Monthly Archives: June 2009

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Splitting Hairs We kicked off Silverdocs 2009 with a viewing of “Splitting Hairs” last night at the Round House Theater in Silver Spring.  The documentary – and it’s filmmakers – was/were hilarious.  Any 30 minute movie about a beard and mustache worldwide competition must be, wouldn’t you think? Some of the footage was pure gold – wonder why they stopped at 30 minutes.  Anyway.  One of the filmmakers was (seemingly) so excited about the opening that he overindulged in (alcohol?) before the screening and was completely out of it the entire time, which made for an eventful pre- and post- screening commentary.  Note that the text link above will take you to the website of the movie itself, while the picture (should) take you to the AFI commentary on the movie.  Nick and I both thought it had a sort of “King of Kong” feel, and completely dug seeing Phil Olson in person leading the AFI Beard & Mustache contest after the screening.  (I can’t help but think that Nick B-R would be all about this!)

And with that, we’re off to the races with another 6 documentaries over the next day and a half.  Our full schedule is below – let us know if we should be looking out for you at any of these!  Info on each of the movies can be found here.

Thursday, June 18th
10:30 PM
SPLITTING HAIRS
F. Stone Roberts 2008 | Short Film, Special Program | 28 min.
  • BEARD AND MOUSTACHE CONTEST
Round House Theatre
Friday, June 19th
8:45 PM
BEST WORST MOVIE
Michael Paul Stephenson 2009 | Feature Film, Theme: Pop Culture Films | 92 min.
AFI Silver Theater 2
11:30 PM
CAT LADIES
Christie Callan-Jones 2009 | Feature Film, Theme: Senior Interest Films, Theme: Women’s Interest Films | 60 min.
  • FORTY MEN FROM THE YUKON | Tony Massil 2008
Round House Theatre
Saturday, June 20th
1:15 PM
PARTLY PRIVATE
Sterling World Competition 2009 | Feature Film, Sterling World Competition, Theme: Health Interest Films, Theme: Jewish Interest, Theme: Middle East Interest Films | 81 min.
  • KINDA SUTRA | Jessica Yu 2008
Round House Theatre
4:45 PM
OLD PARTNER
Lee Chung-ryoui 2008 | Feature Film, Theme: Asian Interest Films, Theme: Senior Interest Films | 77 min.
AFI Silver Theater 3
9:00 PM
NO IMPACT MAN
Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein 2009 | Feature Film, Theme: Enviromental Interest Films, Theme: The 21st Century Family | 92 min.
AFI Silver Theater 1
11:15 PM
WINNEBAGO MAN
Ben Steinbauer 2009 | Feature Film, Theme: Pop Culture Films | 84 min.
AFI Silver Theater 1

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In other random news, this week we booked tickets to Amsterdam!  Woohoo!  Nick is going for the full week for EuroPar, and meeting me in Amsterdam proper on Saturday for a long weekend in the Netherlands.  I’ve never been, and am pretty excited.  Any travel tips?  Let me know – I’ve been searching TripAdvisor thus far and am pumped.

In other travel news – all of the hard work with booking Oktoberfest tents seems to be paying off, as yesterday Frau Rutar (that’s me!) received another table reservation offer via snail mail for Sunday at noon.  We’ve now secured 4 table reservations from noon-end on Sunday!  That’s a lot of beer … and a lot of chicken …  can’t wait :)

And one more set of travel stuff – I’m working on a new project at work with a demo in Seoul, South Korea in August!  I was so excited to go, before I realized that with the long flight, I’d have to miss a family wedding…and thus, no South Korea for me this summer.  In future phases though, that may be a good excuse to go!

Local news – after 6 years of living in the DC metro area – we just last weekend made it to the Jefferson Memorial.  I dug it.

—-Follow Up —

SilverDocs was the awesome, and is officially something I’d miss if we ever left this area.  All the films were great – looking forward to getting a pass next year!

About 2 years ago, I turned 27 and realized that the big 3-0 was not really that far away.  I like making lists, and decided to make a ‘30 things to do before I turn 30′ set of goals for myself.

Looking at this list now, it’s interesting because I can see how some of my priorities have shifted in the past couple of years, while others remain exactly how they always have been.  With half of my list checked off and another handful not really being applicable to my goals anymore, the remaining items now have less than a year to go before their self-imposed deadline.

One of these goals, which has now been most recently checked off, is to make a tiered cake.

Liz talked to Nick and I weeks (months?) ago about Mehul’s 30th celebration, and it was decided somewhere along the line that a cookie baking competition would be a part of his birthday bbq.  I thought this would be the perfect excuse to get my tiered cake baking on, and Liz thought it would be a fun addition, and so, I was off.

Last week, my time consisted of going to work, and working on the cake.  Mid-way though, I realized it was going to be fairly intense and I thought Nick thought I was crazy.  But then, once the ganache was set and the cake was decorated, oh what a cake it became…..

Cookie Themed Tiered Cake:

  • Base layer – 14″ round cookie cake
  • 1st cake – 9″ round vanilla cake (4 layers) with chocolate mousse filling (3 layers), topped with a 9″ round cookie cake – at one point, yellow cake/chocolate frosting was Mehul’s favorite combo
  • 2nd cake – 6″ round chocolate fudge cake (4 layers) with oreo buttercream filling (3 layers), topped with a 6″ round cookie cake
  • All cakes were coated with a raspberry wash prior to filling and stacking
  • Both the 1st & 2nd cakes were giving a vanilla buttercream crumb coat prior to frosting with chocolate ganache
  • Double Stuff Oreos (1st cake) and mini Chip’s Ahoy (2nd cake) were pressed into the chocolate ganache for decoration
  • Cake topper was a gladiator holding a happy birthday balloon and a double stuff oreo shield

Turned out pretty tasty, and was very pretty to look at to boot :)   We cut the cake strait down the middle so that I could take a picture of all the internal layers – will need to upload that soon, but in the meantime:

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