In most people with diabetes, lows occur either because we've overcalculated the amount of insulin we need, or because of an impaired, inhibited, or insufficient glycogen response. While this is obviously an oversimplification, I remember reading that either autoimmunity or modern insulins did weird things to the glycogen response in people with type 1 diabetes, and I know that at least one class of oral diabetes drugs works by inhibiting, if not completely blocking, that response. Then there's the issue of undereating, or not eating sufficiently, for there to be glycogen stores that can be easily converted to fuel our bodies — and, of course, drugs such as glipizide which work by stimulating additional insulin release.

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In one of my high school English classes, we had to read Samuel Beckett's play of this name. Thirty-some-odd years later, I don't remember the details, only that it centered around two men who seemed to be relatively old, penniless, and alone. They met at a particular spot each day, left each evening, and could only remember one day past and think towards one day forward. They awaited a third character, the eponymously named "Godot", who never arrived. The style was considered existentialist in that there wasn't all that much character development: what you saw was what you got. While I never read the French original, in English, "Godot" seemed a thinly-veiled metaphor for "G-d" — and since old, penniless (and possibly homeless) folk have always had the shortest from-this-point life expectancy, it made sense — at least on one level — that these two characters were waiting to die.

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I've not slept well these past few nights.

Not only am I in a strange bed in a place that has not been "home" for over eight years, I'm trying to deal with the financial, emotional, and logistical elements of our current situation. Rather than resting and staying asleep, my mind is trying to figure out how to move our office into our already-packed living room, plus adding additional book cases and filing cabinets, without sacrificing my ability to put up my sewing machine, keep my only means of transportation (bicycle) in the apartment, and find space for sentimental treasures, plus finding a way to monetize that which we cannot keep or store, so that we can finance the process.

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It's a bit late, but I figured I owed you all an update on the 2011 Web Warren Cookie Labs' season.

The Brown-Suited Elves delivered our 15-lb carton of Christmas Magic on the eve of 21 December, as expected. We shipped eight types of cookies, plus spiced pecans. Because our printer was refusing to, well, print, we couldn't do a funny little Christmas poem like we did last year. Instead, we printed up a "shipping manifest" over at the UPS Store. The elves there wear black with gold trim. Sadly, we found evidence of gremlins in their printer drivers, so instead of pretty, double-sided printing, we ended up with five pages of manifest-and-ingredients-list. 

This year, the Web Warren cookie spread consisted of: (READ MORE)

The following filk developed last weekend in the thick of Christmas Cookie baking. You may appreciate the irony of "healthy cookies"...

Oatmeal, the Raisin Cookie

With apologies to Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, Rudolph, Kris, Burl, and the Singing Cowboy, himself...

There are Cardamom Spice Rounds, and Cheese Straws, and Spritzen
Chocolate chippers and others with mix-ins
But even at Christmas we bake
The "most healthy" cookie, by Jake!

Oatmeal, the Raisin Cookie
Had a very bumpy top
And once you bit into it,
You would never, ever stop

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Well, it's that time of year again. The Web Warren Cookie Labs are setting up for the current season's research experi production run. In addition to the usual questions of which general types of cookies to bake, the specific sub-varieties start screaming out for attention.

That we will be "open for business" is without question. That we will be performing a certain degree of "quality control" goes without saying. The sizes of most of the cookies (small to miniature) have been predetermined by previous feedback. The questions include how many varieties to make, and whether to use wheat flour or another flour, sugar or Splenda, butter or yogurt-based blends, how many versions of a particular variety to make, and which ones to decorate.

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