Don't read this if you're hungry

Here's something yummy for a winter's day. Something that will stick to your ribs and make you feel warm and happy inside.

But if you're thinking that you're starting to get hungry, don't click the "read more" thingie. Why torture yourself?

Squilla, I'm talking to you, my friend. I saw what you wrote about yesterday. I know what you're thinking. So don't click the "read more." Don't. Fair warning.

OK, you asked for it.



Mmmmm. To explain, Squilla wrote about pasties and her obsession with them yesterday. I happened to read her post while I was at lunch. And guess what was on my desk?

Half of a pasty. (The other half had just been consumed.) A warm, tasty pasty on a winter day.

It just so happens that Monday is production day, when we're putting the paper together and doing our computerized layout, so there are 1,001 (by actual count) things you have to remember, and time is tight and you don't want to take much of a break for lunch. Our office is on the western edge of town, and there is just one place for lunch within walking distance--a pasty shop, located next door.

So I walked out, got one, went back, opened efx2 and read what Squilla wrote about pasties. She wrote about their variety over in England.

Over here, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, pasties have been part of the landscape for as long as whites have lived here (a little over a century--notice that I didn't say anything about "civilized" or "was settled"?). Our pasties are fairly standard--diced potatoes and "pasty meat" and a few onions inside. Some add rutabagas (pronounced ROO-ta-beggies in our vernacular), but I stay with the standard.

The Cornish miners--the "Cousin Jacks"--brought the recipe for pasties with them when they emigrated here early in the 20th century, taking their pasties with them into the underground mines that led to the "settlement" of this region. The other nationalities who worked here--mainly Poles, French, Italians--picked up on it. Pasties stayed warm for a long time and were handy to eat.

To date, there are many places in lower Michigan that claim to have pasties for homesick Yoopers. But you have to head for the western U.P. to get the real stuff. Most of the small cities in this region have at least one pasty place. Ours happens to be right next door. Happy coincidence!

Our pasty place offers a "breakfast" pasty on Tuesdays and a "pizza" pasty on Wednesdays. Haven't had a breakfast pasty yet, but the pizza pasties are yummy. You know how I get along with pizza.

To paraphrase Homer Simpson: "Mmmmmm! Pasties!"

Thundersnow?

January is known for its fickle weather around here, and it doesn't get much more fickle than the last few days.

It has been a very mild January, but until last week the clouds stayed doggedly in place. Late last week the clouds finally parted, and the temperatures started rising. Solar energy! Here's what the thermometer looked like in mid afternoon.

Well, you have to remember that the normal high around here is about 20F in January. Pretty impressive to me.

The solar power did a number on the remnants of our snow. That we still have snow is because it's remained cloudy nearly all the time, keeping temperature from going past 40F. The sun finally won out, and it was time for some melting.

On Saturday, we were planning to visit my mom. I was focused in on writing stories that morning, but I finally remembered to check the weather forecast. So I was about the last person to learn that we were under a heavy snow warning--for that night and Sunday morning. I called home, and we quickly agreed to push up our schedule by about two hours and rush through everything we had to do. I opted to leave the camera at home, a choice I regretted later.

The morning had been sunny, but as we started our trip in the early afternoon, I could see the clouds heading our way from the south. We stopped at my mom's home, got her mail, went to the nursing home, visited there for an hour, made our obligatory stop at Wally World, hit the Hardee's for an early supper (it was only about 4:30 p.m.) and then headed for home.

By now it had gotten completely cloudy, the sun was setting, but no snow or rain yet, I noted happily.

I saw the first snowflakes in the headlights about 15 miles down the road. It was snowing steadily a few miles after that and coming down pretty heavily a few miles later. The road started turning white. Then you could see tracks in the road. I remarked to my wife that we didn't leave any too early. Driving in heavy snow is something I avoid whenever possible.

