C is for Cookie

Yesterday at work we had a cookie competition. Everyone was supposed to bake some cookies & then bring them in. The lady who organized it had recruited 4 impartial judges to rate the cookies. We prepared 4 plates that each had one of each type of cookie on it. There are only 11 of us, but I think there were only 6 kinds of cookies to be judged. But of course when you bake cookies, it always makes more than 4 cookies, so everyone brought in the extras to share. And when food is brought in to be shared, it always ends up in the cube right next to me (not by my choice – just a lucky, or unlucky, side effect of where I sit). Last week it was bagels, and yesterday was cookies. Cookies OUT THE WAZOO! We all had serious cookie overload by the end of the day. Results in today, and I’m disappointed to have only gotten 3rd place. I thought my cookies were much better than the 2nd place cookies, and at least as good as the winning ones (which were tasty, but much less original). Oh well. For my prize, I got 3 new bottles of sprinkles for my effort.

RAT UPDATE: The rat is still at large, which is not making me happy, because I refuse to park in the garage until we can either catch it or be completely certain that it is gone. This morning was my least favorite morning, sitting in my car while it warmed up enough to melt the frost on the windshield. Yes, Josh did offer to start it for me so it could warm up before I got in – but I politely declined, completely forgetting about the fact that it was super cold & there was frost on the car. That sort of stuff just kind of goes out of your mind when you are used to parking in the garage. Josh took some time today to pull some things out of the garage to see if he could determine if there is any remaining sign of it in there. He found no evidence, which could be good or bad. By the way, we did set some traps, but they are un-touched.

FUN PURCHASES: We’ve made some fun purchases in the last week. We bought a new airbed. We noticed towards the end of Josh’s dad’s visit that the airbed seemed to be getting kind of flat. He said one night he woke up in the middle of the night sleeping on one edge of the bed and the other side was completely vertical. Oops! Not good. We did some investigating and actually found the hole pretty easily. We attempted to patch it, but unfortunately the hole was right on the top, which had sort of a velvety surface, and the patch just wouldn’t stick well enough to completely patch the hole. So we now have a new airbed to try out when they come after Christmas. We also bought (and received) our Christmas present for ourselves (with contributions from my mom & others). We are putting a DVD player in Josh’s car – like, one installed in the ceiling. We are hoping this will make the drives to Disney & Fripp much more pleasant. Finally, yesterday I bought my Christmas present – a KitchenAid stand mixer! I never registered for one when we got married because for one, I thought the price was ridiculous, and also I just didn’t think it was necessary. My mom had always only ever used a hand mixer, so I figured that was sufficient. But lately I have found myself baking a lot of stuff with dense, sticky dough, and have nearly dislocated my shoulder a few times trying to mix it with the hand mixer. So I decided on Tuesday that I wanted one, and went out yesterday & got it (the 20% off coupon from Bed Bath & Beyond helped make the price a little more reasonable). I think I’m going to give it its first try tomorrow night, by mixing up some dough for Christmas cookies. Based on the comments I’ve gotten from others, sounds like it will be my new best friend!