Dancing with the rodeo star!

I just have to put a note on the blog regarding how impressed I am with Ty Murray's dancing. I was already impressed with Ty. We've been impressed a long time with his cowboy capabilities. His sense of humor totally cracks us up. But never, nope not once EVER, did I expect he'd wow me in the field of ballroom dance.

No, he's no Gilles Marini... yet, but Gilles hasn't been a cowboy his whole life either. The physical movements of men who do hard physical labor are going to be quite different than young men who have had a softer life. We're not even going to go into all the broken body parts Ty has had in his lifetime that are bound to be stiff.

Each week Ty has rallied and improved until this week's Lindy Hop had us absolutely whooping and cheering. His score should have been at least 9s straight across. Especially if they give "Lil' Kim" (does she have a real name?) whose leaden, blubbery Tango got a 10 from one judge (that judge needs to go home and watch more old movies to know what a real Tango looks like... or just watch Gilles version). Honestly. Watching the scoring for Lil' Kim (has she got a condition that causes the weird mouth expressions or does she always have something stuck in her teeth?) week after week reminds me of some of the bloated scoring that goes on in bull riding. Melissa Rycroft (exactly how is she a star?) got scored too high for her Lindy Hop (although her other dances have taken my breath away). I saw many more bloopers in her dance than in Ty's, but, well, as bull riding fans, we know all about inflated scores.

Of course, unless the fairies of passion and grace liberally sprinkle Ty in the coming weeks, he doesn't have a realistic chance of winning the dancing competition, but he's got more try than any of the other competitors and certainly more talent and grace already than I'd have given him credit for 3 weeks ago. God knows he's got more talent than all but perhaps 4 of the other competitors including Lil' Kim (I suspect substance abuse for some of her facial gestures and expressions).

I hope Ty manages to last for a few more weeks. If he continues dancing like he danced tonight he easily deserves to be in the top 4. The sad fact of the matter is that someone like the at first amusing, but now stomach turning, Steve Wozniak has legions of geeks out there repeatedly deleting their cookies and casting millions of votes for Team Geek. Not because he's trying as hard as any of the others to improve or to actually learn, but because they think he's a geek like them. Got news for you geekmos, he's no longer a geek. He's just rich. I can see the competition coming down to a war between the Gilles fans and the Geeks.

Ladies, get your scissors and go after their computer cords.

Still not the Ace of Cakes

BUT I graduated my second cake decorating course tonight! I had to make a flower basket cake and about 100 flowers. Okay, not 100. It just felt like 100. After the first 50 who the heck cares if it's actually 100 or not?

I've decided that cake decorating is a lot of fun, but it's not nearly as much fun as people make it look on TV. I can tell you why it's not that fun. Duff, The Ace of Cakes, has "people". Duff's "people" even have "people". Therefore, they can all sit at their clean, roomy, work spaces while someone else scrubs bowls, spatulas, tips, couplers, pans and mixer attachments and takes out their trash. Heck, they even have their own baking guy that does all the oven watching for them.

I, on the other hand, have people that leave half eaten pizzas, empty milk jugs (the trash can is less than three feet away), dirty paper plates, etc. ON my workstation. Thus, not only do I have to toss my own trash and seal my own icing leftovers, but I have to throw away other people's trash and bag up other people's leftovers.

Roomy my workspace is not. Somehow all of my projects seem to require every tool, tip, book and ingredient I have. I have to keep moist towels, baggies, decorating bags, couplers, 60 plus decorating tips (and whatever project I'm working on is guaranteed to need tip 104 for use with at least 4 different colors), 4 spatulas, 2 boxes of gel color, paint brushes, fondant iron, parchment paper, waxed paper, plastic containers, plastic wrap, the stand mixer, 2 flower nails, and my tool box leave me with about 1 square foot of free space to actually decorate a cake or make decorations. The counter tops in back of me are filled with freshly washed bowls, spatulas, plastic containers, mixer attachments, tips and couplers. The sink is filled with unwashed bowls, spatulas, plastic containers, mixer attachments, tips and couplers.

One day I'd like to walk unannounced into Charm City Cakes and see if there are at least smears of daffodil yellow icing in anyone's hair.