A baking project of epic proportions

Today is the last day of the year 2009.  Today also marks the day that my friend and I will begin a baking project of proportions that as of yet we have not even hoped to attain.  We are baking a multi-layer stacked cake with incredible decoration.  I'm not entirely convinced our baking skills are up to the task, but even if they aren't, the attempt will be an excellent way to ring in the new year.  Actually, I'm hoping that this will be the year that I learn to cook for real.  Last night I bought the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and I have been poring over it all morning, making a list of all the things I want to try.  I'm up to page 331, and so far my list is already a page long.  At least I won't get bored.  I think that this endeavor is somewhat similar to the one taken by Julie Powell in Julie and Julia, except I will most definitely not be cooking my way through the cookbook in a year.  Mostly because I want to avoid the liver recipes at all costs, as well as the fish and seafood section, because I really don't like fish.  Maybe one day I will try to regain an appetite for it, but I think fish sticks have decidedly turned me against anything remotely relating to that particular genre of food.

Anyway, in regard to the cake project, we intend to take all sorts of pictures and then create a photo album - whether in print or online I'm not sure.  But perhaps one day, when we open a bakery after we retire from the rest of the working world, we will be able to display this album somewhere and say to ourselves, "Good heavens!  We seem to have come a long way from there!"

Cupcakes!

Today we made cupcakes.  But these were no ordinary cupcakes.  Well, the cake part was normal.  But the decorating part was not.  My friend and I used this excellent cupcake-decorating book, and made cupcakes that look like fishbowls.  They have light blue frosting with Nerds candy at the bottom (like the fish rocks in the bottom of the bowl).  We used Fruit Roll-Ups to make plants to put in the fishbowls, and then we put graham cracker goldfish in as well.  We took lots of pictures, but unfortunately the USB cable I need to upload them is in Massachusetts.  So as soon as I have that, I'm planning on putting them here, because the cupcakes turned out really well!  

I also watched Julie and Julia for the fourth time today, after baking cupcakes and perusing two excellent cookbooks.  I am totally convinced that once I have these cookbooks in my possession...which might take a while...I should start cooking real food on a regular basis.  I think I will start with curried chicken, which is one of my favorite meals ever, and then I will move on to other things, like bouf bourguignon or lobster thermidore.  Actually, probably not the latter of those two, because I really don't like seafood.  I'm thinking that cooking like this would be a bit labor-intensive, but I think the taste of it all in the end might be sufficient to make the effort worthwhile.  In any case, all of this is speculation, because I still need to buy the cookbooks, let alone the actual materials needed to cook it all!

Civility, Morality, and Basketball

Today I went to a professional basketball game.  Not NBA professional, of course, seeing as I live in Vermont where the NBA is only watched on tv, but not college teams either.  For the most part in the past when I've gone to athletic events, the players played and the fans supported their team, but not to the detriment of the other team.  I thought that was normal.  I guess I was wrong.  The fans at this game today were downright rude.  They would cheer every time a player on the opposing team missed a basket, and they would boo them if they did something right.  They would also try to distract them while they took foul shots, holding up signs like, "That's (insert number here) for the distraction!"  Now, it is true that I have never been to an official professional game, regardless of the sport: NHL, NBA, NFL, or major league baseball - and maybe that is the norm for real games.  But it seems to me that sportsmanship should extend to people watching the sport rather than just the players.  Basic moral principles should not be thrown out the window for the sake of one's particular team preference.  Or maybe that's just my opinion, and the sports world would consider me practically illiterate in the knowledge of what is appropriate and what isn't.  Maybe I'm holding everyone to a higher standard that isn't normal.  But I think that "Do unto others as you would have them do to you" is a guideline that affects more than just everyday interactions with people.  That command was directly from Jesus himself, and he also asked us "not to conform to the patterns of this world," which to me would indicate more of a conscious decision to try to be more like Jesus. 

I think that morality is so overlooked in society today.  This has nothing to do with politics, or what current issues are right or wrong.  It has to do with how we treat one another, and how we act daily, in the little things.  Micah 6:8 says, "He has shown you, o man, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."  We have been given a gift; we have been shown what true mercy, love, humility, and forgiveness look like through Jesus and also through God's interactions with his chosen people in the Old Testament.  And what have we been asked in return?  To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.  To act with grace, uprightness, honesty, and righteousness in relation to other people.  To love to forgive - to be openhearted, kind, and loving, developing the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control).  And finally, to walk with, or to develop a relationship with God.  To rely entirely upon him as the source and creator of the things we are called to be.  In doing this, we are following his will as bearers of his image.  

And so what would be the result of following this command?  The world would instantaneously be transformed if it happened all at once.  I guess that's what heaven will be like; no one will be mean or prideful, and we would all seek each other's best interest, viewing each member of the body of Christ as a precious child of God, just as we should do now.  It appears that I have gone on a rather long tangent from the original story about a basketball game, but I think that there are some ideas to be taken from that game that can be applied daily.  The New Year is quickly approaching, which calls for resolutions.  So this year, I'm going to try to be more like Jesus, striving to "act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God."  

