Week's now over.

I did run home and bake a second half-cake (well, it's actually the full recipe for the cake; I usually do it doubled to make a 9 x13 cake when I have to take it anywhere. So this was an 8 x 8 cake. Confused yet?)

On the upside: Once I had the flour and leavening in one bowl, and the butter melting, it took me only as long as it took my oven to heat up to 350 degrees* to get the cake put together.

(*I have an old oven that preheats very slowly. I've adapted to it but that means when I'm up visiting my parents and I want to bake something, I wind up turning on the oven my mom has way too early. But still - this is a very fast cake to put together, I daresay as fast as one from a mix).

On the downside: I didn't have to cut into it at the meeting. Only 18 people showed up, and of those, a couple didn't even want cake.

Again on the upside: I have an 8 by 8 cake, one of my favorite flavors of cake, all to myself. I think I'm going to make chocolate frosting (if I can find the recipe I used last time again - it was one you cooked a bit so you didn't have to put so much powdered sugar into it, so it wasn't as overwhelmingly sweet as some frostings). And then I'm going to eat a few pieces over the next couple days and carefully wrap up and freeze the rest. Because there are some days when I just WANT a piece of cake, and there are no decent bakeries in town. (The wal-mart has an allegedly "in-store" bakery, but I'm not that fond of what they produce).

The meeting was about "living well and living long." The interesting thing? Not a single mention of diet, or restricting doing "fun" things. It was based on a longitudinal study of people that began with them as 10 year olds in the 1920s. Certain personality traits seemed to be correlated to long life: "conscientiousness," "dependability," and a sense of purpose and connectedness to other people.

I have to admit I was secretly laughing over the "conscientious and dependable" part - I think one of my faults is that I take my responsibilities far too seriously and I know many times I've griped on here about other people that I thought I could depend on, but couldn't.

Sense of purpose: okay, on good days at work. Or when I'm piecing quilt tops for Project Linus or something. Or when I'm working down at church.

Connectedness to other people: I don't know. This is the one place where I consistently fall down because I will admit that people often disappoint me in their behavior and frankly by Friday afternoons, I'm ready to go home and lock the world out and spend the weekend reading or writing manuscripts or hanging out in my quilt room.

But it was interesting that, at least according to the study the person cited, people who lived "responsibly" and who had a sense of purpose seemed to live a long time. And as I said: no mention of diet (other than, I suppose, "living responsibly" meant that you didn't eat bar food 6 days out of the week or something), little mention of exercise beyond that it's good to be "active" but that doesn't require one to run marathons or such.

Also, it was noted - and this is one of those things that makes me crazy whenever it comes out in the news - the usual claim that "you die younger if you're not married" is not necessarily true. That while there may be some protective effect for men of being married, it is not nearly so strong for women. (I'm guessing that on average, men look to their wives for socialization, whereas women have other outlets - church, groups they belong to, stuff like stitch-and-chat groups, etc. So I'm also guessing men that aren't married but make an effort to have friends/be a part of groups other than at work probably have a similar "protected" effect.)

(However, another point made was that it is not healthy, over the long term, to push a person to act counter to their basic personality: so "fixing" introverts by forcing them to spend more time around people when they really need alone-time to recharge is not something that can or should be done)

It was interesting though, that the key to living long seems largely not to be tied up with "exercise your body like crazy" and "live on a diet that would make a rabbit cry" but more "don't live a crazy irresponsible lifestyle" and "have something in life that makes you feel like you're a part of stuff."