Some Boise Pictures

I took some quintessentially Boise pictures while I was in town.

2C and tumbleweeds? Yep.

Do we have any trucks in Idaho?

Yes!

But they only come in white?

This was the parking lot of a high school in Nampa.

Whose rules? (This one got the most quizzical face from me. I’m not quite getting where the owner of this item falls on the irony scale.)

Oh wait, we do have some black trucks in Idaho. They are compact trucks, as you can see.

(This was in a parking lot with many other spaces available.)

I had very good thrifting, including finding some material for my mouse costume for $2.99!

Dear Evan Hansen at Broadway Rose

I’d not seen Dear Evan Hansen, so I was glad that the Broadway Rose was staging a production.

Ryan Burton did a great job as Evan Hansen, I felt for him and also understood why he had trouble connecting. Cuin Moore was a Connor Murphy that really drew the eye, and my favorite performer was Azhia Ellis as Alana Beck. She has recently moved to Portland from Florida, and I’m hoping to see more of her.

New Bag from Maruca. And, what’s this?

I wanted a somewhat lighter bag for summer. The orange leather one has been a great fall/winter bag, but it was time to lighten up. Enter, this new Maruca bag. It arrived today.

As I was going through the pockets, I found Maruca’s calling card.

And in the back zipper pocket, I also found Emma’s Algebra quiz on factoring???

It amused me, and had me running scenarios as to how Emma’s quiz made it into the bag. I sent the quiz back with a note saying how much I liked the bag and congratulations to Emma, factoring whiz. I heard back from the owner via email more or less immediately after she received the mail. She said:

I wanted to reach out and thank you for the lovely note you sent us. I laughed so hard! Recently I was walking through the warehouse looking at some of my favorite patterns when my daughter came running in to show me her most recent math score. It was a herculean effort on her part and we were so excited! Hugging with such excitement that I totally forgot what I was doing. Emma and I walked back to my office and in all the excitement and silliness I put the test in the bag. Yes, I was wearing it. I randomly test our bags to make sure QC is catching everything. I put the bag on to test fit, zippers and strap and I look for any imperfections.

I also laughed. What a fun random happenstance.

Something Fun from the Hollywood Theatre

The Hollywood Theatre is turning 100 this year. As a nonprofit, they have a fun new way to support them. My reward arrived today in the mail, with two cute stamps.

By donating at least $19.26 (get it? 1926, the year the Hollywood opened) I was told I would get a golden ticket. Being a low-cost sounds-fun reward situation, I donated. I figured I would get the ticket emailed to me. But no!

Not only did I get a big envelope with two cute stamps, I also got this very nice certificate printed on heavy paper. (Which was bent when it was being inserted into our mailbox.)

Also inside the envelope? A pretty golden envelope with the Hollywood’s monogram.

And inside the envelope, an actual Golden Ticket!

It even had my name written on it!

Thanks much to the Hollywood for the fun surprise mail and (I assume) to the passel of volunteers who put this Golden Ticket package together.

Easter Egg Cake

Never again will I make a cake that requires me to crumble cake and mix it with frosting then mold it into a shape. Never. Again.

The Easter Egg Cake from Serious Eats came out much better than mine did. I would have been better off making the cake that site links to, which has better layers.

The problem started when I didn’t cut the layers correctly, leaving a big gap between the back and front halves of the cake. I ended up cutting the circumference of the back half and mushing up that part of the cake to make some cake spackle to bridge the difference between the high and the low.

Here’s the finished product. I ended up running short on frosting (blame the cake/frosting spackle?) and by the time I got all the crumbs moderately covered, I just sprinkled the sanding sugar on top rather than make a pretty design. I was done.

It didn’t cut nicely in layers, which makes sense as much of it wasn’t a layer but was cake spackle, but it did taste good. Especially with Rick’s homemade ice cream.

Type 1, Gone Forever

Type 1s were one of two of the the Max train cars in use when I moved to Portland. They weren’t very ADA friendly; there were steps to climb up. The Type 2s with their flat entry were the other type.

Reading the TriMet newsletter, I sadly realized that I would not be in Portland for the Type 1 sendoff.

I ordered a Type 1 pin in lieu of going to the sendoff and signing my name on the exterior.