My redemption at the 6th Annual 2011 West Side Cake Competition:



Nuff said...

West Side Cake Club 5th Annual Cake Competition was this past Saturday. I remade the Nintendo cake from the cake I made for Toby's birthday last year. I tied with another cake for second place:

This was the cake I tied with (which by the way was made of styrofoam):

And this was the butt ugly 1st place cake:

Due to the uglyness of the winning cake, I really feel like I won this one.

Lessons you just can't learn from an mmorpg:

Lilith (my not declawed cat) jumped up on my lap tonight, then decided that was a mistake but already had the front 2 claws in. So she kinda just fell until my clothes twisted as far as they would go. She at that point tried to climb back up... until i knocked her off. All this in the span of a few seconds.

Then I realized that it didn't hurt, I felt her claws scraping against my thigh, but no pain or tearing of my flesh....where I wore heavy cloth feet pjs and a long nighty thing, so about 3 regular layers.

I thought, "and light armor is prolly just a little more durable, how bout that."

As I was driving home from gaming tonight with the windows down (nice night for once), I was almost home and off the freeway. My nose was all stuffy and so I grabbed a tissue and opened it up again. Immediately I smelled this terrible rotting smell - I think it was a rotting smell, hard to describe, just really bad. My first instinct was to quickly look in the back seat. Then I realized why I did that and said to myself, "oh I know I did NOT just look in the backseat for zombies." At least I will be ready when they attack, apparently enough movies and dreams have been great practice for my skills.

Got my pup vacinnated last week. Wrote the check for the Maricopa County Animal Control and filled out the renewel form for her registration this week. As I put the envelope in the mail today, I thought: is it racist to say that my dog is more legal than the mexican dood I work with at the restaurant?

This is why I love being friends with other gamers:

Standing in Jo's apartment at 5am this morning, preparing to pack all her stuff into a U-Haul truck, I mentioned how tired I was because I was up til 2am leveling my new farmer, and that the crops weren't going to harvest themselves. Seth says, 2:30am, I was invading a city, that city wasn't going to invade itself. Than another guy, who's name escapes me, said that he was up late as well, moving his army into position, because they weren't going to move themselves. Hehe.


Also, I spilled Mountain Dew on my shoe the other day...I think it made me go faster.

Guess I did it again, here is the progress I've made in my cake endevours:

Tiered Cake from Class 3:

My first fondant cake:

A cake Ang and I made for her friend's baby shower:

Cake with gumpaste flowers and a fondant sash:

Toby's birthday Cake and a close up of the figures Angela made and the controller:

A cake for no reason, wedding style:


It was rushed so I didn't have time to match the flowers, oh well.

The end result of being behind on posting in my blog and taking cake decorating classes is that I will now post all the cakes I've made thusfar:







More to come, class 3 starts tomorrow.

I made this photo receipe so that you, too, can share in the greatness that is bacon sushi:


Click here to enlarge

This afternoon at work, I was driving a consumer home from her DR appt. She's Korean and does not speak very good English. My car mp3 player decided to play Taco - Putting on the Ritz, Daft Punk - Technologic, and Scooter - Ramp. I swear it's trying to make me look like an absolute fruit cake in front of my consumer.

1) I work for Magellan Health Services. Our company's motto is "Getting Better Every Day."

My view on this motto is this:

Of course we are getting better every day. When you start at the bottom of the barrel you have nowhere else to go but up.

2) Magellan bitches that they can't pay us overtime or have petti cash ready at hand for consumers but expects hourly employees to work after hours as there is not enough time during the day to get everything done.

My view on this motto is this:

Perhaps if you didn't spend money on stupid shit, you would have more of it. Example: each consumer's service plan used to be 4-7 pages long, now the minimum it can be is 17 pages for no other reason than blank pages are spit out with a "page x of x" on them so they cannot be discarded. Oh, and I find it insulting when they send us quarterly emails about how much money they made last quarter.

This blog entry was written while waiting for the printer to spit out 17 pages of a service plan which took approximately 10 minutes.

