Why I Stay

I know I complain a lot about work, but I really do love my job. (Just not always the hours or some of the people.) I really love what I do, so I thought it would be a good idea to show you guys what I do. So, want to see a magic trick? :)

Step one: Pick a flavor, any flavor!


First thing in the morning, I check to see what orders I have for the day. Shown above. (I blocked out the number so this lady doesn't get random people calling her.) And make a list of the cakes that I need for the cake case. Shown here:


I love making lists, so at the end of the day, I can see what I have accomplished. It also helps me so know what I need to do. I start by writing what sizes I need, then what flavors on what kind of cake, what color to frost it and then how I want it decorated. I check it off when I have it built, I underline the color I wanted it frosted after I have frosted it, and then I cross out the whole thing when I am done. Anyways, back to the magic trick!




Okay, so the pick any flavor part comes in right here. All of our ice cream comes in these three gallon tubs, and it is my job to make that into a cake. So, this lady happened to want Mint Chocolate Chip. I grab this tub, let it sit out for a little while so that it isn't rock hard, and then cut it down into workable portions.


I have this little half circle, metal gadget that has a razor in the center and a metal wire on the other end of the circle. So, I take the razor and cut all around the tub. Then I take the wire and pull it through the tub to make the different cuts. See:


Okay, back to the order. The lady ordered a half sheet cake, with the mint ice cream and white cake. And she wants SpongeBob on it. Okay. No problem! The first step is done now,

Step 2: Bring out the cake!



I cut the cake into the right size, and then place it on the ice cream. I get to make circles become squares all the time. Here's how:




I cut off all the extra ice cream with my giant-knife thing, so that it looks like this:


Step Three: Frosting, anyone?



We frost our ice cream cakes with either vanilla or chocolate ice cream. If I need another color, like with SpongeBob, then I have to add dye. Frosting is actually the hardest thing about doing cakes for me. It looks easy, but it actually takes A LOT of practice to be any good at it.





At this point, I have to let it freeze FOREVER! I hate it when people ask me how long it takes to make an ice cream cake. Because the answer is: I have no freakin' idea how long it takes to make just one! It is completely impractical to only make one at a time. Since they are made out of ice cream, and I have to let things soften before I can make it do anything else, I let it get soft, and then freeze it again, over and over. So, I make my list, and on a good day, just build them all, then by the time I'm done building them, I can start icing the ones that I built first because they are frozen enough. Then by the time I'm done frosting all of them, then I can start decorating the first one that I finished frosting. So, remember my cake list for the case? That list translates into this:




Sorry, I know that last one is a little dark, but I think that you get the general idea. The first pictures is all of the cakes in my "Flash" freezer, and then the second two are the cakes in the back Walk-In Freezer because there wasn't anymore room in the Flash. In the mean time, while I am building all of these, I have to wave my hand to pop out SpongeBob.


Which, I think, turned out rather well. So, Happy 8th Birthday Oz! (I took the picture before I wrote on it.) But, that leads me to my favorite part.

Step 4: Abracadabra!














A closer look:








And that is why I stay. Because how much I love doing this out-weighs the days where I don't. I will post some more pictures of my cakes later. This was one day, but there is a lot more that I can do.

-P.S. Thanks to Wesley for giving me this digital camera so that I could take all these pictures. :)

The Dark Knight

I don't think that I can even begin to explain to you how much I loved this movie! It was so awesome! First, I have to say that Heath Ledger was amazing!! It doesn't even sound like him the entire movie, and he gets into character so well that I only stopped once or twice to think about that it was actually Heath Ledger and how sad it was that he died. Can they give out Academy Awards for Best Actor even if that actor is dead? He is an amazing villian. He is very sinister and evil, but I can't help but to laugh at him too because he is so crazy. I thought it was really cool that at the end of the movie, it says, "In Memory of Heath Ledger."





Second, the plot is awesome. I didn't notice that the movie was almost three hours long! I saw the 12:30 showing last night, so I was up really late, but there was never a dull moment. Geoffrey was actually a lot better at predicting what was going to happen than I was since he knows more about the cartoons and the comics. Since all the trailers only showed the Joker, I had no idea that Two-Face was even in it too until he pointed it out to me.




I was a little irritated that they changed Rachel from Katie Holmes to Maggie Gyllenhall, but she did well with the part. I just hate it when they change characters in the middle of things when all of the other characters are still the same. I kind of think that if you have to change the actor or actress for the part, they should be a new person all together, not the old one. Oh well though. It worked.




Last, but not least, the music is awesome!! It is by mine and Allie's favorite composers, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard! I could tell pretty much right off. It was especially apparent to me at the end though. There is this awesome monologue (I'm not telling you by who so I don't ruin anything) and the music that plays is similar to my favorite one from the Da Vinci Code. So awesome!! I loved it. It gave me chills and it was a great way to tie off the movie.



