Yale and cake

It seems as though I've let this blog slip away from me yet again. I'm going to be away for a large portion of this weekend, so I will force myself to write something now, no matter what it's about. Here goes:

First, I would like to congratulate my little sister on getting accepted to Yale University. That is such a major accomplishment, and she has worked so hard for this. I genuinely don't know anybody who is more versatile than she is-- she is an amazing artist, a great basketball player, and very talented at any subject she wants to tackle in school. Here is one of the drawings from her portfolio:

You can clearly see why her acceptance letter  wasn't too much of a surprise :)

On a very unrelated note I've also began watching this show on the Food Network called Sweet Genius. It's kind of a stupid show-- overly dramatic, no wildly impressive dessert creations, and the contestants are always ridiculously obnoxious. It seems like there has to be at least one person per episode with an accent that's so heavy that they have to have subtitles on the bottom. The judge (Ron Ben-Israel) also seems to favor all the French people. One of the current contestants is something of a hipster, and keeps making all of these "deep" comments, which I find absolutely hysterical. I'm currently watching a French contestant with a heavy accent make a traditional French cake for the judge, who is also French. Nice.

Anyway, the point is that all the desserts, no matter how good or bad the contestants are, look absolutely delicious. On a related note, my birthday is coming up (well, in two months, but whatever), and I've been thinking about what my ideal kind of cake would be. Not for my birthday, but just in general (birthdays make me think about cake).

I discovered a Minas Tirith cake recently:

Is it ethical to eat the White Tree of Gondor? 

Btw, If you're a LOTR fan or a bibliophile, you should visit my favorite forum, theonering.net. You will not find a more wonderful and and open-minded online community.

And a tangela cake:

Not my favorite Pokemon, but any Pokemon in cake form is more than acceptable

And a butterfly cake:

Prettyyyyyyyyy

As the judge just said on Sweet Genius: "I cannot wait anymore. I must 'ave my cake."

Mozart McDonald Mondays

I have not yet written an explanation of the title of this blog. It might be kind of obvious. I'm not sure what the exact number of times I've mentioned either classical music or dark chocolate is on here, but I'm sure it's enough to write a very small book, provided that I'm not actually looking to get it published by anyone who actually knows anything about music or chocolate.

One of my best friends from high school and I used to have this tradition for bad days. The philosophy of this is basically that any bad day is a Monday, regardless of where exactly in the week it was. If at the end of the day, you are just ready for it to be over, it is a Monday. 

The origin of the "Mozart McDonald" section is a little more specific. We were lucky to have the professor of piano (Jon Kimura Parker) from Rice University visit our school, and at one point, he played a piece for us that I really love (the second movement of Mozart's 21 piano concerto, for anybody who cares). I told him that he had just played one of my favorite pieces, and the next day when he came back to our school, he gave me a CD of his performance the piece, which was (and still is) one of my favorite recordings. And, if you listen to the piece, you can hear how it is a wonderful way to end bad days. It is just great. So, I was driving around town with my friend, listening to this piece, and I noticed a bag of caramels on her floor.

Now, I will preface this story by saying this blog could easily have been named "Mozart and Caramel." I love caramels. They're delicious. And there was an entire bag in front of me. And I was having a bad day for some reason, so I proceeded to open the bag and my friend and we ate those caramels as if we had a personal vendetta against them, stuffing the empty wrappers into the drink holders. After a while, we got thirsty, so we found a nearby fast food place which happened to be a McDonalds, where we both got drinks, and pulled into a parking lot to get them situated. Here we encountered a problem, because with all of the caramel wrappers stuffed into the drink holders, we couldn't fit our McDonald cups into them. 

It was at this point where we had a moment. 

Those moments where you look up, exchange a look, and suddenly realize how ridiculous you are being. 

We can't fit the McDonald drinks into our car because of the sheer magnitude of leftover caramel wrappers from the last twenty minutes, and we are listening to Mozart.

These moments don't happen often, and they are always over something completely silly, but they somehow make your whole day perfect. Outsiders don't understand your moments. When you are having one of your moments, it is YOUR moment. While you read this post, think about the last time you had one of those days and it somehow ended with you falling over laughing, or with you suddenly feeling randomly happy for no ostensible reason. If you were with a friend, perhaps the friend felt it as well, but it is something that is very difficult to explain to anybody else, at least in detail.

That was how that day ended for me, and where a Mozart McDonald Monday (or M3 for short) comes from. It's one of those days that seems to go wrong in every way, and then all of a sudden, you find your moment in something small and ridiculous, and everything suddenly becomes okay and laughable or insignificant. Because in the end, it's just one day.

And in the meantime, there is no shortage of Mozart. Or chocolate.

Rejections

Today, I got a rejection letter in my email for a paid summer internship that I'd really been hoping for, and it was kind of a downer. It's never fun to read those emails. They're always so awkward and depressing and they're not very good for your self-esteem. There is kind of a formula to them that goes something like this (featuring my own translations as represented in italics/parentheses):


Dear Emily 
(that's his/her name, right? Anyone? *checks file* Okay, right, Emily),


Thank you for submitting your application to this program.
(Actually, reading these applications kind of sucks because there are so many !*$&@ applications, but it would be kind of awkward to begin the email like that) 


Unfortunately, we are not able to offer you a position for this summer. 
(well, yes, we are technically able to, but we just decided not to)


We really wanted to accept your application, but we had so many applications this year, 
(as opposed to all the other years, when we get the exact number of applicants as positions we have) 


and unfortunately, we can't choose all the applicants.
(well, not yours, anyway. Unfortunately.)


I hope you understand how difficult this was for us. 
(we know this email must be upsetting to you, but honestly, think of how hard this is on us)


We wish you the very best, and hope you have a wonderful weekend. 
(no, really...the amount of sleep I get tonight will depend on how awesome you're feeling right now) 


Sincerely,
Random Name With Pretentious Email Signature Showing You How Important They Are
(Remember Me? The One You Submitted Your Application To? Back when you had hope for this job? Lol)




While rejection letters are never fun, I wrote up a sample rejection letter containing themes I would like to start seeing more frequently in the near future :


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"Dear Emily aka "Frosty" (lol, your Mu Phi jersey nickname cracks me up every time! It totally fits you),


Your application was so great-- I actually chuckled at the part where you told the joke about the Orc and the moogle walking into the bar, and I was very much persuaded after reading your argument on why every work day should include a two hour ice cream break. What rhetoric! I wish I had come up with that idea, myself! I will also be the first to admit to shedding a tear over the heartwarming story about how you took the money given to you in your great-grandmother's will and donated all of it to the children's hospital, and how the eight year old orphan patient in the hospital wrote you a letter saying that you were her hero because of how many lives you saved due to your selfless and caring donation. 


The problem is, you're actually too good to work for us. We don't deserve everything we believe you can offer, which is why, instead of accepting you, we forwarded your application to ten other big companies who are desperately seeking someone with a breadth of knowledge and abilities as wide as yours. I of course put in my own recommendation along with the application, which I hope you don't mind. I don't want it to tarnish your application because my writing is so bad in comparison to yours, but I was also so genuinely moved by the beauty of your perfect application was that I could not let it slip through my fingers without saying something. 


If you never need money, let me know and I will literally just give it to you because you're so amazing.
Your humble servant,
The Person Who Was Incredibly Honored To Read This Outstanding Application


P.S.You will receive a batch of cookies in the mail by tomorrow-- I just baked them. Attaching a picture of them in advance; if you don't like the look of them, let me know, and I will immediately bake another batch and run to your house and wait for the first batch to arrive so I can whisk it away and replace it with the new batch before you know it."

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