I'm a fan, what can I say?!

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:19:27 -0700

What we can draw from Obama

And they said he was unprepared

It could happen to you

Playground Politics

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Loved this

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:36:39 -0700

Jena Bush got married over the weekend but she did not sign a pre-nup.

Apparently, the family doesn't believe in exit strategies

-Craig Ferguson

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"Broken Time" worth every moment!

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:11:22 -0700

I sat down with my copy of “Broken Time” at about 3:45 or so this afternoon and didn’t come up for air until 9:30 this evening. The writing style is a breeze and goes by so fast it will leave you wanting more.

Broken Time

Set in an underground world of labyrinth corridors, bunkers, artificial lighting and Big Brother style oversight, the parents of a small ill boy battle their way to each other and to wholeness. Doctors seek to balance discovery with personal sacrifice and come up wanting more than science can offer. Nearly every page holds a complex melding of sci-fi biology, and super calculating systems of both biological and technological origin. And yet the text manages to be human, warm and intriguing, even compassionate.

The story is a truly creative look at the space between life and death and the question of wholeness and identity. Complex themes of love and loss are interwoven with strong maternal instincts and grace. All in all an excellent read, and the most creative tale I’ve seen in ages. Bravo!

Here is the book’s description:

A dangerous new virus is spreading across the globe, Emergent Atoximia (EA). When an unemployed widower, Henry Poems, son Buddy is diagnosed with the new disease, his world collapses. Henry painfully watches his options disappear and knows there is only one chance left to save his son. He will trade five years of his life to the Burkette Group in exchange for the promised cure. The trade seems like a bargain until the Deep Sleep Statsis program, run by a one of a kind organic super computer named MARI, starts to develop a few glitches, plunging Henry into a world of trapped souls. Forced to navigate the endless hallways of a surreal landscape, Henry encounters a diverse group of characters that try to help him understand his connection with MARI while reintroducing him to missing parts of his own identity. On the outside, a desperate race for a cure is coming to a surprising conclusion as Dr. Alcorn begins to suspect that EA may have gone self-aware.

More info here: http://www.lulu.com/browse/book_view.php?fCID=2350732&fContestID=1&submit=%3C%3C+Back+to+Content This is the hardback version, a paperback version is available and also an e-book.

I should also mention that Tony wrote this book during the first fifteen days of Nanowrimo last November. And to create this whole world (rough draft) and cast of complex characters in FIFTEEN DAYS has really completely blown me away! And I am mentioned in the “author’s note” page. J Which I’ve mentioned before, but it bears repeating. I am so proud of him I could just burst!

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The Red Velvet Wedding (and the saga of the loser cupcakes)

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:54:05 -0700

The second wedding cake of the weekend was much bigger and was at a semi posh local hotel. There were only 250 guests planned, but we made a total of 600 servings of cake for them. The bride’s cake served 255 people, the groom’s cake another 100 or so and then they ordered 250 cupcakes on top of all that. They packaged the cupcakes in delightful little boxes for the guests to take home with them. What a lovely idea. (Unless you are the poor schlep making 250 identical cupcakes!)

Red Velvet Wedding

The Bride’s cake was a lovely red velvet cake, iced with butter cream and decorated in black colored chocolate swirls. (Red velvet is a pain to ice, it keeps wanting to "bleed" crumbs into the icing!) It was a striking look, the contrast of the colors was very pleasing. I think it would have been a lovely presentation once they started cutting all that red cake! I don’t like red velvet myself, I just feel like I’m doing something horrible to my body by eating that much food color (and it really takes a lot!) but there is no doubt that it is a pretty and delicious cake!

Pretty dining room

I got all five tiers set in place and all the details finished and then looked around for the flowers for the top of the cake. The florist had cut all the little orchids off the stem and my heart sank. What a stupid move that was, but they clearly didn’t know any better. So I started scouting the centerpieces on the tables to find stems of stuff that I could borrow for the top of the cake. I snipped a few twigs here and there and combined with the orchid blossoms, it turned out very pretty.

Side by side

The Groom’s cake was his frat emblem on a full sheet cake that was marble white/chocolate inside. It turned out nicely I thought.

Groom's Cake

And then there were the cupcakes. The Loser cupcakes. At every turn we screwed up this order!

The first screw up happened when the elves took the order. The client wanted an “L” on each cupcake, and the order said they needed to be made out of fondant. BL told me to use a cookie cutter to make them and it wouldn’t be a big deal. I took a look at that cookie cutter and I wondered to myself… it would look better for a child’s event than for a ritzy wedding, but I knew it was the only way to do 250 fondant “L’s” without wanting to jump from the nearest bridge. (Doing a bunch of “L’s” out of Icing would have been quicker and easier but someone up-sold the client fondant – so that’s what I was stuck making.) And with the amount of cake orders I had in addition to the weddings, I was about to pull out my hair anyway. So I started in making these infernal “L’s.” The bride’s mother happened by and BL picked up one of the “L’s” to go show her. I was about half way through making them and I stopped BL by simply saying… “Don’t ask a question I don’t want the answer to!” She looked a little surprised, looked at the fondant “L” in her hand and looked at me, realizing what I was saying. She laughed, put down the “L” and went back to work laughing. I made about 275 of those stupid things the first time around and had to come back and make more because they were fragile and I broke quite a few of them.

