Ghosts.

That’s right. Ghosts.

Let me explain.

Today I was working on fixing a neighbor’s computer, which had become INFESTED with viruses. I don’t mean just a few. I think the report said it had something like 10 Trojans. Anyway… I thought she had a DVD burner, so I thought to myself “Aha! I’ll save myself some time and get all of her pictures off in one fell swoop”.

It was at this point that I opened the drawer where I usually keep my DVDs. A spindle sat there, collecting dust, with one red dvd left on it. Nothing out of the ordinary, right? I, at this moment, thought to myself “oh yeah, that’s right, I need DVD’s, i’m out.”

Another thought occurred to me immediately after that. I had purchased an entire spindle of DVDs a month earlier. I bought them on June 1st, to be exact. I remember that day because my father was away on vacation and I had a few errands to run while he was gone and some stuff to do in the house, and I picked them up while I was out.

Anyway.

These DVDs were not in the DVD drawer. Curious.

They were not in any of the other drawers. Even more curious.

They were NOWHERE in my room. Really weird.

They were NOWHERE in the house. What the hell! ?
It was at this point that I ran through the house ripping open drawers and cabinets in search of these stupid things, leaving no stone unturned and no corner unsearched. These things were nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. I searched again and again and again and came up empty. I even checked my DVD archives that I keep of my photographs to confirm that there were new ones in there just so I could be 100 percent sure that I bought DVDs.

Anyway, at this point, I’m pretty certain that there is a very vengeful ghost out there who is very much against writeable media. I think he came into my room in the deeeaaaad of night and stole the cd’s. Perhaps it happened on friday the 13th. That was last month. It makes sense…

Anyway, here’s some photographic evidence that I found in my room. Something fishy is definitely going on here! If anyone sees this guy, tell him to give me my DVDs back!

In all seriousness… these dvds absolutely disappeared. I have a pretty much photographic memory and i can’t for the life of me remember where these are. It’s very strange that they aren’t in my room. If I happened to lend these to anyone, or give them to anyone to burn me something, please let me know, cause I’m really trying hard to find an explanation as to how an entire spindle of dvds vanishes into thin air.

If no one knows what happened to these for real, I’m going to start believing that it actually IS some sort of ghost!

maybe hollywood could make a horror movie about it. It could be about a guy who ignores the FBI warning and copies a whole bunch of DVDs. Suddenly, he is haunted by the ghost of a man who lost his job because no one bought dvds anymore because this other guy just kept copying them and GIVING them away. And then this poor unemployed man got crushed by a truck carrying these burned DVDs. OOh! OOH! and they can call it something like “FBI Mourning” … get it?

All right, it is quite obvious that it is past my bed time.

If anyone can think of a solution for my missing dvd problem, please let me know. Or, if a Hollywood studio would like to make my wonderful idea into a movie, also let me know. I figure we’ll cast John Krasinski as the lead, just cause he’s nifty. And then probably Donny Osmond as the ghost, cause he scares the hell out of me.

And Paris Hilton can play the part of the DVD truck.

Edit: I found the DVDs today. It is amazing how stupidly I hid these. I placed them in my father’s closet with my spindles of already burned dvds. I searched this location several times, looking for GOLD dvds. But I was crafty in my ways. I placed the last unburned RED dvd right on top of them, so each time I searched his closet, I would just see this red one on the top and overlook it. I opened each and every spindle to make sure that I didn’t do something like this. I did NOT open the spindle in question because it was nigh IMPOSSIBLE to get open, because it was a different kind of case. So, in conclusion, I am a flaming idiot and my dvds were not taken by a ghost.

Damn. Better luck next time I guess. ^_^

Hello everyone and welcome to this edition of “Sara sees a really awesome place on channel 16 and goes there immediately because it has the word ‘crystal’ in the title of it”. Today’s episode is about a little place in Lakeville, Pennsylvania called “Crystal Cabin Fever”. Frozen sculptures as far as the eye could see? A giant ice slide? A full scale cabin made entirely of ice?  The story I saw on the news was just so compelling, I had to go see it for myself. Also, Larry wanted to try out his GPS.

When we got there, we found out that the entire exhibit was in a GIANT barn, and they could have very little lighting so the ice wouldn’t melt. That being said, my photos are very dark and of sub par quality because the lighting was just too poor, and it looked REALLY bad if you took it with a flash. … anyway.

It was ten bucks to get in, and they gave you free hot chocolate. That was pretty great, considering it was FREEZING in there. I regretted not wearing boots the minute I stepped into the door.

After we paid, we rounded the corner and were greeted with this site:

The woman inside of the above picture will give you some indication of the scale of this thing! The craftmanship and details were just amazing. I can’t fathom how long something like this would take!  Here is a detail of one of the logs that made up the cabin:

Outside of the cabin there was even an outhouse. This is not very practical!:

Here’s Larry, my boyfriend, sitting on the bed in the cabin. I sat on one of the chairs that was on the opposite wall and it was FREEZING!

