Vampires and cupcakes

By way of announcement: I’ve installed a spam-fighter. So if you post a comment and it never shows up that could be why. You could let me know, I suppose. If that’s your sort of thing.

My sort of thing is RPGs cuz, enh, dork, etc.. We’ve sort of started a new Vampire game, and I say sort of because in this one we are all mortals which to me just seems kind of wrong because, hey, the game is called “Vampire.” We are so going to get eaten.

But, y’know, it’s gaming, and I’d rather than not, and I’m not as picky (as some. ahem.) about what kind of gaming it is. Even if I don’t have any freakin’ powers.

I guess as a mortal I could have the power of cupcakes and great icing. Cause, y’know, that would be so different from the real world. Then again, why am I bitching? Because–hello, Sims?

Back to the cooking: Here’s how THAT goes, below. Following the cooking lesson, maybe I’ll post the background for this mortal character, too. This will be the second time I’ve written it up. The first I lost by being dumb.

Chocolate icing

  • Melt butter and cocoa, baking chocolate, or unsweetened chocolate powder in a heavy saucepan.
  • Warm about a half-cup of cream, half-and-half, or milk in another saucepan or in the microwave.
  • Set aside a box of powdered sugar, a sifter, and any extracts or additional flavorings you think would taste good. I’ll sometimes use cinnamon, orange, peppermint, vanilla, almond, black pepper, chai tea mix or hot chocolate mix, instant coffee, espresso, marshmallow fluff, peanut butter… basically anything that’s good with chocolate.
  • Once the butter and any baking chocolate is liquid, pour it into a large mixing bowl. You can use a KitchenAid for this, but it’s really easy to overbeat. This is one of the few things I do by hand. With a wooden spoon. I love wooden spoons. Anybody else?
  • Add powdered sugar until stiff. Add a bit of the warm milk until smooth. Then more sugar. Then more milk. Keep going back and forth until it’s as sweet as you like it to be and has the flavor you want. The more milk+sugar that gets added, the more ‘milk’ chocolately it is. The less? The darker and less sweet. The warm milk helps keep it from setting too soon.
  • Once the frosting is as you like it, move quickly to frost your completely cool cake.

Also, I’m still looking for a peanut noodle recipe that doesn’t suck. For your entertainment in the meantime:

Charlotte Marie Sommers (Charlotte Sometimes)

Chronicle: The ‘why the hell are we not vampires’ Requiem game (set in Wilmington, NC)
Mortal, 33 years old
b. August 1, 1973 in Fairfax, VA
to August and Marilyn Sommers

Description:

5′5″ with a pale freckled complexion and coarse black hair with the tiniest flecks of silver at one temple. Favors long full skirts and simple cotton tops, or tops layered with jackets and sweaters. Likes shiny jewelry: anklets with bells, long dangly earrings, metal belts dripping with beads or coins. Wears glasses most of the time–wireframe john lennon rounds, and is usually carrying a messenger bag stuffed with papers and books.

When out at the club, her outfits tend towards gypsy-goth, black skirts and ruffled shirts. Same shiny jewlery, hair down and curly, dark lipstick and coal-rimmed eyes. If she’s working behind the bar, the hair goes up in a sleek chignon. The look is 50s pinup: flared skirt, fitted shirt or sweater and bloody red lipstick. It’s half tip-bait and half practicality. Her long hair and flowing skirts would simply get in the way of her bartending tricks.

When on campus or just out doing everyday things, she’s usually attired in a more colorful version of the gypsy-goth clothes. Still lots of prairie skirts and natural-fiber shirts in earthy tones, but also some professorish pantsuits and quite a few jeans-and-t-shirt days. Hippie sandals. She’s a bit granola and rarely hits the makeup in the daytime. Gloss, toss, and go.

Chronology:

1973-1983

Charlotte was born in Fairfax, VA on August 1, 1973 to August and Marilyn Sommers, who at the time were homeless and jobless. They had been staying at her aunt’s home in Fairfax (her uncle worked for the State Department), but there was hardly enough room for the family as it was, much less with a newborn.

When they returned home from the hospital, August and Marilyn found their other two children, AJ (August, Jr.) and Beverly, sitting out on the front step with the small stack of suitcases and boxes containing their last remaining possessions. AJ was about 5 years old; Beverly was 2.

Thus, the first few weeks of Charlotte’s life were spent in a shelter in Virginia Beach while her father looked for a new job. He found one, in construction, and got enough of an advance to move them into a small apartment. Economy-sized. Family of 5.

The children all shared the small bedroom. AJ and Beverly slept on an inflatable mattress, swaddled with blankets and pillows to create their own raft of coziness. The fold-away playpen was Charlotte’s bed. Mom and Dad slept on the fold-out couch in the living room, though Dad sometimes napped on the air bed. They all shared the one small closet in the bedroom.

