Cupcake Art: I’m hooked on Polyvore
A pink cupcake sort of dream
Where everything is (almost) perfect.
———-
Related Posts:
Archive for June, 2008
Weekend Blues
My favorite color, and with a little help from polyvore.com, I’ve created a lovely dream outfit to go with it! Ice cream on the boardwalk, anyone?
Want a Job? Be a Biker Chick!
I had a good lunch today with a bunch of martial arts and marketing people, with whom I have remarkably little in common. Our state has just legalized a certain activity, and these people are poised to get in on the ground floor and make some money out of it. I have no idea why they invited me along, except that I know a couple of them and we like each other. Nor did I really have anything to contribute to the animated conversation, except to cheer them on.
You know that comic, “Rose is Rose,” in which the mother, Rose, has a punked-out alter-ego named Vicki who wears a leather mini and rides a motorbike? Who craves rattle-snake chili and sports a tattoo?
That was me today. Vicki the Biker Chick.
Karen over at Working Girl had another good post about networking this week, and gives some really good advice, including this: anyone can network, anywhere. She also makes the very good point that job-hunting should be fun. Well, she actually makes that point in today’s post, but it’s true. Job searching is damn hard work, and it’s very easy to become bitter, grim, and warlike about it.
The problem is that most employers aren’t really looking for bitter, grim, and warlike people.
Even more importantly, that isn’t any way to live, period. After all, life is what happens when you’re waiting around for the next thing to happen. Life is what happens while you’re still looking for a job.
Get out there and network. Not because it’s good for your job prospects (though it is) but because it’s good for you. So put down those sad old cupcakes , gas up that Harley, and go out and get yourself some fun!
——–
Related Posts:
Cupcake competition
Following our disappointing venture to Local Cupcake Shop No. 1 earlier in the week, my 12 yr. old daughter and I decided to pursue Deb’s suggestion and check out Local Cupcake Shop No. 2 today. Here’s my daughter’s verdict, eagerly rendered in rapid, time-lapse fashion as she also wields the camera:
(Translation: YUM.)
I had a tiny bite, and admit it was better than the other place, at least. But I’m just never going to be a cupcake fan. In fact, I think we all just need to face the fact that
Says Ms. Manifesto, who has been reading my blog again. And on a final note:
Indeed. Now give me back my camera, kid.
I love a good manifesto
 |
man·i·fes·to [man-uh-fes-toh] –noun, plural -toes. a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, as one issued by a government, sovereign, or organization
My daughter is a master of the form. Her bedroom door has, for years, been a constantly- changing canvas of proclamations, notices, lists, edicts and declarations:
Ten Utterly Useless Things to Do (including) Making Pyjamas Out of Duct Tape.
Why I Should Not Have To Change the Cat Litter.
Lost: Deadly Bull Spider including How to Catch Him.
Warning: Contents Under Pressure.
I Should be Able To Go to Dollywood I Am Not A Slave.
She makes me immensely proud.
A couple of months ago, I found a website that contains nothing but manifestos: ChangeThis.com, an online newsletter whose aim is “to disrupt the media pattern with powerful, rational arguments from leading thinkers.” ChangeThis uploads several new manifestos a month, written by very well-known authors and business gurus as well as more obscure ones. Recent top-pick-topics appearing on ChangeThis include:
- The Invisible Badge: Moving Past Conspicuous Consumption
- PR 2.0: A Communicator’s Manifesto
- Escaping Corporate America: Changing Your Career Can Change Your Life
- Seinfeld on Marketing: 7 Marketing Lessons from the Cast of the Show About Nothing
- The Upside of a Downturn Business Improvisation: The Diving Catch of the Corporate World
Why Cupcakes?
Creative Commons image by bookgrl |
We have a new cupcake shop in our neighborhood.
I am no cave-dweller: I understand that shops selling cupcakes are the new thing, very trendy and urban-chic, which seems to have started in New York at least six years ago. But why CUPCAKES? I liked them at birthday parties as a kid, sure, but the things have basically three ingredients: white sugar, white flour, and white shortening. Have you ever seen a recipe for professional buttercream frosting? Crisco and sugar, I kid you not. Plus lots and lots of air.
