Holy Birthday Recap, Batman!

I turned 20 last weekend. I’m no longer a teenager. Not much has changed – my reasonable side is just like ‘oh well, nothing new here, back to paying rent and taxes’ whereas my more irrational side is like ‘AAAAHHH I’M GETTING OLD NEED TO DO LOTS OF THINGS RIGHT NOW TIME IS RUNNING OUT.’ (I should mention that my irrational side has been saying that since I was about 14.)

During early hours of the morning on day before my birthday, things were a bit of a mess. I’m heavily arachnophobic and after escaping a spider in the living room and spending most of the night looking up spider-proofing methods, I turned around and there was a spider between my desk and the study door. After some stealthy sneaking around the beast, I escaped to the bedroom and dissolved into a panic attack.

So that was fun, and when Dave returned from working night shift only to disappear to Cawdor all day with Josh to help clear up Dave’s mum’s garden–leaving me in a house with at least two large arachnids wandering–I was not best pleased. Caught another one in the sink, trapped it under a pint glass, and busied myself with the Internet and a gammon roast to avoid the fact that everything was terrifying.

Then Dave and Josh made a triumphant return, with this:

This is a cake based on the Companion Cube from the video game “Portal”. In Portal, the cake is a lie. This cake wasn’t.

It took three attempts to get it right, and lots of hard work to get the sugar heart perfect. All in all, it’s made up of: red sugar heart, mini marshmallows, chocolate piped icing, a thick layer of fondant, pink sponge, a buttercream layer, a mini marshmallow layer, peach sponge, jam, and regular sponge. It was HUGE and amazing in the most sugar-rush-inducing way.

I am so in love with this cake, especially considering it was done was almost no time and no materials by the guys. Best birthday cake ever. <3 Josh over at SuitChef has a bit more on the cake-making adventures, and I stole his pictures because his phone camera is better than mine.

I should also mention that they got me this:

My frugal senses twitch at the very sight of this thing, because as much as I love Nintendo products and oh my god 3D Zelda 3D Pokemon NINTENDO 64 ports I’ve done the sums and decided I cannot afford to own this.

Josh and Dave decided otherwise, put their funds together and got me one along with “StarFox 64”. I was addicted to it in a matter of hours, and bought “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” to complement it shortly afterwards.

This console makes the future feel wonderful. I can fly spaceships in 3D. I can play a classic Zelda game, in 3D, or in non-3D if it’s late at night and I’m too busy puzzling out the dungeon to stop wiggling the console about. Not to mention there will eventually be a 3D Professor Layton and Ace Attorney game.

All this, and it wasn’t even my birthday until the next day, when five of us went to ‘Kool Runnings’ in Inverness to try some Jamaican cuisine.

SuitChef has more astute observations about the meal, so I’ll keep this short: jerk pork cheek is salty but awesome,the pork was cooked to perfection and the sweet potatoes were delicious; curried goat lived up to its name with tender goat and a very spicy curry – unfortunately it was a bit too spicy for me, and some bland rice let it down; coconut creme brulee with tropical sorbet was great, the creme brulee was nice but the brilliant sorbet was what really made the dessert.

Also, a drinks menu on the table seemed to advertise only things that weren’t there. The Sunday buffet on the back page didn’t exist. The Bob Marley citrus juice wasn’t in, but they’ve got some berry juice in the back–oh wait, no they don’t. The Jamaican sky juice didn’t exist either. The only thing that seemed to exist was coconut water (very sweet, but very nice), coke and Irn Bru. By the end of the night it was more entertaining than anything else, but it was a bit strange.

Now, I’m off to battle through more dungeons in Zelda…