this is what dreams are made of

today was unreal. i taught my kindys this morning with almost no voice, but i made it through. the interesting part of the day was once i got home and attempted to make alex's mom's chocolate chip pumpkin cookies.
i made a trip to this baking store dena told me about on dayou road. i passed right by it the first time, called dena and got better directions, and found it. i missed it the first time because i had been picturing a little quaint store, when in reality, it was the size of the produce section of HEB. there were aisles and aisles of baking things and obscure ingredients. i bought molasses, brown sugar and ladyfingers, all for various projects.

then i went to carrefour to buy milk, ice cream, and butter. i figured that people around the dorm always have eggs, and i knew we had vanilla in the fridge. so i get home, i've creamed the butter and sugar, and i get an egg out of the fridge. but when i went to crack it, it was hard boiled. dena had boiled allll of her eggs for halloween games. aaand, my vanilla extract had been thrown out with the great fridge clean out of 2008. so i walked over to latini's to borrow an egg and vanilla. but i couldn't explain 'vanilla extract'. dan tried to give me a vanilla bean and vanilla syrup, but not extract. so i went to the coffee shop next door, but also had no luck. the woman from the coffee shop ended up walking with me to latini's, where after a few more minutes of pantomime, we finally figured it out.
then, i get back, mix in the egg and vanilla, steal some oatmeal from dena, add the flour (first i picked up the unlabeled bag of cornstarch, but noticed it was oddly bright white and put it down) and other dry stuff, but the can opener wasn't working so i couldn't get into the pumpkin. josh tried to stab it with this other can contraption, and jerry thought about stabbing it with a knife, but nothing worked. so i trekked back to the coffee shop, pumpkin in hand, and the coffee shop woman opened it for me.
at this point, i'm super sweaty from mixing everything in front of the preheating oven in a room without air conditioning, and from walking back and forth between the dorm and latini's twice.

anyway, the final news is that the cookies turned out very well and the dorm is raving about them. aside from the comedy show of making them, the cookies themselves have nothing wrong with them. they're super tasty and pretty healthy. i took a batch to latini's, the spa, and the coffee shop.
the boys went to some pub in nan kan tonight, but my throat is sore from screaming for 4 days and smoke would just bug it, so i stayed home and watched tv and chatted with everyone else for most of the night.
UT plays tech in the morning, 8 am my time! time for bed.