A bunch of fondant L's

Boss Lady is the baker and she just couldn’t keep up this week. (For good reason – because the bread elf is gone and the brownie/cookie elf was on vacation.) So I didn’t start seeing those cup cakes until it had already become crunch time. They were red velvet cake in silver cupcake liners. I had decorated the first batch and as I moved them some went flying off the board, like penguins into the ocean. Those little silver liners are slippery! I lost quite a few with that stupid human trick but it turned out that only one was beyond fixing. So I used some non-slip stuff (the same stuff that they use under rugs to keep them from sliding around) and worked late into the night finishing up the first round of cupcakes. But that was the beginning.

There they are

When one of the elves came in the next morning and looked at the cupcakes with all those little “L’s” on them… she dubbed them “the loser cupcakes” complete with full tilt New Yorker attitude and sign language. The name stuck. BL passed an edict that the client must NOT know that we named them thus, so the name really stuck.

Gourmet hockey pucks

I was stressing because the rest of the cupcakes weren’t even baked and they are time consuming. So she started the first batch but forgot to add in the rising agent and she didn’t figure it out until they were in the oven so the next batch of cupcakes didn’t rise. They tasted a little strange and they were very short and dense. She didn’t have much time to bake replacement cupcakes but she finally decided that she would at least try. It turned out that we still had to use some of the red hocky puck cupcakes to finish out the 250, but at least they were finished.

Just some of them

The bride’s Mom and Dad came in to package up the cupcakes. Each cupcake got the royal treatment in a red box with tissue paper and a ribbon with the bride and groom’s names on it. Only the Bride’s Mom wasn’t crazy about my little cookie cutter “L’s.” I didn’t blame her, I didn’t think much of them by that point myself. But it was the morning of the wedding and there they were, all 250 of them. BL scoured the order to see if anyone had written “cursive L” anywhere but there was nothing. It was sad because making cursive “L’s” out of icing would have been so much easier for me. The Bride’s dad just shook his head and told his wife “It is what it is” and everyone decided to be happy about it. (He was a freakin genius!)

They wanted to move the cart that I had put all the cupcakes on. But then they realized that there was no way to get the cart through that part of the bakery, it would just be easier to move them tray by tray. So the Bride’s mom picked up the one tray with the extras on it (that didn’t have the non-slip plastic on it) and I had to catch cupcakes like I was Michael Jordan. Loser cupcakes just kept trying to jump.

Mr and Mrs L

It is done and over. I imagine that most of the cupcakes in their pretty boxes have been devoured. It was a beautiful wedding and I’m certain that the new Mr. and Mrs. “L” are enjoying a lovely honeymoon somewhere marvelous. On the other hand, I don’t want to see another red velvet cake for a very long time. And 250 cupcakes? Never again!

And just for the record, it's the cupcakes that were losers, not the people. The people were great. And if you happen to know the lovely couple, remember that I was sworn to secrecy. :) (for all the good that did!) LOL!

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Little Bitty One

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Mon, 12 May 2008 10:30:38 -0700

Little bitty cake

This little bitty wedding cake that turned out so cute. This wedding party had about 15 guests and was in a local restaurant. The cake icing was tinted a ginger color to match a paint chip (yes a paint chip from the paint department) that the bride gave us. Then swirls of ivory butter cream finished off the look. It was a cute little thing, it almost looked like it hadn’t quite grown up yet. There was a medallion with a monogram on it that also went on the cake but I forgot to take it with me on the delivery, and then when I went back to deliver that element I forgot to take the camera. Oh well, it was cute without it. The whole cake wasn't much taller than 12 inches, plus the topper. It's an 8 inch, 6 inch and a 4 inch. I'm pleased with it. I think the folks at the restaurant were going to move it, so I hope they didn't destroy it doing that. Oh well, I have to keep reminding myself that it isn't my problem if something happens after I leave.

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Broken Time by Anthony Vilgiate

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Mon, 12 May 2008 06:08:51 -0700

I am SO excited! I hold in my hand… *expectant hush* the fruit of a friend’s hard labor. Last November I challenged a friend to write a novel with me for Nanowrimo. He wrote an over 60,000 word novel, but instead of taking the whole 30 days of November, he wrote it in just 15 days!! Yeah, is that amazing or what?! And I’m holding the finished printed hard bound novel in my hands right now! It just came!

