Harry Potter Cake

While in Philadelphia, I was told I had to get the most delicious cannoli of all time at a certain bakery. I brought one home in a box on the plane with me for David to try. During my layover he asked me how the cannoli was doing.

David: "How is the cannoli holding up?"

Me: "A little like Harry's 11th brithday cake..."

If you don't get my joke, I really don't think we can be friends. 

Knives

My mother owns the dullest steak knives on the face of this planet. I would have better luck cutting a tomato with a spoon than her knives. But I finally got her to send in her knives to get sharpened, and when they came back the first thing I did was check to see how sharp they were.

If you want to see how sharp you freshly sharpened Cutco knives are, don't do it by runing your finger along the blade. You won't feel it right away, but it will cut you because IT IS FRESHLY SHARPENED!! I don't know what I was thinking.

Philadelphia

I travelled to Philadelphia for a research conference a short while back (paid for by my school, woohoo!!). I was there by myself, but I really had a great time. I didn't want to pay for transportation, so I ended up walking roughly 6 miles around down town every day I was there to see all the sites and eat all the delicious food. Here are some things I learned the hard way:

Here was my walking path just one day:

1. Penn's Landing? Have you heard of it? I walked over 2 miles to get there, to find out it's a parking lot. Literally.

2. The tourist book in my hotel room said to check out Race Street Pier. It is not a popular place. And there is nothing to do there.

Not another soul in sight.

3. You know that thing that happens in New York City where a car drives by and splashes  puddle of water on the person standing on the curb? That happens in Philadelphia too. Yay for me.

4. Jim's and Geno's (and probably Pat's as well) Philly Cheese Steaks taste the same. I don't know what the big debate is about.

5. Cobblestone is my favorite thing ever.

6. I can have fun travelling alone. I have never travelled by myself before, but I don't hate it. Especially when it is virtually free.

Gutter

If it is raining outside, watch your step as you get out of the car because if you parked next to a gutter, you will step in that gutter and get your foot soaking wet.

On this same night we went rock climbing with a local meetup group. When we showed up, the parking lot was crazy full, so we parked next to someone who parked next to someone who was in a spot. When we left, it was pretty empty, so our car was in the middle of the parking lot, a whole space away from the closest parking space, which was empty. Only a little embarrassing.

It's really hard to see, but the actual parking spot is cut off on the right side of the picture. We are the silver car on the middle/left of the picture.

Pee in my pants

I was driving home on a road trip with my dad. My water bottle is really old, so if it isn't sitting upright then it leaks water. I didn't want it to leak all over the floor, so I put it right between my legs to keep it upright. Like so:

What I didn't realize is that the mouthpiece was pressing up against the seatbelt and causing water to leak out. Like so:

That was a fun realization.

Halloween Woes

This Halloween involved a lot of lessons.

1) Irons can be unpredictable. I was using fusible fabric to iron two pieces of fabric together for David's costume. For 3/4 of the costume the ironing went perfect. Then ALL OF A SUDDEN the iron is so hot it melts the fabric. And my arm.

The melted fabric got on the iron, too, of course, so I had to stop using it.

Immediately after the burn.

The next day.

No worries, though, because you can't really tell on the costume and he turned out to be the cutest Charlie Brown I've ever seen.

2) The hallway by the front door is VERY slippery in my new boots. When trick-or-treaters came by the house, I wanted to wear a scary costume and jump out at them to really scare them. Instead, I jumped out at them, slipped on the floor, and fell on my bum. I was not hurt, but my pride was. They came back later asking if I broke my leg, and when they heard I didn't they started laughing and said that fall was the funniest thing ever. 

The skid mark to prove it.

The scary costume.

3) Don't trust Pinterest for Pumpkin seed recipes. I found this post called "10 best pumpkin seed recipes" and tried out two of them. The first one was so gross I couldn't eat another bite. The second one was only tolerable because of the large quantities of sugar on it.

4) GROCERY STORES DON'T SELL PUMPKINS ON HALLOWEEN!! A few days before Halloween there are huge bins of pumpkins outside every grocery store, but if you aren't on top of your game and wait until Halloween day to buy pumpkins, you will be out of luck. We went to two different stores and it as the same case at both. Luckily, my mom had purchased one pumpkin weeks in avance, so at least we got to carve one pumpkin.

While I'm naturally talented at a lot of things, pumpkin carving is not one of them. I'm not sure how good pumpkin carvers do it, but I have tried so many of the hard patterns and quit halfway because you couldn't tell at all what it was. This year, having learned my lesson in the past, I chose an uber simple pattern. And it was still hard. We had to hide toothpicks in it to keep it from collapsing in on itself. 

5) This neighborhood goes ALL OUT for halloween with lights and lout music, and we handed out ALL of our 10 lbs of candy in less than 2 hours. It is a popular neighborhood.

All in all, it was still a good Halloween.