Nonfiction, Cakes, and Rugs

I said (maybe just to myself) that I really shouldn't sign up for any more challenges. The reason being that I've never finished one and my reading is very eclectic and unplanned. Another reason is, that book I'm reading right now? Annals of the Former World? is HUGE. And dense. And all about geology. It's gonna take awhile. BUT there is a challenge on the horizon. A challenge I'm not sure I can resist. It's a nonfiction challenge and you can find out about it here at Thoughts of Joy. When I first noticed a new challenge in the air, on Cam's blog, and before I knew the details, I thought, No way, baby due first week in March. But then I looked at the source and found out that this challenge doesn't start until May. Well, May is a different story. And I do often read nonfiction. I could count the one I'm reading now (because it'll take me until May to finish it) and there is another nonfiction I'm curious about that I saw on A Garden Carried in the Pocket called Written in Bones: How Human Remains Unlock the Secrets of the Dead edited by Paul Bahn. Jenclair discusses it here. So that's two. And there are other John McPhee's and Stephen Jay Gould's I want to read. But here's what will happen. Say I read the first two books I have planned. Then I'll want to read fiction or something will make me go off on a tangent. I would have until September, but I don't know. Sure is tempting.

In other news, I made French buttercream today for the first time in a long time. It was surprisingly easy and fast. I guess I'm getting the hang of it and feeling comfortable with it now. It pays to do things many times. Hey! Let's call this phenomenon I just discovered, practice! I'm making some kind of Valentine cake tomorrow plus vegan mini-cakes, probably heart-shaped. The main cake will also have something to do with white chocolate ganache. It'll either be filled with it or decorations piped with it.

New rug coming tomorrow. Yay! We have to have wall-to-wall unless we put in our own hardwood because we live in crappy 1980s-built builder-grade crap. It's not all that bad, actually, but it sure looks crappy when you pull up the existing carpet and then have to walk on subflooring with the big ring stains from the builders' 5-gallon buckets of whatever.