But it was home, and it was theirs. When times were good (and August was employed), they cooked mac and cheese in the tiny kitchen, watched pilfered cable on the boxy old television, and made ice cream sundaes late at night. They lived there for some time, until Charlotte was old enough to go to school, and another sibling was on its way.

It was 1979. Charlotte had just started kindergarten when her dad got another new job. This one was really going to get their lives started, he said. He had joined a team that built skyscrapers in the city. The pay was much better, but it paid so well because it was dangerous. They moved then, to a small rented house closer to the city. August left early in the morning and came home very late at night. AJ had his own room, and the girls another, and their brother, when he came, slept in a big closet in the hallway, in an oversized hamper. It was like a crib and a room all in one. The kids had to change school districts and the new one wasn’t as nice, nor was their neighborhood, but they finally had some money and they always had food, even if it was the generic brands. Occasionally dinner would be interrupted by small arms fire from somewhere down the block, but it was sort of like a game they played, jumping up from their plates to lay flat on the patchy linoleum.

1983-1990

They lived in the little house for many years. Her brother Daniel was just getting ready to start school and had long-since graduated to bunking wiith AJ, who had just turned 16. AJ was already a troubled kid, frequently suspended from school or picked up by the local cops for shoplifting or spray-painting graffiti on the local high school. Charlotte was still young enough to admire him, and foolish enough to want to imitate him. Her brother taught her how to read people. How to pick pockets. An early fascination with magic (David Copperfield on the TV got her started) served her well, and she enjoyed AJ’s pride in her skills. She helped him pull off small jobs, petty thefts from the area mall, clipping a bicycle… things he could explain away. She wasn’t sure it was a good thing to do, but AJ convinced her that noone would miss the things they stole. And they were things she wanted, that Marilyn couldn’t–or wouldn’t–provide.

In the fall of 1984, Marilyn fell ill, and went into the hospital for a short while. When she returned home, she took to her bed. Not long after that, August and Marilyn sat the 4 kids down and told them that they were going to have a very special brother or sister. It was a difficult pregnancy, and Marilyn remained in bed throughout. AJ and Bev took charge in the house, and AJ could drive, so they ran errands and took Marilyn to the clinic for her appointments. August took extra hours, and extra jobs, to pay for it all. He was never home.

In January of 1985, all hell broke loose. Her father was injured at work, badly in fact. When the hospital called, Bev was afraid to tell their mother, lest she get upset. But her mother had overheard already (the house wasn’t very big, and secrets were impossible to hide). They all went to the hospital, mother too, and a good thing, because as her father was being brought back from the brink of death, his new son was being born, far too early.

The doctors gave Eli very little chance to live, nor did they predict full recovery for August. Both predictions came true, though Eli did come home for a short while, doing time in the hamper like his older brother. That was where they found him the morning he died–stiff and cold in the little closet. Her mother was never the same.

After Eli died, AJ stopped coming home as much. He had gotten arrested at the local discount store while he had Charlotte with him, and after that, he wouldn’t take her with him anymore. Noone at home had time to question him, and whatever trouble he got into, he kept to himself. There were enough problems at home without his additions, anyway. Those culminated in the eviction sign they found posted to the door just before Thanksgiving.

Her father’s injuries were slow to heal, and though he claimed the company would owe him insurance monies aplenty, they had not given him much, thus the rent and bills had lapsed when it ran out. Their mother, who usually kept tight reign on August’s paycheck, was no longer up to the task, and he had squandered quite a bit of it. So they moved. The kids largely fended for themselves, working or stealing or getting government or church assistance where they could, when they could.

Charlotte wouldn’t unpack again until she went away to college. From the time she was 13 until she was 17, they lived in one crappy apartment or another, with brief stints in motels where they worked the desk and cleaned rooms in exchange for lodging and a small paycheck.

Charlotte’s older sister, Bev, stayed with them for a short while, moving from place to place. She dropped out of high school while they were living at the first motel. The attached restaurant had an open day shift and the pay was enough she could get a place of her own after a while. It happened somewhat sooner than she expected, as in addition to employment, Ye Olde Pancake Haus also introduced her first husband, a fry cook named Roger. Roger and Bev moved into their own apartment and soon after Charlotte’s niece, Violet, was born.

Charlotte was now the oldest, and she watched after Daniel faithfully. AJ got picked up on burglary charges, and after the cops visited so did social services, but Marilyn and Charlotte convinced the agent all was well. Though, by now, it really wasn’t anymore. August rarely worked, and when he did his paychecks went straight to his extensive bar tab at the pub down the street. He came home occasionally, long enough to rant and rave a bit before passing out; only sometimes showering and shaving before going back out to a job (rarely) or to his favorite barstool (usually). The years had not been kind to Marilyn, who had had to start working after Eli’s death and August’s injury. She took whatever jobs were available–maid service, secretary, phone pools, gas or grocery clerk. She was often sick, so her employment record quickly resembled her husband’s. But she did the best she could.

