Snarkygurl’s blog

All four of us attended the big exhibition game with the Texas Stars playing their NHL affiliate team, the Dallas Stars, last Wednesday.  I forgot to post the photos the other day, but since I'm sitting in a bar with a great wifi connection (watching they Flyers stomp the Canes), I thought I'd get them up.

Stars vs Stars 07

Stars vs Stars 06

Stars vs Stars 05

Stars vs Stars 04

Stars vs Stars 03

Stars vs Stars 02

Stars vs Stars 01

Stars vs Stars Final Score

My husband and a friend are proud Season Ticket Holders for the Texas Stars games in central Texas (AHL).  They alternate each home game so that they can take a guest, or they go together while the wives have a girls' night out.

We went to a pre-season game tonight (Doce and his wife are going to the pre-season game with the Houston Aeros tomorrow night), but the season starts this next weekend.  There's going to be an exhibition game Wednesday where the Texas Stars play the Dallas Stars, and all four of us are going to that one.

First Game of the Season

Stars vs. Rampage

Star vs. Rampage

Fight

Pinned

Squirrel!

Great Catch

Game Over

I took over 280 photos at the game just to get a few decent ones.  I hope that this improves over the season.

The Daytona Beach airport only has 6 gates, but it's a nice little place.  There are free charging and internet stations, they have free wi-fi (kinda weak), and they have friendly people working here - including the TSA agents who were screening the bags.  Even the little Caution signs for wet floors have smiley faces painted on them.  The plane looks like it's small one and it's raining out here, so there's no telling if the flight itself will suck or not.  I hope everything goes well after my shitty flight out to Florida.

I'll be in Atlanta in a couple of hours, but there won't be wi-fi or even an outlet to connect to based on my past experiences.  Gotta set up email blogging soon.

So far, our flight has only been delayed 2 minutes.  I hope that's it for this trip.

Just to clarify, this was my first time flying Delta.

I was assured my connecting flight was also delayed; but just in case, I made sure I was on standby for the 9:33 pm flight to Daytona, and there was also a flight scheduled after 10 pm.

My connection was only delayed for 18 minutes, as opposed to the three hour delay for my first flight, so by the time I got to Atlanta, that flight had already been gone for 30 minutes. After finding out I had missed my connection and located the gate for the 9:33 pm standby, I found that the last flight had been canceled and my standby flight was delayed until 11:30 pm. 

There were two other flights going through my gate while I was waiting.  The one going to Nashville ended up canceled, and the one to Tulsa was delayed several hours for maintenance. When I first got to the gate, I was told that they wouldn't even talk to me until after 9:30, so when I made it back through the line at 10 pm (I probably spent several hours in line at different airports yesterday) they told me that I was 16th on the list for standby and probably wouldn't make the flight.  I grabbed the last flight to Orlando and made arrangements for my sister to drive from Daytona Beach to Orlando to get me at 12:20 am (there was a rumor that the flight to Daytona was going to be canceled anyway).

My luggage didn't make it, although the lady at the Delta baggage claim office in Orlando kept telling me it did and to check the carousel. A different agent finally told me my bag made it to Daytona and I could pick it up in the morning.

I finally made it to Daytona Beach at 2:28 am Monday morning, as opposed to the originally scheduled 8:00 pm Sunday evening. Because my tickets back to Texas are through Delta, I'll have to use them one more time, but I don't think I'll make that mistake again in the future.  Sorry, but my experience with Delta was a nightmare.

Two friends from work have been the best customer's I could ever have.  They give me a theme or an idea and then let me work.  The most recent case was a perfect example of how much they trust me:  It was a baby shower cake... with a baby chthulu on it, but I'll get to that one eventually.

The first cake that they gave me free reign on was for their friend Isaac.  I blogged about that one after the party, so you can see the cake and story here.

Several months later they announced they were getting married and asked me to make the cakes for their wedding.  The bride really didn't care what the wedding cake looked like, but she did have something special in mind for the groom's cake.  In the episode "Dog with Two Bones" from season 3 of Farscape, she had seen a wedding cake in the shape of the leviathan Moya, and she wanted something similar.

This was going to be my second wedding cake.  The first one, a week earlier, had collapsed less than a mile away from the wedding after driving over half an hour through the tiny back roads of Texas's hill country, and these new cakes needed to be stable enough to make it through a long car ride and then a trip on a small boat to get to the larger boat where the wedding was going to be hosted.  After the first disaster, I was panicking.

Frosted Moya

This is the chocolate stout cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting.  It doesn't look very Moyaish yet, but it will get there soon.

Fondant-covered Moya

Shaped Fondant-covered Moya

This was the first time I made my own fondant. Marshmallow fondant sounds kinda cheap-ass and tacky, but it tastes much better than the generic pre-made stuff.

Painted Moya

I purchased an airbrush and compressor set specifically for this cake.  It made decorating this cake so much easier than it would have been, and I've used it quite a bit since.

Moya Groom's Cake

Moya Groom's Cake 2

Moya made it to the wedding safely and was a hit.  The wedding cake was fine too, but while it tasted great, it was a fairly forgettable design. 

The next cake would be an homage to one of the great movies of the 80's.

I'll be spending most of my day in airports and on planes, so now I have a chance to update a few things that have been sitting in my queue for over a year now.  And as long as I can locate a wi-fi hotspot - I'll be able to post them as well. 

Note to Austin flyers: There's a decent location near gate 6 called Boingo Hotspot.  Hopefully there's something in Atlanta near an outlet.  If not, I can work on clearing out some of my photo library.

While we celebrated my husband's birthday last month, he didn't receive his birthday gift until today.  Or rather, he'll get to wear them for the first time this weekend at our weekly get-together at Einstein's Bagels.

Steve's Birthday Cake

Yo Gabba Gabba Shoes

Temperatures set to soar in one-day heatwave... to a sizzling 86F.

This says it best.