I first encountered an "Ooey Gooey Butter Cookie" back in 2005 while my church partnered with another to help with the cleanup of Hurricane Katrina.

It was a member of the partner church who brought them. But once we tried them, all of us were hooked. So much so that even though we first had them in 2005-2006, a few of us still celebrated finally, finally getting the recipe many years later in 2011. That's how long the memory of those cookies persisted.

Since then, I've made and served them up to others, including co-workers, and I can't stand remaining a gatekeeper for it. It deserves to be free.

So here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup real butter
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg
• an 8 oz package of cream cheese
• 1 box of butter recipe yellow cake mix
• powdered sugar for dipping

Directions:

1. Beat butter, vanilla, egg, and cream cheese until light and fluffy.
2. Mix in dry cake mix and mix well. Chill for 30 minutes.
3. Preheat oven at 350F.
4. Drop batter by teaspoon into powdered sugar. Roll into balls. Place onto a greased baking sheet.
5. Bake for 12 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool on pan.

And enjoy.

...is the first 40 seconds of "My Love".

It starts off a bit unassuming: some generic choir in the background while the music itself is there but also a bit indistinct. Florence's voice comes for only a moment before fading back out. Her voice then unassumingly comes back in and sustains one note while the background voices and music kinda just keep going but not toward any real goal or resolution. After a few seconds, everything but Florence's voice fades away and you realize:

"...she's been holding that note... for a while. How is she- She's still going!" And then the percussion and keys kicks in, and it's just... ugh.

If I'm not paying attention when this song comes on, I'm immediately arrested by it 30 seconds in. And if I am paying attention when it starts, I'll put everything on hold to pay close attention.

I can't think of a single song I dislike on Dance Fever. When "King" was put out as a single, I may have listened to it on repeat 40 times in a row before moving on to something else. But those first 40 seconds of "My Love"...

I think I could listen to it forever.

Maybe if I had something to post on Instagram recently I wouldn't have bothered. Or if I had had this ready months ago. Regardless, here's my 2021 review!

🧑‍🍳 Thanks to Covid, not a lot happened this year. But I did make the best brownies I've ever had. At 9 in the morning. Cause time means nothing (and never would again!)

🥚Even with the pandemic, I was able to visit family some times. Feat. me recording a sister recording a niece

💉 I got a shot or two.

💒 My other best friend got married, and I watched it online! (@samrawiththecamera)

🏠Cue requisite: "I moved this year" photo

📷 Aforementioned best friend's delayed wedding reception!

🪡 To confirm, yes, those buttons are "glued" to my eyes. No, I would not recommend it. Nor would I recommend sewing it into your eyes, Coraline...

🎄Covid didn't stop us from seeing "A Christmas Carol" at @orlandoshakes. Nor did it make me get a haircut. But that's neither here nor there

😡I have no idea what I did to make CM so upset with me, but I love this photo too much to not share

(Hey! I managed to post this even later than last year's! What an achievement.)

✈️ This post begins with the one (1) flown trip in 2020. In the midst of learning about this "novel coronavirus", I needed a break from work. So I took a plane to TYS then drove to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to live in a cabin near a river for a weekend. There's a lot I could speak about this trip. Whether it's being the last person on the plane due to an absolutely amazing experience at SFB to needing to drive through gated backroads (the gates were for flooding areas) to seeing a small cropping of flowers on the side of the river, I had an... exciting(?) time, and I can't wait to travel by air again. Maybe 2022 we'll be back to normalish?

☑️ After registering for it back in 2014, I was finally asked to be a poll worker in Florida this year. My job title was Voter Equipment Technician, which meant that I was in charge of the magic box that you dropped your ballot into. This is a picture I took of the official, public, paper vote count of the results of the Seminole County precinct that I worked, the same precinct that I just happen to vote in. I worked the Florida elections in March, August, and November.

Also, the 2020 elections were open, accurate, and free. And how anyone could claim that election workers across the country, who worked through a global, deadly pandemic to make sure that everyone could vote in the manner they chose, tried to make it otherwise, is beyond me. It's a laughable notion.

🚀 Also in March, the software product I'd been working on for almost a year finally launched. It's literally the first bit of code I have ever professionally written that has seen a go-live. This is a screenshot of the landing page. We'll be launching 2.0 in March.

🎮 Animal Crossing came out this year, and you know The Dream Team played a bit of it together. We've been physically distanced since 2009; you think a little pandemic is gonna affect us???

It is. Please let us visit each other again. Please, I'm begging you. Let u-

🎼 My preferred music service since 2011 was shut down. Google decided to shutter Play Music, even though I and multitudes of others have enjoyed every minute of it since launch. But with GPM shutting down and "transitioning" to YouTube Music (a lackluster comparison, imo), I instead switched to a self-hosted music service called Airsonic. It doesn't have the most features or whatever, but it does serve up my own music on my own devices on my own network. So I'll never need to switch again. Pictured is my Raspberry Pi 4 that's running Airsonic.

⏲️ Whitney, Samra, and I had a Chopped-style competition to see who could make the best meal from random ingredients. (Your own son got cauliflower rice, Flamin' Hot Cheetos, Andouille sausage, and rainbow chard.) I don't mean to brag, but on taste, color, and presentation, we all tied! Pictured is my kitchen aftermath.

🧑‍🍳 Last is a collage of all the foods I got to cook over Thanksgiving and Christmas. Starting with pumpkin pie, then turkey stock (delicious), homemade pizza, and finishing with grilled steaks. Not much to add here except to highlight that I feel I'm becoming more comfortable in the kitchen and in kitchen-adjacent areas.