Hello Cupcake!

Hello Cupcake opened last week to much fanfare, adding to the small, but growing, selection of cupcakes here in DC. I suppose DC is taking its cue from NYC and LA, where there are full fledged cupcake wars (see, for example, this intriguing article). I finally got to try Hello Cupcake today - a little treat to myself to take my mind off of the pain in the center of my back, the result of a mole removal and four stitches.

Back to the cupcakes - with the hype this was getting around the internet, I was expecting nothing short of a Magnolia cupcake. OK, that's really all I have to compare it to as far as the specialty-cupcake-bakery-universe goes. I'm going to have to give Hello an A-. For a $3 cupcake, it's a bit on the small side - about the size of what you'd make at home. If memory serves, a Magnolia cupcake is closer to $2 (maybe $2.50 - or it could have gone up by now, it's been a few years), and is close to twice the size. Hello wins with its icing though. Whereas Magnolia uses, exclusively I believe, a rich buttercream icing - which is delicious, don't get me wrong - Hello uses a variety of icings. The cupcake I sampled was the You Tart flavor - lemon cake with lemon cream cheese frosting. The cake was nice and moist, with a hint of lemon flavor that seemed to get stronger as you ate it. The icing, while there was a lot of it, was nice and light, and not overly sweet. Some other flavors use a buttercream base, or ganache, or peanut butter.

Final verdict - I will definitely return to sample other flavors. Just as soon as I resume my gym routine and can work these suckers off...

A couple of photos...

just in case those links don't work.

From Roberto:

From Natalie:

We're married!!

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything - that pesky wedding got in the way and took up all of my time.  Plus, I think there are only like 3 people that look at this thing anyway.  

We had a great wedding day.  The weather was perfect, everything turned out really nicely, and everyone had a fantastic time.  We haven't seen any of the professional photos yet, but a couple of friends have posted the photos they took in Picasa albums.  Look for those here and here.  Hope those links work.

Home, Sweet Home

12th Street Brothel Exposed

[That's right, the 12th Street that I LIVE ON! Like, 3 doors down (on the other side of P Street).]

A brothel located in a trendy D.C. neighborhood gets cleared out days before police could move in.

The brothel was believed to be trafficking under age Latino women for more than a year. The apartment building, located near Logan Circle, had lights and activity late Tuesday night according to neighbors, but now it stands vacant.

Neighbors said a steady flow of men went in the front of the home, then out the back, 15 to 30 minutes later.

"They was Latino, I know that much about them. But other than that I don't know," said one resident.

While the man who lived overhead didn't want to talk about the people in the basement, another neighbor was so frightened of retribution from the man who ran the operation, that he didn't want to be identified.

"It's an illegal business. These people are not always nice people. Things happen to your house, to your car, to your person," said a neighbor.

Different young women arrived every few months, the clients mostly showed up during work-day hours.

"There was a prostitution ring in the basement for more than a year."

Undercover investigators described the prostitutes as underage girls. Authorities fear the man who ran the brothel trafficked in women desperate to get to the U.S. from Central America.

"It's very common that they use underage girls, you know, they take them away from their families and they don't have any money," said Michelle Molotsky with Ward 2 Constituent Services.

The apartment appeared to be divided into smaller rooms. Once the property manager learned the tenants had packed up and pulled out, he arrived with a key.

"When did they leave sir?" asked ABC 7's Stephen Tschida, "Sir did you know it was a brothel?"

The property manager seemed surprise about the basement being used for illicit purposes.

"A brothel, what are you talking about," he asked.

Neighbors said in the past few months the prostitution became blatant. Apparently a pimp would bring a prostitute out of the apartment to show a prospective john.

"A vehicle pulled up into the alley a young girl came through the fence got into the vehicle," said one neighbor, "they were probably negotiating a price."

The man who supposedly ran the operation likely moved to another location, and perhaps continue to run his prostitution ring.

[From http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0508/521756.html. Someone should tell that reporter that each new sentence does not need a new paragraph. And no, I had no clue there was a brothel being run in there, although thinking back, I did hear some suspicious things at night every now and then.]

The funniest news lead-in ever!

Sue Simmons (NBC News, New York City) drops the f-bomb when she thinks they've gone to commercial. Hy-ster-i-cal!!!

When Will Clinton Go Away?

From the AP:
"Clinton [] disclosed that she had loaned her campaign an additional $6.4 million in recent weeks, additional evidence that her once front-runner campaign was in deep trouble.

She told reporters the loans were a sign of her commitment to her quest for the White House. She earlier loaned herself $5 million as she struggled to keep up with a better-financed Obama campaign."

And she has the nerve to call Obama "elitist"?

What working-class populist has $11.4 million lying around to "loan" to a campaign? And she's the one who's in touch with the people? Right....that's why no one will donate to her campaign. It's pretty pathetic that she grovels for money at some point during each speech she gives. I've never once heard Obama ask people to go to his website and donate to his campaign. He doesn't need to - enough people believe in him and want him to go all the way. Clinton's lack of financial support should be telling.

So when will she give this up? She has no mathematical chance of winning the nomination, not if everyone follows the rules. But these are the Clintons, and I wouldn't put anything (*cough cough bribe*) past them.

Must be nice to have $11.4 million to blow on something you have no chance of getting.

