Sunday, March 29, 2009

Spring? What Spring?


It dumped almost 7 inches snow in the past 12 hours. As you can see, the weather changes from 60s spring to 30s winter again. Sigh...endless winter?

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Warm Spring St Patrick's Day

What a nice warm day today! It is about 71'F (20'C) outside and everybody is wearing the short sleeve summer clothes! Hope that spring is really here since it still can snow in this area even in May. Had a nice walk outside after lunch. It has almost been 6 months since we have such a warm sunny day. Happy St Patrick's Day!

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Moving Away Party Chocolate Cake

It has been a long time since I made a cake due to my non-stopped traveling for work schedule. Finally, I got to stay at home for a while and got invited to my best friend's moving away party. She and her husband and the new born baby are going to move to Indiana soon. She was the first fried I made in Milwaukee and we have known each other for a long time. We were all so young back. It is hard to believe that she is going to move away. I surely will miss her.

I made this moisture chocolate cake with chocolate pudding mix in the ingredient last night. It was a 2-layer cake with the the chocolate ganache (whipping cream) for frosting and the filling. It was then decorated with white chocolate lace and some 3D crowns. The white chocolate really became solid very fast from the melting stage so I had to work fast. Of course, some laces were broken so I had to remake some.

I like the look of this cake and just hope that the 3D crowns or laces would not break during my driving to the party tonight!

Monday, March 9, 2009

Watchmen

Finally, it is here. After reading all the buzz on line and refreshing the memory by watching the motion comics, I finally got to see the movie version of the "Watchmen". Of course, the lousy rainy, snowy, and cold weather outside did help make more people go to see the movie. The first positive thing I would say about the movie is the incredible works that the screen writer and the director did. I cannot believe that they almost pack all the important details in the movie! If you have read the comics, you would appreciate the good works the movie does by organizing the complicated characters and plots into a 2 and a half hour of movie. And they did such a good job that even the people who have not read the comics should be able to follow it without problems.

Since "Watchmen" is more like a murder mystery with all the "batman" super heroes as the main characters, it is not the easiest movie to understand. It is not one of those no-brain summer explosion X-men kind of movies. By saying so, it does not mean that the special effects in this movie are not good. As the matter of the facts, the special effects are amazing and I specially like the way the change the look of the glass castle on the Mars. Anyway, it is definitely a movie worth of watching. The only warnings are the male front nudity of Dr. Manhattan and the graphic violence of broken body parts. Not a movie for kids.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Watchmen Motion Comics And Facebook

Back to the cold and snowy Wisconsin again after spending a month on working in Florida. Almost forget how nasty the winter is up here. I finally decided to jump in the Facebook trend. And there are so many bloggers there I have already connected. The only downside of it is that it is too time consuming. I also started to watch the "Wathcmen motion comics". It is very interesting not only because the "Watchmen" comics but also the way it is made. I have never seen anything like it. It is between the animation and the paper comics. For example, the characters one scene is just like the paper version of the comic but his hair was moving with the wind! Really cool stuff! Now it is time to go back to work. By the way, happy square root day!