Behold! The Chex Mix!

It is writ, "Man shall not live by chex mix alone." How fortunate, then, that I am a woman! Every Christmas season brings about the mixing of the chex and it seems that I spend the next 48 hours, post-mix, pretending that chex mix is the only food in the entire house.

Chex mix for breakfast? Why not! It's got cereal in it! Chex mix for lunch? Sure! It's fast and easy and portable! Chex mix for dinner? Of course! Those nuts give you a lot of protein to keep you full while you sleep!

Because I love it so much, I thought I would share my recipe here. It's actually my mother-in-law's recipe, but I kind of suspect that she got it off of a chex box. What she did do is double or triple the recipe so that you have a LOT of chex mix at the end of it all.

Ingredients:
-- 2 large boxes of Chex cereal (corn and rice)
-- 1 bag of pretzels (Synder butter or other pretzel you like)
-- 2 10-ounce containers of deluxe mixed nuts
-- 1 or 2 packages of garlic mini-chips (in the Deli section at Kroger's)
-- 8 ounces or so of some sort of cracker (this year I used Musso's Deli Dippers Snacksticks -- in the Deli section at Kroger's, but I've also used those pretzel thins)
-- 18 Tbs of salted butter
-- 8 Tbs of Worchester sauce
-- 6 tsp seasoned salt
-- 4 tsp garlic powder
-- 3 tsp onion powder

Instructions:
-- Heat oven to 220 degrees.
-- Layer all ingredients in 9 x 12 casserole dishes (I have to use three casserole dishes for this recipe) or other glass baking dishes
-- Melt butter in the microwave and mix all the seasonings into the melted butter
-- Pour butter/seasonings mix over the dry ingredients in the dishes (stir butter-sauce while pouring or all seasonings will sink to the bottom)
-- Using a large spatula, gently and thoroughly flip ingredients in the dishes, spreading the butter sauce around
-- Put pans in the oven for 15 minutes. When timer goes off, pull pans out and flip ingredients in the pans
-- Put pans in for another 15 minutes. Stir again.
-- Put pans in for another 15 minutes. Stir again.
-- Put pans in for another 15 minutes.
-- Turn off oven. Stir ingredients one last time. Let cool/sit in oven overnight.
-- Transfer to a tupperware in the morning.

The secret is in the mixing! I usually not only stir each baking dish but also swap the chex mix from one dish to another. The more thoroughly you mix it, the more consistent the flavor is as you eat it.

Enjoy! You will have a very large quantity to share or to pig out on all by yourself!

Anti "Happy Holidays"

Apparently, I'm not alone in my feelings. A recent poll released by Gallup states:

Most Americans think the trend toward saying "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" at Christmastime is a change for the worse. But is it therefore a bad marketing decision for retailers to greet customers this way? Gallup finds some evidence of a consumer backlash, as 32% of Americans say it bothers them when stores use "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" in their displays at this time of year instead of "Merry Christmas."

While the generic greetings bother a third of the public, there is almost unanimous public tolerance for the phrase, "Merry Christmas." Only 3% of national adults say it bothers them when stores specifically refer to the Christian holiday in their displays, rather than "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings."

(These results are based on telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of 1,013 adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Dec. 5-8, 2005.)

I am not sure if you need a subscription to Gallup to read the rest of the article, but I'm including the link anyway.

"Merry Christmas" is the new rebellion

After working in a secular environment for years, being conditioned to never say "Merry Christmas" for fear of offending someone, it has been weird to work in a Christian environment (like I do now) where the reverse is true. People fully embrace "Merry Christmas" and some people are offended if you don't use it in giving your December well-wishes.

Since I've always preferred "Merry Christmas" anyway ("Happy Holidays" is fine, but "Season's Greetings" sounds like a phrase that was created in 1928, and seems so old-timey and irrelevant now), I've been happy with this transition back to my original holiday greeting, but I still catch myself saying "Merry Christmas" guiltily, as if I'm getting away with something by being non-generic.

Maybe I've sunk into a false sense of security, living in a place with a higher Christian population than I'm accustomed to. It seems like you're less likely to get busted using "Merry Christmas" in Nashville than up in Michigan. I feel like "Merry Christmas" is just more the norm down here. I noticed last December when I visited this area that everyone said "Merry Christmas" to me (as opposed to "Happy Holidays") -- waitresses at Shoney's, clerks at the mall, sweet gentlemen holding the door open for me, even the skycap at the airport. I even had a life-long Nashville resident tell me that he had never thought of a Christmas Tree as a Christian symbol (I was talking about the difficulty of buying "holiday" cards for a secular corporation and how anything that had any type of Christmas ornament, symbol, or reference was taboo).