Many years ago, when my husband was in graduate school in Toronto, we discovered that Canadians love donuts. There was a donut and coffee shop on every corner, and on the corners where there wasn’t a donut shop, there was one that sold over-sized muffins. For poor kids like us, muffins were a terrific and fairly cheap treat, and if we bought them “take out” we avoided the 15% sales tax, too. We could make a whole dinner out of a muffin.
My husband and decided to investigate the new shop today. Mostly it seemed to be candles and cards and other cutesies, but eventually we saw a small assortment of cupcakes to choose from, too. They all looked like… cupcakes. There were no prices, so I bought four, one for each of us, and it cost me over thirteen dollars. We brought them home and ate them. They tasted like cupcakes too, pretty much just as Betty Crocker invented them.
I don’t get it.
Muffins are infinitely variable, and they’re so good they don’t need sugar and shortening glopped on top of them to make them edible. They can be light and fluffy or spicy and dense. You can feel them in your mouth as you eat them. They linger on your tongue and on your tastebuds. Muffins have a personality. For that matter, so do cinnamon rolls, croissants, and danish. Scones slay me. Cheesecake is amazing. I also like pie, crullers, and cookies. Bakeries that sell these things, especially if they also have good bread and maybe serve lunch on the side, these are among my favorite of things.
But cupcakes? Someone, please explain this to me.
How to (almost) live through a flood
This is IMU building on the University of Iowa Campus, as of two days ago. My hotel was housed in the upper right-hand corner of the building. The sandbag levee that I (almost) helped build is the white, wavy line bisecting this picture. I was (almost) there when the real, actual flooding took place.
This is what the ground floor, or basement level, of the IMU looks like now, after being flooded with five feet of water. I (almost) bought souvenirs at this bookstore for everyone in my family. I had to hand over my airplane peanuts, instead.
I also (almost) stayed long enough to see the massive turn-out of volunteers that put in another round of sandbagging on campus last weekend. Some appear to have come from the large Amish settlements in northeastern Iowa. What’s the story there, do you suppose? That’s a long ride in a buggy..
I can only (almost) imagine losing my house or my farm or my livelihood in the midwest floods that are still taking place. It’s either too big, or too foreign a set of things for me to think about. But as for the much more specific matter of the IMU building on the University of Iowa Campus in Iowa City, Iowa — now that’s about the size of a thing I can focus my attention upon, for one week at least, and understand.
Almost.
(Images from the UI News Service photo stream on Flickr.com)
Still Obsessing
AP image by Sue Ogrocki. |
This image of the University of Iowa campus was taken last Sunday from about the same place that my own photos were taken a few days earlier.
I remain a little obsessed with Iowa City.
This is exactly why everyone needs to travel. Reading about a place and the people who live there is never the same. I wouldn’t have believed it myself until my own first trip abroad: we are intensely experiential beings.
My current empathy with Iowa is not virtuous, just human. The midwest floods have become more than newsprint to me only because I’ve just been in the midst of them. In a similar way, my whole attitude about being “American” changed during the six adult years I lived outside of this country, with other places becoming flesh-and-blood to me while America itself receded to mere newsprint.
I don’t feel like I’ve fully re-materialized in Tennessee yet. This won’t last. I expect in a few days I’ll feel local-normal again. I’ll probably stop caring so much about the flood victims, too, which is too bad. But I’ve learned that our capacity to empathize with things too far away from our own experience is much smaller than most of us would like to admit.
Maybe I’ll just sell cocaine
On the other hand, I did get a phone call yesterday from a woman who wants to recruit me to sell bad insurance products to old people. This isn’t how she described it, of course, but I did a little research.
It’s a neat little multi-level-marketing scheme, too, with a 100+% turn-over rate. I’d have to sign over access to my bank account (for credits AND debits), be fully liable for all of the products I sell, and pay all of my own taxes and expenses; howEVER, I could probably net two or even three thousand my first year alone!
My narrow-minded, sarcastic little remarks, of course, only prove that I don’t have what it takes to be a successful salesperson for this particular company.
At least, that’s what MsPodunk235 told me online, because HER husband made $150,000 last year. AND they got a free trip to Cancun, too (here she inserted a little emoticon thingie with a stuck-out tongue. Yes, really.)
