Cabo Cookies

My boss stopped by my office this morning and asked me a kind of strange, out-of-the-blue question, “Do you have a passport?” At first I thought I’d heard him wrong, and I said, “A what?” Then, the question sunk in, and I excitedly asked, “Do I need one???!!!???”

No, he wasn’t trying to invite me on some kind of sleezy, inappropriate weekend getaway. Every year our company hosts a big meeting in some exotic location. In order to attend this meeting, you have to be nominated by your supervisor and accepted by…someone, somewhere. We found out the other day that next year’s big meeting will be held in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

According to my boss, he got a call from HIS boss (a regional-level manager), who strongly recommended that he (my boss) nominate me to go. That’s pretty cool, because I didn’t even think the guy knew my name. lol…

So…nothing is definite yet, but it’s really nice to be recognized by the powers-that-be…and hopefully, I’ll get to go to Mexico!

And as for the cookie part…

Tomorrow we are having a holiday party at work. People who wanted to participate were given the option to sign up for a gift exchange game. Apparently everyone sits in a big circle with a wrapped gift. Someone tells a story, and every time they say the word “left,” everyone passes the gift in their hand to the person on their left. When they hear “right,” they throw the gift on the floor and stomp on it (no, they don’t really, they actually pass the gift in their hand to the person on their right…I had hoped you’d be able to determine the pattern on your own…). When the story is over, you get to open (and keep) the gift that’s in your hands.

We were given a limit of $10. I decided to try and be crafty and knit a scarf as my gift. I spent around 12 bucks on yarn (but I won’t use all of it, so I didn’t go over my $10) and started knitting a day or two before Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, since then, I haven’t had any time to knit, so my scarf is more of an absurdly long hat than a scarf:

It *will* get finished, but definitely not before tomorrow (unless the scarf-elves would like to come by tonight and take care of it for me…), so I was forced to come up with Plan B for my gift exchange. I decided sometime this evening that I would buy a Christmas (ok, HOLIDAY) tin and fill it with homemade chocolate chip cookies. I’ve made these cookies oh, once or twice before, and they usually go over pretty well, so I figured that was a better gift than just going and picking out a gift card for Starbucks like everyone else is going to do…

After dinner, I ran out to the store to buy some chocolate chips, the only ingredient that I believed I was lacking. When I went to start the cookies at around 8:30 pm, however, I discovered that, oops, I am almost out of flour, too. I debated for awhile, and finally ran back over to the store at 10:00 pm to get the flour. (Translation: I couldn’t come up with a better idea for a gift at that point.)

I got home, ran to the kitchen and hurriedly started to throw ingredients into a bowl. I’ve been making my own chocolate chip cookies since I was 11 or 12 years old, so I don’t need to look at the recipe. Everything was going great, until I opened the brand new, sealed box of brown sugar and found it to be hard as a rock. AHHH!!!

Fast-forward to 11:44pm…right now…I just put the last tray in the oven to bake. I am finishing this blog as I enjoy maybe 2 or 3 cookies-worth of raw dough, which honestly, I enjoy FAR more than the actual finished product. Cookie dough, cake batter, brownie batter, anything that has the potential to give me salmonella…YUM!!!

I’ll be going to bed in 9 – 11 minutes, depending on oven temperature…lol…

G’nite!