I'll go again with anyone that wants to go!!

A Good Day

I had the day off today, so I was able to sleep in. (For real this time, not the being lat to work kind.) After lounging around my house for a while, I finally got up and did some laundry and re-checked out my library books so I wouldn't get a fine. Then I picked Kennedy up, and he was kind enough to come with me out to Salt Lake to run a few more errands. I had to take my parking ticket into the bank so that they could send it in for me and then I ran over to the Planned Parenthood to get my second HPV shot. I hate shots! But luckily, this one doesn't seem to hurt me as much as it does other people. I had heard a lot of horror stories, but my arm is just a little sore from where they put the stuff in. I asked Kennedy before hand if he felt comfortable coming with me, but he said that he didn't mind which was cool. We then came back to my apartment, which he had never seen before. We had a good conversation and he let me show him all of my photography projects that I have done while he was gone. (Allie, he wants a copy of your Tide poem. He really liked it.) Then we made steak and angel-hair pasta for dinner while watching V for Vendetta. I forgot how much I loved that movie!! Now I am killing some time before Geoff and I, along with a ton of my friends, head out to see the midnight showing of The Dark Knight. I'll let you all know how it is! But, that is what I call a good day. Not too stressful, I had some fun, but I also got some things done that I needed to so I don't feel completely lazy. Too bad I have to go to work tomorrow. :( That is always the hardest thing about a midnight showing.

Happy Birthday Allie!!

Happy Birthday Allie!! I hope that you had a fun day, even though you said that you were probably just going to sleep! I wanted to post some pictures for you, but your real present will come at our combined birthday dinner! Love you!

Parking Tickets, Audits and Sleeping In

Recently, the bank that I go to for work moved from its location that I have been going to for the last couple years and into a new building two blocks away. It seems like a lot of hassle for such a shirt distance, but I guess they have more space now. Anyways, the move has been a big change for me. I used to be able to read while waiting in the drive-thru, and now, in the new building, they don't have one. (As a side note, I have made it through 2 books so far this year by just using the time that I had to wait to read instead.) The first day that I went to the new building, the manager recognized me and was talking to me for a while about the new building. He said that the parallel parking out front was fine for me while i was just running in our deposit, or there is underground parking that they validate. So, I have been parallel parking for the last couple of weeks. Yesterday, after I left the bank, I noticed a slip of paper on my windshield. Since I have never gotten a parking ticket before, I had no idea what they even looked like, and even after reading it, I didn't understand why I got it, since I was parked where the bank manager had told me I could. After having someone else confirm that I had in fact gotten a parking ticket, I called Dad. I asked him how I could fight a parking ticket. He said, "Well, first tell me why you would want to." I explained to him about the bank manager telling me it was okay to park there and that I had only been inside for about ten minutes, etc... He explained to me that even though the bank manager told me it was okay, it was obviously against the law to park there, and that banks can't change the law. HE said, however, that I should take the ticket into the bank and ask them to pay it since they were the ones that had told me wrong. I did that today and it looks like the bank will pay it for me. I didn't ask them outright like that, but I guess there is a drive-thru at another location, so I asked them to tell me where it was again. The bank manager said he would miss seeing me coming in, and I told him it wasn't worth a parking ticket to me. That was when he took it, made a copy of it, and told me that he would take care of it. I also checked the signs outside again. Even though it says that there is 15 minute parking, it also says that the driver has to stay in the car. It is for them to park while their passenger runs inside.

Later that day, after I had gotten my parking ticket, my boss called to see if I knew how to detach the printer from our registers without turning the register off. I did. He then asked me if I would have some time after I got off to run to a couple other stores for him, take the printer, hook it up and print off their paperwork. I guess he was selected in a random audit, and there are three stores that just write down their sales instead of printing them out because their printers either don't work or they don't have one at all. Being me, I said that I could. My first stop was West Valley. Other than being rather time consuming, I didn't have any real problems. I ran out of ink towards the end, so my boss said that was good enough and told me where to go buy more for the next store. So, I got more ink and headed to Taylorsville. When I got there, I got everything all hooked in, but it wouldn't work. I figured out that there security key that I was hooking the printer into wasn't getting power. I decided to go back to West Valley and grab their power cord to get it to work. And that didn't work either. So, I called Justin again and asked him if I could take a security key from one store to another to get the paperwork printed out at Taylorsville. He didn't think it would work, but he said I could try it. He actually even told me that it was okay if I didn't get it and could just go to the next store, but I knew that he was going to need it, so I wanted to find a way to make it work. I drove back to West Valley again, and then back to Taylorsville and FINALLY got the stupid thing to work. In case anyone was wondering, I am an excellent problem solver! :) After I got all of Taylorsville's paperwork printed out, I took the West Valley security key back to them, called Bountiful to make sure that theirs was working, and then went there. I didn't have any problems with Bountiful either, but by the time I was driving around everywhere, getting everything to work, and getting everything printed out and then faxing it to the place, it was almost 11:00 at night.

