Applications of Doom, Chapter 423,987,268,522: In Which I Rejoice Greatly

I'M DONE I'M DONE I'M DONE!!!!!!!!! With ALL of them! Now I just have to schedule one more audition and figure out how I'm going to work the two auditions scheduled on the same day, but all the thinking stuff is done. HOORAY! And I finished them all before the end of the year. Happy 2011, world!

Applications of Doom, Chapter 423,987,268,521: YUCK

I hate, hate, hate writing resumes. Is it ok if I just submit my already-created artistic resume in place of a legit one? For everything I ever apply for? Life would be so much easier. Thanks, application deities.

Fajitas!

I made dinner for my family tonight in the form of fajitas and salsa. They turned out very well! I was excited. I'd never made steak by myself before, and I did! It was tender and marinated and delicious. Then I made some onions and some peppers and some salsa and some rice, ripped up some lettuce, poured some grated cheese into a bowl, and put it all on the table. It was quite successful, if I do say so myself....Chipotle, homemade style.

More cookies!

My brother and I made some more cookies tonight. Apparently, trips home are synonymous with baking so much that by the end of the time, we're all close to diabetic shock. My guide was this recipe, but instead of using pre-made pie dough, I made my own. Homemade stuff just tastes better, no matter what. I altered some of the ingredients in the pie dough - I added some vanilla, left out the salt - and instead of using Hershey kisses for the filling, I used these things:


Tasty!

Because I made mine a different shape than those in the guideline recipe, I decided to drizzle some chocolate on top to make them look a little nicer. This is how they came out:

Help...

For the entirety of my life, I have been morally and/or fundamentally opposed to one of the world's most widespread fashion trends: skinny jeans. Mmhmmm....as in, I could have written a book on how much I detested them. But today my mom, my brother, and I went shopping, and they somehow managed to get me to try them on. Maybe it wasn't that hard; I will try on pretty much whatever anyone hands me. That could be a problem, but so far it's been kinda fun. But I digress.

I tried them on with some boots...and then with flats...and I may have had a life philosophy change. I don't know what to do with myself, and I am evidently desperate enough to have taken one of those "Look at me standing in front of a mirror wearing weird clothes and holding my camera" pictures. So I am asking for help. Oh wise and wondrous blogosphere: is this a step in the direction of sweetness or is this a severe and grave mistake that will land me in the depths of fashion Hades?

Pirates 4

What do you think of this?

Nota Bene

Random fact: because I was born on Wednesday, February 22nd, 1989, I will be turning 22 on the second day of the week in the second month of the year on the 22nd day of the month in 2011. The numerical symmetry of this event is blowing my mind, and just because of that, it will be the most epic birthday ever.

Christmas Baking

I enjoy cooking and baking a little too much - my arteries may well one day self-destruct. Yesterday, I made dinner including pasta sauce with 5 tablespoons of butter. (I did make carrots too, but I didn't photograph them.)


After that I made chocolate mousse...


After that I made mint "oreos," shamelessly taken from another blog. But hey, they tasted good.


But the crowning victory/artery-clogger of the evening came in the form of the Snickers cupcakes that Sara and I made. Artery-clogger is an understatement. These are possibly the unhealthiest cupcakes we have ever made....but they taste SO GOOD. We got the recipe here. First we made the cupcakes, admittedly from a mix, but with excellent added ingredients including oil and sour cream.


Once they were done, we filled them with chocolate mousse, made from whipping cream, vanilla, and melted chocolate chips. Our first attempt at that kinda failed, because our melted chocolate re-hardened. Weird. But we made some more and continued.


After that, we frosted them with homemade buttercream frosting (including two sticks of butter, three cups of powdered sugar, some vanilla, cocoa powder, and a little milk) and topped them with bits of chopped up Snickers. They came out beautifully!


Sara and I enjoyed them throughly.


We may both suffer heart attacks in the next few days, but at least our mouths will be full of cupcake.

Erie, PA!

Fact # 1: Erie is the farthest west that I have ever traveled in the US. Sad, right?

Fact # 2: Traveling to Erie was a lot of fun!

