Happy Halloween, friends!

I forgot to take pictures of my dress rehearsal, so you'll have to wait another day or so to see my costume.

I'm pretty confident it will be worth the wait.

eagle-like

Help me out, said the eagle to the dove.
I've fallen from my nest so high above.
Oh, help me fly, I am too afraid to try.
Now saddled with a fear of heights,
I'm praying you can set me right.

A Matter of Balance

I've been planning to 'coach' a class of A Matter of Balance at the Bangor Agency on Aging for a few weeks now. The training session is tomorrow, and after I complete that I'll be ready to help senior citizens deal with their fear of falling.

Tonight, while running up the stairs and talking on the phone, I fell rather loudly. You know what I mean, limbs all over the place, slamming into solid objects. Loud.

My right shin is scraped and bruised and swelling in an unattractive goose egg way.

My left great toe is also swelling and reddish and feverish.

Brilliant.

At least we're starting from common ground.

Mocha Spice and all things nice

Well...today was good and not-so-good. I don't want to say 'bad' because it really wasn't bad. Just not-so-good at parts. I did some grocery shopping. Good. I saw a few one-act plays, one of which featured one of my students. Good. It rained all day, and I was woken up this morning by the shaking of the apartment in the wind. Not-so-good. I tried a new cupcake recipe. Very good. I realized around 1pm that I had student papers to respond to by 10am tomorrow. Definitely not good.

So, you see, today was a mixed bag.

But, overall I think I can say that I am pleased with today. I'll feel better once I get the student papers taken care of.

In the meantime, a word about the cupcakes.

I tried the Mocha Spice cupcake recipe that I found here.
This was possibly the most complicated batter I've made so far, but that was only the case because of the incredible number of spices involved. There was such a great deal of measuring go on. However, all the measuring done, the cupcakes were a success.

The idea of spices including cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and (to me the most frightening) ginger in my chocolate cake was a bit unsettling. But, I think the fact that the cake was more mocha than straight chocolate made me feel a bit better. Who knows.

Anyway, the spice is quite appropriate for fall, or pre-winter as we are now having in Maine. And the basic chocolate icing I made for the top is nice and comforting in its Hershey-ness.

Here's the glamour shot of the cupcakes on the tower my mom sent me a couple weeks ago.


And here is the naked shot. This cupcake is fairly boring to look at, but the flavor more than makes up for that.



















And please notice the blue cup of milk slightly behind the cupcake. I had to drink milk as I iced the cupcakes just because the frosting looked so rich. I wasn't even tasting as I went, I might have gone into a sugar coma if I had.

Taste of Maine

That is probably a misleading title, now that I think about it.

But my weekend can only be explained through the umbrella of Maine. It all began on Thursday when I attended the A Fine Frenzy concert slightly off campus.

If you don't know A Fine Frenzy, then you should get on that. Here's one of my favorite songs, Rangers.

And another, because it's live and just so very good. You Picked Me.


Our concert featured just the girl and the keyboard guy. Apparently this is how they used to do all their playing, but now they have a full band. Anyway...this is not the point.

The point is that Maine managed to pull together about 50 or 60 people for this concert. It was embarrassing. I blame this on poor advertisement. I didn't notice the flyer until the day of, and even then the flyer was unclear. I can only assume that this means the event was not advertised off-campus at all. The concert was paired with the obama campaign and the on-campus early vote day. Still...our showing was poor. More interesting yet, this was a free concert. A FREE concert! In Orono, Maine!

Despite all these factors, there were so few people there that we didn't even fill the upstairs of our small-pub-like off-campus bar. To me... this is indicative of my experience in Maine. I had a great time. I loved seeing A Fine Frenzy and the intimacy of the concert was really great, but underlying it all was my own uneasiness regarding the circumstances.

Oh well.

Then, Friday, after Beth and I saw High School Musical with a bunch of little girls and their mothers, we decided to go to the first home Hockey game of the season. Now there was a strong showing. We should in line outside for about an hour or so, and then we sat down in our seats in the FFF section. (That stands for far, far, far, I'm guessing.) The inflatable black bear's head came out and then a few minutes later, so did the players. We cheered, we listened to two national anthems, and then things went downhill. Northeastern scored three times in the first ten minutes. It was sad. We left early. We ended up losing 5-0.

And I know that Northeastern has a really strong team this time, so it's not all the Black Bears' fault. However, this pattern is also slightly Maine. Excitement, anticipation, disappointment.

For this and other reasons, I ended up at Target today. In the Halloween section. Buying too many cupcake-cessories.

And now...I have something to get excited about.

HSM 3!

Today is the day!


High School Musical 3 opens today, and I couldn't be more excited. Well, actually, I'm sure I could, but as far as Oh-no, Maine goes - this is a big weekend.

My roommate and I have had the HSM 3 opening day on our planners for weeks. Maybe even months. And, yes, I know that High School Musical started out on the Disney Channel and that HSM 2 went directly to video, but we don't judge a good author by her first awkward poems, do we?

The thing about High School Musical is that is combines all the things we dread (or do not remember fondly) - singing, dancing, high school, summer jobs, the bitchy popular girl, first love - in a way that makes them at last palatable.

At least if my high school experience sucked (and believe me, it did), I can have fun watching some kids who have it all figured out.

I mean, what is NOT fun about watching a whole cafeteria of high schoolers dance in formation and sing, "No, no, no! Stick the status quo!"

It's witty. It's colorful. It's innocent. It's social commentary. (This last one might be a stretch, but I'll let you know after I see it.)

And let's be honest, if we all looked like Gabriella and could sing like Troy, our formative years would have been very different.

So, that's where I'll be today. Be jealous. Or just join me.

In other news, I saw A Fine Frenzy last night for free. Details on that when I don't have to prepare for 101.

Letters!

Yesterday I received two letters in the mail. TWO!

I haven't received an honest letter in months. Perhaps not even since I've moved. My mom is quite good about sending cards with little notes and drawings on the envelopes, but letters are a totally different level of personal communication.

I so excited pulled them out of the mailbox to find two different gorgeous handwritings. Both of which I immediately identified. I had never noticed the similarities between my sister's and the Empress' handwritings, but now that I look at them again, it's really uncanny. I wish I could post them side-by-side but that would involve divulging more information than I care to on the interweb.

Anyway, two letters. The similarities, my friends, do not end there. Both ladies wrote me on lovely stationery. True to her nature, the Empress wrote on paisely, gold-embossed paper with a matching sedate, paisely-lined envelope. My sister chose a minimalist black, white and red leaf-patterned note in a crisp white envelope.

Here's the kicker, both letters contained enclosures. And . . . wait for it . . . both enclosures spoke directly to my rather obsessive baking habit. The Empress sent a magazine article on "Canine Cutie Cupcakes" that I'm excited to try out. Don't worry, the cupcakes are for people, they just look like dogs. :) And my sister wrote me up for "Excessive Baking" on one of her Office of Safety and Security citations at work. Seems I was misusing my "License to Bake" permit. My own sister even wrote in the fine. A wopping $35 for sharing my cupcake wealth with the world! The nerve!

Anyway, as you can see, I got too excited about my letters yesterday. I think I need to pull out my neglected stationery and write some letters of my own.

P. S. - True to form, I tried to scan some of my letters and enclosures for blog reasons, only to find that I unwittingly removed the scanning software from my laptop. Of course.