I feel like I have been chained to my kitchen for the past few days. Although I haven't made anything of any nutritional value, I have nearly exhausted my lifetime supply of granulated sugar.

I have decided to use my cooking for good and not evil. Now whenever I have a meeting coming up at work, even if it's one that I'm not attending but I'm helping set up, I bake something to take there. It's always nice to have something homemade at a meeting, isn't it? And I love baking, and I love sharing food with people, so this seems like a good, positive outlet for my culinary urges.

So on Wednesday night I made a MILLION chocolate chip cookies. They were a big hit at work, although they turned out browner than I would like. You see, I can't just do one thing at a time. While I was baking the cookies I was...

1. Talking on the phone to my mother for over an hour,

2. Watching the news about our impending take-over--I mean war--in Iraq, and

3. Reading the Vanity Fair article about Michael Jackson. (What a freakadeek!)

Therefore, I kept forgetting to check the oven, hence they turned out with a unexpected and unwanted ingredient... carbon...

And tonight I really went to town. We have the high school teachers over in our building tomorrow morning for an AM staff development thing, so I decided to make my Aunt Mary Lou's coffee cake, which is soooo yummy. I made it with blueberries this time, although sometimes I do it with cherries.

And after our AM meeting with the faculty, my building is having a March birthday potluck because we have so many birthdays in the office this month. I'm not one to be outdone at a potluck, so I made my family-secret banana pudding... yummy... That is usually a hit in any setting, so I hope the people there will like it too.

I'm starting to get a reputation as "that 23-year-old boy who COOKS!".

Did I mention that I want to take up crocheting as well? I always feel like I'm wasting time when I watch TV or a movie, so I think it would be fun to do something to occupy my hands and then have something to show for it when I'm done. I don't know where this sudden industrious bug has come from, but I like it because I don't feel so schlumpy any more. Yay!

This diary entry is Iraq-diatribe-free, you will notice. I feel so powerless right now that I can't even talk about it. I hope everyone else out there is doing well.