Conclusion: children sell insurance. I’m thinking, however, that so long as my soul is required, I may as well skip straight to the big stuff.
Photo Essay: the Iowa Flood
The river was already rising when we arrived in Iowa City last Monday, after a series of storm delays the day before. This was the view last Wednesday from outside the sandbag levee. I was staying in the Iowa House Hotel, which is housed in the river-side end of the Iowa Memorial Union Building (IMU), and only 20 feet away from this levee. When not attending lectures or meeting with my workshop, I alternated writing funny stories about my family and watching this wall being built just below my window. Who me, concerned? 
The ground was saturated, too. Iowa Street (above), where it comes into campus, began flooding by Wednesday, from groundwater alone, and we watched water rising — and roads being closed – by the hour. Those of us staying in the Iowa House/IMU were told we’d have to evacuate by Saturday. We shrugged and kept on writing. Some of us helped put little twistie ties on sandbags. Others of us (ahem) kept on writing, just pausing periodically to take pictures. (Did I tell you? My digital camera is working again!)
By Wednesday or Thursday, 25,000 people had been evacuated from their homes in Cedar Rapids (just a few miles upriver) and we were told Iowa City was next. Volunteers began arriving in larger droves to further build up the city’s levees, especially around our low-lying arts campus which straddles both sides of the river. The sight of all those noble Iowans rallying to the cause was enough to make one’s throat go all lumpy.
Just across the river, the university art museum began to evacuate its most precious paintings (one of my friends witnessed an escaping Chagall) and the library began saving books. The National Guard arrived, too.
Sandbagging efforts became more and more frantic, continuing into the night Wednesday, right under my window. I took this photo from the steps to our hotel, while a myriad of giant roaches swarmed not far from my feet. They looked seriously DISPLACED.
Confession: I had not been filling sandbags. I had been drinking margaritas, instead.
Thursday, and the finished levee on our side of the river… 9 feet wide and high. The Iowa House/IMU visible at right. Shortly after noon on Thursday, those of us in the Iowa House/IMU were finally told we had to evacuate. Immediately.
Friday morning, after bunking with a stranger in the limited (and still accessible) hotel space available in the city, and this was as close to the IMU as the National Guardsman would allow me to get. The fresh-faced soldier from Ames told me that the river was now 5 or 6 feet ABOVE the ground here, with only the sandbags holding it back. With the river expected to rise five more feet, he said the levee would eventually be breached. It was now too dangerous to be near the levee, or make any further efforts to save the IMU or other arts campus buildings.
My more assertive friend Len (who would ever guess he’s an accountant?) was able to bypass the Guard to take this picture of our former quarters. The levee continues to hold, though water is now leaking through. There’s a piece of paper taped to the bottom half of the right hand door to our hotel… that marks the level of expected flooding, when the river crests and the levee breaches.
Iowa City is a few miles down-river from Cedar Rapids, which had the worst flooding in the state. The airport, also in Cedar Rapids, became inaccessible from Iowa City on Friday afternoon, when I-380 was closed to all traffic. The campus was entirely shut down then, too, including all of workshops for the coming week, and on Saturday I had the choice of either taking a 350 mile detour to the airport (a $500 taxi fare) to use my new ticket, or waiting it out in Iowa City until the following Saturday, when I’d originally planned to fly out.
It was tempting. Several of my newly-bonded-for-life friends offered me a cheap place to stay, and a handful of stranded writers planned to continue workshopping on their own.
However, the flood had yet to crest last Saturday, and reports were that I-380 would remain closed for at least another week. I couldn’t afford any more airplane tickets, and didn’t really see myself spending the whole summer in Iowa. A classmate offered an alternative… drive with him to the airport 100 miles away in Des Moines and fly home on stand-by, which I did, with no problems with flooded roads at all except when we got off I-80 once to find a gas station. So I’m home a week early. Those who remained behind have kept in touch.
As of yesterday (Monday) The river has crested, and the IMU is now surrounded by water, and much of the University of Iowa’s campus is under water, as shown in this video shot yesterday:
I am terribly disappointed to miss the second half of my long-awaited workshop, of course, but the week I did have was wonderful, and at least I still have a house. There’s a lot of people in Iowa today who are no longer so blessed.
