OCD+ADD=OMG

BBear drops by with all the ingredients for her family's favorite treat :D Christmas Crack!...ok, it's Saltine Toffee, but they call it Christmas Crack because it's so addicting :3

Recipe
Ingredients
1. Brown Sugar
2. Semi-sweet chocolate chips
3. Saltine Crackers
4. Butter

Directions
Step 1) Preheat your oven to 375.
Step 2) Wrap your pan in aluminum foil & grease the foil with butter.
Step 3) In a sauce pan, mix 1 cup of packed brown sugar & 1 stick of butter Heat on Medium-high heat.
Step 4) Stir Continuously until mixture dissolves.
Step 5) Once mixture begins to boil, allow to boil for 3 minutes.
Step 6) After the 3 minutes have passed, move the sauce off of the heat. It will still bubble...don't be afraid.
Step 7) Place crackers in the foil lined pan.
Step 8) Pour Brown-Sugar-Butter-Mixture on to the crackers in the pan.
Step 9) Spread the goopy stuff over all the crackers.
Step 10) Put the pan in the oven to bake for exactly 7 minutes.
Step 11) After removing the pan from the oven, sprinkle chocolate chips over your toffee.
Step 12) Allow chips a minute or two to melt.
Step 13) Once the chips are visibly shiny, spread the chocolate across the toffee.
Step 14) Use foil to lift toffee from pan. Allow the toffee to rest & cool.
Step 15) Place the toffee in the refrigerator to cool quickly.
Step 16) Once cooled Break toffee into bite-sized pieces.

Beware, for I am: Drained

Thank God that today is ending. /Sigh I've gone from anger, to frustration, to depression, to resignation, to sardonic humor, and at this point, I’m just too damn tired to feel anything. So. And update from when I last left you. I finally got in touch with this Think All Publishing place. Turns out, I’ve been billed at least 3 times a month since November. So all-in-all, I’ve lost about $180 to these people. It’s times like these when I wish I could just forget all about my Christianity. But then I remind myself that I walked right into this scam and there really is nothing I can do but be resentful. And what good would that do me in the long run? So, aside from being extremely disappointed in myself for allowing myself to be duped (Paul did say to work hard that no one should deceive you after all), that crisis is pretty much averted. On the good end of the spectrum, I did get my income tax checks in, and they were enough to make the Think All disaster virtually ineffective on my account. During my call to the Think All people, I politely requested that they cancel my subscription (or whatever it is they call it), and have received an e-mail verifying said cancellation. That doesn’t mean I won’t be looking for these people on my next bank statement, but at least I have an e-mail as proof now that it should be canceled.

After dealing with that unpleasant matter, I settled in to watch Robotech. A full start-to-finish thing ending whenever I should finish the Invid saga. I was interrupted half way Mom. Sees Bub (my brother in Oklahoma who’s in college) has found this new thingy called a Green Dot card. Basically he has this card that he bought from Wallgreens, and you can put any amount of money on the card and it only cost like $4.95 to reload it. So, he figures if we get a Green Dot card, and load it, then transfer the money he needs for rent and tools (usually a once-a-month expense but lately, who can say?), it’d be easier than sending said cash in cards. Mom likes to get encouraging cards and send the cash in those. The cards are thicker so they hide that there’s money in them and all that. Plus it’s just sentimental. Well, Mom’s very dubious about the whole thing. Why? Because Bub said three little words…It’s Really Easy. Any time someone remarks on how easy a process is, it will invariably become a troublesome process when my mother tries it. It’s not really her fault. She’s just not very inept when it comes to learning new things. She forgets everything too, so when it comes to doing something she hasn’t done recently, she forgets that too.

So, we head on down to Walgreens and we pick up the card right away. We ask the cashier about the whole process and she flippantly tells us that it’s easy and it’s outlined on the back of the card. We shopped a bit for some other things that we needed. Nothing big, just little things, you know. Then we headed to McDonnalds. Mom wanted a vanilla ice cream cone. The nearest one said their ice cream machine was down, so we went all the way on the other end of town to get one. Their ice cream machine was down as well. Turns out they clean their ice cream machines all on the same day. Today. So they were all down. Aggravated Mom to no end, I tell you. So we ended up going to the Snow ball stand not two streets over from our own. I got a snow cone (Coffee flavored with condensed milk) and Mom finally got to have her ice cream cone. We came home, turned on the watering hoses so the flowers could get a good drink, and set about the arduous task of this ‘easy’ Green Dot card.

...

Don’t you know...it wouldn’t work. We tried doing it over the phone. We tried doing it on the net. We tried putting in several different numbers (they gave us 2 receipts with numbers, maybe those were the correct numbers) we put in Bub’s card number, we put in our card number. Finally Bub calls. Mom tells him the situation and says she’s gonna call the store manager and see what he thinks. He tells us to come down to the store (again) and he’ll do it right from the store.

...

He couldn’t do anything with it. That made me very happy. It only aggravated Mom more, but I found it very refreshing that we were not the problem. So I called Bub (because by them Mom was so upset about the whole thing she didn’t want to talk to anyone), and I told him that the manager told us to come back in the morning and talk to the head manager, because he couldn’t make a refund on a purchase that big.

The whole problem with my Mom is that she feels stupid. She always feels like she doesn’t know what she’s doing and she’s stupid. Everyone else can do things so easily and she just feels inadequate because when she tries they’re terribly hard. My brother is a know-it-all with a tendency to talk down to others. Throw these two together in this situation, and you’re gonna have some hurt feelings. She started going on how she wish she could just never do anything on the computer again, because if she didn't then she wouldn't have to feel stupid. I told my mom that I thought she was a great woman before she got to e-mail and technology and I thought she'd be just fine without it if that's what she prefered. If all she wants for her computer is a glorified game box, then that's all it has to be for her. It's fine with me. /sigh she was sullen and quiet for the rest of the evening...make me sick. I hate it when things come and take the light right out of her eyes.

