It’s been quite the busy weekend. I brought home work from school Friday and spent Friday night, Saturday morning, and Sunday afternoon and night making out semester exams and study guides for those exams. Saturday night a friend of mine had a belated birthday dinner for me and an early birthday celebration for another friend. They grilled steaks, each was huge and cut two inches thick. It was more than I could eat. We had a wonderful time though.
Sunday morning, I went to my niece’s baptism. It was at one of those huge Baptist churches, where my sister and her family attend church. My brother-in-law refuses to ever attend church with us because he says the singing is terrible, and while we don’t use music, I always find our singing, with all voices, and only voices combined, to be the most beautiful sound. However, the singing I heard yesterday morning was pitiful. The one song that they allowed the whole congregation to sing was merely drowned out by the orchestra and most of the music service was solos and duets. One of the joys of going to church, for me, is being able to sing, and at this church no one was encouraged to sing except those whose voices they deemed worthy.
The rest of my Sunday, not involved in making exams was spent baking. A friend of mine gave me a KitchenAid stand mixer for my birthday, and I’ve been dying to try it out and I always love baking for Christmas gifts, so I made four dozen cookies and a dozen mini loaves of bread. The cookies I usually make are very simple: refrigerated cookie dough, a cup of dried cherries, and a cup of pistachios. When they are done and cooled, I dip them in white chocolate. Everyone loves them. It’s an easy recipe, but kneading the pistachios and cherries into the cookie dough takes a while to get a good mixture, so I decided to make the cookie dough from scratch this year. What has always taken about 30 minutes to put together, took less than five with my new mixer. I was amazed and the cookies look beautiful, but I will wait and dip them in white chocolate tonight. I ran out of time trying to get everything done.
Joe
The Closet Professor 
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