Thanks for all your birthday wishes. I had a great day. Had a couple meetings at work–one in which things happened that hopefully will result in some sort of good news sometime in the future, but which I obviously can’t spill the beans about yet–and after work went to see the Bourne Ultimatum with my roommates (not Supremacy like I posted–have to admit, I get the different names confused).

It’s Employee Appreciation Week here at work, which means free pizza for lunch today, various contests, and also today, Game Day! I went to a discussion group on girls in gaming earlier this morning, and this afternoon we’ll be talking to

 for a book discussion group. There are groups learning to play D&D (both basic and advanced; believe it or not there are some people at this company who learn the game after getting hired), Magic, the new Star Wars RPG, etc. It’s a good day to work at Wizards.

For those of you wondering about the chocolate chip cake recipe, here it is:

1/4 cup oil
1 yellow cake mix
1 large box vanilla pudding mix
2 eggs (don’t forget the eggs!)
1 1/4 cup water
roughly 6 to 12 oz of chocolate chips (my grandma says 6, I say the more chocolate the better)

Pour the oil into a cake pan and coat. Then dump in all the other ingredients except the chocolate chips–right into the pan. It might help to beat the eggs into the water first, but I don’t notice a significant difference. Beat with a fork until moistened and relatively smooth (but don’t overbeat, just like any cake).  Smooth out, then sprinkle chocolate chips evenly over the cake.

Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes or until cake is golden brown.

It’s SO easy, and the cleanup is obviously a cinch due to mixing it right in the cake pan. It’s a dense cake, quite rich, and even better on day 2 than right out of the oven. HIGHLY recommend it for chocolate lovers to do a chocolate cake instead of yellow, but be warned: it’s
REALLY rich, and you might want to try the yellow first for comparison.