Charlotte also worked part-time jobs after school to help out. Daniel had a paper route and was a regular babysitter for neighbors at several of their apartment complexes. They both were doing well in school despite the tumultous home life.

Charlotte was 17 and working at a local coffeeshop. She had finished taking her senior year exams and graduation was just a few weeks away. Her acceptance letters had come, and with them scholarship and work grant offers that would cover her tuition and expenses. She was elated and happily planning her future.

Daniel was riding his bike home from football practice when he was struck by a car and killed. Charlotte was devastated. Marilyn retreated further and August dove deeper into the bottle, now rarely bathing at all and never working. What money he got for booze he beat out of his wife or stole from Charlotte or Bev, when she would come around (which wasn’t often).

Charlotte left for college that August.

1990-1995 (college)

Being away at school was like living another life. The dorms seemed small to most incoming freshmen, but to Charlotte it was a huge space and she carefully furnished it, kept it spotless. For the first time, she could choose to spend her paycheck however she wished. She could come and go whenever she pleased, and she had hours to herself to read, think, and study. It was heaven.

She went home once, the first Christmas. Her mother had called and begged her to come and have holiday dinner. Charlotte arrived and found her mother frantically trying to make something edible out of government cheese and canned ham because August had made off with the small kitty she had saved up to make the special meal. Charlotte took the spending money she had for the holiday break and used it to buy a huge turkey and all the trimmings.

They had just put the bird in the oven when the phone rang. It was AJ calling from county lock-up. They spent all night arranging bail, and the turkey went out in the garbage the next day, still half-raw. Charlotte packed up and returned to school, thoroughly disappointed.

She felt guilty about leaving, but also feared being sucked dry if she stayed there any longer. And for what gain? She had hoped to have a nice meal with her family, then come home and buy some groceries for herself and make dinners in the dorm kitchen. Instead, she ate ramen and cold cereal the whole time. And for what? Nothing. Noone was helped by her being there. She spent the remainder of the break in a blue funk, but shook it off once the rest of the students returned. She got on with her college career and never looked back.

She made friends and kept her grades up. She dated, but never seriously. She enjoyed doing what kids do in college, only was a bit more responsible about it than most. She had several part-time jobs, her favorite being a bartending gig at a local club. She started out working random shifts, and stayed on there long enough to eventually get her pick. Even when she was a teaching assistant preparing for grad school, she’d still take the occasional shift, just to get out and see people. It gave her a way to be social and still get paid for it.

1995-2003 (grad school, plus a few years spent working)

Charlotte graduated with honors, thus assuring herself a place in the next year’s grad student class. She chose to stay on at Wilmington, though she had entertained offers from a few other places. She had by this time moved out of the dorms and into a small townhome. It wasn’t much, but it had an obstructed ocean view and she could feel the breeze off the water from the porch. There was a small bedroom and a lofted office and a great little kitchen where her friends would sit at the bar while she made dinner.

Grad school was perfect. She loved teaching and the laid-back lifestyle of an academic. She had settled into the life she had always wanted, and nearly forgotten the rest. She was briefly startled in 2001, when her father passed away. Against her better judgment, she prepared to go home for the funeral. Her beater car, though, had other ideas. She filed this away as ‘fate’ and didn’t go. Didn’t send word, didn’t call, just didn’t go. She was really free.

She took some time off from grad school to pursue an year-long study exchange in China, India, and the Middle East. She rented out her place (that, by now, she had purchased) to a trusted student and took off on something of an adventure. She took an actual vacation at the end of her tenure abroad, touring some of Europe and spending a week in Ireland. It was lovely, but by then she was happy to return to her cozy little home.

2002-2006 (research and teaching)

After her year abroad and more than a bit more work getting published and teaching, Charlotte was offered a job on staff with the University system. She accepted and is still pursuing tenure today. She teaches 3 or 4 classes a year in classical history and literature, and continues to publish at a respectable rate, as well as supervise grad students and advise undergraduates.

Socially, she attends functions for work, and, when left to her own devices, simply hangs out with the other regulars she knows at the bar. She still moonlights and feels comfortable there. She really only works there to make a bit of extra cash or just to have something to do.


One moment from the last-ever episode of Alias:

Sloan (to Sark): Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts?
Sark: Of course not. It’s just–it’s not everyday that one gets to be a part of global genocide.

RIP, SpyDaddy… R.I.P….

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