What's that? A cake recipe? Why, yes, I happen to have one right here.

Dana asked me the other day to re-give her my Mom's recipe for Texas sheet cake. I had determined to post it as a note on Facebook when I got -- The Upgrade (and well after others did. I think this means FB likes me better than you). The tabs don't work from my Mac, and the Note option is gone from the other little row of iconny bits. So, to satisfy the part of me that was already reveling in accolades over the most wonderful cake of all time, here's the recipe.

It's a super moist, really wonderful cake that always wins over a crowd or makes someone happy on their birthday. Here you can see it in its "love cake" form; in the wild, it's a big rectangle. I've started making it with white whole wheat flour to make it a wee bit healthier, and I know there are lighter versions out there. But this came to me from my Mom and her family, and I've been having it since I was wee, so I stick to the original pretty closely, because That's My Cake. I feel like it's my Mom doing the cooking when I make her recipes.

TEXAS SHEET CAKE
Why Texas sheet cake? I think it killed a man once just for snoring.

The recipe calls for a 9x15 jelly roll pan. I have found that a dark colored one works better than a lighter one. Weird. But true. While the cake is baking, make the frosting.

CAKE
DRY:
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
½ cup sour cream (or ½ cup milk with enough vinegar to sour, maybe a teaspoon)
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda

WET:
2 sticks margarine/butter
4 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 cup water

1. preheat oven to 350.
2. combine dry ingredients in large mixing bowl.
3. combine wet in saucepan on stove. Bring to boil.
4. add wet ingredients to dry, mixing thoroughly. Pour into greased jelly roll pan.
5. bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until knife slipped into center comes out clean. Set on cooling racks.


FROSTING
Pour one 1-lb box of powdered sugar into mixing bowl.

Heat over low:
1 stick margarine/butter
4 tablespoons milk
4 tablespoons cocoa powder

Heat till butter melts; mix.

Add to powdered sugar.
Mix well.

Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Mix well.
Frosting should drop slowly from spoon -- plop, even: not a river, but not sludge either.

Frost the cake while still warm. You’ll want it cool enough that it doesn’t come apart when you spread the frosting. Doing it while still warm lets the frosting sink into the cake and makes it that much more moist.

I should probably get the potato chips out of my hair now.

"Put the mask over your own face before your child's," I kept hearing as I fed the cats first while my own blood sugar tanked, my breathing shallow. If I pass out from the lack of oxygen, can they reach the masks? They are (a) jumpers and (2) entranced by dangly things. So really, wouldn't they have a better chance than some wobbly headed hominid who's crying because his mommy went all floppy?

If I pass out on the floor, I guarantee that will be the straw that finally makes them sprout thumbs.

It won't be like that X-Files. They don't know how to bite like that. You should see them trying to eat turkey.

This is not them trying to eat turkey

Tiny little post about Tiny little Lost quasi-spoiler

Would someone please spare me Kate from here on? When was the last time she actually meant anything to the plot, for real, for true? And this ridiculous love triangle. If I were a spitter I’d spit on it and sock it in the groin. If Sawyer even WANTS to leave Juliet for her now, I am so done with him. That'll learn him.

The only thing I like about it anymore is the term “S/Kater,” which maybe I also hate at the same time; who can tell anymore.

In other news, the cats would LOVE a pendulum. Maybe not one so hitty, though.

Having found petroleum near the Hydra,

the gentlemen of the island begin a new plastics industry.

There was very little worth reading here. Some might say nothing. Now I have to go buy cat food.

P.S. Don't get me started on the "word" app. I growl every time I hear it.

PBS'd

Entered in this contest.
Tough decision, they take so many good shots. Really the contest should just be among them and their many beautiful ways.

Is it any wonder I'm not in jail?

The more I think about it, the more relieved I am that I survived 8th grade with my eternal soul still intact and on the right side of the line, considering all the bands that we knew for certain to be devil worshippers, with hardcore evidence against them. For instance!

1. AC/DC. Name = Anti-Christ, Devil's Child. Duh.
2. Led Zeppelin. CODA meant something. I'll tell you if I remember what.
3. The Eagles. "There have been no spirits here since 1969," where "spirits" = Jesus, said Dawn Uglik. She gave us the lowdown on ALL this stuff. She had a sister.
4. Styx. Der.
5. Supertramp. I ... ask Dawn.

At some point I think my BF's sister tried to tell me that ELO were devil worshippers too. This I refused to believe because I already liked them so much, and really, followers of the horned one are not so much for singing about holding on tight to one's dreams (and especially! not in French). Time was the first concept album I'd ever heard. And come on. The guys from the soundtrack to Xanadu? Like Olivia Newton-John would've stood for that.

Lucky for us all we found holy respite and distraction instead in the tight pants of Loverboy, Billy Squire, Foreigner, and Journey.

Lucky for us all.

Dawn loved Mike Reno.

None of *this* has happened before, I'm pretty sure.

Last night at about 11:07 p.m. I did a search for "Daniel Dreilide" and got zero results. Today, 5:24 p.m., 174.

This is about Battlestar Galactica

I did wonder at one point if Starbuck was Chipping the piano player, but then thought surely she would remember what her father looked like and dismissed it. I forever get this show wrong. (Or does it get me wrong? Discuss.)

IMO Someone to Watch Over Me was one of the best episodes they've ever done, and makes me wonder why more can't be like it, why so much of this final season has been wasted on other crap, and why they are gypping us out of the fantastic talent of Katee and Tricia and the others by taking it away from us too soon.

Some questions that either last night's show aroused or I just happened to wonder about since then. You probably have too.

• How did Boomer find the fleet?
• Why would the centurions want skin jobs anyway? Unless they could become them, why would they care? Cavil talks with rancor about how humans enslaved cylons, but then the skin jobs just went and enslaved the centurions themselves. How completely genuous and unhypocritical of them. Really, John, you have a skill.
• When SB says the mutiny thinned their ranks: What happened to everyone who turned against Adama, anyway? They didn't all die. Racetrack, how could ye, and where have ye gone?
  

According to Battlestar Wiki:

• The name 'Dreilide' is German for 'third eyelid' and refers to the inner eyelid, regarded as the gateway to the soul and realms of higher consciousness. The third eye is often associated with visions, clairvoyance, precognition, and out-of-body experiences, and people who have allegedly developed the capacity to use their third eyes are sometimes known as seers.^[2]

• The analog for Dreilide Thrace in the Original Series is Chameleon. Chameleons have a third eye called a parietal eye.

And of course, back to the '70s: A charming and aging con man, Chameleon just happens to be Starbuck's father.

I wonder if there's any chance I beat Jenny to this.

Hey, lookee here!

And look where they are. Aw.

P.S. Under "Sponsored links from Yahoo!" on the TWoP recaplet page for this episode, in which Jacob says the word "Watchtower," the first link is this:

High quality leather binding for Jehovah's Witnesses. Bible and reason book. Gold edging. Rush orders and credit cards. Other ministry items available.

This one's for you, Kurt

She was singing your name over and over again