So.. I’ve been baking cupcakes a lot lately. It was my birthday on Wednesday, and one of the traditions at my workplace is that the birthday person provides cakes for everyone.
I thought I’d be different and actually make them myself. There are 80-odd people in my company, so this was no minor undertaking..
It all turned out quite well, and I managed to get them all to the office, on the train, by means of panniers and my trusty bicycle.
I made Chocolate and Guinness, Orange Chocolate, Lemon, and Carrot and Cream Cheese flavours.
By far the most popular were the carrot cakes and poor philb didn’t get to try an assembled one as I iced everything at work (to maximise the chance that they would all arrive in a reasonable state), but he enjoyed the two separate sections.
So today, I decided to bake some more, just for philb.

Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing

Makes 12
For the Cupcakes:
120g caster sugar
95ml vegetable oil
2 tablespoons orange juice
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
110g plain flour
180g grated carrots

For the Icing:
227g Philadelphia cream cheese(room temperature)
85g icing sugar
1/4 tablespoon vanilla extract

Directions

Put oven on 180C

For cupcakes
Combine sugar, vegetable oil, vanilla extract, eggs and orange juice
Sift in flour, baking powder, baking soda, allspice and salt
Mix in carrots
Spoon into cupcake tray or paper cases
Bake for about 25 minutes

For the icing

Sift the icing sugar over the cream cheese and beat until smooth. Add vanilla extract

Even though thingsonsticks has more or less faded into sticky memory, I still retain a certain fondness for items on sticks, so I was particularly delighted to come across the artist Brian Pike and in particular, a picture called ‘Things on Sticks’.

Have a look. I’m sure you’ll see the appeal.

Philb and I have decided that we must own something by this genius. Preferably involving sticks/owls/cats, but all his pictures are fabulous.

Yay!

Words cannot describe the sheer elation we feel right now. Random cat has been found and safely relocated back here.

About 20:15 this evening, we had a phonecall from the vet to say that Random had been spotted in their car park and that they would try and keep his attention until we could get there. I have never cycled 5 miles quite so fast in my life. By the time we got down there, they had managed to trap him and he was in one of their cages.

I asked the vet to scan for RFID tags; he has none. Not that this necessarily means he’s homeless, but it’s unusual for a cat not to be chipped.
We then had the problem of how to get a cat home on a bicycle, but luckily Phil’s friend Paul drove us home, with Random yelling all the way.

I feel very very lucky right now.

Random Cat has eaten more food, purred and been stroked (so he doesn’t hate me, at least) and is now wandering the streets of Holyport. We were going to keep him in, but he was so distressed at being captive, that we thought it best to leave him outside, where he is happy.

Well, there’s a thing. In this post I mentioned that we had received an Easter card intended for another set of Braggs entirely.

I was kindly directed to a Rhiannon Bragg on friendsreunited by ShadowTail, who posted a comment on my blog.

£7.50 later and I sent off a message…

I received a reply, and bingo! Owner located!

Weirdly, they live about 100 metres away, round the corner. So we popped over with the card..

Thank you lazyweb! That seriously made my day.

So, the pixie and I accompanied most of my work colleagues to ten-pin bowling this evening. Well, we watched, they bowled - it all looks scary.

Sky sports was on the TV alongside the bowling-score screens. I was idly watching the Arsenal match, as one of my colleagues had gone to the match tonight, instead of bowling, and I wanted to make sure we were having more fun than he was I thought I was hallucinating when I saw a squirrel run across the screen. Seriously, there was a squirrel running across the pitch. I didn’t dream it look these people saw it too (19 minutes bit)  I’m not seeing things.

Anyway, a good time was had by all, although I’m dying to find out if Guy actually saw the squirrel from wherever he was in the stands..

I also saw some bunnies bouncing around, eating grass. Not on the football pitch, in a patch of grassland near the bowling alley. I still haven’t lost the childlike glee at seeing bunnies bimbling around wild. I will never make a wildlife photographer though, as while attempting to sneak up on them to take pictures, I dropped 1.5 litres of volvic water in bottle on the ground. Loudly. Needless to say, they scarpered. Philb was giggling uncontrollably. I punished him by making him hold the water while I skulked around and had another attempt. Bunny pictures might appear on flickr tomorrow, but let’s face it, we all know what bunnies look like, and it’s only me that gets excited by seeing wild ones dancing around.

