2022 National Bundt Day Part 1

We're holding the local celebration of National Bundt Day at the office today, like I did in 2018 and 2019.

2020 and 2021 were outside--I am going to miss doing it outdoors because non-DC friends could attend, but at least this way us editors can interact with other colleagues. Sometimes people not actually involved in making the books think we're snobby, when in fact we're just deeply cynical, smartass, and immersed in getting books to to the printer.

I tried making two Instant Pot Bundt cakes and they're just too dense. They don't rise and get fluffy. It's like eating condensed cake, smashed up like a bit of bait. Bait for luring in colleagues who don't understand the creative end of the biz.

The best results came from the regular old from-scratch chocolate cake with cream cheese center. This year's attempt at Tunnel of Fudge was a complete disaster. I tried the recipe on the Pillsbury site, and the results were spectacular, but not in a good way.

Steamed Jiffy Mix

An experiment is underway with a cheap cake mix and my Instant Pot.

Craftsy + Chicken

Here are the finished baby changing pads. 

I didn't have a baby to model, so I used a paper maché rooster.

Craftsy

I haven't taken out my sewing machine since face masks were back in stock a couple of years ago, but tonight I finally pulled out the Burbank one and worked on baby changing pads for two different editors.

I'll finish them tomorrow night and mail them out by the end of the week.

It was nice to do something with my hands and not the computer for a change.

Ancestral Yard Sale

In 2016, I visited the Humphrey Museum where my great-grandfather's sister had lived. It was quite the experience, and the museum has since closed, its contents auctioned off. Occasionally, a piece shows up on eBay.

What a strange feeling to watch family heirlooms auctioned off as trinkets. But they were owned by a non-profit and they really are just trinkets.

All I would have wanted were my great-grandfather's elephant figures from around the world.

I wonder if my global trinkets will be doled out on eBay one day. Maybe I'll do it myself at some point, get ahead of this.

Halloween in Burbank

Burbank goes all out for Halloween. Here's the scary clown house.

Who?

Remember the falconer at the office last month, the one whose job it is to drop by and scare off pigeons?

 She works with her husband, who was at the office tonight with his owl.

More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Moka Pots

I do love my Bialetti Moka Express. But every few years, it stops working. The actual mechanics of a Moka are pretty straightforward, so every time it stops working, I think "oh, just clean it out, change the gasket, we're done here."

But it never works like that, and I usually just buy a new one after a new gasket doesn't stop Moka from sputtering a sad little trickle instead of flowing smoothly. (Yes, I could buy a fancy espresso machine but my kitchen is small and I'm stubborn.)

The Ancestral Quarry

Last Sunday morning, I left my mom’s house early and headed up Interstate 66 toward Dulles Airport. I still think of I-66 as the “new highway,” because it was finished after Star Wars debuted, after I was in junior high, after my parents split up, after the last time I would have gone with my dad to see Lost John Austin, the alcoholic quarryman moonshiner who had raised him.

When my dad died in January, my mom, sister, and I did a deep dive into the past, finding a geologic map that showed the location of the Austin-Barbour Quarry on Bull Run Mountain. Lost John and his BFF Lewis Barbour had owned this quarry. Lewis had lived walking distance from Lost John’s trailer, in a wood cabin with a stone chimney, farther up the rutted dirt and rock road, if you could call it that. I think there had been a Mrs. Barbour when I was small. I don’t remember when Lewis moved into the trailer with Lost John, who himself had been married to my dad’s oldest sister long before I was born, before she died of something preventable. Hillbilly life in the 1950-60s was just different, particularly if you were a mountain man with a distrust of doctors.

Back East Again

After New York Comic-Con, I headed to my mom's house to meet Charlie the Envigo Beagle before going back to Burbank. Charlie is real cute, though he is a bundle of rescue-dog-anxiety. 

He was kind enough to learn to poop outside for me. Progress!