Nathan, Sarah, and I left on Friday morning around 8, picked up Lisa a little down the road, and were on our way soon thereafter. In the parking lot where we found Lisa, we also saw Mr. Buswell, a violin teacher who taught at Gordon and who just so happens to be a rather famous, internationally-renowned soloist. Exciting!


We didn't stop and say hi though, because we may or may not have been running slightly behind schedule. 9 hours and lots of toll booths later, we made it to Erie, where we met Andrew and other family members too. In my opinion, roadtrips with good friends are great, even when you're really overtired.

The next day was Andrew's 21st birthday! Happy birthday, Andrew! We celebrated first by going to a rehearsal for the Christmas service/concert the next day, but then with Chipotle-style "wraps," Funfetti cake sans frosting, ice cream, wine, and a movie later that evening. Yay!

On Sunday, we went to church in the morning, worked on our puzzle in the afternoon, and then went to the service/concert at night. Playing at the service/concert was actually the point of going to Erie, but it was only one of the many highlights of the trip. Fact # 3: this church is gorgeous. Here's the view from the oboist's chair...


As previously stated, Christmas concerts like this one are what make Christmas truly Christmasy for me. This one was no different. How wonderful it is to have the opportunity to play glorious music (which, as musicians, is what we like to do best) to celebrate the birth of Christ. Moreover, it's a collaborative effort, and something that is deeply meaningful to everyone present. We looked fancy in our concert dress too! Fact # 4: my friends are super, and I love them all dearly.


Post-concert, we went out to birthday dinner at a hibachi restaurant. It was so cool! They cooked the food in front of us, and it tasted delicious!



They gave Andrew some fried ice cream for his birthday, which was a little weird.


Finally, the next morning we finished our puzzle (Lisa, Sarah, and Andrew did most of the work, but Nathan and I helped too), ate a little breakfast, and went on our way.



Now we're all back on the East coast (or in Vermont...which has no coastline), but it was a lovely, lovely trip. Let's do it again sometime.

The Tea Experiment

One night, I was lying awake because I was coughing, so I got up and made some tea. Because it was really, really late, I got tired, placed my mug on the heater that is right next to my head, and went to sleep. In the morning, I noticed (NOT surprisingly) that some of the tea had evaporated. Instead of immediately cleaning it up like any normal person would have done, I decided to perform a science experiment and see how many days it would take for my approximately 33%-full mug of tea to evaporate completely. As it turned out, it took three days. By that time, it had become a wee bit more difficult to scrape the dry, crusty tea bag off the side of my mug....

Happy birthday, blog!

I just checked, and discovered that my blog turns one year old today. Awwwww. It's still so young. Also, if I write three times tonight, I will be at 100 posts. It's happening.

Traveling Adventures!

Look! On the way to Erie, PA, we found a bathroom with reindeer on the doors, all individually named. This is apparently my reindeer, as she was clearly named after me.



Pardon my unkempt, I've-been-traveling-in-a-car-for-too-many-hours-and-I-haven't-slept-in-several-days appearance.

Oops

Confession: finals week led me to break both of my unbreakable fashion rules:

1. Never, never, never wear leggings as pants.

2. At all costs, avoid looking ridiculous.

Arguably, this outfit was worn only as pajamas, and it was very comfortable, but I'm documenting it here to atone for the error of my ways in the form pictorial humiliation.

This Christmastide...

This evening, we celebrated Christmas with what was undoubtably the most glorious Lessons and Carols service on the North Shore. With a 38 voice choir, a 38 member orchestra, and an exceptional music director, how could we expect anything less? For me, this service truly represents what Christmas is all about: it's not about festivities, it's not about presents, it's not about winter weather, it's not about seasonal music; it's about Christ being born, and it's holy.

Nathan, thank you for this. What a beautiful reminder of what Christmas is.

"Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people."

The 12 Composers of Christmas

I just discovered this today - a very creative video by one of my professors here at school.



His blog is very, very musical, and he's a fan of mixing various pieces together. This is a humorous, Christmas-y example of his hard work!