New House....check,
New Puppy....check,
New Car....vrrrrm vrrrrm!

I got a 2008 Honda Civic this past Saturday. This car is so fancy it makes me feel inadequate...like the car is too good for me. But I'll adjust to luxury I'm sure.

I ate spinach today. And I didn't spit it out.

Meet Ninja:



She is 4 months old. The kitties are adjusting.

The birthday bash was quite the success with only minimal injuries to people and home. Friday night, Toby took me out on a fun excursion of Cheesecake Factory and to see "Balls of Fury." It was a relaxing gaming and fun filled weekend with lots of sleep, fun, and kitties. Since no one brought a Wii, I busted out with Katamari. It is the most gay video game ever made, but a good one for groups.

As for the first workday of Magellan taking over, it's been a tough Magellan Tuesday. I finally have access to all the computer systems but nobody has bothered to update me on how to convert the way I know to write progress notes to the new way. It's paper and pen for now!

So for the moment here's a haiku about my leveling status:

I'm Twenty-seven
in life, 32 ingame.
And I'm so Gellan.

I get the house in less than 2 weeks. :) Eeeeeee!

I'm going to be a homeowner again! This time I'm going to have a garage and a backyard. Booyah!

A haiku based on my experiences at 2am last night with Lord of the Rings Online:

Freakin' NPCs!
I'm not your damn errand girl,
Give up the XP!

I just wanted to be lvl 20 before I went to sleep, is that too much to ask for?

I'm so bad at keeping up the blogs of my life. I meant to write this on this past Monday:

I made my final student loan payment today! Arizona State no longer lingers in my mind like an old sports injury, I am done with you! ....now to get cracking on the credit cards. Oh yes, once all the debt is gone, there will be a monstrous celebration where I (yes I said "I") supply the booze.

After over 7 hours of work on my computer, I'm proud to say the following:

My computer has a 512mb ram video card and 5 hard drives totalling 900GB storage space. Oh yeah, I went there. :)

San Diego trip pictures to come, my website is being a jerk at the moment.

My world has been upsidedown since I heard the news and confirmed it on imdb.com today:
Steve Martin played the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors! I cannot trust my senses any longer.

I've been published on Board Game Geek! I just earned more lifetime geek points. Check out my painted Silver Mimrig on Board Game Geek:


http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/201594

Here are some of the oddities in the last week of my life:

1) I walked past a coworker as she was staring at her computer screen and says " I wish I had a drug problem, this would be so much less boring."

2) Conversation between Toby and I last night:
Me: If I gave you a mellon baller could you get rid of my uterus, it's hurting.
Toby: I don't think so, we'd need something bigger, like a toilet plunger.
Me: Are you calling me fat?


3) Angela to me over IM: "I need to poop but im out of origami paper. I like to make cranes."

Fry's had an incredible 50% off sale to get rid of their Heroscape stuff. I have all of Wave 5 now and the super neato dragon sets. But I wanted my 2nd master set figures to be discernable on the battle field, so I painted them. Here's the best one:

Silver Mimrig

Ladies be jealous, the most beautiful arrangement I've ever been given:


Valentines Day Pic 2007


This ranks in the top of best v-days. I still wish grownups gave each other those box-o-vday-cards like we did when we were in elementary school. Maybe I'll start doing that next year.

In the last 2 days, I have learned the following lessons:
1) What you learned in driver's ED when you were 15 is true, you can hydroplane even when the ground barely looks damp. I am ok, was only going 40mph....I did not panic and remembered to pump the brakes.
2) The nice police officer who stopped to see if I needed help when I blew my tire on the 202 told me that he often receives calls stating that people are "driving crazy and trying to kill themselves" on this freeway (after I told him I work for ValueOptions). I told them that doesn't suprise me after the things I've seen and stories I've heard about.
3) Do not mess with Toby's car's seatbelts! They will make you punch yourself in the face and split your own lip.
4) When you are hungry, everything looks like food. There is a collage at work and I thought the word "friendship" said "fried shrimp." I'm glad no one was around when I was standing there saying "mmmm, fried shrimp."
5) Buying the Bushisms calendar was a bad idea. I feel more dumb everyday reading it and knowing that logical human beings actually voted for this man. Oh and I mean voted, not just voted him into office. He is a monkey! And not even an articulate speaking one at that. Jan 31st quote: "Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat." Didn't past presidents have people to write their speeches for them? I could write better crap in 4th grade. He reminds me of Biff from Back to the Future. America, what a country!

