Well, it is officially my last day in Tacoma until about... May 2010.
I can't even begin to list all of the things I will miss, so I'm not even going to try.
We had a great little goodbye party here last night, all the neighbors came by and a few friends from high school and work. Mom made tons of amazing food, dad grilled some delicious steaks and there were plenty of snacks and sweets to be had. Quite a good night, all told.
Now I just have to pack my carry on bag then it is bye bye Washington. :(
I've been trying to cook/bake more this summer so that I can have a few recipes under my belt for next year and just because it's fun.
So far, baking-wise, I've made some cute cupcakes, a dark chocolate cake with orange & lemon zest icing and chocolate chip cookies. Not anything too exciting, but it's all turned out nicely so far.
For my next trick, I plan on making what I've been calling a "sorting cake." A friend invited me to a Harry Potter themed party and said that if I wanted, I could bring a tasty treat. The plan is to make up a batch of yellow cake batter then separate it into four bowls and dye them red, green, blue and yellow - the colors of the houses in HP. I'll layer the different colors into the pans so that it looks like
this. Once the cake bakes (and has cooled, learned from this mistake last time), I'll frost it a dark purpley with stars and moons and what not so that it looks like the sorting hat from the movies. Ideally, the cake will have baked so that each piece has an obvious main color and that would be your house. Realistically, it'll just be fun to look at because it'll be a crazy colorful mess.
Last night was the Haley House volunteer appreciation shindig and it was a total blast. I was worried that I wouldn't really have fun because I don't really know the other BC volunteers well... but it turned out that I was quite wrong!
While I was walking there, I ran into this group of three kids about my age and they asked me where the Haley House was. They said they met DaHye (the BC senior in charge of all the Haley House volunteers) at a park the day before and she had invited them to come to the dinner. Good thing they didn't turn out to be sketchy. They're doing this year of travel thing before they go to college, going around the country and doing social justice work and what not. They seemed nice enough but left pretty quickly.
I also got to hang out with Axe, my supervisors 2.5 year old, and he kept talking about Bob Marley, John Mayer and the Cookie Monster. I asked him what color the Cookie Monster is and he said "Blue and a half."
We had the dinner on the third level balcony, complete with christmas lights, patio furniture and pasta salad. Delish. I won all three rounds of Egyptian Rat Screw, which we renamed Mongolian Rat Trap. The other pulsers were totally awesome and I'm really disappointed that I didn't get to know them earlier on.
Anyway, a good time was had by all. And I can't wait to go home.
