Randy Walker

I am 0% Jim Whimpey! =(

For some reason, I can't bring myself to re-read a book. I don't know what it is, but whenever I try, I find myself remembering what happens later and it ruins the experience for me, so I don't finish.

I don't seem to have this problem when I watch reruns of TV shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation or Charmed, for example. I'll sit down and watch an episode that I've seen three, four, five, or even more times, no problem.

Is it detail? When one watches a TV show, one can't slow down or rewatch (TiVo, etc excluded, but you know what I mean) scenes to pick up on details. You're at the episode director's mercy. With a book, however, no scenes rush by, no detail passes your notice. If you do miss something, you can easily flip back a few pages to re-read the pertinent information.

I guess this is why I can watch reruns but I can't re-read. Each time I rewatch an episode of a TV show, there's always a new detail to notice, a joke to finally notice. Re-reading a book just doesn't have the same sense of new-ness.

Two weekends ago, I was craving brownies. Luckily, I had a packaged brownie mix in the pantry. All I needed to complete the recipe was water, oil, and eggs. Uh-oh! Eggs! I didn't have any eggs!

Surely, somebody has had this problem before, so I turned to Google and learned that I could use 1 tablespoon of baking powder, 1 tablespoon of oil, and 1 tablespoon of water in place of each egg. Since my recipe called for 2 eggs, I doubled the above list. I thought to myself, "Self, that's an awful lot of baking powder..." but I shrugged my shoulders and mixed everything up.

I wanted extra-thick brownies so I baked them in an 8-inch by 8-inch pan. About half-way through their 50-minute cooking time, the smell of cocoa permeated my apartment. I was in heaven!

When my kitchen timer went off, I opened my oven and before the I could see inside, I knew I had a problem. Smoke was pouring out of my oven! As soon as it had cleared away enough for me to see inside of the oven, I knew what had happened.

The baking powder had caused my brownies to rise so much that the batter had bubbled over the sides of the pan and had burned into a black sludge on the bottom of my oven. (Good thing it has a self-cleaning cycle!)

The brownies looked fine. Until I cut into them. Without the eggs, there was nothing to hold the batter together as it cooked so what I had was a pan full of thick chocolate sauce. I didn't want to waste it, so I scooped some out onto a plate and tried it. It wasn't bad! It was slightly bitter (from all the baking powder, I think), but other than that, it was pretty good!

After a night in the fridge, I actually had something I could cut and remove from the pan without using a spoon. The results weren't disasterous afterall. I finished the last brownie a few hours ago.

I don't bake often because unless you're pretty precise, things don't turn out (as evidenced by my brownies). That's why I prefer to cook. You don't have to follow a recipe or measure exactly to end up with something that tastes good!

For those of you who haven't yet seen "X-Men: The Last Stand", please do so. Furthermore, it is imperative that you stay for all of the credits because there is more movie afterwards.

Wow, it seems like Winter semester flew by! I did really well in my classes and my GPA went up! I'm happy. I think I'll (finally) be done with school after next year. I'll recheck things this summer to make sure, but I think the time has come.

I'm on Residential Life staff this summer in Pine Grove. I'm still living in the same room, so come visit me! I'm on duty every other week so if you want me to do something, check with me first! There are just a handful of permanent residents out here but during the summer, snowbirds come up for a few weeks and live here.