Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

Previous posts here and here about my problems with Hearthsong.
Turns out a friend of mine had the same problem with them this year - ordered toys for her child, they never came.
Yesterday a hand-addressed envelope came from Hearthsong. “This should be good,” sez hubby. Opening it revealed… (are you ready?)
A mailing label. [...]

- My items were not delivered still.
- My promised $6.99 refund for expedited shipping was never issued.
- Hearthsong claims they’ll be shipping items out overnight today and tomorrow.
- I told them to hell with that, I wanted to cancel the remainder of my order and I want a refund for the entire $30 or so [...]

This is the letter that I would have sent through Hearthsong’s Feedback Form, if it had functioned. Which it hasn’t for days. And mail to info@hearthsong.com bounces.
Yes, I checked. They are not owned by Lillian Vernon.
Re: Order #WXXXXXXX
I received 4 items out of the total order. That package was [...]

Finally more about The Nutcracker!

A few weeks ago, David Wyattsent an email to the Austin Bloggers mailing list offering local bloggers the opportunity to attend a technical rehearsal of Ballet Austin’s The Nutcracker. I had already purchased tickets to one of the performances, but I thought that the kids (okay, okay, and me too) [...]

The last grade I’ve been waiting to hear on finally got posted tonight, with literally minutes to spare before the 11:59 p.m. deadline for instructors to turn in grades. Funny enough, the grade I got first was from the final I took last. My Interpersonal Comm final paper got turned in over two [...]

Okay, I am a real tamale snob. I get really turned off by substandard tamales. I’m not exaggerating when I say that these tamales rival the best tamales I’ve ever bought from someone else.
They’re not hard to make, but they are time-consuming. It takes about one minute per tamal to spread the [...]

It’s tamale time again. We’re getting started really late, and we’re about to be out of town for two days, so we need to have them done by then. Ten dozen down, about fifty dozen more to go.
But boy, are they gooooood.

Stöllen
2 cup liquid sourdough culture
4 3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup butter, melted
2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup currants
1/2 cup citron
1 lemon zest, grated
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, ground
1/2 teaspoon cloves, ground
1/2 teaspoon cardamom, ground
1/2 cup rum or bourbon
1 tube marzipan or almond paste
1 stick melted butter
confectioners’ sugar, as needed
1. Soak the dried fruit overnight in rum or bourbon.
2. Mix the liquid culture with 1 cup of the flour and 1/4 cup of the water in a large mixing bowl. This is the working culture. Let [...]

I started my Christmas baking. Sunday night I made Paula Deen’s Monster Cookies (yum) and came out with 5 dozen instead of the 3 dozen the recipe said it would make. Then last night I made 4 stöllens. Today was my last final, for COMM 1306. I decided to bring one [...]

Started out with hubby heading over to Gamestop to wait for their delivery truck. He scored a Wii, extra controllers, Zelda, Call of Duty 3, and Trauma Center.
Then my husband and I independently bought Roombas (robot vacuum cleaners) in today’s Wootoff.
Then I received a call from a professor at school, who had gotten my [...]