Rainbow Cupcakes!!!!

We anxiously await our hour of devouring

My beloved husband's family has had a rough few weeks with his grandpa in the hospital (he is doing much better now!), so I decided to make them some rainbow cupcakes to cheer everybody up a bit.  They're really easy to make, they just require patience.

Prepare white cake mix per the instructions on the box, divide the batter into as many bowls as you want colors, and then use food coloring to dye the batter as you please.

Using spoons, drop the batter into the lined muffin pans, one color after another.  RESIST EVERY TEMPTATION TO MIX AND SWIRL THE COLORS TOGETHER.  Unless, of course, you want brownish colored cupcakes.  But if that's what you really want, you should just make chocolate cupcakes.

I alternated the order of the colors for each row just to add some variety to the color of the cupcakes.  So, half of them were pink on the bottom and yellow on the top, half were vice-versa.

Bake as directed on the box.  As you can see, the end result is, if I do say so myself, quite smashing.

Cats in Strange Places #4

I couldn't find Buttercup the other day, but then I remembered that I had left the closet door open...

Don't worry Buttercup, I'll still love you after you come out of the closet.

"I totally just read that!": Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen

Tiggy's review: "Snoozefest!"

Explanation of Review Criteria


Evaluation by the Numbers:
Pages: 331

Time to completion: About 8 hours

Difficulty: 4/10
Seriously, this is one of those books that you put in front of you and it practically reads itself.  It's almost as easy as watching a movie.

Genre Value: 9/10
Genre being "popular fiction novel."  It is the quintessential book of this kind.

Overall Value: 8/10
It's an enjoyable read and very well researched.  Definitely worth the quick read that it is.

Elysian Value: 8/10
It didn't change my life, but I liked it.

Words I < 3 #2: Brobdingnagian

Scrubs' resident Brobdingnagian:  JD and Turk as The World's Most Giant Doctor

Brobdingnagian (adj/n)*
Pronounced:  brob-ding-nag-ee-uhn/ˌbrɒbdɪŋˈnægiən
-Adjective:
1.  of huge size; gigantic; tremendous
-Noun:
2.  an inhabitant of Brobdingnag^
3.  a being of tremendous size; giant

^Brobdingnag:  From Swift's Gulliver's Travels, the imaginary country of the giants.

In a sentence:
Everyone was surprised when the 4'11" tall Neville started dating Shaniqua, the Brobdingnagian captain of the girls' basketball team.

*Source: Dictionary.com

"I totally just read that!": Emma, by Jane Austen

Better late than never!  Finally took the time to re-write (as best I could) my review of Emma, lost in the Blogger Meltdown of 2011.

Explanation of Review Criteria

Evaluation by the numbers:

Pages: 594 (free e-book from Project Gutenberg)

Time to completion: About 15 hours

Difficulty: 6.5/10

I'd give any of Jane Austen's writing in general a 6, as once you get used to her prim and proper prose it becomes very readable.  However, the extra .5 in this case is entirely due to the character of Mrs. Bates the windbag.  She speaks for paragraphs at a time and rarely says anything of consequence, and for these frequent skim-triggers she earns her own .5 on the scale.

Genre value: 7/10

It's as Jane Austeny as any Jane Austen novel, but it does break the mold a bit by having a heroine who is impossible to sympathize with.

Cats in Strange Places #3

This is definitely one of those adorable cases of "If I can't see you, then I assume you can't see me."

Pay no attention to the Tiggy behind the curtain...

Words I < 3 #1: eschatology

And now, it is time to initiate a new series of dorky posts!

I'm definitely what I'd like to call a "word nerd"--I religiously check my word of the day apps, I have an active account on dictionary.com, I have thousands of vocabulary flashcards (some purchased, some homemade), I often read specialized dictionaries for pleasure, I often read books about etymology, linguistics, or lexicon creation for pleasure, and I can proudly boast that I scored a 730/800 on the verbal portion of the GRE when I took it last year.  This series is called "Words I <3," and I imagine it will be a regularly updated and never-ending etymological extravaganza!

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
by Edward Jakob Von Steinle

Today's word, in honor of this weekend's failed apocalypse, is eschatology.

eschatology (n)*
Pronounced: es-kuh-tol-uh-jee; ɛskəˈtɒlədʒi
1.  any system of doctrines concerning last, or final, matters, as death, the Judgment, the future state, etc.
2.  the branch of theology dealing with such matters


In a sentence:
While I am an incurable atheist and thus care little about matters of eschatology, I did look forward to May 21, 2011, because it is always fun to watch the world not end.


*Source: dictionary.com
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