Mom and I started the day by getting ingredients for Baking Day. We didn’t get to actual baking until 11am and got halfway done with our list, more or less. Things baked today: Lindy Cookies (mom’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookies), sour cream sugar cookies, “pecan caramel dreams” aka floor sweeping cake (it does look like it’s covered in floor sweepings, but it’s just pecans and Heath Bit O’ Brickle chips), and peanut blossoms (the peanut butter cookies with the Hershey’s Kiss on top – AKA nipple cookies) were all finished today. I rolled about four billion peanut butter balls for the buckeyes we’ll be dipping tomorrow. And mom made the dough for her icebox cookies (which we should call “back porch cookies” since we’re keeping them cold in the back porch, not the fridge).

Tomorrow, we finish the buckeyes and also dip some peanut butter between Town House crackers in the chocolate (mom’s had ’em and says they’re great). We’ll bake the icebox cookies and also make Aunt Alma’s ground pecan cookies (my favorite, but sticky as all get out), and four other things which elude me at the moment. One thing is a munchie that’s damned addictive and sweet. Great for playing cards by. 🙂

So far, I’ve gotten 22 catapult reports graded – woohoo! Only 10 more to go. I’m ahead of schedule there. Behind schedule on the cookbook updates, but I’ve still got recipes coming in. (My cousin Shelly sent in some today – woohoo! And another cousin, Patty, has snail-mailed me some others – woohoo!) Still waiting on Aunt Becky (& Granny & Deanna), cousin Mick, Amy & Rachel, and Aunt Charlene to come through with some recipes. judiang owes me two and elsaf said she’ll think about contributing a few (definitely her Bailey’s Irish Cream ice cream recipe – woohoo!) I’m thinking Thursday will be my biggest work day on the cookbook. That way, Friday I can try the printing and cutting and whatnot.

Not sure I’ll actually do any web work this break. It’s low priority on my To Do list. There are other things I’d rather do and I don’t get paid for the web work (yet). Hoping that once I get caught up on my summer tasks at school (Wednesday?) I’ll be able to spend some time researching ASP and writing the website.

On Nov 30, I challenged everyone on my flist to a Holiday Story Challenge. The good news is that I actually have completed a story for it – woohoo! So far, folks who have decided to give the challenge a try are warinbabylon (who is done and written a good ‘un), timjr (who has written a Halloween drabble – I never said it had to be Xmas – write for ANY holiday), mojober (who has started, she says). There may be others whom I have forgotten. (elsaf has set herself upon a holiday fanfic challenge independently of my own – hopefully she’ll be able to get it done!)

If you have completed the challenge or are still hoping to try something, let me know! I’ll be posting mine later this week, along with links to all of the other challenges thus far completed. Then after January 1st (the deadline) I’ll make a more complete list of links. In case you didn’t want to link back to the challenge, here it is again:

Write a holiday-based fan fiction from one of your favorite fandoms (or least favorite fandoms if you’d rather). You pick the holiday, the length, the characters, etc. But it must be done by January 1st. Post it in your LJ when you’re done. Give it a try – you know you want to!