I have a "Bushisms" desk calendar at work and this past weekend's quote was good enough to put up for all you to see. Bushisms are stupid things our leader says and boy are there a lot of them.

Here is the one for January 13/14:
"It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet."

So sitting here with no pressing obligations on a Saturday afternoon. What should I do? I know! I'll write the post I've been meaning to post about.

GenCon SoCal in November:
Was super fun! There weren't as many board and card game choices but I kept busy the whole time and did have quite a lack of sleep. I'm sure it annoyed Toby that I was jumping on him at 8am everyday so we could get breakfast and start a 15 hour gaming day. There was this awesome booth were you could have a miniature and paint it. They gave us tips and stuff and was a great social atmosphere. My mini (link in the previous post) took 2 hours to complete and I see mistakes I made, but for my first one I think it's super. I'd like to get a bunch of ppl together to paint the 100 Zombies!! I have. I plan to pay helpers a Fudruckers 1lb burger challenge, my treat. Gotta buy paints though, I got brushes and trays. There was a dance that Saturday night at GenCon and while sitting with a friend talking a few hours prior, 2 guys walked up to us and asked us to it. I have never had someone randomly ask me out before and they weren't even 300lb smelly gamer boys. Finally get to check something off my list of things I want before I die. Seeing as how we both had bfs that were pooping at the time, we politely declined but ended up going anyway (not with them, I don't even remember what they looked like). I cut up a rug after my 2 drink minimum....they played pretty fun songs to dance to for the 45 minutes Toby let me be there.

My Job:
I interviewed and transferred to the 2nd closest ValueOptions site to my house. I have a bigger desk that I have to stretch to reach the phone (no short person jokes!), we have an office suite that is about 4 times the size of both pink team rooms from my last clinic, and a good supervisor. She yells a lot, but she's funny too. She laughed when it was 5:55p on Friday (I go home at 6), she tells me she can't accept the service plan it took 3 hours to write and revise because the consumer signed it before the date that the computer put on it and would need to get resigned, and I yelled "son of a bitch." I'm in a good place, it's not a bad team, but its not the Pink Team. Gosh I miss those people and how much fun we used to have. It pisses me off to no end that at the very last minute they kept the person who was hired most recently of all case managers....and she isn't even good at the job. Roberto did most of her work cause they had a thing even though she's engaged to someone else. Prolly should forget that last part....I couldn't avoid the gossip train entirely there, much as I try. Also, they had Gary stay at the last last minute. He had secured a position at Thomas Rd much like me at the Alma School clinic. He is a great guy from what I can tell, and I am glad he's going to a better team (green). But if they were firing people left and right all over the Valley, and claimed it was all by hire date, then I should have been the first person to be asked to stay. So I do take it quite personal that my caseload of great people was ripped apart and the best desk in the place was overtaken (though I am glad by who took it), I am also the person who lives closest to that building. As for my caseload, I am slowly meeting the people. It's sad that since my new place is a priority for State Audits, they focus on paperwork more then helping people in the field. It also decreases my mileage reimbursement check every month.

