Friday, March 4, 2011

Free Cupcakes and Best of the Week #11

There’s a new cupcake shop opening in DC (as if we need another one, right?), and their cupcake-mobile gave away free cupcakes this week as a promotion. I love me some buttercream, but I am actually opposed to paying for cupcakes (except for Baked and Wired) because they tend to be small and overpriced and just too darn trendy. But free cupcakes? I am always in.

Anywho, back to my Wednesday free cupcake adventure. As you will see (if you keep reading), it didn’t quite work out. Luckily I am absolutely ridiculous, and creative, and kinda bored, and just the right amount of shameless.

It was a challenge, but I found their email address at the bottom of a press release from when a Sprinkles opened in Texas. (True - I’ve developed my slightly stalker-ish contact-finding skills to the max). Then I sat down and composed this email:

Dear Sprinkles,
As a California transplant, I was so looking forward to your store opening in Georgeotwn. And when I saw the news about the cupcake truck, it was literally icing on the cake! I immediately marked my calendar and notified my friends.
Each day I watched as the truck neared the Dupont Circle stop. My friend and I spent all morning refreshing twitter between work emails, anxiously anticipating a deliciously sweet snack break. We couldn’t focus, instead we spent the morning thinking about those coveted confections that we craved. Then the tweet went out: Sprinklesmobile has arrived at Dupont Circle on Mass Ave.!  First 250 people get a free, freshly baked cupcake! At 1:02, we left our desks and ran to Dupont Circle, wildly looking for the cupcake truck. 
When we arrived it was nowhere to be seen. We looked up and down Mass. Ave…nothing. We joined a crowed of likeminded cupcake cravers and walked around wild-eyed and lost. (We even ran to a UPS truck, mistaking its brown front for your own cupcake mobile!)
Finally, at 1:30, we spotted the Sprinkles truck parked a block and a half up on Connecticut Avenue – jackpot! But when we got there it was deserted. We waited, hoping beyond hope that the doors would open and scrumptious Sprinkles would be ours, but after 15 minutes we gave up the chase. We returned to our offices, cupcakeless and sad, feeling duped and dejected at the prospect of a frostingless afternoon.
Oh Sprinkles, why did you do this to us? 
Your cupcakeless fans,
Mollie and **** 
I know, I know, I’m almost embarrassed to be myself. Except not! Because the result of this super cheesy composition was a very nice email including the phrase: 
As a result, I have good news:  we’re coming back to Dupont Circle soon with double the number of cupcakes.  But in case it is inconvenient for you to visit us when we stop by again, I hope you’ll come by our store for a couple cupcakes on us. Next time you’re by M Street in Georgetown, please give us comp # XXXXXX for 2 cupcakes on us.

WIN. Sprinkles has redeemed themselves and I am psyched. Squeaky wheels…oh there’s definitely something to be said for them…

And now back to Best of the Week.

Thanks to Photoman's gorgeous pictures I had my BEST WEEK EVER! My most popular post was Banana Nut Nutella Cinnamon Rolls - it was featured on Tastespotting and Foodgawker.


And to continue with the good news, East Coast Calling featured and added to my Running vs. Jogging list with her post on You Might Be a Runner If...


The news has been full of Charlie Sheen's ridiculousness. I particularly liked Charlie Sheen Quotes as New Yorker Cartoons, most notably:

On a more serious note, "Where Have the Good Men Gone?" from the WSJ, was very interesting and a wee bit depressing. It's about the "extended adolescence" of American 20-something men. Things are not looking good...

This video is awesome. I love popcorn and I love intense slo-mo video technology! (Nerd alert!)


I just like the title of this post from Chris Blattman:

Every time someone takes a job in finance, somewhere in the world a puppy dies


And finally, I got an awesome forwarded email - Life Explained in Graphs. Turns out they come from a website GraphJam. Awesome. Here are some I liked:




Hope you have a good weekend!