Journals

Recently, my days have been filled with trying to wrap up at work (T minus 8 working days!) before my last day, doing stuff with family and friends, trying not to think about missing Ann Arbor and Michigan, and also trying to get a job in Charlottesville. Life transitions, guys, they're a lot of work. It's 90% awesome and exciting and 10% terrifying and sad, if you're into the facts and figures.

I also read "The Middle Place" by Kelly Corrigan, which had me nearly in tears and up until 3 am last Thursday night, which I haven't had happen to me because of a book in a long time. Even though I don't have kids and am therefore not technically in "the middle place," it still hit home and made me want to curl up in a little ball and charge forward with grown-up-life at the same time. You'll have to read it to find out. Thanks to Jen for posting a video of her reading something about friends, which also made me tear up, which made me want to read more of her stuff.

Despite not updating the blog much lately, I have been writing in my journal in real-life. I'm almost finished with the journal I started right before college, which is a neat little wrap up, because I had two journals that I finished before starting college. Life stages = journals, very tidy. Never mind that there have been other mini-journals in between. This is important.

Okay, that's all. Oh also the website is still in progress. It has been pushed aside to focus on more pressing matters. Like moving across the country.

Thursday Night Experiment

In my 23 years, I have eaten quite a few cookie dough blizzards from Dairy Queen. That's why it's so surprising that what dawned on me on my stroll home from DQ tonight hadn't ever occured to me before.

Try making teeny cookies out of the cookie dough.

...think about it for a minute. I'll let you digest.

I know, right?! So simple, yet so unbelievably profound. I deliberately didn't search the internet before I did this to see if any other pioneering scientists such as myself have attempted this before, because if they have I just don't want to know.

What follows is my documentation of the process, which (spoiler alert) ultimately ended in failure and a nasty excuse for a cookie. Even if it was very tiny and therefore cute. But that doesn't matter, because it was exciting and what is life if not for some failed experiments, am I right?

Let's begin, shall we?

Step 1: Purchase and consume most (but not all) of a cookie dough blizzard. Make sure you take the time to carefully eat as much of the melted soft serve as possible because that's a critical step you don't want to miss.

Step 2: Preheat your oven to approximately 350 degrees, the universal cookie baking temperature.

Step 3: While pre-heating your oven, carefully rinse the ice cream you couldn't eat off of the cookie dough. This was my first hint that the final product might be a little dicey, because honestly this part was a little gross.

Step 4: Nicely arrange your small cookie dough balls onto your nice baking mat that your friend Britain gave you, who also was the one who walked you to the DQ and also patiently indulged you while you got excited about baking cookie dough from a blizzard.

What an adorable, innocent looking little ball of cookie dough!

Step 5: Remove from oven and experience a great disappointment. Unfortunately, the cookie dough is much, much more delicious than the cookies turned out to be. I should have known that when you take industrial strength cookie dough and bake it, you are essentially baking sugar and chemicals.

A close up of the nasty crispiness.

That is a mega lie, lady. No one could ever love the cookies born of this so-called "cookie dough."

Thank you all for listening.