I’m probably out of my mind (more than usual). I’ve decided that it’s not enough to help students as they write research papers, plan a wedding (that, let’s be honest here, I haven’t done a whole lot with besides get my veil… at Wallyworld… for $7… I rock!), and be half-orc/elf/ogre/iksar/gnome/kerra/human (x2) DD/EQII characters. Oh, no, I like a challenge. I’ve polled two of my classes and they’re behind me. We’ll see what my class tomorrow morning says, but I’m sure they’ll be supportive too. I’m doing NaNoWriMo 2009. The latter link is to the blog I set up where I’ll write my so-called novel. I think know I’ve lost my mind. Granted, I did “win” last year, but that novel wrote itself, I was merely along for the ride. This time, I’m not so sure. We’ll see what happens.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday I bought a convection toaster oven (this one, actually). Save your breath/typing regarding the fact that I should have put it on a registry so that my friends/family can buy it for us. To refresh, we have a perfectly good gas range. It’s currently not plugged in because there aren’t enough outlets in the kitchen and our wiring is shoddy at best. Therefore, we’ve been manually starting the stove top. That’s no biggie, we can control the temp with the knobs on the front of the range. Do that too for the oven, right?

Problem: the controls for the oven are all electric, so even if we did manually light the oven, the only setting we have is “hot”. For the last two+ years I’ve been using the microwave. I’ve been mostly successful, though some things just don’t translate well (see also: cookies). Granted, I spent less time cooking, but the end result just wasn’t up to par.

So I broke down and bought the convection toaster. I can’t speak for MB, but I’m tired of nuking everything. And there’s only so much I can do in a frying pan on the stove. I sent it on its maiden voyage Tuesday night for dinner. I didn’t know chicken was supposed to be so juicy! Then last night I made pumpkin spice cookies for MB to take to work today, and today I made sugar cookies. I’m definitely making up for lost time! 

And now I can’t wait for the holidays! One of the traditions that I rarely get to take part in anymore is coffee cake. Every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, my mom makes a coffee cake for us to eat at breakfast on the morning of said holiday. When MB and I went to Florida last March, Mom made a coffee cake for us/me. Oh, how I missed it! Now all I need to do is rob from my registry again and get a Bundt pan…