a very nice birthday :)

Yesterday was Ted’s birthday. We had a really nice day. :) Ted got ALL KINDS of loot, although the funniest bit was probably when he saved one of the presents for last ’cause he thought he knew what it was, and then it turned out to be something else entirely. He was still pleased with it, but it was pretty funny. :) *laugh* He got to open his presents mid-day, because all unexpectedly the camera I ordered in early December arrived, so if *I* got to open a present on his birthday, *he* certainly got to open his. *laugh*

I spent most of the day baking. Did you know that german chocolate is not actually German? It was invented by an American man named Samuel German, who thought it’d be easier for cooks if there was already sugar added to their baking chocolate. It was, at first, called German’s chocolate, but the apostrophe-ess got dropped very quickly, so now it’s German chocolate and has nothing to do with Germany. Anyway, I couldn’t find it at any of the stores around here, but I did find a substitution for it (semi-sweet or bittesweet chocolate; I used semi-sweet, and 1/2 tablespoon sugar for every ounce of chocolate) and the cake turned out perfectly. Between baking, I dashed out and got cooling racks, which I really needed, and had a discussion with the woman at Shaw’s about how nobody cooked anymore (it was pretty weird, looking for ingredients at Marks & Spencer, one of the stores here. They do not have ingredients. You can buy bread, but not flour. You can buy almost any kind of meal, but you really *can’t* buy the things to *make* that meal from scratch. M&S is not a proper grocery store, and you can buy ingredients at proper grocery stores, but it was still v. odd.), and then rushed home to take the TOTALLY FALLEN cakes out of the oven. I have never in my life made such fallen cakes, but it was my own fault, because the ovens are tiny and I was trying to not burn the cake at the back of the oven so I had Ted switch them around mid-way through baking, and *fwump*. They fell. I was v. sad. Regardless, it turned out deliciously, and I cut them away to be even, so it didn’t look too ugly.

I also went forth and got new cat food. Am I a party animal, or what? But it was really beautiful out, and I had a really nice day.

Ted and Shaun spent much of the day unpacking, having spent Thursday night building the bookshelves and dressers and whatnot we’d bought. Our living room suddenly looks like real people live there. It’s nice! They did lotsa big work. And then we went out for dinner at the nice Italian place in Athy, where I caused the waiter to go, “Eeeeeee!” with dismay when I poured water into my wine glass because I hadn’t noticed he had a water glass handy for me. However, that seemed to set a tone for the evening, as when he came back later to see if we were done, I’d done what I thought was a quite respectable job on my pasta (even before Shaun took a third of what was left), and he looked dismayed and said, “You’re not *done*, are you? I’ll come back in five minutes.” *laugh* Anyway, we had a lot of fun. A very nice day indeed. :)

miles to Mount Doom: 348