Life of a Single Married Lady

Happy summer solstice!  Today I want to acknowledge a few birthdays and brag a bit about a cake I made for one of those birthdays.  There will be pictures. June 19: Happy birthday to my favorite mother-in-law, Lynn! June 20: Happy birthday to the best mom I could ever hope for, Liz! I am so lucky to have you both in my life.  I hope you both had wonderful birthdays :) Tomorrow marks the birthday of one of our bunkhouse-mates, Kayla (happy birthday Kayla!).  To celebrate, I decided to make a flourless chocolate torte.  I've had these before, they're dense and chocolatey and absolutely melt in your mouth, and I really wanted to try it out.   First step after preheating the oven: build yourself a double boiler and melt ALL the things! It. Was. Amazing.  Make it.  Right now.  Go, do it.  A nice, crisp crust forms on top as it cools, and the inside is moist and dense and soft.  I prefer to eat a small slice just because of the richness of the cake; I also advise pairi

Last week Wil and I flew to Seattle so Wil could take the GRE, a grueling 4+ hour test required by most schools during graduate application.  In the meantime, we visited with Jess and Martin (and their puppy Scout), lovely friends of ours from Iowa.  We had a ton of fun at the Washington Brewer's Festival and also saw How To Train Your Dragon 2! The movie was incredible, and I highly recommend either the first or second movie.  They are family friendly, witty, fast-paced, and filled with adventure and dragon fights.  What's not to love? This post, as you might have gleaned from the title, is about How To Train Your Dragon (I'll use HTTYD from now on). Pardon the eye color difference, it's a lighting thing (Toothless's eyes are green) Right now I'm writing up what is effectively my Master's thesis for publication.  It's a long and difficult process--there's a lot of reading and fact-checking involved.  I'm getting through it with my Pando

I hope you are all having a great Friday and that your weekend is a time of relaxation!  In Cordova, we're gearing up for Copper River Nouveau, which (I'm gathering) is a large auction and dinner event that raises money for the Prince William Sound Science Center.  I'll be helping with setup and teardown.  For a small town, there are a lot of fun community activities here! Over the last week or so I've gone out on some fun hikes and other outside activities, and I have lots of pictures! I hope you like them! We hiked out on the Alaganik Slough, which is a large area of soft, muddy, swampy ground on the Copper River Delta.  The Slough is full of wildflowers, birds, fish, bears, and moose.  There's a beautiful boardwalk and a little trail directly through the Slough, which was a lot of fun to walk through! That dark blob in the middle, below the dark green trees, is my first moose sighting! Here's a nice panoramic view of the slough. I went hiking wi