Peda 20

Congratulations to Peda, one of my roommates, who has his 20th birthday today!
We (as in I and Rebecka, my other roommate) tried to surprise him as he got home from school, and I think we succeeded.
When we sneakily asked him what kind of cakes he likes a couple of weeks ago he said "anything with marzipan and custard would do, possibly something with meringue". So, we decided to make an ordinary princess cake, slightly adapted for him: it should of course be blue, no question about that, and also include both raspberry and blueberry jam. Several cursewords and a slightly bluer kitchen later, we decided to make it monster-style, as we in no way could make the marzipan cover the entire cake without it breaking everywhere. So, we patchworked the marzipan and turned the failed marzipan rose into eyes and a mouth...
There had been many discussions about what gifts to give him, as turning 20 is not an ordinary birthday. Nerds as all three of us are, Rebecka and I soon tried to find ideas on the net, in forums and webshops. Almost every suggestion included being incredibly mean to the one having his/her birthday, for instance picking up a piano from eBay (apparently they are often given away as long as you come and get it yourself) and leaving it outside his/her door, for the birthday person to get rid of best they could...

We ended up giving him this: a scrapbook with pictures of actresses he has mentioned he thinks are hot, an orange tie (he's studying physics, and at our school their colour is orange), a t-shirt with his name in binary, and a fanfic written especially for him. This last thing was particularly interesting to make, although both me and Rebecka have read and at least sporadically written fanfics for a couple of years now, we found it extremely difficult to write about someone we actually know in person. We had never co-written anything like that before either, and decided that in the future, any cooperative fanfiction-writing between us should only include slash...

Last, there were lots of cookies that we made last week. It turned out quite a nice evening, with lots of sugar and some giggling and blushing on mine and Rebecka's part, as Peda read the fanfic. There's a very good reason for why those are usually published at least somewhat anonymously.

Love,
Ellinor