But we were only about 10 miles from home now and had crossed back into Michigan (to get home, we have to drive into Wisconsin and then back into Michigan; it's 50 miles each way). Then I saw a little flash in the sky to the north. "Did you see that?" my wife asked. "Yeah," I said. Then we saw another flash. Were we getting lightning? Thundersnow? I had experienced that long ago, but the weather conditions seemed wrong.

Then we saw a reddish flash through the snowflakes. WTF? Then a green one. By now we were getting close to town, and the mystery was quickly solved.

We had forgotten that there was a winter celebration planned for Saturday, and they were firing off fireworks in the evening. That was it. We pulled over and watched the end of the show in the snow. My camera was nice and safe back home, so no photographic evidence.

(For the record, that's the third consecutive fireworks show I've watched under unusual weather circumstances. On the Fourth of July 2004, the clouds were very low, and the fireworks were shot off into the clouds/fog. The clouds came and went--we saw some of the show well, and other parts were behind the cloudy curtain. It was strange. Last summer, on the Fourth, it was a rainstorm that coincided with the fireworks show. Now this. So first it was fog, then rain and now snow.)

Anyway ... Once I got home, I took a picture of the snow falling along the street. There were two inches on the ground by then.

When I got up and went to work Sunday morning, it was more like seven or eight inches of wet heavy stuff. Here's what the back yard looked like ...

And this is what the back steps looked like after I climbed down them.

So it's been an eccentric few days weatherwise. But, hey, it's still January, so what should I expect? By the way, it's still not subzero. And I don't miss it at all.

The Year of Dr. Dog

A new year started today on the Chinese lunar calendar, and guess which one it is?

Yea, verily, it is the Year of the Dog. The Year of the Rooster is over. Now, it's Dr. Dog's time to howl. (Dr. Dog, by the way, was born during the Year of the Ox. That explains his plodding, patient style of life, maybe.)

To mark this auspicious occasion and this humbling honor, I will be observing it today by (A) finishing up a number of half-finished stories here at the office; (B) shoveling away about six inches of very wet snow that fell overnight--the topic of another blog in its embryonic stage; (C) watching a junior curling tournament this afternoon, while providing a cushion for my dozing wife at the very same time; (D) eating a pizza for supper, the main culinary event on Sundays around here; and (E) doing this and that at home in the evening. Or not.

And since this is the Year of the Dog, I wish to make the following resolutions:

I will continue to try to learn new tricks. Learning is the stuff of life. I will proclaim cats as our friends and buddies. I will try not to chase my tail. It gets me nowhere. I will endeavor not to scratch myself there. I will do my business when I must and not make a show out it. I will keep my voice down and not bark to hear myself bark. Because the rest of you have something to say, too, and I can learn from that. I will treasure the time I spend with friends and will try to make more friends. I will not growl at anything not worth growling about. And when I growl, I won't make any bones about it. I will dance around excitedly when someone wants to play with me. I will sleep when I am tired.

That is my agenda for this new year. So it is written. Arf.

What's the picture?

I can not figure out my work camera. You know. The one I wrote about a week or so back. It had frozen up, giving no message but "Card error," and I had to use my personal camera.

That has not gone as well as I had hoped. The pictures are not as high a quality as I like, and it shows. Well, it's a cheaper camera, after all. And since I hadn't sent the work camera back to the repair center yet, I remembered that I had to do that. So this morning, I found a suitable size box at home and got ready to ship it out. I looked over the form I filled out for it, and it was fine. Then I decided to look at the camera again. I had taken the memory card and batteries out, so I put them back in, just to see.

I turned the switch ... and it went on. The way it's supposed to. I turned it off and then back on. It turned on again. Over the day, I tried it several times. It worked every time. I took it to volleyball tonight, and it worked well.

It seems that the camera may have "reset" itself. The settings weren't the way I had left them, the memorized settings were gone, and I had to reset them, too. I had to change other settings during the evening after checking the pictures I had taken.

But the quality was there. The pictures looked pretty good--I'll get a better idea once I see them on my monitor tomorrow. Obviously, I'm not shipping it to the repair center in the near future.

