Normally I prepare enough icing for my carrot cakes such that I can make one cut, ice two layers and have enough that my dad, brother, dog, cat, and brother’s girlfriend can each take a massive fingerful of the whipped cream cheese icing.

I prepared a cake tonight for work as I’d never bake a proper “congradulations, you shot out a baby” cake for coworker’s now six-month old (I was busy) but at 2 AM there’s few beaterlickers about.  There’s a ridiculous amount of icing on the cake.  I could have easily iced a 3rd layer or possibly another cake.  There’s a spot where it’s an inch deep.  It’s more like someone made an icing cake and dumped a carrot cake on it.  I did some work to try and make it less obvious so there’s a slight shelf where the icing extends beyond the cake forming either an icing overhang or an icing hat, depending on your vantage.  I left the cake out, homing my cat would go to town on it, no dice.  With a pound of cream cheese, 2/3 pound of sugar and a fresh stick of butter I may be responsible for either killing, or inducing diabetes in several of my coworkers.

Bonus Story:  My cake recipe involves about 200 grams of whole vanilla yogurt which I thought I had.  Well, having what is vanilla yogurt and having what was vanilla yogurt and is now an affront to both a just and loving God and baking soda is another.  I went to Wawa to get some yogurt and they had no whole or low fat vanilla yogurt, just non-fat which uses artificial sweeteners that taste like burning tires post-baking.  I grabbed a 230 g container of peach fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt and proceded to checkout, where the checkout agent put it in a bag.  I was so dumbfounded that my single serving of yogurt received a bag, I didn’t object like I normally do.

I go home, and start spooning out the yogurt and hit the peach part with only 180 grams of usable yogurt.  I’m not going back to Wawa to purchase another single serving of yogurt so I look around for a yogurt substitute.  I wondering if any of my coworkers will identify the 20 grams of mayonnaise in the carrot cake.

It’s 4:00 PM and my coworker just did a little jig because his supervisor left slightly early.  My coworker leaves at 5:00 PM normally and his supervisor at 5:30 PM.  But he did a literal dance.  I asked him why, “because it’s Friday and the boss is gone”.  I checked in periodically if he was whittling away at the time left in his day by reading the newspaper, online articles, or even an excessively long coffee break.  Nope, his nose was to the grindstone solidly until 5:00 PM.  On the way out, he did a little shuffle, too.

Did I miss something?

In an attempt to save material cost, a coworker was tasked with determining the actual surface area used of a material on one of our products.  Watching him measure a curved surface with a ruler was almost painful so I proposed he cut the film of interest away from the product, mass it, and compare it to the mass of a reference sample.  I was told this was “too inexact” compared to trying to measure a curved, inflated, stretchy surface with a ruler.

He then moved to using CAD to view the device in 3D and started using the ruler functions to again measure the surface and tried cutting the space into smaller geometric figures as the surface of consideration wasn’t quite spherical.  I proposed he use the equation for the surface curve and that he calculate the volume as an a surface of revolution.  Once again, I was rebuffed for it not being exact enough.

Calculus, not exact enough.  The only method for perfectly determining the area under a curve after literally millenia of estimates using stupid rectangular prisms and trapezoids is not exact enough.  A mathematic accurate enough to shoot the Voyager 2 probe within 70 km of Neptune at a distance of nearly 4.5 billion km.  Your right, calculus, not exact enough.  You got me.

I spent most of the morning today mocking a blacksmith in work who had made his own forged belt buckle.  References to the LLBean Christmas 08 anvil catalog, the My First Anvil playset and the web 2.0 compliant e-Anvil and its corresponding Facebook group flew furiously.

Later that day, my belt buckle broke and I replaced it with the new Boy Scout web belt.  It’s a fine belt with a quality latching mechanism and less “a small child threw up on my belt after eating peas” green.  I was worried that people at work would catch onto the fact that I was wearing a Boy Scout belt until I had to lift my dunlop to show a fellow campmaster the new belt.  What the dunlop giveth, the dunlop taketh awayeth.

I work 12 hour shifts at BMS, M/W/F and at 8:00AM and 5:00PM I want a cold drink, so I brought in an ice tray into work.  At first it was my little secret, then slowly my ice started disappearing.  This wouldn’t annoy me accept that even when emptied it was never refilled.  I consider this karmic balance for my theft of candies (1-09-7) except when I found their use: in the morning a woman comes in with a piping hot cup of coffee, and at 10 AM she reheats it and then puts two ice cubes in. WHY WOULD YOU MICROWAVE IT THEN ADD ICE!  This isn’t an isolated occurrence as I’ve verified that she does it near daily.  I’ve recently discovered that Gastroenteritis can withstand both heat and cold, vengeance will be mine!

Soon to be married coworker designed a wax seal to use on the wedding invitations.  The seal was made using a highly complicated construction process out of the goodness of the person who generates prototypes.  Constant talk of dimensions, materials, design formats and production time had me geared up to see a seal worthy of the Q’in Dynasty Emperor and I saw the work today.  I saw the completed product and met it with Segway-like disappointment, it’s the following: ” : D C : “.  And when I mentioned sarcastically that it made two happy little faces I was met with a “I was hoping people would notice”.  Luckily it will go great with the “D <3 C 4 eV4R” commemorative mini-lite brites.