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So I was Twitter-Stalking a few minutes ago (oh yeah I’m using Twitter again – my son will be thrilled, cause he was hoping I’d add something new to my list of ways to avoid responsibility – follow me!) and Badass Geek casually wrote about how brownies are the perfect breakfast food (and anytime food for that matter) and suddenly, just like that, the craving hit. You know – the “you can literally taste and smell delicious perfect brownie all around you” craving. I could feel myself drooling within mere seconds of reading that damned twitter message and now just moments later I can already see how this going to go down…

I present to you the Twelves Steps of Crazy Pregnant Cravings

Step One: You laugh at the notion of a silly craving – who’s in charge here, really? Surely I cannot be undone by simply thinking about a food.

Step Two: You find yourself mentally taking inventory of your kitchen – do I have the ingredients on hand to make brownies?

Step Three: Repent. You consider how many calories are in one brownie – and how many would be in an entire pan of brownies – who is going to help you eat all of that delicious brownie goodness? Surely not your non-pregnant husband who actually takes his diet seriously.

Step Four: Clearly, you realize you need to find a way to obtain just one brownie, for the sake of your diet. You begin mapping out the locations of every place within ten miles where a brownie can be gotten.

Step Five: You wonder if it is economically wise to drive to a store to buy one brownie – and how much will this one brownie cost anyway?

Step Six: You recall that you have a Weight Watchers cake-like thing in the freezer that could possibly be considered brownie-like – will my stomach be fooled by such an imposter?

Step Seven: You eat the Weight Watchers CLT just to be sure – but find that, though mildly delicious, it tastes nothing like a brownie.

Step Eight: Digging through the cupboards, you find all the ingredients you need (and / or go to the store for what you don’t have) and make a pan of brownies.

Step Nine: Indulge in sweet, delicious brownie – marvel at the flavor – this was the best idea you’ve had all day!

Step Ten: Re-remember those pesky calories already, adding the Weight Watchers CLT you ate before the brownie and suddenly become racked with guilt.

Step Eleven: Craving completed, you can’t bring yourself to eat more than three of the other delicious brownies. Your husband may dutifully eat a couple to make you feel better, but the pan remains largely untouched.

Step Twelve: Wake up one morning to discover barely touched pan of stale brownies which were never properly stored, that now smell kind of funky and hold no appeal. Throw out offending left overs and vow to not repeat the twelve steps again (but you will).

This could get ugly. I’m hoping that by having blogged about it, I’ll be able to resist the urge to go there… Mental note: convince my husband to pick me up a brownie on the way home from work tonight…

With all the news about twitter phishing on the rise, I probably would have ignored this headline, thinking I had it all covered, but my husband brought this news to my attention and I wanted to make sure you all knew about it, too. There is a new phishing attack method on the rise, called “in-session” phishing that I think could be VERY easy to fall for but can also be very easy to protect yourself against if you are informed. I’ll cut down the gist for you:

Suppose you are logged into your bank’s website and you open a tab to go somewhere else – anywhere else – well if this new tab is infected with the malicious phishing code, what will happen is a pop up window will open saying that your banking session has timed out and will ask you to enter your credentials to log back in – because somehow this virus can tell that you are logged into your bank and will try and trick you – a trick I probably would have fallen for if not for this information.

Now my bank typically will time out in the original window, bringing you to a new page altogether, but I have no idea what methods other banks use, and I wouldn’t have been very suspicious if they’d simply changed methods, but the ways to protect yourself is pretty obvious:

• Don’t log back in via the  pop-up window. Close that pop up and if necessary log back into your bank account manually from the original window.
• Another good piece of advice is to immediately log out of any secure sites once you’ve finished your tasks.
• And again avoid any un-prompted pop-up windows.

Okay, class is over. Read the article here from Ars Technica for more information and store this tid bit in the memory bank to ensure your identity is kept safe and sound.

For more wordless fun go to Wordless Wednesday and 5 Minutes For Mom.