And I guess that I just don't buy the idea anymore that people are so easily offended by "Merry Christmas." I know I wouldn't be offended by someone wishing me a "Happy Chanukkah" or "Happy Kwanza" or "Happy Winter Solstice" or "Happy Boxing Day" or "Merry Festivus"! Seriously, try me!

Boring Boredey Bored

The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'.
--Phillip Lopate

Although I do not consider myself someone who has a hard time relaxing (based on all the weekends where it seems I don't do much of anything), the Friday after Thanksgiving was one of the most boring days in recent history.

Les was working and I was home all by myself, with nothing at all to do for the day except "whatever I wanted to do." You would think this would be a fantastic thing; it certainly seemed to be something that I had been longing for for months. Yet, after sleeping in as late as I could, I found myself pacing nervously around the apartment. What to do? What to do?

Chores were out -- this was supposed to be a vacation day, a "day off," after all.

Shopping was out -- one of the worst days of the year to do it, and I'm not a big shopper anyway.

And I felt too distracted to concentrate on a book or a movie.

Too many options, and I couldn't select just one!

In the end, I watched a movie (Saved) that we had had out from Blockbuster's mail order for four months, just so I could check "Watch Saved and send it back to Blockbuster" off of my To Do List (I knew I could slip a chore in there somehow!). I went and got the mail. I paged through a magazine (backwards, the way I always look at magazines). I took a shower.

At last, Les came home around 4:30 and I could cook dinner and do whatever he wanted to do. You'd think that after six months living by myself in TN, I could thoroughly entertain myself for six hours one Friday. Guess not.

What happens if . . .

Here's a photo of what might happen if you try to scootchy-scootch in front of me!
Consider yourself warned!

Thanksgiving Cooking Rule #5

Thanksgiving Cooking Rule #5 is: No matter how tempting, do not try to dispose of the peelings from five pounds of potatoes in your in-sink garbage disposal. Potato starch turns to glue really quickly.

Trust me on this one. Seriously, I know all about this.

Persistence Pays Off!

The year was 1997 and I was in a revenge state of mind. We were sitting in a movie theatre watching the credits of Spice World (yep, the Spice Girls movie) roll past. I had blindfolded my friend Rob, led him into the theatre, and made him watch this movie against his wishes.

What had he done to deserve such a cruel fate? He had taken me to see David Lynch's Lost Highway a few weekends prior. I had really hated that movie. In fact, I would have walked out of the theatre after the first 10 minutes if it hadn't been for the fact that Rob was my ride home.

And so, to get back at him, I had made him watch Spice World. It actually hadn't been that bad (especially compared to Lost Highway), and I was thinking that he might have gotten off easy, so I decided that we would stay to the bitter end and watch all of the credits, too.

As the last of the words rolled up the screen, we began collecting our things, getting ready to leave. But wait! There's more! The Spice Girls came back on the screen and told us to go home. At the end of the credits, something else happened. Who knew?

This experience changed me forever. Now I always stay in the movie theatre until the credits have rolled by and the theatre lights have come on, just in case something awesome happens after the words. 98% of the time, nothing happens. But Tuesday night I went to a free screening of The Producers, and there was a post-credit bonus sequence. And there were only about six people in the theatre to see it. Vindication!

So, if you go and see The Producers, stay until the bitter end. It's worth waiting for...

It's a Flip Flop Flying Christmas!

I know that Thanksgiving isn't even over yet, so it might be too soon to speak of Christmas, but I'm going to do it anyway. I have neglected to mention one of my favorite websites of all times: Flip Flop Flying. The site was created by this guy named Craig Robinson, a Brit who now lives in Berlin. Craig is the creator of "Minipops." You may have seen a book about minipops in stores last holiday season or you might have seen minipops on album covers or magazines in the last couple of years. If you're totally oblivious to the minipops phenomenon, I believe you will be delighted when you first gaze upon them and figure them out.

In my opinion, Craig is brilliant. I admire his sense of humor, his dedication to his work, and his overall coolness. There are many creative people that I have jealously wanted to switch personalities and lifestyles with, and Craig is one who's at the top of my list.