Broken Time

And guess what?! My name is mentioned in the “Author’s Note!” *does a little dance!* And I quote: “I was challenged to write a novel in the month of November by a wonderful and encouraging friend, Carmen.” Yeah! That’s me! Wonderful and encouraging – LOL! “I took the challenge, and what was birthed during that first 15 days of the month and this is the novel that follows.”

Wonderful and encouraging me

Tony Vilgiate

He’s sent me excerpts here and there along the way that I gobbled up with delight, so I’m really looking forward to taking some time to sit in my spot on the sofa and devour this thing, hook line and sinker. I got the bits before he sent it off to be edited, and the editor took out 9000 words, so I hope it’s still as cool as it was before the editing. I can hardly wait! As a matter of fact, that may become my project for the day if I can tear myself away from the pressing stuff.

Here’s the info:

Book: Broken Time

Author: Anthony Vilgiate

Hard bound, 419 pages

Buy it at Lulu.com: http://www.lulu.com/content/2350732

I’ll post a review once I’ve had a chance to uh… well… review it. yeah.

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So it's Mother's Day again? I'll pass

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Sat, 10 May 2008 22:39:02 -0700

I saw a friend’s facebook status update. She hates Mother’s Day because of the recent loss of her mother. My heart went out to her. I have grown to hate Mother’s Day, but for different reasons.

My hubby and I don’t have children and I learned over the years not to put myself through going to church on Mother’s and Father’s Days. Generally speaking for a childless couple, church on those days is an exercise in innocent torture devices. And since I’m no fan of silent unseen knives and daggers… I’ve learned to skip.

I remember walking in on a conversation that my Father-in-law was having with someone about Father’s Day at church. He was griping that their church didn’t celebrate it much because it caused pain for infertile couples and he went on at length about how wrong that was. He said being a father is something that should be celebrated and he didn’t know why that should be taken away from him just because some people are touchy. He said he’d been a good father and he was proud of that. And in his opinion this sensitivity thing had gone so far that it took the fun out of things for everyone. I said nothing, just walked away as he continued to expound on the theme. I suppose it was worth pointing out that one infertile couple in a congregation can ruin the celebration of Mother’s Day for everyone by being all selfish and thin skinned (providing the celebration has actually been tailored with any sensitivity whatsoever.) It really is such an audacity to suggest that church should NOT be the place where one’s raw places are treated to a deluxe case of superiority and insensitivity. And yes, he knew I was in the room observing the conversation. And yes, he knew our situation. And yes, he blithered on like a leaky faucet anyway. (Emphatic Explicative!)

Jesus said "Forgive them for they know not what they do." But what about when they DO know what they are doing and do it anyway? Still then? (Yeah!) There are aspects of this "follower of Jesus" thing is no walk in the park. Good thing I don't have to do it by myself.

I’ve seen the outline for the service for Sunday. I’ve been given the week off the worship team and I will be mercifully absent. And I suspect there will be some other empty seats as well. Hubby on the other hand, has to run sound and will attend despite what is planned.

I’m glad there is a Mother’s Day. I wouldn’t want to dampen the joy for anyone because motherhood is indeed a cool thing. All kinds of deserving (and undeserving) mammals get the singular pleasure of delivering a beautiful tiny helpless version of them (or die trying.) And generally speaking, after the initial mess is over with, baby animals are really cool, especially baby humans. There is so much destiny and purpose in each deep breath of life filling up those tiny lungs! Yeah, there is definitely something about the little screamers!

And one day that will be me. We have started the adoption process and it’s entirely possible that my children are already out there somewhere. And if they are born, then they are already mine – whether or not I can hold them tonight. But we are not far enough along in the process to have a referral so it’s still pretty hard to wrap my head around that at the moment. We’re just in a weird in-between phase. And maybe this will be my last year skipping the indecencies of a Sunday morning torture session. And maybe not.

There will come a time when I’ll celebrate Mother’s Day with my children around me, grateful that finely there was an answer to a prayer I’ve prayed for nearly two decades. But I’ll never celebrate without an eye out for those with tears in their eyes on that day. And I’ll understand far too well why their spot at church may be empty on certain Sundays. And I’ll add my own prayers to all of theirs in the hopes that God will give them the desires of their hearts. Yes, my turn will come. But I will never forget what it was like to be on the outside looking in. Yes, for a long time, all Abraham had were the stars in a dark night sky.

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Artzy Potpourri

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:53:56 -0700

We’ll, time for a little update I suppose.

