You'll be sweet til you get to your car

Today I stopped by the Lollipop Tree and picked up my tips, my Cokes, and my CD's. I'm officially done. I'll get my last check next week, but that will be terribly, terribly small as it will only have a relatively small amount of hours on there. Major bummerz, ya'll! No more cakin' for me! Boo hiss hiss

Remember the 5th of November

Another day in paradise. Midterms done. Six weeks in this quarter to go! By the time it's over, it'll be Christmas already. That's really not good considering the news I received when I got home. Due to some changes and financial difficulties, I've been let go from my job at the Lollipop Tree (or the Lollipop Forest, if you will). It sucks to be perfectly honest. But I understand that tough situation my boss was in and I don't hold it against her in anyway. I just have no idea what I'm going to do for money now. It's pretty hard for me to find a place that would give me one day a week with such a potential for hours. Especially a job that I enjoyed as much as I enjoyed that one. Sometimes it wasn't easy, but I did really enjoy it. I learned a lot of techniques that I'll definitely continue to use when I bake on my own from now on. I'm a little bummed. Really the perfect end to a perfect week. LE sigh.

Pride's not power

I had a short day at work, just 10 to 4. I didn't take a break because of my short day and just tried to get done as much as I could. I would have gotten more done if I hadn't put the wrong name on the above Snow White cake. If you look at these cakes closely, you'll see that the same thing is written on both. I did the Snow White cake first and when it got to the point of writing, I some how mixed up the cake tickets. Luckily, I realized this when I got back to the Dora cake and realized I couldn't find the ticket because I had stuck it on Snow White AND that I had put the complete wrong thing. Four year old Jessica would have been pretty upset. But I easily fixed it and all was right in the world. But I had to get goin quick cause I had a special show to get to...


What show? The Halloween Spooktacular at the Bus Stop Cafe! It wasn't just special because it was a Halloween party, though. It was also the last show that we, J&TY, are going to be playing for a while. Due to my incredibly busy school schedule, I barely have time to do anything. If we didn't take this hiatus, I wouldn't have any time to write NEW music nor could we ever be able to record anything for the next album. So, reluctantly, I made the decision to stop booking shows for a while. It really added to my stress level the days prior. I know this break is a good thing, but it's still hard on me. As stressful as planning and playing shows can be, I still love it. I love the performing parts. Be that as it may, it was a really good show. Good friends came out to support and the audience was actually pretty full. Stupidly, I forgot the CD's. Pretty stupid thing to do at a last show.

But I digress, it was a really fun show. I wish they were all Halloween shows. I love dressing up crazy like. Lady Gaga has the right idea!

Men do cry, sir

Worked from 10am to 1:30am and then I took my mother to the airport at 5am.
I think that about says it all.


Surprisingly I'm still here to tell the tale!








ps. if I didn't hate the Louis Vitton pattern before, I really hate it now!

We need more blankets

Due to my lingering vertigo, I was 25 minutes late for work. Because of this I was given the annoying task of making this Transformers cake. Surprisingly, the hardest part about it was transforming the car into the robot. I couldn't believe that I couldn't do it until I looked at the box and it said it was the most difficult level of transformation. I messed with that thing for SO long. It was such a triumph when I finally got it to work! I don't know how I did it, but I didn't not transform it back into a car just in case I couldn't figure it out again! I think the little cake dude came out alright. It wasn't easy. Hopefully that kid liked it. I wasn't too pleased with the final product. OH WELL.


After the show, I rushed home and got changed and set out to Philly to catch Dead Men's Bones. We thought we were late, but apparently the band was four hours late and they hadn't even let anyone inside by the time we got there. It was packed and we stood leaning against the wall through most of the talent show acts before DMB came out. I couldn't stand anymore and I went and sat down near the front. Couldn't see the whole stage, but I could see enough that I was happy. It was a sweet show. A theme show for sure. I wasn't going to take many pictures, and I really didn't, but I was trying to get some decent shots of that Ryan Gosling dude. Such a stand out act from the Mickey Mouse Club. Sings JUST like he did back then. Crazy. Hardly any difference at all. You wouldn't believe it if you saw it.

Everybody love everybody

My cake making schedule has been severely diminished due to my new school schedule, but since I don't have classes on Fridays I'm free to work from 10 til we're done. I personally did five myself. And as I sit here typing this I realize that we never did any confetti cakes. Whoooops..... Oh well.