The Christmas season...longer than expected

Merry Christmas!  Oddly enough, I feel like Christmas has already happened because of the large number of Christmas things that have been going on as of late.  If this were true, then Christmas would definitely be more than one day long.  In fact, it would have started on November 2nd, when our Wind Ensemble started rehearsing Christmas music for the annual Gala.  Rehearsals continued all the way up through December 5th, when the Gala actually happened.  The day before, I had played a gig in NH with a quintet that was missing an oboist, and we played Christmas music for an hour for a bunch of people in a library.  Soon after that came the lessons and carols service at church in Hamilton, which was FANTASTIC!  Decidedly the best Christmas service I've been to, probably ever.  After that came finals, and finishing those felt like five Christmases put together.  And finally, a wonderful cookie-decorating party with lovely people was a great way to finish the season.  Except that Christmas still hadn't happened yet.  And so here we are on Christmas Eve, and it sort of feels like Christmas is starting all over again, in a different town with different people.  I really like Christmas, so this is a good thing!

On a different note, I've decided to read the entire Bible in a year.  It'll be the second time I've done this, but instead of reading parts of the Old Testament and the New Testament each day like I did before, I'm just going to read all the way through from cover to cover.  I was going to wait until January 1st to start, but then I just started reading Genesis one day and decided to start early.  So I guess in order to truly finish reading the Bible in a year, I have to be done by December 18th, 2010.  

Well, the clock tells me it's 12:01, so it's actually Christmas now.  Merry Christmas for real this time!  

My brother tells me I am a noob at blogging.  He'd also probably tell me that by notating that comment on a blog, I'm even more of a noob.  Or maybe he'd spell it differently.  But that's ok, because he smells funny since he just came from basketball practice.  Ha :)  I feel like it's also ok because he's reading over my shoulder and laughing, so there's no reason it shouldn't be written.  

I forgot that Vermont is so much colder than Massachusetts this time of year.  It took me a few days to remember that -16 degrees Fahrenheit is NOT in fact the coldest it gets, and by the time the temperature gets that cold it doesn't really mean anything besides the fact that the inside of your nose freezes every time you breathe.  Probably by the time Christmas break is over, 20 degrees will feel practically balmy.  In the mean time, there are several things during the summer that I always forget about cold weather.  1)  Don't put on chapstick when about to walk outside.  Your lips freeze, and there's nothing you can do about it.  2)  You need to leave about half an hour early for everything because there is potential for your car to be buried in 50,000 inches of snow.  If it's not snowed in, it's probably just frozen and you still need about half an hour for it to warm up.  3)  Woodstoves are the best invention EVER, right up there with down comforters.  4)  Wearing ballet flats is not a good idea, because the snow gets inside and then it melts all around your feet, and then your feet are both cold and wet.  Function, therefore, must prevail over fashion.  5)  Sometimes it doesn't feel cold, but then when you're out there for more than 5 minutes, your ears feel like they might fall off.  6)  Studded snow tires might make you feel invincible, but they are in fact fallible like everything else.  Sometimes ice is slippery.  7)  Ice skating is fun, cheap, and you can only go during part of the year.  Ergo, it's worth it.  I think those are all the things I've rediscovered about cold weather this year.  I'll probably have to make the same discoveries next year.  

In other news, I clearly should have attempted to practice oboe, but I'm currently out of awesome music, so that is clearly impossible.  I will have to order more.  I need something that is not particularly Romantic, because I play far too much of that on a regular basis.  So I either need to find something incredibly Baroque or incredibly 20th Century, neither of which are particularly desirable.  It is possible that there's something completely awesome out there that I haven't yet stumbled upon, and it is true that I haven't looked very hard, so perhaps I will just have to make a better attempt at finding good music.  In the meantime, I'm trying to sight-read my way through the hymnal on piano, which should help keep my knowledge of music theory intact.  

Well, that's pretty much everything interesting that occurred today.  A random recommendation: www.mylifeisaverage.com is great, and provides an excellent procrastination tool.  

A blog!

I've never written a blog before.  This represents a new experiment in daily...well, maybe not daily...but sporadic musings on the everyday things.  Today is December 21st, 2009, and I'm sitting here in front of a lovely woodstove in Vermont, decorating a bulletin board to bring back to my room at school at the end of Christmas break.  My mom has been telling me since the very beginning of the school year that my wall looks positively bleak next to my roommate's highly decorative one, so hopefully the bulletin board will remedy the situation. 

Apart from wall decoration and sitting in front of the woodstove, I've done very little this vacation except for cooking dinner for the entire family and discovering a very large collection of records of awesome music ranging from Shostakovich to Bach to plainsong and Gregorian chant.  As a music major and having just finished the entirety of music history, I found this collection pretty fascinating, and have been exploring it for several days.  However, I've listened to it almost exclusively while home alone because the rest of the family doesn't really appreciate it, with the exception of my dad, to whom they belong.  Nevertheless, it gives me an excuse to use the record player, which I rather miss while away at school.