Applications of Doom, Chapter 1: In which I wonder, "What the heck ARE my professional goals anyway?!?"

Grad school applications. UGH. Although I realized that only one of them is due by Wednesday; the other two aren't due for two weeks and five weeks, respectively. But the one I am currently struggling to finish before Wednesday is being met with opposition in the form of writer's block. I've reached the essay stage...up until now it was easy enough. But now I have to answer the following prompt: "Describe your educational and professional goals and tell us your specific reasons for choosing to apply to (school) as you pursue these goals."

My first draft looked like this:

I WANT TO PLAY OBOE FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. (SCHOOL) IS AWESOME.

I deleted that approximately 15 seconds after I hit the final period in the second sentence. In fact, I'm surprised it even lasted that long. FRUSTRATION.

Now, after writing a full 259 words in pursuit of answering the age-old question (simplified, obviously) "What do you want to be when you grow up," I am still at a loss. My essay doesn't really answer the question posed, and now I only have 241 words maximum to do so. Clearly, I'm procrastinating by blogging instead. It's much easier to speculate about the future when there isn't the threat of a room teeming with application evaluators breathing down my neck. Maybe that's an exaggeration. But still.

BUT STILL!

(You can't argue with that, right?)

Snow!

I love snow...how kind of winter to arrive whilst I am still at home!

Home for the Holiday

I got home last night around midnight, and was greeted by lots of stars, crisp, cold air, and a fire in the wood stove. Oh, dear wood stove, how I've missed thee. After trying an oboe and determining that the first one was far better, I went to bed.

We had a pretty lazy morning, though that was cut slightly short by an 11:30 doctor's appointment for one of my dear brothers, who was subsequently diagnosed with walking pneumonia. Great. Incubation period: 2 weeks. Events happening in two weeks: exams, two lessons and carols services, and student teaching stuff. SPARE ME!!!

Moving on. For the rest of the day, we didn't really do anything. However, what would a trip home be without baking, some Photobooth, and dancing in the kitchen? (Answer: uncharacteristic and rather sad.)


(This is the non-infectious brother)




Pictures of the red velvet cake we made this evening will have to go in a separate post, because they are on a different camera which is currently unavailable.

Grr

This marks the last time I will complain about this, but....

I am very, very tired of being sick. I think I have caught every single cold that went around campus over the past two semesters, so I guess I'm making up for the lack of colds I had during my first 2.5 years of college. Maybe if I get all of this sickness out of the way now, I won't have any while student teaching.



Yeah right.

What NOW, Public Safety!

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a trio of girls in possession on a good amount of free time, must be in want of something to do. However little know the feelings or views of such a group of girls may be on their first waking moments in the morning, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the general populous, that they are considered as the rightful property of whatever ideas may enter their minds.

This truth was, in fact, universally confirmed one Saturday morning when Meghanne, Lauren and I decided to rid ourselves of our slowly decaying mini-pumpkins. Not only is it a truth universally acknowledged that we come up with strange things to do when bored, it is also a truth that certain things on campus are prevented by the threat of minor monetary fines. Sometimes, however, they are not prevented if the people committing the "felonies" are certain they will not be caught. So here is our (or maybe just my) confession:

We threw our slowly decaying mini-pumpkins out of our third-story window.


AND IT WAS FUN.


Here is the evidence.


The orange dot well to the left of the rock is mine, and the orange dot on the the near right side of the rock is Meghanne's. Michelle and Meghanne had thrown theirs out the window the night before.

We then proceeded to inspect them for damages, and then throw them into the pond. Maturity level: severely below what it should be.







And post-throwing:

Recital COMPLETION!

So as of yesterday at 4:20ish pm, an event that I had been dreading for 3.25 years finally happened. I no longer have to live in constant peril of my senior recital! Hooray! Actually, it was kinda fun. Meghanne did my hair, which took a long time. A very long time. And a TON of bobby pins. It went in stages. First was the curling process:


One curl came out looking really cool! Also, my hair looks slightly blonde here. Weird.


