cold sunday

I've read eight books this month, and five of them were nonfiction. This is not likely a trend that will continue every month, but I do like to feel that I'm growing. The most recent book was Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein. The author was on The Daily Show not so long ago, which prompted my interest. It's a fascinating book. At times, it is hard to remember that it is real and not a piece of hard boiled fiction - the vents are both that unreal and vivid. This book is an excellent reminder that life is weirder than weird sometimes, in ways prosaic and strange. But its greatest strength lies in the way it wrings emotion out of what could be dry or sensationalized. Every beat resonates.

Right now I'm baking a cake for Mike to take to work. He just had his four year anniversary so it will be a four layer cake. The cake is French vanilla, and I'm going to layer it with strawberry preserves and icing. Hopefully the layers will bake up relatively even so I don't have to spend a lot of time sawing and leveling the cake itself. That's the goal anyhow. I took extra care in greasing and flouring the pans.