apple stores, cupcakes, t-shirted roof cat

Apple stores in the city are crazy. My iPod had been acting up - skipping songs, re-starting randomly, etc. - since October. I took it in to the 5th Avenue Apple Store a couple of weeks ago, but their fixes failed to remedy the problem. Luckily, the store itself was enough to make the 2-hour round trip uptown worth it. It's obviously modeled after the Louvre (above is a photo from the Apple website). You enter a giant glass cube, descend a spiral staircase and then you're in the large, underground store. It's also open "24/7/365" ... I wonder who buys MacBooks and iPhones at 4AM. Anyway, in hopes of one day having a working iPod, I went to the store in SoHo today. It's two stories, with a big auditorium space where they give product demonstrations. I watched a Photoshop presentation while I waited for my appointment. AND they replaced the faulty iPod with a new one, so I'm quite happy with the outcome.

On the way back from Apple, the F train went express at 7th Avenue in Park Slope. Essentially, this means they skip a few, smaller local stops in between bigger ones to make up for lost time. My stop is the first one skipped on the F line. Usually I'm annoyed when this happens, but today I decided to walk home and take a much needed pit stop...to buy cupcakes!

Now that I'm an experienced D.C. cupcake rater, I'm ready to move onto local fare. I've been meaning to visit my nearest baked goods purveyor, Ladybird Bakery, since I moved here (I actually stopped by yesterday but didn't have any cash, so no dice). But yeah, there was no excuse for me not to go there today. Here's what I thought:

Ladybird Bakery (Park Slope) - 2 cupcakes; $7.25 for both


Brooklyn Blackout: Chocolate cake filled with chocolate pudding and topped with ganache frosting. The cake was somewhat crumbly and not chocolate-y enough for my taste. The frosting was quite good and - unlike some ganache - not too overwhelming. B

Red Velvet: Red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. The cake is really red and dense, but tasteless. The frosting was rich, but nothing special overall. BC

Average: B/BC. I'm not sure if I'll buy cupcakes from here again - they were kind of expensive and not as tasty as I had hoped.

Miscellaneous notes:

- Earlier this afternoon, my roommate Jeremy ran into my room yelling, "KATIE! KATIE! Look outside! There's a CAT IN A T-SHIRT!" He proceeded to point out the window, where indeed - there was a cat in a t-shirt on a nearby rooftop. I grabbed my camera in two seconds flat. The cat looked so confused as to why he was in the middle of a roof - in a t-shirt, no less. He soon disappeared, but the entire situation was hysterical.
- I went to beginners' yoga with Jeremy this morning. There's a studio less than a block away. I'm pretty inexperienced and, well, bad, but it was an ideal way to energize for daylight savings' time.
- I met a guy from Wisconsin last night who works at a nearby Aussie/New Zealand pie shop. He seemed excited to meet me and I'm sure I'll see him there again. He called me "sister" ... not exactly a Wisconsin term of familiarity. He must've picked this up in the city!
- I reaaaaally need some Tombstone frozen pizzas in my life.