I haven't visited his website for quite a while. Since the last time I was there, he has added a blog and a blog for his dog and a bunch of new characters to The World of Flip Flop Flying.

Although I don't visit FFF every month, I am always reminded of this website every Christmas season because one year he did a really fun internet Advent calendar which I did check every day (I am utterly obsessed with Advent calendars for some reason). He has done other interesting Christmas things, and you can view all of them here.

Take a moment to poke around on his website and absorb the brilliance that is Craig. I do not think you'll be disappointed!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I was so tuckered out last night that I went to bed really early. It's not surprising that I woke up at 2:30, after about 6 hours of sleep, and was wide awake. I thought I would take an opportunity to wish you all an early morning Happy Thanksgiving! Perhaps my friends with new babies will be awake, too, catching up on blogs during their early morning feeding... If so, HELLO!

I was thinking, "Maybe I should start cooking something!" but then decided that that seemed a little bit crazy, especially since it's just the two of us for Thanksgiving and we can eat whenever we want to today.

Instead, I thought that I would give everyone my veggie Thanksgiving recipe. Since we're vegetarian, we never have turkey for Thanksgiving (obviously), but I make this chicken roast instead. Yes, I know it should be a turkey roast to be consistent with the holiday, but for some reason it has always been a chicken roast through the years and so the tradition continues.

If you're not vegetarian and you're not a roast eater, I fear that you will read the ingredients and think, "Gross!" In my experience, however, the magic of roasts is that you can throw a lot of disconnected things into a pan, mix them up, bake them, and they turn out delicious!

Stuff you will need:

-1.5 cups soft bread crumbs (just run pieces of bread through a food processor until you have enough)

-13 oz. frozen veggie chicken, shredded in a food processor and added to the bread crumbs (I use Worthington Foods' "Meatless Chicken Style" veggie protein; it comes in a big roll in the freezer section and usually has to be purchased at an Adventist Book Center -- check your phone book for the nearest ABC location)
-1/4 cup chopped onion (I don't like onions, so I blend them in a little blender thingy until they're nearly onion juice!)
-1 tsp McKay's Chicken Seasoning, vegetarian (also usually purchased at an Adventist Book Center; it comes in a jar and is in powered form)
-1/2 cup mayo
-1 tsp lemon juice
-1/2 cup milk (use condensed milk if you're really being "naughty")
-2 Tbsp vegetable oil
-crushed corn flakes to go on top of the roast, for a crispy upper crust

Directions:
-Shred bread and chicken in food processor (I use the blade that has lots of holes in it)
-Add oil, onions, chicken seasoning, mayo, and lemon juice
-Mix well
-Put into greased (or no-stick sprayed) smaller (9x9 or 11x7) casserole/roast dish
-Pour milk evenly on top
-Cover with crushed corn flakes (you can judge how much to use; I can still see the roast through the corn flake layer when I'm done)
-Bake uncovered for 30 minutes at 375 degrees

I hope you like it! We think it's delicious!

Sports Update

I realized the other day that, for all of my earlier talk about how involved I am in various sports things this Fall, I haven't given any updates whatsoever. Here, then, is an update on my various teams and how things are going...

Fantasy Football:

I am currently tied for 1st place with two other players in my 12-team league. This comes across as amazingly lucky to me since I am only 4th place in total points and don't really have that great of a team. My strategy has been to sign a nearly new team every week, picking up the best free agents and getting rid of last week's sign-ups. Because I know very little about individual players, this looks like a risky approach to me, but it seems to be working okay overall. Now that Donovan McNabb is out for the season, however, I am really worried about pulling off wins each week! He was my superstar QB!

I am watching less football than I was earlier in the season, thereby proving to everyone that I'm really just a fake fan. I also spend less time each week agonizing over which players to pick up or drop. I am not sure if this is because I have a system in place now or because I am less interested in it. Overall, it seems like the less time I have spent on this, the better my results have been!

Fantasy Hockey:

Since there are so many hockey games per week, I spend even less time agonizing about my Fantasy Hockey team. I don't make a lot of bench changes either (pick-ups or drops), but mostly just go through each day a month ahead of time and make sure that I have players in as many games as possible. I am currently in second place in my six-team league, so it's working out okay, but I feel like I'm taking a very half-baked approach to this fantasy league.