At the same time, I'm keeping that box handy, just in case the camera decides to flake out on me again. One false move, and ...

It Could Happen the Day After Tomorrow

OK. I admit it. I watch The Weather Channel. Seeing those green blobs and white areas crossing the nation, the big H's and L's, the blue sawtooth lines and the red lines with the little bumps on it. What can be more fascinating than that?

Well, maybe this. In the last couple weeks, The Weather Channel summoned up a Category 5 hurricane to hit New York City and a F5 tornado to churn through the heart of Dallas. This Sunday: Mount Rainier erupts, burying Seattle in a flood of mud from the melted snows from the mountain. Sort of like Mount St. Helens--with a major metropolitan city in the neighborhood.

The program is called "It Could Happen Tomorrow," and I'm not sure what they're planning in the weeks to come. Earthquake in San Francisco? Blizzard burying the Twin Cities with 50 inches of wind-driven snow? Locusts invading the wheat belt (as in "The Good Earth")? Rain of toads? Hurricane breaching the levees in New Orleans? (Wait. They did that last fall.)

I don't know. There seems to be an apocalypse complex among TV programmers. They seem to be in competition, trying to concoct the most extreme scenario of natural disasters in order to scare the bejeezus out of everybody.

Example: Lately the Discovery Channel and Learning Channel have had regular helpings of natural disaster programming--both historical (all the tsunami stories) and speculative (Yellowstone National Park blowing up, since it's a massive volcanic system--it's done so twice already, you know).

And when all else fails, they can sic a massive comet or asteroid into the heart of Toronto. Or Paris. Or wherever. I suppose a few miles plus or minus won't make much of a difference to the human condition. We'll all be toast, either way.

It must have started with the movie "The Day After Tomorrow," in which every conceivable worst weather disaster happens all at once. Laughable storyline, really.

Of course, in the real world we are seeing climate change. Everyone who has their eyes open (which excludes the leaders of the industrialized nations) can see that. Hurricanes have become worse. The arctic north is melting away. The oceans are warming. Weather patterns are becoming slower to change and more extreme. More drought. More areas where the rain just never stops. It's fact. It's real.

But they can't get people interested in that. On the other hand, volcanoes and hurricanes and tornadoes and tsunamis--they're very visual! They're cool to watch! Spectacular video! I mean, would you rather watch that or watch average temperatures creeping up slowly but surely? Would you rather watch that volcano exploding or watch Greenland melting? Watch that F5 tornado--or watch another species pass away quietly and permanently?

Hey, it's entertainment! It's not like it's the end of the world!

A true World Series

Game on! Finally!

As a dyed-in-the-wood baseball fan, I have been looking forward to the first true "World Series," the World Baseball Classic, scheduled to take place this March. It puts teams representing the major baseball-playing nations of the world in a World Cup-type tournament.

But it almost came undone because of the U.S. federal Department of Paranoia. Actually, it was really the Treasury Department, which nearly scotched the entire tournament because of its paranoia about Cuba. The Cubans (if you don't know) are a top baseball power, but the U.S. was going to keep them from competing because the Office of Foreign Assets was scared that some foreign assets would wind up in Cuba, violating the U.S. sanctions that have been in place since ... well, for nearly the last half century.

In the end, the government changed its mind after Cuba promised to donate any money it makes to the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Of course, it could also be because Major League Baseball was leaning on them pretty heavily.

They were doing the heavy leaning because some of the other Latin American nations threatened a boycott of the tourney, and the IBAF (the international baseball governing body) was ready to pull its sanction.

In short: Change you mind about Cuba, or there won't be a tourney. Baseball must have found a fig leaf for the government to keep them from losing face.

So stupid! The biggest potential Cuba-related problem with the WBC is the very real possibility that some of their bigger stars may wind up defecting, a la Livan Hernandez and Jose Contreras.

Then, there is also the chance that Cuba, which has been kicking butt in international tourneys, may get kicked around. Cuba is part of the group with Puerto Rico, Panama and the Netherlands. (Yes, the Netherlands. Which includes Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, home of a number of MLB luminaries.)

