Visions of sugarplums

• Pursuant to a discussion of cookies in mollpeartree's journal, I uncovered this useful scientific article on "biscuit classification". It reminds me of nothing so much as our primitive lunchroom attempts to concoct a taxonomy of Hostess® snack cakes executed with a degree professionalism which was far beyond us in high school. If I understand the criteria correctly, the confusingly cake-like black-and-whites (Amerikaner zu den Deutschen) would also be classified as "pseudobiscuits". But that's a call I should probably leave to the experts.
• There's a commercial for SuperTarget® on the radio which keeps touting quick, easy dessert recipes. But the only example they give is "Black Forest mousse", which is made from "Jell-O® chocolate pudding, Oreos®, and canned cherry pie filling". It sounds like something thought up by two seven year-olds, yet the announcer urges you to inflict it on your co-workers. I've got no use for a lot of mine, but I doubt I really hate them that much.
• When I stopped by monshu's last night, I found a package of chocolate-coated Lebkuchen on the table "for the trip down to St. Louis". Cause, yeah, you know, we may have a problem with there being NOT ENOUGH COOKIES in that car, or something.

Razing the bar

Why can't I be wrong about the right things? I think I've written a flawless paragraph of polished German prose and then I find out I've forgetten something minor--like, you know, to conjugate any of the verbs or something. But when I put off exchanging my obsolete cell phone for a shiny new one, doing the deal turns out to be every bit as torturous as I feared. And then some. I'm just praying that their in-store customer service is in no way indicative of their telephone customer service or I'm going to have more to regret.

Since the first trade-in they gave me didn't work, the first thing I did with the one I have was call my sister in STL to make sure I'd have no problems reaching anyone there during my trip. As long as I had her on the line, I thought I'd confirm that plans for tomorrow night had reverted from "dinner at pizza restaurant with the entire crew" to "quiet time with Mom chez elle". It went something like this:

Doofus Brother: So I guess we're getting together with Mom Friday night and we'll see you all on Saturday.
Third-Time New Mother: Yeah, that's the plan.
DB: Thank goodness we're not going with Mom's idea to have a big elabourate dinner out with everybody.
TTNM: That wasn't Mom's idea, that was mine.

D'OH!

So I promised her I'd call on Friday night with suggestions for when we could get together over the weekend after reminding her that I'm such a good sibling, I'm planning to make a special trip down for the christening, whenever that happens. Hopefully that means that she'll think twice before taking her gifts for me back to Lord & Taylor and swapping them for catepillar baby outfits and a new blouse.