So, I’ve been wanting (badly) a cast iron bundt pan. You see, my Granny’s pound cakes were just about famous. Everyone from Hugh Morton (who owns Grandfather Mountain to Dean Smith (former coach of the UNC Basketball team) got one every Christmas. I have the recipe, and I’m not a half-bad baker, but the cakes have never turned out like Granny’s. The crust, which is supposed to be light brown and crumbly, was instead always dark brown & shiny. The curse of a thin, non-stick pan.

So I looked on eBay (they’re few and far between and very expensive) and looked at the Lodge website (where they had some, but I wanted to see if I could find an older, pre-seasoned one), but I’d not gotten around to doing anything about it.

Imagine my surprise last night when Jeff presented me with a beautiful cast iron bundt pan! More impressive yet is the fact that in between when I looked (3-4 mos. ago) and now, Lodge stopped making the pans! So now they’re quite sought-after and difficult to find. In discussion groups where bundt pans are a topic, there are, according to Jeff, lots of comments from folks along the lines of “this pan’s ok, and that’s one’s pretty good, but you’ll have to pry my cast iron bundt pan from my cold, dead fingers.” Jeff was dilligent, though, calling lodge and just about every antiques vendor with a website on the planet it seems. He finally found an antique dealer in VA who had one (and apparently didn’t know what she had), and spent the entire weekend while I was in Charlotte with my Grumps cleaning it up and re-seasoning it.

Awwwwwwwwwwww!

Further prolonging the birthday ecstasy were flowers from Dad that arrived this morning — they’re truly beautiful (pics to come).

I do declare that this is my bestest birthday ever!

Backstory:
I have a yard guy because I’m violently allergic to the outdoors. And I don’t like it much either, it turrns out. And my house has a front yard that’s extremely …
vegetatively able:

My current yard guy (having been through a couple not-so-good ones) is James Lewis, for anyone who’s in the RTP area and who wants a good one — email me for a phone number).

Frontstory:
I called James’ house today to schedule my next yard service and spoke with someone who I think was his mom. She was just about the sweetest person I’ve had a random conversation with in a great long while. I think she must’ve called me “honey,” “sweetie,” and “angel” all during this one little 3 minute conversation. And she said “Bless you and you have a great afternoon.” And she meant it.

This has thoroughly cheered my afternoon!

:)

Spent all day yesterday at a Useability Engineering conference here in the park. Mixed bag, as always, but some good bits I can use in work, I think. This tired me more than it should’ve and I’ve been a little cranky. It doesn’t help that my Grumps (my Mom’s father) is in the hospital and things aren’t looking great. I think I’m going to Charlotte this weekend to see him (although Mom isn’t even sure if he’ll *want* me to see him like this. Sigh. Also, I had a major foot-in-mouth moment at the conference, which I imagine I’ll post about later (just to get it off my chest, even though I’d really just rather forget it happened at all. Double sigh.

But the day wasn’t all sighs, as last night I had dinner with Jacintha. We went to CPK (which I always enjoy) and spent a good (great, really) two hours catching up. She’s one of those folks who listens so well, and asks such insightful questions that I usually end up walking away feeling like all I’ve done is talk about what’s been going on and how I feel about all of it. I *try* to find out what’s going on with her, but she often ends up deftly turning it around, which amazes me. (This is not to say that she doesn’t share, she does; it’s just that she’s so caring that she manages to get me talking about all those things that normally I don’t talk about. This is a skill I’d like to develop.)

I love my friends — they are one of the biggest blessings in my life.

But he does love to tease me. I’d showed him the livejournal thing and next thing you know he was IM’ing me, asking “Are you trying to make Jeff jealous?”

To which my (always literate) reponse was “huh”? Then he started teasing me about the UPS driver story and the fact that I’d called the driver sweet.

Now nothing against UPS drivers, but my idea of cute is more Alton Brown or Kevin Spacey. mmmmmmm…. geekylicous.

(whoops. Maybe that was a jealousy-provoking statement? Of course, Jeff really doesn’t seem to be the jealous type at all…)

Rambling.