So, today, I woke up feeling pretty well rested, but a little too hot. Then I panicked because it was too light, and too warm to only be 8:00 in the morning. I looked at the clock and it was already 10:30! I was supposed to be at work at 9, and we open at 11. I managed to get ready and drive to work on time, but it was 11 when I got there, so all I could do was open the store when I got there. Luckily, I didn't have any early cake orders, so no one was already waiting there for me, and they didn't defrost, so I had all of my ice cream, but the registers weren't working. I had to write down all of the orders and figure out people's change with a calculator for all of my customers for almost the first hour of work while I got the registers back up and running. When my second person got there at noon, I was able to print out the paperwork, and get the paper order all put away. Needless to say, I was pretty stressed today. I felt really, really bad about being late. I got things under control, but I really thought that my boss was going to be mad at me. Surprisingly, he wasn't. At all. I told him about it and all he said was, "Ok." He didn't say, "Don't let it happen again," or yell at me, or anything. I asked him later why he wasn't mad and he just said that if someone works for him for years and is late once he isn't going to be mad. He probably knew too that I was doing a good enough job beating myself up over it. I really don't know why I didn't wake up, or why my alarm didn't go off. It could have been a lot worse though.

New Ertmann Family Pictures

Kjersti, Jay, Kameryn and I went out to take some new family pictures for them. Here are how some of them turned out, although you have no idea how hard it was to get Kameryn to cooperate!

These pictures aren't in any particular order. Since I am using the computer at work, it is hard for me to get it to do what I want, and it doesn't want to let me rearrange these pictures.

So, even though Kameryn threw the biggest temper tantrum I have ever seen, we got some cute pictures and overall had a good time!

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Wesley and Elisabeth

As previously stated, I have a lot of things I would like to catch up with, but since Wesley and Elisabeth's wedding is coming up soon, I thought it would be nice to catch up with some of their pictures first.


This summer when we went down to Cedar, I was so happy that Wesley and Elisabeth were able to be there at the same time. I really enjoyed being able to spend time with them and to get to know her. It was also so good for me to be able to see how happy she makes Wesley.




It was really fun to fill Elisabeth in on all our family jokes, such as Wesley's theft of Allie's bottles, and to in turn be able to tease Elisabeth about the hot tub story, in which she would always yell, "There is no story!" I think that Wesley and Elisabeth are great for each other. They have a lot of fun together.




The original plan for Cedar was that since Wesley and Elisabeth were going down before the rest of us, Wesley was going to propose either when they went horseback riding together, or while they were hiking in Bryce Canyon. However, when we got down there, Wesley hadn't done it yet. He said that even though they had a lot of fun doing those things, there had never been a time when they had really been alone for him to be able to do it. So, Allie and Wesley came up with the new plan. Since I am very camera happy, and had been planning on taking tons of picture of them together anyways, we came up with that while we were taking pictures of them, I should "pose" Wesley to be kneeling down in front of Elisabeth. Then he was really going to pull out the ring and propose.







I loved being a part of this. Since the wedding is up in Kodiak and I can't go, I wanted to share in something with you guys. I still expect to see pictures, etc... from the wedding, but I wanted you to know that it meant a lot to me to be included. I am so happy for both of you. I think you guys are awesome!











So, congratulations guys! I am so happy for you both. Welcome to the family Elisabeth. You fit right in and are a welcome addition.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Never Enough Time

I am sorry that I don't blog much anymore. I usually take these great pictures, and think of some interesting things that I would like to post, and then I find that my time just slips away somewhere. I usually have to decide if I want to go home and sleep, or come up to mom's to blog. I can't use the computer at work to look at anyone's blogs, so I get behind on those too. Another problem is that I have so many pictures that I want to share, and not enough patience to either upload them all or to go through them to pick out the best ones. I feel bad though. I feel like I really haven't seen a lot of you lately.

I wanted to blog about our trip down to Cedar and show you guys a lot of pictures from down there. There was so much to say. It was amazing to have Wesley home, to meet Elisabeth, to be able to take pictures while he proposed to her, the plays were amazing, and as usually, I just thoroughly enjoyed spending time with the family.

So, I can't promise that I will catch up with everything that I want to blog about, or that I can make more time to do it, but I will try. I love hearing about everything that everyone is up to, and I like you guys to know what is going on with me too.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)