My Car:
I have my precious back! In some ways, it drives better then before....I knew there was a problem with the alignment before but alignment places said there wasn't. Had to pay for it myself because nobody was doing anything about it and my back was killing me not having a car that I could sit upright in. Went to physical therapy for nearly 2 months. Not only did that leave me with no lunch break many times but was very unpleasant (the process not the place). The insurance company took nearly 2 fucking months to make an offer, it was just rediculously fucked up. I've submitted all the paperwork I believe I need to and am waiting for them to reimburse me. It's just been an awful experience and I know that this isn't the way it's suppose to happen as I have been hit by people making retarded decisions several times in the past. It's like Elliot got away with ruining me for a time and there aren't AZ laws to protect the victim, it protects insurance companies thus encouraging bad driving. My accident was 100% avoidable if the other guy hadn't made a fucking obvious mistake. Things are getting better, stress level is lower and my asthma isn't so bad anymore - had an asthma attack for about 5 days after the accident.

Non-Denominational Winter Holiday:
Was great! I made a huge Non-Denominational Winter Holiday (Christmas) Dinner feast for Toby and I. It included my very first try at a turkey - which turned out very well, only a tiny bit dry in the white meat. I'm still making turkey & stuffing burritos and sandwiches, heh. Presents were great too, mostly got Heroscape stuff. I am so excited to play my first game with the Castle set and new units. Dibs on the Massachusetts Minute Men. Ang got me an amazing 6 foot long puzzle of the most advanced map of the world in 1375, 4000 pieces. I'm hoping to start a puzzle night weekly. I don't own a puzzle surface big enough for the whole thing...will have to do it half and half.

Lastly:
Let's end with a picture:
http://members.cox.net/mgaza/blogpics/frigamegroup.jpg
It is a large chunk of the Friday gaming group at Seth and Kirstin's wedding. From left to right: Toby, Me, Jo, Ben, Katie, and Chris.

Yeah yeah yeah, been meaning to post, so much has happened in the last couple of months. This one will be quick and then when I have time, a much more in depth one to follow.

First: It is the new year, and with that comes tallying up how many trivia questions I got right and wrong on the 2006 Simpsons trivia desk calendar that Matt gave me for Christmas '05. I win, but not by much. 166 correct, 147 wrong....I'll need to watch more Simpsons to get a better score in the future. (Yes that doesn't add up to 365....a bunch of the weekends were combined on a page with just 1 question.)

Last but not least: Check out my first ever painted miniature that I did at GenCon SoCal:
http://members.cox.net/mgaza/blogpics/myfirstpaintedmini.jpg

GenCon SoCal here I come! Time to pop my gaming con cherry!

I haven't been good at returning calls and messages, so here's the update:

Wednesday night, I was driving straight minding my business and singing in the car when a red Dodge Durango came out of nowhere and turned left into me. I have bad back and neck problems with pain and crap range of motion. I have a very messed up car. And best yet, the other guy got to drive away. I've never gotten to drive away from an accident and I've never caused an accident. :( Elliot Johnson from Tempe, AZ never even apologized for destroying my pretty purple car with his idiocy. Elliot, I hope this stays on your conscience for the rest of your life.

Thursday morning, I was informed that due to downsizing, my position at ValueOptions will no longer exist on December 15th and they are prepared to give me a whopping 1 week's severence pay. I have the option of interviewing for another site, but with everyone getting canned, it'll be like feeding time in the lion's den. The kick in the pants thing is that they only got rid of the last 5 people to be hired. What's that you say? Oh, yes, I have been working there almost a year and am senior to half the case managers in the clinic. But the man says that my time as a temp doesn't count and I am not a real person in the clinic til April and a bunch of the new new people had non case manager jobs with the company before transfering here.

This morning I received a text message on my phone stating I have 44 minutes left on my cell phone until Nov 20th. Checking messages takes minutes and there are no "night time minutes" with my plan. I won't be available by phone because of all this crap wasting my minutes. But when I can get to other people's phones, I can call back. I prefer email and aim and always have.

This afternoon I received a call from Geico saying they are totalling my car because repairs are $300 more than the cost of my car. I told them to shove it in a 25 minute yelling conversation. I will get my precious back!

So I don't want to hear anything about this from anyone. I know I'm the person you are glad you aren't. I would be to if this was you. So thank you for the calls, maybe I'll be more social when my life gets put back together.