This is a three layer chocolate cake with strawberry jam between the layers and white chocolate covered strawberries on top. I spent six hours over the course of two days working on this cake for my friend. It was my first time ever making cake and frosting from scratch. The friend I gave it to actually squealed in happiness when she saw it, and everyone who ate it said it tasted really good. It wasn’t quite as pretty as I was hoping, but I was incredibly pleased with it nonetheless.
Two lists before bed.
Done List (for the week of January 22nd-26th):
- Wake up really sick on Sunday morning and spend the day in bed
- Watch a football game and a half (ending with the results I didn’t want)
- Read some of Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
- Read the first chapter of Introduction to Quantum Mechanics and enjoy it
- Go to work and hand-write thank you notes three days of the week
- Happily sit through my least favorite class two times because I’m really fond of the kid who has decided he should always sit next to me
- Go two days with essentially zero sleep (resulting in being in state likely to be considered insane)
- Have two really good dance classes
- Have two really good ultimate practices
- Finally get all of my new ultimate swag
- Complete first two psets of the semester (despite extreme cases of illness and sleep deprivation)
- Decide I really really want to be in Seattle this summer
- Read some more of Kant’s work and not really understand it
- Spend plenty of time with someone becoming increasingly important
- Start enjoying the weekend Wednesday night
To-Do List (for the weekend of January 27th-29th):
- (Finish) making a really fantastic cake
- Quantum PSet
- ODE PSet
- Java PSet
- Meet with a professor to get recommendations for summer programs
- Read Rousseau’s Basic Political Writings
- Call my mom
- Extensively celebrate the birthday of one of my favorite people
- Buy milk
- Sleep
An hour-long speech later.
And I still am not a fan of President Barack Obama. He said two things I agree with (and I’m not stubborn enough to pretend I don’t), but overall I find his political viewpoints extremely disagreeable. Also, certain things he said about America being “an indispensable nation” and the like really irk me. Nationalism is natural, and really I think you should have pride in the nation you call home, but comments like that just seem so naive to me. From everything I’ve seen in history, people and nations come and go. How arrogant to think we are that much better than the rest of the world.
Sometimes you just have a bad day.
The ten hours of sleep you got the night before just wasn’t enough because you’re sick. You go through the day in a stuffy, achy, hot/cold daze. You can’t focus on school work or work work. The smallest negative comments push you into a zone of agitation. You replay sad days in your head despite your best efforts to be positive. You’re torn between wanting someone to hug you and tell you it will be alright and wanting to be left completely on your own. You try your hardest to brush of the little stresses, work past the illness and exhaustion, and just get stuff done. But as the night rolls in you find yourself just sitting at your computer, staring at the blinking cursor on the blank document intended for homework, listening to Mumford & Sons, and wishing you could be transported to somewhere different—another time, another place, another body, another life.
Also,
It’s snowing outside!
The first (winter) snow (because I don’t count the freak Halloween snow) makes me so happy. There’s just something so wonderful about it.
Update: This is what I woke up to. It’s beautiful, really.
