I will stop. The World.
I wish I did have a freeze ray sometimes. As you can imagine, since my last post I’ve been a little busy. Everything is running and spinning smoothly though. Major wedding plans have been set in place. The date is December 20th, 2008. I’ve been getting a lot of emails from people asking me if I will be making my own cake. All I can say to that is “HA! No bloody way!”. It has been a bit of a challenge though to find someone to make it though. I think I’ve finally got someone. We’ll see what happens with I send them my sketch.
I find that I’m also painfully behind on The Internets. So I leave you with this. Enjoy.

I’m sure than most everyone already knows the events of the past week; but now I’ve taken some time to digest everything and breath…and blog.
Last week began with my parents finding their way out from Ohio. I drug them everywhere interesting I could think of and made them eat at a lot of places they generally wouldn’t have. Sorry dad. Somewhere in the mist of that I turned 25 and spent a good portion of that day at the beach. I enjoy low-key birthdays. Two days later I was awoken to the cats playing “run-over-jes’-face” and got up to find that Ian had PRESUMABLY gone to work early. Thinking not much of it, I gave him a call to make sure he INTENDED to go in early. After ensuring everything was fine, Dad and I headed to Lowe’s for some home improvement items. I got home and went to my computer to get directions to our next destination only to find a message from Ian letting my know there was a late birthday present game on my computer. I opened it and started playing, thinking I was playing a build of a project he’s been working on with friends. The little 8bit avatar of me should have made me suspicious. The alarmingly specific events in the game should have made me suspicious. When the final boss bugged and Ian had to remake the build and put it back on through the network I finally admitted that I wasn’t just playing a random game. Before I knew it 8bit Ian had a question for me and I turned to find flesh Ian walking toward me. I’m sure everyone knows what happened next and I said yes.

I’m not really a fan art type of gal, let alone super good at photoshop; but I conjured this up on my couple of days off. Go play Whirled, then play Brawler in Whirled. It’s an amazing game done by an amazing guy.

I just wanted to share with everyone my latest culinary triumph. Thanks to Bill for taking such beautiful pictures!

While we’ve moved almost a month ago, various boxes and piles of hubble are still in states of various mess around the house. It seems that hubbles and messes follow me around though. Enjoy these pictures from moving and how the house is coming together.

I’m not known for my deep thoughts or witty observations, so I beg your patience for what follows.
As I lay in our new bath tub this evening (an incredibly comfortable porcelain number with a fantastic sloping back, the kind made for reading and relaxing) reading the latest issue of Bon Appetit, my mind began to wander. First to how my mind always seems to go elsewhere while I’m in contact with water, whether I’m washing my hands at work for the umpteenth time or trying to get food ink off my arms at home. Then to food. I realize that everyone is shocked by this statement, clapping a hand over the aghast expressions on their mouths, and exclaiming “Jes was thinking about food?!”. But I wasn’t just thinking about what I was going to make for supper next Monday night, taking a mental inventory list of what is in my fridge, or trying to think of a dessert to make with asparagus. I was thinking of my emotional experiences and social class within the culinary world. When did I become a gastronomer? How does one even get to that point in their lives?
Most everyone is introduced to cooking in their mother’s or grandmother’s kitchens. Favorable or not, you would sigh nostalgically at the smell of chicken noodle soup and the yellowish-brown counter tops (as they seemed to be popular a few decades ago). I remember the mantra of my grandparents and parents to eat whatever was put in front of me and while I often hid my peas under a glass, the notion has stuck. Simple meals, simply prepared with simple flavors and ingredients have now been replaced with everything just the opposite. I can no long look at my meals and say “that is chicken noodle soup”. Now it is open-range corn-fed chicken braised with garlic and shallots in an organic vegetable stock with fresh ground peppercorn and rosemary poolish chibatta. What? Grandma’s oh so wonderful yet entirely unreplicable chocolate cookies replaced with thyme infused parfait and fleur de sel caramel. Observing these changes in my palette lead me to pine for what I’ve lost and cheer at what I’ve gained. I have risen into the upper echelons of taste and conquered my will to eat raw ramen. Okay, that is not entirely true, I still like raw ramen. But I’m saddened for the people that can’t to that. The people that will never have the chance to be simple.
It’s something you never think about. Something you never expect until one day a precocious eight year old inquires to the cocoa percentage of his hot chocolate or a birthday party for a three year old that requires a fresh raspberry, creme bavarios, and lemon chiffon cake and that cake better say ‘Happy Birthday Wil’ with one ‘L’. God forbid if there are two. It’s a strange sensation to see those children in the future ordering valrhona fondue with amarene cherries and fresh fruit; complaining about a single ding or blemish on a strawberries and allowing hell to reign within the restaurant and the poor managers. I fail to understand this mentality. I can admire a flawless strawberry and Pavlovian drool at the thought of my teeth sinking into it; but I’d take a box full of imperfect ones with slightly brown tipped leaves over one perfect one any day of the week and be just as happy. While people have earned the right to eat as they please, someone needs to hand them grilled cheese and condensed tomato soup and tell them to eat what’s been put in front of them. There is a point when you’re far too old to act like a child, no matter how much wealth you have.