The only good points about today: 1) We got some Hershey’s Cookies ‘n Cream candy bars (my new favorites). 2) CSI: Miami was very good. 3) The day is over, and soon I can sleep.

I hope tomorrow is better...It just has to be /sigh. Goodnight.

I'm an Evening Sky.



Cool and comforting, you're a brisk evening sky. You figure you've got the same number of hours every day, why waste them sleeping late or hitting the bed early? The most active hours of the day your comfort zone; morning and night are simply time to warm up and cool down.

What sky are you?

Take Other Caffeine Nebula Quizzes

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MM

OMG! Caramel Reese’s are the best candy in the world (for now at least).

Oh! How do you like my background? Cute no? It’s my jelly fish. I figured it was about time I personalized this journal somehow, and what screams MM more than her patented Jellies!

Ok...time to stop with the “Genki-des” routine. Today has been...something. I’m not quite sure what yet. Mom and I woke up early, neither of us feeling very well. We went to church, and when I went to go to the bathroom (second time that morning) Mom was in the halls. She said she’d had diarrhea all morning. Which, startled me since I had been having it too. We assumed it was yesterday afternoon’s taco bell and left it at that -.-

We came home. Mom went lay down, but I got on and tried to make some custom CDs with Musicmatch. I don’t want to lug my huge CD carrier all the way to work, so I’m trying to improvise by ripping the tracks of all my CDs and then taking the songs I really love and burning them to a custom made CD. It worked well for the first one. Then Musicmatch froze and I got tired of waiting for it. I played some City of Heroes and leveled Blackened Senshi. She’s level 4 now. I’m loving her and her sisters. Their powers are really cool...especially her and Golden Senshi. Golden’s a sniper with arrows, and nine times out of ten she’ll have her target drop dead before it runs over to attack her because she can shoot from a distance and fire quickly. After I’ve got everyone on Victory up to level 5, I’ll move back to Infinity and work on my girls over there a while.

After watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition tonight, I think I’ve got a bit of inspiration for a Christmas gift from Reiko and Chibi. I’m not gonna give anything away now...but it’s definitely something that will require a lot of time and work. We shall see.

I’ve also decided that I want to grow my hair out and cut my bangs so that I actually have bangs. I love Rory’s new hair cut from Gilmore Girls and she’s got her hair long, but short bangs. Mom pointed out that Rory has a none-too-small forehead like I do, so the look would probably work for me. And it’s gotta be better than the torture I’ve been putting myself through lately with this hair! I swear, I’d shave it all off if I could. I told Mom that and she was like, “Well, you could. There are nice wigs you can get now.” And I was like, “The whole point of shaving your hair off is that you don’t have to worry about having hair to fool with. Fooling with wigs cancels out the purpose.” Guys have it so easy...

In other news, my Twin and I have been corresponding via e-mail. Not much, but more than…well…the last two months of drought. She says she quit playing MMORPGs (World of Warcraft being her fav) due to her financial status, but once she’s got regular income, she’ll get right back on the RPG horse. I mentioned that after my three month subscription to CoH expires, I’d be more than happy to try WoW. An unpleasant side effect is that now I’ve become ravenous for WoW info. I want to buy the strategy guide and find out about the races and classes and how one plays and skills and roles and all those things. /glares at Jen-Twin-san Stop laughing! You created this monster; it’s your beast! Dammit! /sighs oh well...

I guess I should go ahead and take my pills...If I don’t, I won’t get to sleep till 11, and that does not bode well for one who needs to rise and function at 6 a.m. So, later dudes.

Wow. Today seems to have gone by so fast. It isn’t even funny. I woke up around 9ish to make coffee, have breakfast, and watch Gilmore Girls. I did that. Worked on some EQ: Generations stuff and then Mom and Dad came home from their shopping. They’d gone out to ‘Christmas Shop’ but they came back with another California closet for me.

They got me the second bottom part that I wanted with the three drawers. It now matches better with that other top part so I put them together. You can see the old stack of Chester drawers/California closets here.

We then went to New Orleans to get Dad something from a store he wanted and stock him up at Sam’s. My Dad works off shore as a Control Room Operator. He often buys boxes of candy (Snickers, Milky Way, Payday, etc) in bulk and then takes it out on the rig where he sells it. It makes the men happy and gives him a tiny bit of profit. Not to mention it gives Mom and I ample opportunity to buy whatever candy we want in bulk. As a consequence, I now have a box of white chocolate Reece’s peanut butter cups, Hershey’s candy bars, and Raisinets (the newest acquisition).

It was a little difficult to get around only because we had to go to the store Dad wanted to go to first, which was on a side of town we don’t visit often. But we figured it out, and then headed to Red Lobster...which was closed. So we then headed to a Chinese restaurant in the Lakeside Mall...which was closed. So we headed over to Outback, which was open but we had to wait for 25 minutes before we were seated. But the food was damn good! I got some chicken & shrimp fettuccini. And since Dad didn’t eat all of his stake, I’ll probably have that too. He doesn’t like eating those fancy left-overs for some odd reason...or maybe he just doesn’t care, and knows I enjoy eating them...Either way, it all worked out fine.

We only just got home at 8, and then unpacked the car and we’re finally cool. I shall now go shower, and then rewatch Gilmore Girls and then to bed for me. Goodnight.

On Average, You Would Sell Out For

$1,074,517

At What Price Would You Sell Out?

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MM