Will work for food

My husband will tell you that I eat pizza like it's my job. The last time we had pizza he asked with incredulity lifting his voice, "how many slices did you HAVE?" 

Around my mouthful of cheesy goodness I replied, "the right number..."

As we well know, I also bake a lot of cupcakes.

And y'all wonder why I run so darned much. It's so I can stay ahead of all the food I eat!

I baked these beauties yesterday...

Butterbeer cupcakes, appropriate for the witchy season and for the plethora of Harry Potter nerds in my life.

Recipe is from www.amybites.com and is delicious! The addition of the soda into the batter makes the cake light and airy, the frosting isn't super heavy either and the ganache in the middle gives it just the right amount of gooey sweetness in the center.

Yum yum yum.

These got voted a top three favorite by my tasting team...two of them said number one :)

And husband already has tried wheedling the remainder for his lunch (there are eight left and he wants all of them...). Must be tasty!

Now I've gotta go run off the three I had yesterday!

Ciao,

kc

Runner

In response to a blog of a friend's that I just read and in celebration of the first ten miles I ran since my injury that I ran last week, and my first 11 miler that I completed today, I would just like to say a few things about what I learned with my injury:

1. I learned that you can't keep me down. Unless it's really really bad, and then I still fight it and everyone yells at me.

2. I learned how to listen to my body.

3. I learned when to keep pushing and when to take a step back.

4. I learned what pain is just "whiny" pain and what pain is "okay, we need to stop right now" pain.

5. I learned to appreciate my body and everything it does from me.

I learned this the day that I sat at the back door in so much agony that I couldn't stand or walk, screaming at my four month old puppy because he stubbornly wanted to go out the front door to go potty and would not come to the scary crying lady so he could go out the back door to go potty.

It sometimes takes not being able to walk to appreciate every day that you're able to.

6. I learned to appreciate pain. Not in a scary, emo way, but in a "this was so much worse a year ago" way. Pain is simply my body letting me know, "Hey, yeah, so you over did things..."

7. I learned that I love running. I bitch and bitch and bitch about "having to go" but those months that I couldn't go? I craved it.

Today, I got to run with my puppy. He was such a good boy. He was off leash for the whole 11 miles, and didn't misbehave once. Well, maybe once. But there was a squirrel that literally jumped out of a bush in front of him...hard to blame him there.

8. I learned that I love my body. I love the muscles in it and the way my joints ache at the end of a big run. I love that it gets me from point A to point B with a minimum of fuss.

I love that today, my body let me go 11 miles.

Ciao,
kc

Marriage

We've been officially married for a month and a day!

I loved our wedding day. I wanna have another wedding it was that much fun.

Plus, I want to wear the dress again because it made me really really really happy.

It took Tyler exactly 16 days to break his ring.

It's a two-toned band, the yellow gold band came loose from the white gold and had to be re-soldered, and apparently its something than can happen easily if you fuss with it too much.

I'm still having an identity crisis from changing my name.

Its weird to have been one thing your whole life and suddenly go by something different. Especially as I didn't do any of this "gradual" crap. I did the changeover (for the most part) all in one day, wham, bam, thank you, ma'am! The Monday after the wedding I went to the courthouse to hand in our marriage license and get my certified copies, went to social security, DMV and the bank and changed everything over!

I love being married.

"Nothing's changed" as they say, but I feel more stable, and husband has this confidence that I've been seeing emerge the last nine months or so, kind of a sigh of relief and a straightening of his shoulders that says, "Aha! She's mine forever now! I can even hold her head under the covers when I fart and she won't leave me!"

Not that that's happened. But you can see he's thinking it.

And I love being married.

Ciao,
kc

Survival

I did it. I survived my third iPhone launch. Technically it's the fourth I've been through, but one was missed due to Nana's passing and the NWM. Which I was totally okay with. Missing it, I mean, not Nana passing.

I have not left the office earlier than 8PM since Thursday night, and we close at 7. Thursday we had to set up for the launch and I was there until 8:30 or so. Friday I arrived at 7:15AM and didn't leave til 8PM, sprinting around like a crazy person and selling my heart out...it was actually invigorating.

Though try telling a normal looking woman with an iPhone-crazed look in her eye that, "Yes I know you've been waiting since 5AM, but we didn't get any gold iPhones and they are back ordered through November."

A person with good reflexes and street smarts needs to be prepared to duck in those situations. Never know what they might do.

Luckily the majority of people took the news with aplomb rather than screaming and either went with the "right now" option (Space Grey) or moved on. Only one or two screamed epithets and threatened to go to a different carrier.

I'm really not sure what the deal is with the gold ones. You put a case on the sucker and you can't see it anyways.

