Weekend

I had a great weekend - despite the massively disappointing performance of my beloved Cyclones.
Friday night I was able to hang out with my sister and brother-in-law, niece and nephews. I have three nephews: Walker, 12, Cyote, 11, Ethan, 6 and my niece Anna is almost 2 and a half. What she lack in age and height Anna makes up for in attitude. Elizabeth had told me that they'd be having board game night which meant I stood half a chance of winning - I get schooled at Wii everytime I play. So after a healthy dinner of pizza and chocolate milk, it was time to put Anna to bed - teeth brushing, book reading, singing - meanwhile the boys were downstairs roughousing like boys apparently do - I didn't grow up with brothers. Then we settled in to play some Blokus. I really liked this game - not incredibly long, fast-paced. pretty easy to figure out too. And I love a good strategy game. After a couple rounds, it was time for the boys to brush their teeth and head to bed. Elizabeth and I chatted briefly and then I went to bed - I was getting up at the crack of dawn on Saturday.

Tailgating on Saturday was great. My friend, Jenny, has a spot in C4 and along with her good friend, Andrea, had prepped a bunch of breakfast burritos that just needed to be reheated on the grill. Not to mention the fruit salad, and smores brownies they'd made.YUM! I made Andrea a cookie cake for her birthday, even though she cheers for the wrong team. After meeting up with Steph and Matt, I showed up at the tailgate shortly after 7, and enjoyed my healthy breakfast complete with OJ and vodka. I did horribly at my bag playing yet again, but I question the scoring as I think some shady things went on. Steph and I also wondered over to see Salsa and her cousin, Eric who also lives in Omaha. AND I got to drink a beer from one of the cool ISU Bud Light cans. Yes, Bud Light, your marketing has worked on me.

And then we headed into the game The first quarter was going well, we scored. Steph and I went to the bathroom and came out to buy another bottle of water - total time - maybe 3 minutes in real life. Then we hear, "First and goal, Iowa," we looked at each other so confused and looked at the TV in the concourse as iowa scored. When we returned to our seats the guys let us know about our brilliant decision to do an onside kick. Well, I think people know what happened from there. The sights and sounds for me included watching an older Iowa fan getting arrested from our section during halftime. I don't think I've seen anyone get arrested since I sat in the student section. We toward the end of the third quarter. It was hot, we were tired. I was sunburnt. Naps were needed. I was so exhausted I fell asleep around 10 or 10:30.

Sunday, Ethan and Cyote both had soccer games, but since I needed to pack for a work trip, I wasn't able to go to both. I went to Ethan's soccer game. This is Ethan's first year of playing and considering he's just getting started, he's pretty good. His team is pretty good - my sister said they practice twice a week. He scored a few goals, made some good stops and had a few good passes. He told me earlier this year that he hopes to be as good as Cyote someday. Cyote had to try out for his team and plays in a competitive league.

So minus the part were my team sucked and I was sick the entire time, it was a great weekend - full of friends and family.

WebMD

So I've been coming down with a little bit of a cold, or seasonal allergies since Monday morning and I went out to WebMD to plug in my symptoms. If you've never used the symptom checker thing you plug in a bunch of symptoms and it returns your potential diagnosis. So I plugged in sore throat, coughing, headache, little tired/rundown, runny nose - 20 things came back - most of them were things like a cold, or allergies or things along that line and I figured it was just a run of the mill cold. But, the best one - I could just be nearsighted. Huh? I didn't put anything in about my eyes. PLUS, I'm already nearsighted. I'm freaking blind as a bat. I keep a pair of old glasses in my car in case I'm a couple hours away from home and rip a contact.
Thanks WebMD! I realize that using the internet to diagnose my illnesses is not the best idea, but I figured I should start somewhere.

Let the Games Begin!

This is my favorite time of the year, I love fall and I love college football! In another week or two the leaves will start turning and the weather has already begun to get cooler. Iowa State's home opener was on Thursday and I took the day off, so that I could have lunch with my sister before hand. The day started off a bit poorly because it was pouring at home, some weirdo old lady cut me off at the coffee shop and I got half an hour away from home only to discover my tickets were on my kitchen counter. AAAGGGHHH!

So after those minor setbacks, my sister and I sat down to a late lunch. Heading up to Ames, I called Steph and stopped at Hy-Vee to pick up my contribution to our tailgate and get our beer. As I was waiting to checkout the guy ahead of me clearly knew the clerk checking him out and the two of them were discussing bars in town, which ones were good, which ones sucked. It was decided that Whiskey Creek (where I never went in college) was only good if you were looking for cougars. I'm thinking to myself, am I seriously listening to this? I thought maybe I was on some poorly produced TV show, so I only smirked and didn't laugh.

After that tailgating began where some bean bags were played, beer and food were consumed. Oh and some entrepreneur tried to sell us cigars! Which he assured us were genuine Cubans. And then, it was game time.....

I LOVE OUR SECTION!!!! We could technically move, but we opt to stay where we are because we like the people we sit by. The "Minnesota boys" one of whom once introduced himself to Steph as her future brother-in-law. (He was already married, he just decided she would marry his brother.) They're always fun. The perpetual optimist who sits next to me, and always has faith - though she doesn't always make it into the games (tailgating gets in the way). There's the couple who sits behind us and he said exactly what the rest of us where thinking the other night - "Um, no huddle offense? Seriously, my high school quarterback was play calling faster than this out of the huddle." And his wife his hitting him and telling him to shut up. Everyone else was laughing. The "I-S-U Cyclones!" guy, who, after every time we score, he leads our section in a cheer - though he was really slacking Thursday. And the new addition this year - three couples who look like they're about 25, who yell like hell - or at least the guys do. The boyfriend/husband of the one couple was trying to explain some of the yelling/clapping fundamentals to his significant other - which was also entertaining. Apparently he majored in cheering in college.

The other great thing about our seats is that we have a great view of the student section and I'm amazed at how syncronized they have become. Seriously, I don't think we were ever that together.

Reality Check

So over the weekend, one of my friends that I've known since 1st grade posted a photo trip down memory lane. There's some superswell pictures of me at age eight if you're interested on FB. She also posted some photos from our junior prom. And as I looked at the pictures, I realized just how out of shape and lazy I'd gotten with my workout regime since high school. I only weigh about 10 - 15 pounds more than I did in the photo and I'm only one dress size larger. The difference maker: in high school I was playing sports or working out five to six days a week, probably almost fifty weeks out of the year. Including camps and sports like track that I did just to keep in shape in the off (basketball and volleyball) season.

I make the lame-o excuse that right now, I just don't have time to work out, because I work too much. I put in around 50 plus hours a week of work, but seriously, it's not like I was sitting at home knitting in my free time in high school. I was pretty active in high school activities and since we lived 17 miles from the school it took an eternity to get there and back. My parents would occassionally ask me who I was when I walked in the door. So now I'm hoping that I can just convince my mom to come over every week and make all my meals for me because while I enjoy cooking, that's my other major timesuck. Chances that she's going to make the cross Iowa trek for me - not good. Maybe when she retires in the January.

One of my birthday gifts to me, was a sweet pair of running shoes. I just need start USING them. In the nice neighborhoods by my house. I'm not going to join a gym until after I buy a house, since I don't want to be driving across town to a gym.

I did realize that I hope I never have an awesome updo like I did in 1996 ever again. It was huge. (I'm wondering if there were any animals hiding in there.) And lots of curly trendil thingys. My hair for my senior prom was much better. I looked kinda like the "Pantene girl." Which probably makes no sense and I don't own a scanner.

Cake Ball recipe

Here's the cake ball recipe, per request. I've also added a few comments at the end because of my personal experiences...

Ingredients:
1 (18.25-ounce) boxed cake mix plus ingredients called for on box
1 (16-ounce) can prepared frosting
Almond Bark Coating or Confectionery Wafer coating (I used about a pound of almond bark per box mix).