Below is a detail of the ice that was just above the door. The light  was hitting it in such a way that it had all rainbow colors in it. I thought it was really striking and beautiful:

There were signs strewn about this place, and each and every one of them were carved into ice. I think they were either sponsors, or the people who actually carved each section, but I am unsure. Here is one:

In the middle of the room there was a stage with sculptures that looked like they had just been finished and were almost ready to be placed out or something. Here is an owl from that section:

Here is an ice angel, also from the stage that I mentioned above:

An ice moose was right behind the cabin. These were very dark because there was only a very small amount of light in this area:

In ET, his heart would glow. In Crystal Cabin Fever, the animals’ butts glow:

This swan was my favorite piece in the entire place. There is something about the smoothness. I know that a swan is really one of the most stereotypical ice figures you could find, but alas, it was beautiful:

After we finished looking at the ice sculptures, we went to the end of the barn to find something really quite “cool” …. lolz, bad pun… ugh. … Anyway, there was an ice slide. The whole thing was entirely made out of ice, and MAN was it fun. Here is a picture of the side of it:

I am really not that internet savvy, but I uploaded a video of the slide in action and placed it on youtube. The link is below. It also features me going down the slide. I apologize for my annoying voice and for the shaky camera work when I’m going down the slide with the camera in advance. Here’s the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaCjkE97jso

After we had gone down the slide a few times, it was time to get our free hot chocolate. We were very much surprised to see that the entire concession stand was ALSO MADE OF ICE!

After this, we traveled to Adventure Games. I seriously couldn’t feel my feet all night, but I am so glad that I went. I will go next year if they do it again, and this time I will remember to bring boots so I can go down the slide a million times instead of just two.

Hope you guys like the pictures. You should all go see this next year! Until next time!

Hey everyone! I made Taiyaki this weekend! For those of you who don’t know what the HECK that is… well… it’s a japanese pancake-like pastry that is shaped like a fish. I see it a lot in various anime, and I have always wanted to have it! It always looks so good, but then again, doesn’t all cartoon food. Heck, I used to want those chili dogs that Sonic the Hedgehog was always eating in that silly cartoon, and I DEFINITELY don’t like chili dogs!

Whenever I tell people “I made the fish pancakes this weekend”, they think “Ew… pancakes made out of fish”… but that’s not what they are at all! They are really just a kind of pancake batter filled with whatever your heart desires (please don’t fill them with liver though. That’s just gross) … We filled ours with red bean paste (which was surprisingly good), and chocolate which was AMAZING!

What you have to do is mix the pancake batter and then heat the little grill thing. The grill is basically this cast iron mold that makes the fish shape. You don’t have very much time to do what you need to do with these little fish cakes. Once the grill is heated, you spoon some batter in the bottom part of the fish. Then you fill the head with your desired filling, be it chocolate, bean paste or even vanilla cream! After this, you have a small amount of time to cover your filling with more of the batter. If you aren’t fast, the bottom part of the fish might burn!

Here is a picture of the bean paste. It looks TOTALLY unappetizing here, but i swear it was good.

After you do the steps above, you pretty much just have to turn the grill over one of the burners on your stove, and pray that the batter doesn’t stick to the top. I wrecked a few pastries because i was too hasty in opening the taiyaki grill.

Here is a picture of our first one. It’s a little bit burned on the top, but it tasted very good! This was one of the ones we filled with red bean paste.

The skewer is there to lift the fish out of the grill. They stick no matter what you do, and you really have to pry them out of there!

Here is Larry, waiting patiently and hoping that none of the batter got stuck to the top of the grill!

We started these at around 3:00 on saturday, and by 5:00 we had a pretty decent batch. We haven’t quite gotten it to a science yet, and some of them do still burn. Just last night we lost almost an entire batch because there wasn’t enough milk in the recipe!

Here is a pic of the finished taiyaki. The brown stuff on most of them is the chocolate oozing out. On the other ones it’s just burned pieces, because they are REALLY hard to cook.

I am absolutely the messiest cook in the entire world, and while cooking these, i wouldn’t have been surprised if I got some batter on the ceiling. I get the same reaction from everyone who sees them though. They’re like “What the heck are THOSE things?!” …

I’m so happy that I was able to get a grill and taste what taiyaki tastes like. It’s actually quite good, and next time I make them, I think I’m going to try vanilla cream inside of them! One of my friends who just recently returned from japan told me that some taiyaki in japan has a weird green tea batter that is used for the pancakes! I would love to try that!

Man, why am I so afraid to fly! I wanna go to Japan!

Anyway, until next time!