'Tis the season of stress, I've decided. I'm making a list. I'm not checking it twice, because I don't want to read it any more than I have to. So here goes:

-Finals - those terrible cumulative monstrous tests that take precedence over everything else, even if everything else is, in the long run, more pertinent to your life

-Millions of rehearsals/concerts - they take up hours and hours of time, and you play the same music over and over again

-Papers - they just take forever, and no one actually wants to read them anyway

-Crazy scheduling - when you look at your planner and realize there's no time to do all the homework that's due

-Nasty weather - when you leave for class, realizing that it's a lot colder outside than you anticipated and you have to go all the way across campus

-Materialism - inflatable snowmen? Really?!?

-Sleeplessness - when you consider yourself lucky to go to bed before 2, and you become easily annoyed at the smallest things because your overtired

-Interruptions - when you just want to get your work done, but you realize that there are more demands on your time than just work


This list is too stress-inducing to continue. Furthermore, being the (generally) optimistic person that I am, I believe in alternative viewpoints.

-Productivity - when you look at your massive list of stuff to do, and realize that you can check a lot of it off. Who doesn't like checking things off lists?

-Millions of rehearsals/concerts - it doesn't happen often that you get to play glorious church music with a full orchestra and dear friends. You might as well enjoy it while it lasts, and you get to worship to boot! Score!

-Crazy scheduling - you feel pretty heroic by the end of the day when you realize that you conquered another one.

-Nasty weather - it may be cold, but you can't wear your winter clothes in the summer. Or you can curl up next to your heater with a mug of tea and a cookie while reading your English homework. Plus you get to wear nice coats.

-Decorations - I've never met anyone that didn't appreciate holiday decorations, regardless of relative tackiness or class. It's an outlet for expressing creativity.

-Restoration - "He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul." It's such a holy time - a time for giving, for forgiving, for repairing, for praying, and for new beginnings. Time to focus on selfless blessing rather than selfish gain.

-Interruptions - when a friendly hello turns into a discussion of theology, and you get a brief reminder that everyone you see on the street is a child of God, holy and dearly loved.

What do we have to complain about?

Hmm

My English class (or maybe just the teacher) continually astonishes me for reasons that usually have nothing to do with the material we read. For example, this moment happened the other day.

::English teacher holds up pumpkin::

"WHY would you throw these away?!? They're perfectly good pumpkins! I mean, you can bake pumpkin seeds with them. You can make pie with them. You can make SQUASH with them!"


Last time I checked, squash was made out of....well...squash.

Lorée!

In other news:

I HAVE A NEW OBOE!!!

I am beyond excited. Maybe one day, I will become truly excellent at playing it. Until then, I will continue to practice until my hands fall off or until Christmas is over. Whichever comes first.

Although I guess to become truly excellent I will need to practice after Christmas as well.

Veni, vidi, vici

That's right, grad school application number one! I CAME, I SAW, AND I CONQUERED! Ok, so maybe that's a little over-joyous since I still have 66% of them left to do, but it feels quite nice to have one checked off the list. Also, most of the work I did on it was concentrated into the last two and a half hours, so if I can do that again for the other two, it won't be so bad at all. However, it left my bed looking a little like a war zone.


...and you can't see the floor. It was absolutely covered in paper that I deemed now worthless and therefore recyclable. Whilst digging through all this paper/music, I discovered that I do not, in fact, play oboe. Instead, I play the hoboe. Who knew?


A welcome interruption came in the form of...well...they say pictures are worth a thousand words...


Ha.

And, of course, as life gets more busy (stressier?), my corner gets messier.


Once I finished, I made some celebratory oatmeal (steel cut oats, of course) with maple syrup, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and called it a night. All in all, minus the power outage that knocked out everything from Wenham to Salem, it was a very productive evening.

A curse upon thee, Artistic Resume.

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?

Microwave Cake, take 3

Each time I attempt microwave cake, it gets a little better. This time definitely surpassed the previous two, possibly because I added six tablespoons of sugar rather than the four that were called for. Nevertheless, recipe experimentation always yields a good learning experience, even if it is at the expense of some of your dishes. In my case, I learned that not every teacup, though to all appearances made out of reliable material, can be microwaved. Also, I learned that you should always, ALWAYS read the information on the bottom of the dish you're trying to heat, as evidenced by my mistake:


Also, the chocolate chips I was trying to melt may or may not have caught on fire.

However, once I figured out the aforementioned information, the cake itself turned out quite well: