Tasty Morsels

* If there was any doubt about us being bona fide home owners, it can now be put to rest. We spent our Friday night at Home Depot and Menards, looking for a new bathroom light fixture and mirror.

* We went to see Children of Men last Tuesday evening, and wound up being the only two people in the theater. That made us wonder if they even bother starting the movie if no one shows up. We decided they must, because someone could always come a little late, and if the movie hadn't started, that would make the next showing start late. Anyway, the movie was very intense, but very good.

* On Friday the temperature hit 40°, the first time we'd been above freezing in two weeks. It was but a brief respite, however. Highs for the next 10 days range from 7 to 25 degrees.

* As you can imagine, people are very excited about the Bears being in the Super Bowl. There's a billboard somewhere in Chicago that we saw once, which said "Baseball will divide Chicago, but the Bears shall unite it."

* The past few weeks I've been working on replacing the old light switches and electrical outlets in our house. I'm very pleased, because not only did I successfully replace two 3-way switches, but I fixed two 3-way switches that had been installed incorrectly! Woo!

* We've been trying a few new recipes lately, with great success. Last week we made pasta with olive pesto, and it was INSANELY GOOD! Wendy got the idea from an event at work, where a restaurant catered the food and brought olive pesto pasta. They said it was their best-seller, and I now believe it.

* We also tried homemade pretzels, which were good. Ditto for a chocolate mint cake we had right after New Years. Also, Wendy used an Amazon gift certificate to buy a Muffin-Top Pan. I had never heard of these before, but I was blown away when she told me about it. Basically they let you just make muffin tops, ala Seinfeld. Today we had chocolate chocolate-chip muffin tops. Very, very tasty.

* Lest you think we gorge ourselves on decadent desserts, we've also been trying some recipes from The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen. I found it on Amazon, and was intrigued because it had over 50 reviews with an average rating of 5 stars. Everyone says that the recipes are great, even for non-vegans, and so far, yeah, we agree. Spaghettini with Walnut-Garlic Sauce and Herbed Scalloped Potatoes, Provencal Style are a few of the tasty dishes we've tried.

News and Notes

The Job Search
Unfortunately, Wendy didn't get the job she interviewed for. We're both disappointed. She was incredibly well qualified, and the interview went really well, but they decided to hire someone from within the department. Something else will come along, though, so we'll keep our eyes open.

New Orleans
Let me say first of all that I'm very glad that supplies have finally made their way to New Orleans. I'm extremely appalled, though, that it took ALMOST 5 DAYS for them to get there!! It's very, very wrong for that to happen.

The Weather
Wendy heard recently that this has been the 3rd driest summer ever for this part of Illinois. It certainly appears that way: I've been driving by acres of brown and withered crops on my way to and from work.

College Football
I'm still struggling with how sports fits into the national scene right now, but the fact is that the college football season has started. These are the games we're looking forward to this weekend:
* OU vs TCU: What will our offense look like? More importantly, how good is our defense?
* Notre Dame vs Pitt: Charlie Weis vs Dave Wannstedt. Whose coaching skills will reign supreme?
* Miami vs FSU: Usually a good contest, but why make this the first game of the season? It would probably be a better game if both teams had a few weeks of experience first.

The Local Sports Team
The Chicago Bears' preseason has been a trainwreck to say the least. Their starting QB got injured and is out for the season; their backup QB turned out to be so bad he's fallen off the depth chart; so their only option now is give the helm to Kyle Orton, a rookie QB. Not an auspicious start. At least we get to watch former Sooners Mark Bradley and Tommie Harris play.

On Instant Replay
I have to say I'm not a big fan of instant replay, and I'm a little sad to see it appearing at the college level. It slows down the game and seems to change the way that referees officiate.

Sometimes, we're a little lame
The light in our loft hasn't been working the past few weeks, and we were really stumped as to why. There are 3 lights in the light fixture, and they had all stopped working at the same time. It didn't seem likely that they'd all burned out together, and they didn't even look burned out. All the other electrical outlets in the loft worked, so we didn't think it was circuit-related (but we're not electricians, either). Finally, today, Wendy solved the mystery. There's a second switch for that light in the loft that we'd totally forgotten about, and it was neither on nor off, but stuck right in the middle. Wendy flipped the switch and presto! The lights now work. I think we're both a little embarrassed that it took us several weeks to figure it out.