While Meghanne curled, I played with sticky tack that I found on the table.


The curls left me looking a little like Shirley Temple, so then we put them up.


Then Meghanne did my makeup too, and then it was off to rehearse some Bach and Mozart before performing it for real. Then the recital happened!

Analysis:

Bach - violin and company, sweet. Jillian - decent

Mozart - decent

Intermission - spectacular

Herzogenberg - movement 1, fantastic; movement 2, decent; movement 3, mostly in tune; movement 4....apparently unnoticeable near disaster! But we ended together, so it was ok.

Saint-Saens - my embouchure was tired, so with that in consideration, decent

All in all, maybe not my best work, but everyone that was there said it sounded good, so I guess I'll take that. Let's just hope that grad school auditions are up to par by February!

Post-recital, we had a party! Lots of people came, including but not limited to:

My lovely apartment! (Note: please pardon the blurriness of all of these pictures. My camera is slowly dying.)


And our moms!


And Nathan, Sarah, and Andrew!


A lot of other people were there too, but I don't have pictures of them on my camera. Sad! (If you happen to have some, I'd love them!)

Finally, the day was over, and we took the bobby pins out of my hair. Whoa.


I needed some help with that, I guess...



Then I went to bed. All in all, a good day! And now I don't have to think about it anymore!

No good....

Sickness is a very bad thing to have two days before a recital. Luckily for me, I have apple juice and vinegar, zinc, and probably echinacea somewhere. I think I can fend it off. Argh.

Here we go....

Official recital countdown begins today, as it's only 1 week away...t minus six days (not counting today, of course).

To do:

-PRAAAAAAAAAACTICE
-Coordinate string/trio rehearsal(s)
-Practice
-Finish transcribing the viola part for Bach
-Practice
-Sleep? (HA!)
-Practice
-Oh right. Normal school.
-Practice
-Play a recital
-Not die.

That's all.

FINALLY! CURRIED CHICKEN!

I've been meaning to make chicken curry literally all semester. And today, I finally had time (ok, maybe I didn't have the time - I should have been practicing or something) to do it. I used this recipe, although I added probably 40% more curry than was called for. I really like curry. Anyway, this is how it turned out!


Then I made some rice - because heaven knows you can never have curry without rice - and some broccoli so that I could be healthier. So it was a good lunch.


What I really want to do is find a recipe for curry like the kind we had at Bangkok City in Boston which was spicy enough to make my eyes water for a solid 5 minutes after we left the restaurant. This was a slightly different type of curried chicken, but it was still pretty good. I'd recommend it if you're looking for a good chicken curry recipe.

Dinner?

You know you have too much to do when you resort to precooked chicken cutlets for both lunch and dinner. But you know...sometimes they just taste good. Or at least, they don't taste bad. On Friday, I'm planning to make real dinner in the form of stuffed bread, because this recipe looks really good!


I experimented with stuffed bread yesterday, just putting in pizza toppings, and it turned out ok. The crust didn't look like the picture though - the picture looks all smooth and monochromatic, and mine was a little browner in some areas than others. I have a theory that if I brush some melted butter on the top, it'll look a little more professional. I've decided that I often make food that (in my opinion) tastes pretty good, but it never looks the way I would like it to do. You know - the kind of food that you see in magazines and copy the recipe just because it looks amazing. But I guess it's better to have it taste ok and look not so great than have it look amazing and taste disgusting. It's a tradeoff, really...maybe with a lot of practice I'll be able to make a cake, eat it, and make it look awesome too!

Church Music!

I bought this album on iTunes the other day:


...and I have been listening to it nearly nonstop ever since. I fear that I have become a more of a nerd than I was before...but I see nothing wrong with loving hymns. What does that make me? A hymnophile?

Hmm

Ahem.

I just want to take this opportunity to notate my thoughts about the music for this year's Christmas Gala. However, since I believe that common practice dictates that a picture is worth a thousand words, here is a photo:


....am I wrong in thinking we are revisiting 7th grade?