I woke up this morning with a killer headache. That's just not right. That's a crime against nature. You go to sleep to get rid of a headache. You should not be able to wake up WITH a headache. It's not like I was out drinking last night. So lame. I proceeded to have that headache all stupid day long and still have it now. That brings my tally of headaches per day this week to four days. I've had a headache everyday since Tuesday. So lame. I think my brain is broken.

In other news, today would have been John Lennon's 69th Birthday. I don't normally word it that way. Normally I just say, "It's John Lennon's birthday today!" but on the radio the DJ worded it that way and it made me really sad. My wording leaves room for denial! Clearly I'm not in denial about the fact that he's not with us, but it's not really something I enjoy thinking about nonetheless! No matter if I was alive when he was alive or not, it still bums me out. Nobody knows what he'd be going if he were alive. Maybe he'd done more music, maybe he'd just be a hermit, the world will never know and that's probably what's the saddest thing about it. He's undoubtedly one of the most influential artists in the English speaking world and it's so lame that he's dead and Yoko is alive. Sorry Yoko, but I think people would trade you in for a few more years with John! Sucks to be her! haha But I digress, perhaps I've said too much...

Point is...

Happy Birthday, John! <3

Happy, happy cake, cake!

A few highlights from my day. Laura deemed the smiley cake her favorite of the week! Yay! It's a pretty cheerful cake. I was all about doing it. But I'd be all about eating that chocolate bar cake! YUM!!

Chump day

Some days are annoying; today was one of those. Despite that, Kristin and I were kicking ass and getting a lot done. With another huge stack of cakes for the week, we managed to get a good head start by pulling and icing as many cakes as possible.

The top one I did was actually ordered and requested for 3:00, but the customer arrived to pick it up at 2:20. That annoyed me. People must think that we have nothing else to do. She probably didn't tip me either. Lame.

Either my work sucks or I happen to do the cakes of cheap bastards. I get shitty tips. I'm in college people! I need some money!

Friday night lights

Worked a half a day on Friday; went in at 5pm. Wasn't quite a half day in reality since I wound up working til 12:30am anyway, but it was definitely better than coming in at 10 in the morning and doing cakes all day!

Despite my half day status, as you can see, a lot of cakes were done. And not just any cakes, these kind of cakes are the kind we call "projects". These were the cakes that Cathy was going to work on, but was unable to due to personal tragedy. So, they would have been even better had she done them, but I tried my best.

Kristin fell in love with my fish. It came out a lot cuter than the picture. The picture I was working from was of a fish that looked a lot more realistic (probably because it was one Cathy had done!) and mine is adorable. Oh well!

And you're making that face that I like

Another day, another cake. Today was frustrating. I was having so much trouble with the frosting scan paper. Scan cakes should be the quickest, easiest cakes to make, but I have bad luck. Something always goes wrong for me. It's frustrating. Be that as it may, Laura and I made a pretty nice dent on the cake situation, but there was still tons left for Friday. It's weird that we have so many this week. Kathy said that after labor day, they drop off and they did, but then this week it was just insanely busy; probably the highest volume we've had this entire summer, I think.

After work, I hustled home and got a shower and got ready to leave for Philadelphia to see Regina Spektor at the Electric Factory. YAY! Despite my hustle, we didn't arrive as early as I would have liked and thus were unable to get anything close to a decent spot. We made the rounds, but wound up just hanging in the back for the majority of the show. Maybe I'm just old and bitter, but it irritates me when everyone in the audience sings along and it's so loud that the actual singer isn't almost hard to hear. It just shouldn't be that way. I don't pay good money to hear a bunch of Regina fans sing her songs. I pay to hear her sing them. I know I sound like a bitch, but I don't care. I just wish people could lip synch to the songs. That's what I do.

Be that as it may, Regina was brilliant. She flubbed on two songs, which was completely endearing and made me feel like less of a fuck up for forgetting the lyrics to my own songs too. I was disappointed that she didn't do "The Flowers", but I forgive her since she did "Ode to Divorce", which was the first song I ever heard by her. It's the song I fell in love with her to. haha So, to sum up, she was fantastic, the audience was lame, and I hate the Electric Factory.

