl and some Tuna Rolls. I opted for the Shrimp Fry combo with egg rolls. The egg rolls were a bit too saucy inside for me – I’m used to the stuff inside staying in there and not dripping right on out after the first bite. My shrimp also tasty pretty greasy – I tasted more grease than shrimp. Boo hoo. It was still interesting though anyway. I don’t see a lot of walk up Japanese places.

On Sunday we headed to Zankou Chicken in celebration of us loving the song “Debra” by Beck. Looking at various lyrics sites, some list it saying “Zankou Chicken” and others list it as “This ain’t cooked chicken”. Zankou Chicken is more hilarious to me, no matter what he’s actually saying. In any case, we both got damn cheap chicken wraps. I got a roasted chicken wrap. When it flopped open in front of me, it looked like it had no sauce and just chicken and tomatoes. But before I took a bite, I noticed some kind of strange looking white sauce which turned out to be pretty tasty. Not bad for a meal that cost me less than four dollars. I didn’t eat the purple things though, which Alyssa thought was pickled beets. I don’t eat anything pickled.

We headed out to Amoeba Music after our fill of chicken. I had never been there before. It’s huge. I picked up “Live at Jittery Joe’s” by Jeff Mangum, singer of Neutral Milk Hotel. Afterwards we tried to go to a Japanese snack shop we saw the day before when we went to get Japanese food, but it was closed. We looked in a little used bookstore, but it was lame. Then we popped into a way overpriced open house for a condo. Later on we went to the Spaghetti Factory for dinner. The wait was long for a table, the wait was long for our food, but spaghetti is delicious. Mmm, I have leftovers to eat today for lunch. Yum.

For Heather’s Zombie themed birthday party, I made a graveyard cake with zombies crawling up out of their graves. It’s pretty cool, I think. Everyone at the party seemed to like it, yay!

The cake is a yellow cake with vanilla pastry cream (dyed red) and fresh strawberries in the middle with chocolate frosting. The zombies are molded out of white chocolate and the tombstones are milano cookies dipped in white chocolate with a few drops of black food coloring. The dirt is crushed oreo cookies. Stacey totally bit the head off of the blue shirted zombie. Others had some of the arms. I ate a tombstone, myself. There are a couple of other photos of this cake as well, in my cake gallery.

The party was fun – food, drinks, friends, zombie movies = good times. I got my buzz on fairly early and let it pass without getting further drunk. I really like sleeping in my own bed.

EDIT (for those that want to know how to make this cake) on 10/26/08:
To make the zombie men, I used a candy mold. I filled the molds with melted white chocolate chips – I spread chocolate around in the mold and then let the chocolate cool in the fridge. I only used the top half of the mold – the body part and the arms part since that was all I needed. After it had hardened, I popped the chocolates out of the molds and pressed them together (again, using more melted white chocolate to make the pieces stick together).

I used food coloring to paint them, though that was not a very efficient method, but the sloppiness of it turned out in my favor. I used the food coloring to paint the hair, the eyes, and a crude shirt onto each zombie, with a tint of red around the lips. You could try using a little melted white chocolate with food coloring, but I just used straight food coloring with a fresh paintbrush that had never been used on anything else so that it would be food safe. I got a little “dirt” of them (crushed oreos cookies) and then just stuffed them right into the cake.

I hope these additional instructions help you to make your own zombie cake! If you have additional questions though, please feel free to email me or make a comment below.

At the Poway Dog Park (which is where Maya and I usually go since they have an area just for small dogs) they were having their annual “Dog Day” celebration. They had a bunch of free contests, ranging from “Longest/Smallest Legs” to “Most Colorful” and “Best Trick”. I entered Maya in the “Happiest Dog” contest and she won first place! First placers were eligible for “Best in Show”, but alas, she did not win that. She was happy to win happiest dog though! har har.

(PS to Alyssa – yes, that’s a new bedspread. I almost wrote “breadspread”.)

OH MY GOD, guess who got one? OH MY GOD, it’s me.