I missed Eye Candy Friday, and for that I apologize. So instead, I’ll give you Eye Candy Saturday. Or rather, Eye Cookie Saturday:

I made cookies this evening to share with my friends during our weekly Lost-viewing get-together. They were a huge success - I won’t even tell you how many cookies the five of us ate altogether. :) But I did promise to share the recipe, so … here goes:

Chocolate Chip Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 cup softened butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 3 cups uncooked oatmeal
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 12 oz. bag of chocolate chips
• approx. 1 1/2 cups dried, sweetened cranberries

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 325°F
• Cream together butter and sugars until well-blended. Then mix in eggs one at a time. Then mix in vanilla.
• In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt, and then mix it into the butter-sugar mixture until it’s just mixed (don’t overmix it). Next, mix in the oats. Then mix in the chocolate chips and the cranberries.
• Drop cookie dough in small balls onto ungreased cookie sheets and bake for 12 minutes. Let them cool about 5 minutes before moving them to a wire cooling rack.

Voila! You have yummy cookies.

In other news, I went to a talk by Jorge Cham, author of Piled Higher and Deeper, at Duke on Thursday.

Jorge Cham at Duke University on April 5, 2007

Piled Higher and Deeper (or PHD for short) is a web comic about grad students. I started reading it when I was one, and I kept reading it because it’s fucking hilarious. That, and it hits way too close to home, sometimes. :)

Grad student Tajel, a character in Piled Higher and Deeper, meets with her advisor

Jorge goes around to schools all over the country, giving this talk. The theme of the talk? Procrastination. (And how it’s a good thing.) I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. My face hurt when the 1.5-hour talk was over. It got better when tonight my friend Mary, who was also there but not sitting with us, told me that the girl sitting next to her was taking notes through the whole thing and didn’t even crack a smile the entire time. Oh well. I guess not everyone can appreciate good humor.

Embrace procrastination: it’s not a disease, it’s a time-management philosophy!

I’m sorry I have no fiber-related stuff to share tonight. I’ve been working hard on getting the pattern written out for that new sock of mine, and after some test-knitters have had at it, I’ll post it here. So, til then… tata (box)¹!

¹ Please forgive me for my horrible biology pun, but all this grad school talk has gotten me back in the mood…