Bake the cake according to package instructions. While warm, crumble the cake into a bowl with a hand mixer to a fine texture. Mix in frosting to make a paste, using 3/4 to a full can of frosting, according to taste. Chill the mixture for at least 2 hours.
Using a melon baller or your hands, form the mixture into 1 ½ -inch balls. Place the balls on wax paper; freeze at least 6 hours.
Working in small batches, remove the balls from the freezer and dip the balls into warm, melted Almond Bark Coating or Confectionery Wafer Coating, using toothpicks or forks to manipulate the balls. Remove the balls. Place the balls on wax paper to harden. Makes about 30 cake balls.

My notes: I only used about 3/4 can of frosting with each kind, but you can use more if you want. I made three different kinds, it's pretty much up to you what kind you want to do. If you do a google search, you'll find all kinds of flavor ideas. I used a melon baller, but I wouldn't make them as big as they recommend above, I think mine were about 3/4 to 1 inch. I ended up with about 40 balls of each kind. The red ones were confectionery wafers which I'm not used to working with and it was a LOT thicker than the white almond bark that I'm used to dealing with when making candy coated pretzels, etc. I did use melted dark chocolate confectionary wafers as the garnish type on the chocolate balls I made.

CAKE!!!

I'm a big fan of baking. It's fun, it reminds me of so many happy memories from my childhood - making chocolate chip cookies with my mom when I little, decorating cookies for the holidays and all the awesome treats that my mom used to make for us back when we'd have treat days for school. Baking is almost a therauputic thing for me, but at the same time, if I bake stuff, I have to eat it, and I have no need to have an entire cake sitting around my home.

So, this summer, on of my many cousins got married and one of the foods available before dinner were cake balls. After doing a little internet research, apparently cake balls have become quite popular over the last couple years, for all kinds of occassions. Guess I'd been missing out.

So this past week, I decided to bake some up - I wanted to see if this was something that would be easy to make and also be something that I could give out to certain agencies. The end result, they are pretty easy to make, a bit time consuming, but easy. I mean, you use a boxed cake mix, and around a can of frosting. Seriously. The cake balls allow for a lot of variation, you can pretty much put any cake and frosting combo together that you want. I made three different kinds: yellow cake with buttercream frosting mixed in them, funfetti cake with vanilla frosting and chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

After mixing those two parts together and letting it set in the fridge for few hours, I got out my Pampered Chef scoop and scooped them on to wax paper and then put them into the freezer for six hours. Then the cake balls get dipped in almond bark. Here is where I made a bit of a mistake. I'd gone to Hobby Lobby and purchased some red confectionery wafers. I'm not used to working with them, and probably should have thinned them out a bit. I was dipping the yellow cake into the red mixture and after it set I noticed that it was seriously thick. I used white almond bark for the other two, turned out much better. You can see the photo of the end result. I'll probably make them again, maybe experiment with some different mixtures, the chocolate one is really rich.

What's the big deal?

Is anyone else a bit annoyed about all the hub-bub the universities are causing over the "school colored" themed cans currently being sold by InBev, aka Anheuser-Busch aka Bud Light? Here's a link to a DM Register August 26 article: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090826/NEWS/908260360

I find the whole thing to be a bit annoying. As far as I can tell nowhere on the cans does it say, "Iowa State" or "ISU" or "Iowa" or "UofI", so what's to say that I wouldn't be buying those cans to support USC instead of ISU or Purdue instead of Iowa or heck, perhaps my sorority of choice? Do the universities not have better things to waste their time on, budget shortfalls? Will binge drinking at ISU and Iowa among underage college kids plummet once these cans return to normal colors? Has it spiked in the past couple weeks - as opposed to this time last year? Hmm...who are these 19 and 20 year olds drinking Bud Light anyway? Shouldn't they be drinking whatever is cheapest? Keystone Light, Natty Light, Busch Light, insert some fantastic crap light beer here.....

When I was a kid, I remember that my dad has some vintage looking ISU beer cans, that were gold and had a picture of Cy on them. I always though they were pretty cool. (I'm sure my dad still has them around somewhere, trust me, it's my dad.) I did a google search to see if I could find the manufacturer of these cans. I could not. What I did find, was that the back of the can said something like, "Not part of Iowa State University." Perhaps that was InBev's faux pas.

I guess what it all boils down to is that I'm going to be a bit annoyed if I can't purchase some of these cans for tailgating when I'm well over the legal drinking age.