I fix it, I fix it

Fresh with a case of the Mondays, I came in to find we had a hefty load of cakes for the week. This was especially bad news considering I'm not going to be at work for most of the day on Friday. Ah well. I liked how these cakes came out. I haven't done a little person thing since I did my first Elmo so I was a tad nervous to create little Kai-lan. Not too shabby, I think. Anyway, after work and after family dinner, I went over to see my little nephew, Samuel. I had a little gift for him and I hadn't seen him since his birthday. He has a lot of crazy new moves, but is STILL obsessed with watching Batman. Not the cartoon either. I'm talking The Dark Knight. Yeah, my TWO YEAR OLD nephew is obsessed with that movie. He kept asking to put on Batman all night. It was cute, but Jessie and Andrew are beyond tired of seeing it so they told him the DVD was stuck in the holder and they couldn't get it out! haha I actually got to interact with him directly a bit thanks to my knowledge of comic book character names. Obviously Andrew knew them, but I was offering up the answers to his "who's that?" questions and that started him being a little less shy with me. Which was cool. Unfortunately, I don't see him much so we don't have much of a relationship so it was nice to get him comfortable. I definitely should go over more often.

Apology accepted, Captain Needer

Fridays are always destined to be terrible for me lately. I thought it would be a good day since we had so little work left to do, but somehow work was found! The baby cake I had done the day before was vetoed by Cookie, Head of Quality Assurance. And, fair enough, it didn't match the picture perfectly and I despite being frustrated at having to start from scratch on such a detail oriented cake, I was alright with doing so. I wasn't, on the other hand, okay with being told in such excessive detail all of the reasons why I had to re-do it. If they wonder why Cookie has made employees cry in the past, that would be why. It teetered on just cruelty. Unnecessary cruelty. But, I'm not the crying type. I've got too bad of a temper for that sort of fuckery! When she told me at the end of her schpiel to "not take it personally", I simply said, "I just don't need to have things explained to me in such grand detail." She chuckled and patted my shoulder. I wonder if she felt how tense with anger I had become by that point. Annoyance aside, I re-did it with a lot of helpful points from Cathy and then we cleaned up and were basically done by 3. So, alls well that ends well I suppose!

You have failed me for the last time

This motorcycle cake came out pretty awesome, I think. If I'm still there in April, maybe I'll do this one for my dad. We never really do anything for his birthday, but I don't think he'd mind having a cake. Loves cake. Hates cupcakes. Perfect! This other cake was my first foray into the "baby cake". Of course I've done lots of other cakes for babies or baby showers or whatever, but this was the first one I did with an actual baby on the top. It's a pretty standard thing that I'd seen Kelly do a few times, but it's a lot harder than she made it look. Would I give this cake to my baby? Sure. Would I even give this cake to my family? Yeah, I think I would. I don't think it's that bad. Unfortunately, not everyone agreed....

Life is sweet

Kristin and I whipped through a slew of cakes. We used to get two cakes each done in a day. We definitely out did ourselves.

I think that baby cake is the only baby cake that I finished without much trouble at all. I think it came out pretty cute. And it was essentially completely invented by me.

If those people didn't like it, they're stupid. So there.

The Donald Duck Club

"TGIF" does not apply to my life. It's more like ONIF; Oh No It's Friday. I really hate Fridays. Why? Well, considering I was at work from 10am to 11:30pm, I obviously did a lot more than just this Donald Duck cake. Be that as it may, this is the only cake I took a photo of. I had a really frustrating, long night and I was in no mood to pull out my camera after any of the others. I'd been more likely to throw the cakes against the wall than take a happy picture of them. So, really, by the end of the night my frustration level was a bit like Donald Duck's! Ironic.
And lame.

Alone with my caking

I really enjoyed making this king cake. I would definitely be happy to have received this cake. As far as sports cakes go, I think this Yankees cake I did came out pretty decent. I did a lot of other stuff, but I'm cutting back on my picture taking. I make a lot of standard boring cakes that I don't need to take pictures of so I'm just going to do pictures of the different ones; a highlights reel, in a sense. I'm really growing to hate Thursdays. But not as much as I hate Fridays...


ps. Happy Birthday, Matt!

What an adorable roulette table

The customer that wanted this cake called while I was in the middle of making it and asked Cathy if we were going to make the cake like the picture she sent us or was it going to be cute? I don't know what's stupider; sending us a picture you didn't like to put on a cake or expecting us to make a roulette table cute.

ps. 09.09.09!