…and they don’t need updates via the interwebs.
I realize that I start every post by saying how super busy I am. This isn’t an excuse for not updating, more than a statement of my life. The new year has not only been full of books; but lot of stuff that likes to accompany the beginning of the year, such as taxes, conventions, finding a new apartment.
While taxes are done for me, it seems that doing taxes for a company incorporated in Maryland; but with owners living in California is a little complicated. At this point, I just want to get the K1’s so we can get everyone else’s taxes done. Having a business in California really is like your money has turned into water money and the government has a sponge. I suppose it’s like that everywhere else, it just seems like the government has a lot more little sponges here.
We celebrated Ian’s 26th birthday in January with a dinner at Quattro. It’s nice to eat at a place where everyone knows you. The food was pretty awesome and the dessert sampler that Chef sent out was very nice and tasty. Thanks to all my involved coworkers for making the night extra nice.
Did I mention conventions up there? I thought Mac Hall/Three Panel Soul wasn’t doing conventions anymore. Well we didn’t, last year. This year rang in the new convention year with Genericon in Troy. NY. Seems everyone had a fine time and the staff was amazingly communicative. Last weekend we attended Animation on Display in San Francisco. You have got to love conventions that allow you to sleep in your own bed every night. It was nice to hang out with a plethora of people there; but I think a grand total of five convention goers had any idea who we were. This lead to me cursing at The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for two days instead of paying attention to fans. Strangely enough we did do two panels. One involved Matt and Ian on stage while Dom and I sat in back and heckled them. The other involved Matt, Ian, Dom, and myself on stage while Dom and I heckled each other and the audience and Matt and Ian stared at us like we were insane….webcomics b(^_^)b. I was disappointed with the toy selection; but hopefully that will be rectified at Fanime and while I did not get to ask Rob Paulson if he was pondering what I was pondering, I did get to harass Vic Manohminha (not how it’s actually spelled) for an autograph.
Back to the matters at hand though. A few things still need taken care of before April. A wedding cake needs making for March first and April 19th. Some time before May first I better figure out where we’re going to live next……
Finding a new apartment is way too hard.
Here are a couple pics from Ian’s birthday.

Happy 2008 to everyone. I’m not much of the reflecting person; but I think last year was a pretty good year. This year got off to a pretty good foot, though I was at work. No matter though, I like my new job.
Books seemed to be the name of the gift this holiday season as I’ve acquired enough reading material to last until next year. After finally finishing the Dragaeran books, I discovered that there are five books that preclude them. I’ve also received the other books written by Steven Brust, that I have yet to read….
The same gentleman who got me into the books formerly mentioned gave me an entire other series of books. There are more of them than I have fingers.
I’m also looking at an impressive number of food books, including: Morimoto, Dolce Italiano, On Food and Cooking, Twinkies Deconstructed, The Sweet Life, and a vegan dessert book is on the way.
I haven’t had the time to read them yet; but I’m plodding away at them slowly and trying to balance them between playing with my new computer, my new DS Lite, and Rock Band.

Puzzle Pirates has some cool things happening this holiday season and created new ways to show off your awesome pirateness. Check it out!