Yesterday was more hellish, because all the troubleshoots and bill questions that avoided coming in on Friday came in yesterday. I didn't get lunch until 6PM because the three hour waits that had existed on Friday perpetuated into yesterday and every time I went to the front to ask for a break I was met instead with, "So and so is the next customer, they've been waiting for an hour..." So I would race to the back room and scarf a cheese stick or a handful of goldfish crackers in between bouts of "okay, so which phone..." and "I'll go check on cases for you..."

All you can do with days like these is survive as best you can.

My back is killing me.

BUT I sold more phones than anyone in the store on Friday, with 6 new and 17 renewals. Second in the store for new, beat everyone out on renewals by about 7 devices, and was the only one to end the day with decent pull through, a metric that is calculated by how many new non-phone devices we sell versus new phone devices. I sold a home phone and an iPad of my six new lines, so my mix was right where they wanted it to be around 33%. Needless to say, it was nice to hear a few accolades yesterday before the shit hit the fan.

I promise, my next post will be less about phones and more about my life.

I got married, you know, and am now not technically kc anymore. I'm kb, but in light of the identity crisis of changing the name I've had for oh, almost 27 years, I'm gonna stick with kc. Husband still calls me that, so we'll go with it.

Ciao,
kc

Bring Out Your Crazies

I'm not really sure what it is about cellphones in general, and iPhones in particular that make people especially crazy, hostile, and inane. Not insane, inane.

As many of you may know, Apple announced their new phones on the 10th, and one started preorder on Friday and they both officially launch this coming Friday. And tell you what, if I had a nickel for every crazy who has yelled at me for not having the iPhone 5S on preorder this week and a penny for every idiot who walked through the door demanding the new phone NOW...

Holy moly.

"That greeter girl at the front is LYING to people, you people better get your facts straight! She told me that the new iPhone isn't on preorder!"

"Well, ma'am, which iPhone were you looking for? Because if you were asking after the 5S that is correct, it is not on preorder. However, the 5C which is virtually identical to the 5 except in shiny polyurethane and color, is on preorder..."

Oh.

"Well, can't we just set everything up and pay for everything so all I have to do is walk in on Friday and pick up the phones?"

"Sir, without a phone present I can't ring anything up and that particular model can't be ordered at this time. The 5S will be available on Friday and is a first-come, first-serve situation."

"That doesn't make any sense. I just want to give you money and start the account, why do you need the phones to do that? I don't want to have to get here at the crack of dawn like everyone else."

Hand to face.

iPhone people are their own extra-special breed. Especially as the new iPhone is really just a load of hype and not a lot of change.

Where's the "extended battery"? Oh? It lasts for ten hours you say? Oh wait, so did the 5. And the 4S. And the 4. Weird.

Oooh, they updated the camera and now it's better? So more megapixels? Nope, still 8, but they added an extra piece to the lens to add clarity. Huh. Isn't every other phone on the market at a 10 MP or better these days? It is? That's too bad, because clearly, the iPhone is better.

And why would they want to add NFC (near field communication) like every other phone on the market, which makes transferring of data easy and wireless without any setup? That's for the peasants.

Oh! Oh! But they did add this really cool security feature where you can use your fingerprint as your password! Never mind that it didn't fully make it through beta testing...

So I really want the "new" and "improved" iPhone, don't you?

Ciao,
kc

Dinner

It's been a while since I've gotten a "wow! Best girl ever!" from Tyler in regards to dinner...I've been a bit remiss in my Suzy Homemaker duties as well, I work a lot.

I did get one tonight though for the easiest peasiest meal ever (one of those classic what-do-we-have-in-the-fridge meals)...consisting of a broccoli, summer squash and halibut stir fry (leftovers and slowly wilting in the fridge), a cucumber, carrot and strawberry salad with fresh lettuce that my honey grew.

Delicious and unexpected for dinner! Hope the combo shows up in our fridge again because a little salt, pepper, sesame oil and balsamic vinegar really made the stir fry delicious.

My life in cupcakes

Last month I made a lot of cupcakes...

I made oreo cupcakes...

I made Reese's cupcakes....

I made from-scratch Funfetti (recipe courtesy of Annie's Eats)...

And I made Fourth of July chocolate cupcakes...

Not to mention the chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes I made at the beginning of the month!

For Oreo and Reese's cupcakes, do a 6-minute chocolate cake recipe and break up Oreos and Reese's into each cupcake well. I used the whipped vanilla buttercream frosting found on Annie's Eats (www.annies-eats.com) for the Oreo, with Oreo crumbs broken in. And then I made a chocolate/peanut butter frosting...mostly by winging it but with help from Google :)

Thankfully July had proven less butter-laden...

Ciao,

kc