Tonight we enjoyed watching a stage production of Peter Pan. A friend of ours played “Mr. Darling” and it was very cute. This is not a story I grew up with and I knew it only in a peripheral sort of way. I was surprised with how chauvinistic the roles were, the girl being a mom to all the boys, making the meal, and doing the annual Spring cleaning. Peter Pan pretending to be the father with his chair and pipe. And I was also surprised with how the Indian characters were coreographed in the most stereotypical way possible. I know I’m an uncommon woman, but as I child I never pretended I was a mother or that I was cooking or spring cleaning for anyone – ever! It wouldn’t have occurred to me. Now I did pretend I was on stage singing or playing piano for thousands, hosting a cooking show or designing doll clothing or designing the interior of a shoe box with blocks for furniture. You know, all the normal stuff. J (for an artist.)

I’ve started making my own mineral makeup. It’s an interesting process and I’m learning a lot as I go along. I managed to get a really good match to my own skin tone, that was surprisingly easy. Most mineral makeup is far too yellow for my skin but I was able to work it out by adding pigments and then using the back of my hand to match the color. I’ve got a good eye for color so it wasn’t that hard to get it right. It seems to me that I should be able to get pretty close for other people’s coloring as well. And now that I’ve got all the stuff, I might as well make it available to my friends. I’ve worn the product a couple days and it covers more than any other mineral makeup I’ve worn and that’s kind of interesting. I guess this formula is a bit more like a concealor than a foundation. So I’ll keep messing around with the formula for the light coverage and good for your skin qualities that are so cool about mineral makeup. I refuse to use that Bismuth stuff that is in cheap mineral makeup that is actually an “inorganic” (not a mineral at all) that is just cheap filler and actually known to cause issues for some people. So I’m fascinated by this for the moment. We’ll see where it takes me.

I’m laptop computer shopping. Yeah, it’s time to purchase a computer that will be able to handle the next round of software I’m going to try to get for my business. I’d love Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver, we’ll see if I can pull together that kind of cash. It’s a big investment and I’m not a professional designer (well, I used to draw logos for a marketing firm but I haven’t done that for a while) so it’s a bit difficult to justify. However, buying Dreamweaver is certainly cheaper than hiring a web designer who knows dhtml so as long as I can continue to put together all my own websites, then that’s good for me. I wish I could figure out a way to learn how to code dynamic html websites without having to put out the big bucks! I’ll keep researching it, it is still possible that some of the features I need are already in the Frontpage software that I already have. I don’t think Frontpage uses CSS though, so I’ll keep researching that. I’ve also put in some time researching shopping carts and setting up a website to sell products using PayPal.com. I’ve giving some thought to a commerce website and exploring some of the other options with that as well. The wheels, they are a-turning! If you've been there, done that - pass along any pointers! (I had a yahoo store for a while and that just isn't what I want.)

I’ve made lots of different kinds of soap lately. Some of it really turned out beautifully. (And some of it had to be completely melted down and rebatched.) I’ve got about ten different kinds now and I’m especially happy with the colors and fragrances and my favorite of the moment is a Milk and Honey bar that I think is especially cute. I’ll try to take photos and post them one of these days. I’m really happy with how that adventure is going. And my soap has been accepted in a local gallery, so that’s kind of cool. I have tentative word that my alphabet photography has also been accepted there. So I just need to pack up a bunch of stuff and take it to them and see what happens.

I need to spend a little time with the jewelry again. I have a wholesale order waiting on enough money to be able to click the “checkout” button. But I think I’m going to give that some serious thought and maybe go in a different direction altogether. There are just so many different options with jewelry design that keeping it fresh is really not that hard to do – it’s just a matter of deciding what to explore. So many ideas, so little time.

The good folks at the Library have invited me to come and do a cake demonstration for them. They’ve given me an hour and I’m supposed to carve, ice and decorate a cake into the shape of a book and talk to them as I do it. Then they’ll all eat the cake and that will be that. It sounds like it could be fun. Boss Lady told me to think about jokes to tell and ways to make it fun and interesting. I’ve never really thought about cake decorating as a performance art, so this will be interesting indeed. Anything for a change of pace I suppose. Who knows, I may decide that I really like pretending to host a cake decorating show. J

Well, it’s getting late and the morning has a way of coming round on a regular basis. So I shall curl up next to my snoring hubby and see where the Dream Giver takes me.

Goodnight foxy voxers

And sweet dreams

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all in a day's work

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:14:02 -0700

Funky Floral Cake

For a bridal shower where the bride hates pastel colors. They asked for fun, funky and bright.

Antzy cake

I was finishing up the order and Boss Lady was standing there looking at the cake. And I said "Yah know, I'd just like to do a row of ants all the way around the border of the cake." She squeeled and laughed and told me to do it. And she promised to take the heat if the client complained. :D So those little black dashes...

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Check it out

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Thu, 01 May 2008 06:16:45 -0700

Obama on gas prices

I think this is a very reasonable approach to rising gas prices. And kudos to Obama for communicating effectively AGAIN! My... he is fine!

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