Happy Birthday, Army!

Today is the U.S. Army's 237th birthday, and one of the perks of my job is getting to take a break from work and eat cake to celebrate. This year was especially exciting because Sophie LaMontagne and Katherine Kallinis, the ladies behind Georgetown Cupcake and TLC's "DC Cupcakes," were in the Pentagon with a hand-made/baked Abrams Tank.

My "battle buddy," Sam

I heard they came in at 3 a.m. to start working on it! I checked on the progress a couple of times before the ceremony, and it looked like they were having a couple of glitches with icing melting. A guy from TLC was there taking video of the whole thing, so you'll probably see it on a future episode. It turned out great, even if the icing had melted off in a couple of places.

After remarks from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, and the Secretary of the Army, the Honorable John McHugh, the announcer asked the ladies if their tank could shoot. They replied, "Absolutely!" and then shot a cupcake out of the tank gun! Nice work, ladies.

I took a picture in front of it with the July issue of Glamour in hopes that the magazine will publish my picture. (They feature one reader's photo each month -- I guess we'll find out in September if they choose mine!)

What you can't see is the male Soldier to my left laughing at what a nerd I am.

You'll notice I'm wearing red pants. That was intentional, as I was hoping to get on TV and wanted to stand out in the crowd. The courtyard was packed with people, especially when it was cake cutting time. I don't know if I made it onto "DC Cupcakes," but I did make it onto CNN! (I'm to the far left of Gen. Dempsey smiling from ear to ear -- not because I realized I was on TV, mere feet away from the top ranking officer in the U.S. military or near my favorite CNN reporter, Barbara Starr -- but because I was looking at 5,000 cupcakes.)

 

Georgetown Cupcake donated 1,500 cupcakes to the event, and you can imagine how fast they went. I was feeling sorry for the Army bakers who had made a huge cake, but then I noticed that it was going just as fast. As Barbara Starr put it, "In a couple of hours, everyone in the Pentagon is going to be on a sugar high." I waited for a while to get my cupcake, a salted caramel (YUM). I really wanted a chocolate coconut one, but I was very happy with what I got.

Also melted, but who cares? I even ate the Army insignia. It was delish.

I took it back to my office to find that my cubemate had a chocolate coconut one! So we split our respective cupcakes in half and shared.

Sugar high? Check.

Sugar CRASH? Double check.

Totally worth it? Duh.