Discover, you're pissing me off.

Discover Card is quickly losing my business. Since the beginning of the month, I've gotten no less than 26 phone calls from 866-290-6227, trying to sell something - account protection, something about account benefits - beats the hell out of me. All I know is that my phone rings night and day. When I did actually speak to someone, as soon as I began to utter the words, "Take my number off your list," she had hung up on me. That's right, dropped the phone like a hot potato!

I called back and spoke with an account manager, and while trying really really hard to remain calm, demanded that my number be removed from their list(s). I was told it could take up to 30 days. Excuse me? You have the technology to call me 2-3 times per day, for weeks straight, and you can't immediately delete my number from your system? Bullshit. One more f-ing phone call, and I'm done with Discover for good.

Nats 10, Mets 5

Boo. I was rooting for the Mets. I am a New Yorker, after all.

Here are some pictures from the game on my new camera.

My favorite, I think:

A pitching sequence. Oddly enough, each is from a different pitch. I'm not quite sure how I managed to get 4 consecutive positions in 4 different pitches, but here it is:

Finally, a nighttime view of the park:

Is it Spring Yet?

The birds are chirping. The flowers and trees are in bloom. The sickening smell of freshly laid mulch is in the air. It must be spring, right? Then why am I still wearing wool turtlenecks, wool pants, and a coat?! Doesn't Mother Nature know that not only does April bring rain showers, but it brings temperatures in the 60s!? So why are we struggling to get to even the mid-50s?

Global warming my ass...

Zombies in Plain English

It's not very timely, but hey. It's still fun.

Courtesy of http://www.commoncraft.com/zombies.

P.S. Thanks Natalie!

Heard on the Street - February 29, 2008

"Can I just, like, pay the fine and admit my guilt?"

-Rhode Island Avenue NW at Massachusetts Avenue NW

Heard on the Street - February 14, 2008

"I don't have herpes!!!"
-Connecticut Avenue NW and Q Street NW

[Appropriate disclosure for Valentine's Day, I suppose.]

Happy 2nd Birthday Julia!!!

OK, I'm a week late, but we celebrated Julia's second birthday this past weekend with a cake that looked like Elmo (all homemade, by the way). Julia loved it - maybe too much? After she blew out her #2 candle, Grandma asked Julia if she was ready to eat Elmo. Eat Elmo?!?! No way! Julia started to freak out and wanted to get away from the cake. After we took off the paper that made up Elmo's mouth, nose, and pupils, making the cake look more like an apple with two weird white things on top, Julia still wouldn't touch it. She refused to even try the cake. Oh well...the rest of us enjoyed Elmo!

Found!

I found my bag, the Orla Kiely bag I posted below. After obsessing about it, I was ready to buy it (yay for tax returns!), but everywhere I could find it online - all 2 places - had it backordered. Well, I'm not a patient person when an obsession hits. I checked out a store here in DC that carries Orla Kiely (Tabletop), and low and behold, they had just gotten it in! It's so cute and so perfect for spring. And best of all - it's got really intelligently designed interior pockets - always my biggest pet peeve with bags.

Does this smell fishy?

U.S. Officials Say Broken Satellite Will Be Shot Down

"WASHINGTON — The Pentagon plans to shoot down a disabled 5,000-pound spy satellite before it enters the atmosphere in early March, a senior Pentagon official said Thursday."

I guess that's one way to do it. Sounds a little suspicious to me...

Vacation Anyone?

Isaac and I recently joined a travel company, and we will soon be registered travel agents. We have a website where you can book your travel, just like you would on Travelocity or Expedia or any of the other travel websites, with very comparable prices. You can book a flight, hotel, car, cruise, vacation package and the like. Check it out the next time you need to travel.

http://www.ytbtravel.com/grannysmith

In the interest of full disclosure, we make a small commission on any travel booked through our site. So not only will you get the same travel options that you'd get from another website, but you'd be helping us out a little bit also! All proceeds will go toward our wedding. :)

Time Stops at Grand Central

I think I'm in love...

My latest obsession is designer Orla Kiely. Her bags are so darn cute. I don't own one (yet) but they look like they're pretty high quality.
Photo courtesy www.shoptwig.com. Twig is an online retailer with some really cute, sorta funky stuff.

Congratulations, Isaac!!!

Isaac recently participated in a competition through the History Channel, City of the Future. The object was to design a plan for Washington, DC, circa 2108. He led a team of faculty and students from the University of Maryland. Although the team did not win the top prize, they did receive the IBM Innovation Award, recognizing their innovative use of technology. The model they built was nothing short of incredibly. It was 3 feet wide by 7 feet high, double-sided, it turned, it pivoted, and it opened up. Very cool.

The competition has gotten a lot of press, and Isaac has gotten a lot of well-deserved credit for his role. You can see him here in this Washington Post article - there's even a picture of him and two students working on their model:

Check out these bags and children's clothing!

They're all handmade by a cooperative of Guatemalan women who came together as the result of a raid at their workplace in New Bedford, Massachusetts. My very good friend is an immigration attorney and assisted in the efforts to help those who were taken in by the raid, and I've set up this website to help showcase their beautiful products. Take a look: http://sabiduriaoxlajujnoj.googlepages.com/