Happy Christmassy Things

I'm going to make this brief, as I have plans this evening and much I'd like to do before then. Still, there are some happy little things to share, and I hate to put that off!

First, I'm not sure I've blogged before about the simple "Christmas" candies that I like to make every year. There's nothing objectively Christmassy about them, but if you only make something at Christmas, it becomes a Christmas thing by default.

Take these:


Chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, cashews, and chow mein noodles. (For twelve ounces each of chips, you want about 2 cups of the dry ingredients, but it's flexible.)

And they become these:


Which are not much to look at, but are delicious, I tell you. Crispy and sweet and salty and delicious. And seriously, so easy!

• Chop up the nuts a bit (and trust me, I'm not a cashew fan, but they belong in these), and break up the chow mein noodles into smaller bits.
  
• Melt the chocolate and butterscotch chips in the microwave, stirring frequently, until smooth. (This part is best handled as a don't-leave-the-kitchen task. It only takes a few minutes.)
• Mix in the nuts and noodles and stir until coated.
• Drop spoonfuls onto waxed paper, or into cupcake liners if your aim is better than mine.
  

It's hard to make them tidy! But you can make them any size you want. I made mine last night, and they were fully set this morning. And so, so good.

Next! You may recall some whining from me about the recent non-workage of my VCR, including the realization that my Christmas specials are all on video, not DVD. My mother, kind soul that she is, was touched by my plight, and to alleviate the potential horror of a season without Snow Miser, she sent this:


It's a craptastic picture, but you get the idea: a VCR! She found it at the local charity store, and mailed it up to me. I was thrilled!

So, you say, why are you only mentioning it now, when it arrived a week ago? Well. I've mentioned before how I have this old TV, and of course the setup includes not just the VCR, but also a DVD player and the cable box. So it looks like this:


We're going to pretend that you don't see the reflection of my pajama'ed legs and messy living room here, right?

See all the cords? Very scary. And this is only a workable, not an optimal setup: I can't record on the DVD player, and I have to manually switch a cord to the VCR to watch videos. My plan is to buy the new TV after I am permanently-full-time employed again, and have someone with the abilities make everything perfect again.

In the meantime, this was the best I could do, and it was doing all right until the VCR stopped wanting to fulfill its prime directive (i.e., play tapes). So I switched out the old one and put in the new-to-me one, and ... it didn't work. That is, I could hear that it was clearly playing, but the TV was not getting the signal, and the screen was blank.

So, I stopped. I didn't want to get all fussed about it, so I took a step back. I tried again another day, and same deal (with me, doing the same thing does not always have the same result, so no matter what Einstein said, it's worth trying).

Today, I wanted to watch a Christmas special while I was doing something, so I decided I would make another stab at it, and if it didn't work, I would back away again. In looking over the connections again, I noticed a previously overlooked switch on the back of the new VCR for the "channel 3 or 4" setting, and when I changed that, it works!

I just watched The Year Without a Santa Claus and it was wonderful. It's the little things, man. Happy little things to you, too.