The U.S. is part of a group with Mexico, Canada and South Africa. Yes, South Africa. Other minnows in the pool are Italy and Australia, which find themselves in the same pool as Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Guess we know which teams advance from that one.

The last pool includes Korea, China, Japan and Taipei. Pool play is a round-robin--one game each against the other three teams in the pool. The top two teams from each pool advance to a second round of pool play. The semifinals and finals are one game, winner take all. They will be played in San Diego.

I spent a little time today trying--unsuccessfully--to see if the games will be televised. None of the websites I checked are very informative on this point.

Election eve in Canada

Tomorrow my friends north of the border--in Canada--elect their new Parliament and may put a new prime minister in office. I'm interested in this--this is one American who follows Canadian affairs pretty closely.

To them, I humbly suggest: Vote for whomever you like most. Vote smart. Don't vote just to protest or "make a point."

That's what happened in my country in 2000. Remember Ralph Nader? He's directly responsible--though he heartily protests that--for putting President Shrub in office by draining enough votes away from Gore to decide a few key states in an extremely close election.

That was an entirely different time. Remember 2000? America had a booming economy. A big budget surplus. No major foreign entanglements, outside of peacekeeping in the Balkans. People were talking about paying down the national debt or else finally fixing Medicare with the surplus. The U.S. dollar was very strong.

A lot has happened in the last five years, hasn't it?

Just so you know ...

... on and off over the next few days, I'll be experimenting with my color scheme, changing this and that and then seeing how it looks.

Later on, I'll try to do more customizing of the blogorific atmosphere over here. Menus. Maybe a background. An image. An avatar. I used W.C. Fields over at Modblog. Over here, I think I'm leaning towards Groucho Marx. I like Fields, but I think I identify with Groucho more.

All that's on the to-do list. It's part of my oh-so-slow transition from one blog home to another. The work is done when I find an hour or so of free time at home. That's harder than you might think, what with all my nighttime assignments and then trying to keep up with the rest of you.

If I haven't been around at your place for a while, sorry. I'll be back, raiding the refrigerator, putting my shoeless feet on the coffee table and acting totally clueless. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.

(I write this just in case you thought efx2 was having color conniptions. Nope. It's just me, looking for the proper color scheme to express myself.)

Photo-taking pinch-hitter

Well, here's something different. When I go to my games, features and assignments for the next month or so, I'll be toting something new along with me. A new camera.

"New" in the sense of "different." But not really new. Because the "new" camera is my own camera, now pressed into service, pinch-hitting for my "work" camera, which has fallen deathly ill. For instance, when I went out to cover a wrestling meet tonight, I took that camera with me. It worked well, too.

The old one was showing signs of age for some time, but it had been working fairly reliably up until last Saturday. I had some writing to do Saturday morning, as usual, and then went out to take some hockey pictures at a local rink. OK, it worked well enough. Next stop, a JV girls volleyball tourney. I took off my jacket, opened up the camera bag, found a good position and switched the camera on.

Except, it wouldn't turn on. Well, it did, but only to give me a blunt message on the back display: "Card error." Uh-ohhh. Fortunately, I carry a spare card with me, so I took that one out and installed that one instead. Turned it on. "Card error." It kept saying "Card error" whenever I switched it on, regardless of which card I inserted or which set of batteries I used. (I tried switching batteries, too--also to no avail.) Eventually, I got the message.

What to do? I wasn't too far from home, so I drove there, got my own camera, drove back and got some pictures. Done.

My work camera's condition hasn't changed one bit since Saturday. The next step is shipping it to the repair center in New Jersey and waiting for an estimate--and then the repair. They estimate a month or so.

Of course, the company would probably be much better off investing in a new camera. The old one, after all, has fired over 20,000 pictures in the four years since we got it, and it's seen lots of duty. Lately, it's been going through batteries much faster than before, which, to me, was a sign of problems down the road. So my problems last Saturday weren't exactly a shock to me. And I had mentioned that to the bosses a month or so ago.

But you have to look at it their way: A new camera would be about $500. Repairing the old one would be about $200-250. Hey, they're probably thinking, we can save $300 and get the old camera all fixed up again! That's my definition of penny wise and pound foolish.

So I'm shipping the old one off to New Jersey, and then we'll wait and see what the repair center estimate says. Meanwhile, my little camera suddenly has now become my work camera as well, and the people in charge at the office clearly don't have a problem with asking me to use the equipment I bought for myself for work.

Maybe the next time my old, dim, hard-to-read monitor in the office goes out, they'll expect me to bring over the monitor I use here at home. Stranger things have happened.

Short attention-span weekend wrapup bliog

Let's see: In this blog I'm writing about (1) our winter weather, (2) tracking critters in the snow, (3) the Narnia movie, (4) the NFL playoffs and (5) another movie we might see tonight. If that isn't a hodgepodge of topics, I don't know what is.

Anyway ...

Talking about unusual weather is a lot like taking a stroll on some thin ice. At times it seems that whenever you mention some unusal conditions, the weather gods take it as a signal to do something completely different.

We had a lot of cold weather in December, but January has been very mild here and in most of the North Central U.S. We have had no major storms since mid November--aside from one storm on New Year's Eve. It got below zero (Fahrenheit) last week, but we also got to 40F.

As a consequence, our piles of snow are looking forlorn and foresaken. The snowbanks along the road are smudged up, mostly with sand and dirt, and the snow is compressing and getting wetter. When there's an inch or so of new snow, I tend to let it go. Two inches, and I'd be out there. But one inch seems just like an annoyance. We've only been getting one-inch (or so) snows lately.

One thing we both like to do in winter is look at the animal tracks around the yard. We live right in town, and the main highway passes right by our front door, but many morningd we see little prints in the snow. This morning, it was a rabbit's tracks, passing along in front of the house, toward the neighbors. Should have grabbed the camera, but I had to get to work.

Other times it's dogs and cats--there were cat prints right on the back porch a day or two ago. My wife likes to feed the birds with old bits of bread and other baked goods--she dumps them near the alley--so her bird friends add their footprints to the snow. Every once in a while, we get a larger visitor--like those deer prints in the photo from last month. (Not sure if I posted it at efx2. That was then.)

Thankfully, this past weekend was a lot quieter than the one before (as if it could possibly have been busier). All of us went down to visit my mom on Saturday, and we also saw that "Chronicles of Narnia" movie, which we enjoyed very much.

There's been talk about "Christian" themes in the story, but if they were, in fact, there, they were pretty subtle. Aslan, the lion, gives his life to save one of the children and then is reborn--but I think they said it was because of a lie told by the White Witch. There are pagan-like themes in there, too, and mytholigical creatures portrayed in a positive way. I suppose some people just live to find grist for their take on the "culture wars."

I don't go to movies to look at things with a particular mindset. I go there to be entertained and to escape everyday cares, and Narnia did that very well. There are seven books in C.S. Lewis' series, and I hope they will make others.

Whew! Didn't mean to get that deeply into it. Anyway, we saw it, and we all enjoyed it.

As for the NFL playoffs, I missed all of the first Saturday game (at the Narnia movie and visiting) and all but the last quarter of the second Saturday game. Sunday, I only wanted to stay home and relax and got to see both playoff games. After lunch on Sunday, my wife sat next to me on the couch, as she usually does, rested her head on my shoulder and soon was fast asleep.

So I had to sit there as quiet as a litle mousie during one of the wildest NFL playoff games (Steelers-Colts) I have ever seen, with major twists of fate throughout the second half amd especially at the end. She eventually woke up during the second quarter of the Bears-Panthers game. I was disappointed in the Bears' defense--as a long-time Packers fan, I wanted the Bears to win. They didn't.

Missed all of Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday, too, for the same reason. I saw a little of the second game, after the Patriots-Broncos game finished up, but I was tired after a long day. So my wife, so we went upstairs to bed. But it just so happened that she wasn't that tired yet, so you can guess what happened next. We both slept soundly.

One more thing. On my journeys Saturday, I also invested in a new VCR-DVD combo unit. Big surprise, right?

Unbelievably, I have three straight nights at home this week. The Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line" is at our local theater, and there's a pertty good chance we'll see it tonight. We're both Johnny Cash fans, and the reviews say Joaquin Phoenix did a really good job portraying him.

So that's the story of our early January weekend.

Fate plays a little joke on me

I am trying to think of a diplomatic way to describe my mood. How does "ticked" sound? Or "PO'd"? "Unhappy" seems way too mild under the circumstances.

It's all about that movie I wanted to record this morning. The one I wrote about last time. I had programmed it into my VCR and late last night I looked for a tape to put it on. I found a prospect and stuck it in to see what was on it and whether I wanted to keep it. I saw ... snow. Not like winter. Like lack of signal. Hmm, that's odd. I rewound it a bit. More snow. A bit more. More snow.

Must be something wrong with the tape. I ejected it and stuck in another one. Hit play. Snow. Not like in winter. I rewound it a bit. More snow. I rewound it a lot more. More snow. Hmmm.

I ejected it and stuck in a third tape. Hit play. Snow. Same with a fourth tape. And a fifth. And by now I was getting the very clear message that my VCR had bought the farm. For some reason, the "read" heads weren't working at all.

This is taking place at 10:30 p.m. Of course, there is no way to get a replacement or repair in time for a movie starting at 5 a.m. A movie, by the way, that I had been waiting to record for four months. A movie that is not available either on DVD or even on a VCR tape.

I was so screwed. And angry. And disappointed. And let down.

Well, you know, VCRs are highly mechanical devices that depend on magnetic tape and a whole array of mechanical thingies that employ nearly every mechanical tool imaginable. That means they are very complicated. That also means that it's very easy for something to go quite wrong. And you know what Murphy's Law says about when that is more likely to happen.

TCM will eventually play "Between Two Worlds" again. Someday. Maybe my luck be just a tiny bit better on that day.

Between Two Worlds

I like old movies, and there's a particularly good one I want to record (because it starts at 5 a.m. Central Time) on Saturday. It's called "Between Two World," and it's about a group of people who get caught in the London Blitz during World War II and then find themselves aboard a ship ... and eventually realize they're heading to the afterlife.

It's got a bunch of big stars from the mid 1940s--Paul Henreid, Sydney Greenstreet, Eleanor Parker, John Garfield. Interesting movie. The kind I like to watch wtih my wife.

"Between Two Worlds" also decribes my blog existence right now. I'm still tilling the garden back at MB, but now I'm also working at efx2, trying to paint up the place, mow the grass and make it look more presentable. Remember, I'm the one with no artistic talent.

I'm trying to remember an incident from years and years ago. Maybe it was a dream, for that matter, for it involved something my family didn't do very often: ride a rowboat on a lake. Nevertheless, I remember I was already on the dock, and my dad was climbing out of the boat, too. It just so happened that the boat was slowly drifting farther from the dock. And my dad had one foot on the dock and one foot in the boat. And I could just see this mini-disaster about to happen.

Except it didn't. My dad already had his weight on the dock and nimbly lifted the other foot to join it. Nobody got soaked. I don't remember anything else about it.

That seems to define my blog existence right now. I have one foot at MB and one foot here. And I know I'm shifting my weight.

I'm not a person who bails when times get bad. But I am a person who will wait patiently for things to get better--and then reluctantly conclude that I had better make a move. And I do.

Inertia has a lot to do with it. Bodies at rest tend to remain at rest. That describes me. But now I seem to be making a move. Will I be lifting my foot out of the rowboat?

Movie spoiler: "Between Two Worlds" leaves the viewer to decide what happens to the characters--what their fate will be. There is no neat, clear-cut answer to my dilemma, either. Time will tell.

Tune Pinwheels, revealed!

Due to some comments made after my last post, I am hereby revealing the secrets of Tuna Pinwheels, one of my wife's recipes. (It's a bit delayed, because I was busy all weekend, but better late than never.)

A major ingredient is called Bisquick. To those of you outside the States, Bisquick is a premixed baking product made by General Mills.

Also, this recipe uses the "imperial" measures used in the States, along with degrees Fahrenheit. Your measures may vary.

And now, without further ado (drum roll, please!):

TUNA PINWHEEL ROLLS

1-1/4 cups Bisquick
1/3 cup water
Mix thoroughly and knead smooth.

1-1/2 cans tuna (6 oz. cans)
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup grated cheese (1 oz.)
2 Tbsp chopped parsley
1/2 tspn celery salt
1/4 tspn salt
dash pepper
1 egg, slightly beaten

Heat oven to 425F. Mix tuna, onion and cheese. Mix about 1/2 of the egg with remaining ingredients and combine with tuna mixture.
Roll dough into 10 x 10-1/2 inch square. Spread tuna mixture, leaving 1 inch along 10-1/2-inch edges. Roll up and slice 1-1/2 inches thick. Place slices on well-greased baking pan. Brush with remaining egg. Bake 15-20 minutes or until nicely browned.

Voila! You have yourself some tummy tuna pinwheels. If you decide to try out the recipe, you may invite me over to "test" them. (FWIW, my wife usually made scalloped potatoes or au gratin potatoes as a side dish with the pinwheels.)

JUST IN CASE you can't find Bisquick where you live, here is my wife's recipe for Biscuit Mix, taken from the same recipe card--she often doesn't have it and doesn't want to run to the store just for that.

BISCUIT MIX
1-1/4 cups flour
2 tspn baking powder
1/2 tspn salt
3 Tbsn shortening
1/3 cup milk

No other instructions. I guess it replaces the Bisquick + milk part of the recipe, and then you pick up with the other part--tuna, etc.
****
The weekend was rough. Very little went on during the week--everything was Friday night or Saturday, including two major basketball games and a volleyball tournament. The volleyball tournament meant I couldn't do any writing on Saturday, as usual--it was all pushed back to Sunday, along with the tournament itself. Quite tiring. I didn't even try to visit my mom--a phone call had to do.

Then, today, it was a lot of scrambling and hustling to get everything finished. Photos, stories, even an editorial (nothing profound, believe me). But I got it all done. Then, tonight, I covered a volleyball match and then back home. Finally, after 11 p.m., I got to write this.

On Tuesday, I took my mom and to the eye doctor for a new set of glasses. The weather was nice--mid 30sF and even some sun. Wow! We have been under gray skies for weeks now--the sun came out for a while late this morning, and the person at the next desk ran to put on some shades.

The Game of Four

The oft-imitated but never duplicated Honeyvizer tagged me for "The Game of Four." So let's see how I do:

Four jobs you've had in your life: Well, I've been doing what I'm doing practically all my life. So ... 1. newspaper reporter/photographer; 2. dispatcher for a security firm; 3. copy boy at a daily newspaper (now we're back to college); 4. office clerk for laundry products company.

Four movies you could watch over and over: 1. The Seven Samurai; 2. Yellow Submarine; 3. Petrified Forest (Humphrey Bogart); 4. It's a Gift (W.C. Fields).

Four places you've lived: Geez, not much variety here, either. Oh well. 1. Iron River, MI; 2. Iron Mountain, MI; 3. Milwaukee; 4. Menomonee Falls, WI. Some variety, eh?

Four TV shows you love to watch: I just don't watch a lot of TV--gone at night too often. 1. The Weather Channel; 2. Turner Classic Movies; 3. CBC's political satire shows ("Air Farce," "22 Minutes"); 4. TV hockey and baseball.

Four places you've been on vacation: What can I say? Zero variety: 1. Duluth, MN; 2. the Twin Cities, MN; 3. Chicago; 4. Sault Ste. Marie, ON. I love the train ride that goes north from the Soo.

Four websites you visit daily: Hmmm. Well. 1. Modblog (of course!); 2. Cricinfo.com; 3. Google News; 4. Weather Underground.

Four of your favorite foods: 1. pizza; 2. tacos; 3. chicken caesar salad; 4. tuna pinwheels--one of my wife's recipes, except she hasn't made them for about five years now. Don't know why. :(

Four places you'd rather be: That's tough. How about places I'd like to visit someday? 1. London--the one in England; 2. Toronto; 3. Melbourne, OZ; 4. Seattle or some other place with an open-minded population.

Four albums you can't live without: 1. Howlin' Wolf, "Howling at Midnight"; 2. "Meddle," Pink Floyd; 3. "Revolver," the Beatles; 4. "Electric Ladyland," Hendrix.

Incidentally, the order in which I list these has no significance whatsoever. And there are certainly things I forgot. But hey, I'm in my mid 50s, so I'm subject to CRS at the drop of a hat.

(What? I didn't mention "Coach's Corner" on "Hockey Night in Canada?")
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In other news ... my wife is back to normal ... the weather here has been yucky--lots of freezing drizzle lately; the sun is somewhere up there, I guess, but I haven't seen a true shadow for a long time ... I took the plunge and ordered an iPod today; yesterday, I finally installed the USB 2.0 card on my puter so I can transfer my MP3s ... now I'm looking at a DVD recorder ... and in the not-too-distant future (a month or two or three) I'm going be saying, "Dude, I'm gettin' a Dell."

Dr. Dog's patient survives!

I solemnly resolve in 2006 to dual-post my blog entries. That's as ambitious a resolution I'm ready for right now. If I follow through on it, I'll be doing fine.

The big news around here over the holidays is that, first, I got a mild case of the flu right after Christmas. Then I passed it along to my bed partner. Sort of a belated Christmas gift. (And was she ever grateful!)

Good news from over here. My wife is feeling a lot better. In fact, she's working (for a few hours) today. Still aching a bit, but definitely improved a lot.

She woke up feeling better on New Year's Day--after we did make it to midnight; details to come--and was able to eat normal food most of the day. We both went to the grocery store in the afternoon after the Packers' win and had our normal Sunday evening pizza that night. She woke up feeling a little achy today but felt better after a long bath and washing her hair.

So my days as stand-in cook are over, at least for a while. It's probably best for all concerned, including her. I made one more rice recipe for her supper on New Year's Eve night. It went a lot more smoothly than the first time. Hey, I'm getting good!

We watched some TV that night, saw 2006 arrive at Times Square, exchanged our kisses and then went upstairs to the bedroom. Sex was not in the cards, but I didn't want to mess around on the computer without her, anyway. So I went to bed and did something I do once in a while--read to her.

How many of you are familiar with Howard Pyle's "The Wonder Clock"? It first came out in the late 19th century--maybe the 1880s--and is a wonderful selection of stories and fairy tales, wonderful to listen to and a lot of fun to read aloud. Pyle was a very good writer, so I got "The Wonder Clock" about a year ago and have been reading some of the stories to her once in a while.

She enjoys being read to, but usually she reads some of her own books in bed before dozing off--often with the light still on and her hand still holding the book in front of her closed eyes. I work on the computer for 30 to 60 minutes before going to bed, so I've seen that often.

On New Year's Eve we got upstairs at about 11:15 p.m. (Central Time), and I got out "The Wonder Clock" and read her stories about how a mole got the better of a thieving fox and wolf and then a story about a poor lad who wins the beautiful princess' hand in marriage because "one good turn deserves another." I think that was the title, in fact.

That last story was quite long, and I was getting tired by the time I finished. But when I glanced up at the clock, it said 11:55. "Hey, we might make it till midnight, after all!" I told her. She lay partly on me, waiting for "12:00" to come up on the clock. Then we kissed each other for about a minute, she settled down on my shoulder, and we were probably both asleep within five minutes.

And when she woke up in the morning, she was feeling a lot better. Imagine that!