Some time ago, I mentioned to my husband that I would find it amusing if eyelids made a clicking noise.

This has resulted in sporadic outbreaks of making-clicking-noise-with-tongue-while-using-eyelids. Using eyelids? Operating eyelids? Whatever, you know what I mean.

It looks amazingly cute and funny, although that could be because philb is unbelievably pixie-like. He looks rather like one of those Russ trolls that I used to collect as a teenager. Although that could just be the cheekbones.
The sillyness was compounded today, when I decided to use mouse-buttons for that authentic clicking noise.

Try it. Get your partner/housemate/random acquaintances to try it.

I will be mortified if you do not find it hysterical.

I have decided it is now warm enough for our lemon-children to venture out into the sunshine. Of course this now means that I can take pictures of them, ably assisted, as always, by Mogret.

Lemonpictures 

Waitrose organic pre-prepared pineapple (in the chiller section) and half a pink grapefruit make for a yummy lunch.

Philb pointed out that the addition of some lemony goodness might have improved the blend still further, but by the time he did so, lunch had been consumed. Something to note for next time.

Incidentally, it is worth paying that bit extra for the white pineapple. The difference between the white organic, and the normal yellow stuff, is astronomical. Literally a whole world of difference. The white organic pineapple is melty, smooth and subtly sweet and makes the normal yellow pineapple seem crude and inedible by contrast. My pineapple-palette has been entirely reconfigured. No more can I consume the common-or-garden yellow pineapple, of which I had previously been so fond. Now, only the white organic pineapple (sold by both Waitrose and Sainsbury’s) is good enough.

In other news, Random Cat has been back and playing chasing games with our Mogret. It’s so cute. She’s flirting and thoroughly enjoying herself. It’s good to see her happy, as I feared she was bored and lonely. I have emailed the Cats Protection people (the rescuers of Mogret) to see what they think we should do about Random Cat. I mean, I want to adopt him and adore him, but not if he is someone’s pet. Although I wish they’d get him Done, as he’s making quite a nuisance of himself.. I gave some serious consideration to the idea of getting him a collar with a message-roll in it and attempting to contact a possible owner that way.

I’m doing another Open University course at the moment: Relational Databases. Admittedly it is more for light relief, but it is still 30 points towards a degree. So far I have read through all the materials and am impatiently awaiting the next batch. Due to be posted 7th April. Bah.

On previous courses there was a certain amount of discourse, between members of a tutor group, via the conference systems run by the OU. The relevant conferences would be available from your ‘desktop’ when you logged in to the conferencing software. For this course there is nothing. Oh, there is the normal ‘course news’ conference, which is read-only, but nothing else. I’m doing a level 3 course (3rd year of degree level) so maybe you are just supposed to fend for yourself now. Who knows. Personally I miss the amusing putdowns and one-up-manship (where does one hyphenate that?) that went on. Also, I’m feeling just a little bit alone on this course.

I’ve received a reminder from my tutor that there is a tutorial this Saturday (the first one), so hopefully there will be Other People there. If I hurry, I can get my first assignment done and handed to my tutor too. For some reason this course doesn’t use the fabulous e-TMA system, whereby you submit your files electronically; this course requires dead-tree versions to be snail-mailed to the tutor. No more minutes-before-cutoff-time frantic assignment-attempts. I will have to plan things. Yeesh.

Our precious drama-lemons have all suddenly sprouted thorns. In the last two days.

Well I’m not much of a lemon-parent, clearly, as I was unaware that lemon trees grew thorns. Seeing as our lemons are only two years old, well, almost three years old, they are really only trainee-lemons; but they seem to have bounced back from their winter of discontent. Even SpindlyLemon (yes, they all have nicknames) seems to have perked up again, and having shed all his leaves, has started to grow some fresh baby leaves for spring.

What a relief.