Only a match made in heaven if somebody kills me first

When I started this blog, I mentally made a promise to myself to try not to be mean spirited or to talk about dating. This post might be a little bit of both. I live in a very nice looking condo. However, it has walls made out of tissue paper and floors made out of something else that has really good noise conduction/really bad sound insulation. My downstairs neighbor and I have a significant difference of opinion on how loud he should be. I asked nicely once, and passive aggressively twice, and he basically told me he had no intention of being considerate and neighborly and turning his music/sound system/chasing his dog around and making weird noises down. I think he plays Call of Duty on Tuesdays and Thursdays (with the headset), turns his hip hop music on at 9 am (he wants to be a "balla, shot calla, 20 inches rims on my Impala") on the weekends, and apparently my tiny request that he turn the bass down a tad has "ruined his enjoyment" of football. I contemplated multiple options of revenge and retribution. I gallop and stomp around in my heels. I pondered poisoned baked goods, but such a waste of baked goods for such a meanie. He has old lady perfume as an air freshener or incense or something and it wafts through our shared duct work and inexplicably under my kitchen sink. It makes me want to keep the heat off and wear three sweaters. And earmuffs to block out the noise. It makes me literally crazy. The other thing that makes me crazy is internet dating. Dr. Neil Clark Warren's personality algorithm matching system is all kinds of broken. Because I got matched up with my downstairs neighbor. True story.

Walking in a winter wonder...cake

I don't often think about my baking in food blogging terms, with words like luscious swoops of snowy whipped cream that make you think of the magic of Christmas, and the time of year when you believe that every wish you ever make can come true as long as there's a light snow falling and the twinkles of Christmas lights on a woodsy fir tree... and words along those lines. But I baked this cake this weekend for a holiday party and that is exactly what I thought. It is like a Christmas candy land cake. And I totally forgot to have a bite of it at the party. I did check in on it at one point to see how it was doing (i.e., see whether people were gobbling it up and providing me with validation) and the top two layers had sort of slid off the bottom two layers (whipped cream frosting does not provide a lot of structural support). I believe my reading public will be proud to know that instead of trying to prop the cake back up again and looking like a crazy person, I just went and had another glass of wine.

The recipe: Devil's Food Cake with Peppermint Frosting
The only thing I did differently was to ditch the marshmallow frosting, because it is a colossal pain, and doubled the white chocolate cream frosting instead. I don't regret that change for a minute. And my arms thank me for not hand whisking egg whites for 15 minutes.