What-What?! Week of May 10th

Happy Mother's Day to all the mommies out there.  Have a great day! :)

This past week was mostly spent just running the house and keeping things going.  Our bathtub faucet has developed an intermittent leak, which is extremely aggravating -- it'd be nice if things could wait to break until we've fixed all the things that are already broken. :P

Osric's Birthday Celebration

Yesterday, we celebrated Ozzy's third birthday.  I made him a chocolate cake with buttercream frosting, themed after the TV show The Octonauts.  The cake is the character Kwazii, who is a pirate cat:

This cake was actually a bit problematic to make, mostly because we moved.  I couldn't find my frosting dyes, so I had to run out and buy more.  I have also lost my offset spatula, so the frosting isn't as smooth as it would otherwise be.

After blowing out the candles, he tried to eat it all himself, with no utensils.

Briefly, he shared his toys with his siblings.

Oz got a lot of toys; a Little People boat, a biting shark toy, Transformers, Legos, and Octonauts toys.  Everything but the Transformers and the Legos can go in the bath, and you better believe they've been there once already!  That little boy loves baths now.  While unwrapping presents, he was squealing with excitement.


I feel like this photo is pretty representative of my husband as a person: Doing manly-man things, but always with a novel in his pocket.

The husband barbequed hamburgers and hotdogs.  This doesn't seem particularly special, but it is quite an occasion for us; since moving into apartments, we've barbequed only once.  Barbequing was something that we did at our parent's houses, never at our place in California, since it was forbidden in the lease.  We did barbeque once last year at the Washington apartment, but that was pretty unpleasant.  Barbequing yesterday tasted like delicious victory; the freedom and privacy to do whatever we desire is exactly why we bought a house.

In other news, I received another royalties check from Amazon for my ebooks!  It's just $100, but it's still pretty gratifying to actually be paid for writing.  Between this and a check I got in October, I've made half again as much as I did the prior year.  I've also just had a boom of sales in the past month that's not reflected in this payment; because the info in my papers is pretty academic, I find that sales coincides with college finals and midterms.  After mid-June, I'll have a big drop in sales, then they'll pick up again in the fall.  I should get back to serious writing again.

What-What?! Week of April 27th

Yesterday was my first day working the Kidzone area for the YMCA.  The Kidzone is a childcare area that parents can use while they work out or take a class at the YMCA office.  It was pretty low key, and I spent most of the time working on things for a special event the office was having that day.  To be honest, getting paid to paint banners is pretty fun, and I also spent some time looking through books, so now I have some great ideas for upcoming curriculum.

Earlier this week, I did a post about concept artwork from Disney's Frozen, and how it looks similar to a lot of other Disney films.  If you missed it, check it out: Disney's Frozen Concept Art versus Other Disney Films.

News:  Amazon, in Threat to UPS, Tries Its Own Deliveries via WSJ.com

Amazon is now testing a plan to take over delivery services of goods in the "last mile"; that is, the final part of the journey from warehouse to consumers' homes.  This bid to forward integrate has advantages and disadvantages to it; on the one hand, it can help facilitate the goal of more efficient 1-day shipping, and helps Amazon control shipping delays, preventing some of the customer service pain that happened this past Christmas.  The biggest advantage is cost; with the United States Postal Service and UPS increasing prices by 3-5 percent a year, it gives Amazon an incentive to invent cheaper modes of delivery.

The disadvantage is the risk itself.  Amazon is just not very good at making profits.  If this doesn't work out for Amazon, and that is a big if, the company stands to lose a significant amount of investments that it doesn't have the ability to absorb.

It'll be interesting to see how it works out for Amazon.  I don't expect it to become a widespread service for at least a few more years, even with the company already in the testing phase.

(img via aim.org)