It's Girlfriends Cyber Circuit time, and this week Jennifer Lynn Barnes' new teen book, GOLDEN, is up!

At Emory High, there are two kinds of people: those who matter, and those who don’t.

When Lissy James moves from California to Oklahoma, she finds herself in the middle of a teenage nightmare: a social scene to rival a Hollywood movie. And if understanding the hierarchy of the Goldens vs. the Nons isn’t hard enough, Lissy’s ever growing Aura Vision is getting harder and harder to hide, and if she’s not careful, she’s going to become a Non faster than you can say “freak.”

But it’s becoming clear that Emory High has a few secrets of its own. Around the halls, the term “special powers” goes way beyond one’s ability to attract the opposite sex, and there may be something more evil than the A-crowd lurking in the classrooms. Lissy can see a lot more than the average girl, but she’s about to learn the hard way that things aren’t always as they appear and you can’t always judge a girl by her lip gloss.

Anyone who knows me, knows I'm not exactly a wizard in the kitchen. I love good food as much as the next person, I'd just rather it was the next person cooking instead of me. And usually, so would the people forced to eat the food. But even though I'm not a culinary tour de force, I love cutting out recipes that sound good.

About 13 years ago someone gave me a recipe that I still make. It's the recipe for Mrs. Fields' Chocolate Chip Cookies. And when done right, the cookies are to die for. When done incorrectly, they look like the congealed mess you see sitting on my baking pan to the left. That is actually what my batch of cookies looked like last week (ignore the pink polished toe at the bottom, I had to stand on my kitchen island to get the best angle). I had a meeting in Chicago and I came up with the brilliant idea to wow my client with my baking skills. Well, needless to say, I flew to Chicago empty handed. For some reason, about 65% of the time, this recipe comes out of the oven just like this - all drippy and thin and inedible (which doesn't mean my kids and I can't spoon the warm batter off the sheet and eat it, just that I can't bring them out in public).

Any bakers out there who can give me a reason for this? I'm thinking that for some reason when I measure, I'm not putting enough dry ingrediants into it (the recipe has both flour and oatmeal). It probably doesn't help that I have one measuring cup, and I'm not sure if it's a 1 cup cup or a 3/4 cup cup. You'd think I'd be able to tell, wouldn't you? In any case, today might be the day I go out and purchase a real set of measuring cups, lest I continue to waste package after package of chocolate chips. Not to mention the 17 sticks of butter.