It is interesting to note that Fantasy Hockey has far fewer perks than Fantasy Football does. For instance, you can't "smack talk" in Fantasy Hockey -- the most fun part of Fantasy Football! And there is less expert advice as well, making player selection feel like a shot in the dark. This represents part of the reason that I am probably not as into it as I am into Fantasy Football. But I am still enjoying being in second place!

Nashville Predators:

The Preds are currently at 13-3-3 (wins-losses-overtime losses), and it's always nice to watch a winning team! I am still really enjoying being a season ticket holder. For some reason, I find going to the games very relaxing. For those 2.5 hours, you are completely immersed in what's going on around you, taking your mind off of anything that is currently stressing you out. And there's something rejuvenating about yelling and screaming, and dancing around when your team scores a goal. Although it has been an expensive endeavor to pay for two season tickets, I must say that I am currently up for getting season tickets again next year. It gets you out of the house regularly, gives you a feeling of belonging to a club, and really is a lot of fun. Plus, the Preds organization really goes out of their way to offer perks to their season ticket holders, so it feels like you really do get something extra for signing up.

The only con to this experience has been how it has affected the flexibility of our schedule. With 42 home games in the regular season, there are a lot of other things you can't participate in. We've had to forego a couple of out-of-town weddings so far this year and are staying in Nashville for Thanksgiving because we have games on Thursday and Saturday. That has been the only "hardship" about being a season ticket holder.

So, that's the update on all my sporting involvement this year. I'm having fun and keeping busy!

Restaurant Reviewer

I've decided to start reviewing local restaurants on www.citysearch.com. So far, I have reviewed all the restaurants we've eaten at, other than restaurants like Macaroni Grill or Waffle House because they're pretty common and already had a million reviews each.

The reason I decided to start doing this was because I was recently looking for a new Thai restaurant to try and I found that a lot of the reviews were of two varieties: (1) "Oh my goodness! This is my favorite restaurant ever! I love it so much!" or (2) "This restaurant sucked! Don't ever go there! You'll probably die from food poisoning!" Surprisingly, many restaurants have both kinds of reviews, making you wonder who was right (or who was paid off).

I always try to note whether there are many vegetarian options and I think this gives me a unique (if worthless to 95% of the population) perspective compared with other reviewers.

Because of this new attraction to citysearch restaurant reviewing, I have decided to abandon my unrealized plan of reviewing restaurants here on my blog. Instead, I encourage my readers to go check out (and review your own restaurants on) citysearch. You'll get a more diverse perspective than I could have given you and you might find some good (or really bad) places to eat nearby.

So these must be my favorite songs...

Two weeks ago, I went through a desperate search of our collection for the latest Gorillaz CD. I had heard the last half of "Feel Good, Inc." on the radio and suddenly HAD to hear that song. When I found the CD, I immediately put it in the car so that I could listen to it on the way to work. Nine days later, when I was still listening to that song, I realized that I had probably listened to "Feel Good, Inc." 30 times in a row (quite an accomplishment, considering that my commute is less than ten minutes) by hitting the back button every time I got to the end of the song. I guess I really like that song.

I have a habit of listening to music this way. Although I have an equally long list of CDs that I have listened to all the way through multiple times in a row (there are at least 10 CDs that have stayed in my CD player non-stop for a month each during my commute to work; during college, U2's Zooropa was the album I did all my paper-writing to -- I had listened to it so many times that it was less music and more pleasant noise to me, used to block out the rest of the paper-writers in the computer lab), my ability to listen to the same song over and over and over again without getting tired of it seems weirder. How many of you do that? Can we start a club?

I thought it would be interesting (well, to me at least) to compile a list of these "favorite" songs of mine. I can't remember what songs fell into this category back in the day, so this is a more current list from the last couple of years and probably makes me look less dorky than if I were able to remember songs from my high school and college days. I do know that two of my college songs were Ace of Base's "All That She Wants" and House of Pain's "Jump Around." What can I say? Those were popular songs back in 1992!

So, here is my incomplete list of songs that I have listened to more than 15 times in a row:

Aqualung: 7 Keys
Aphex Twin: Girl/Boy Song
Avalanches: Gimix (it's a whole CD, but a live mix -- the Bob Dillon part is my fave)
Badly Drawn Boy: Once Around the Block
Badly Drawn Boy: River Sea Ocean
Beastie Boys: Intergalactic
Bebel Gilberto: August Day Song
Bjork: Joga
Bob Marley: Is This Love
Bob Marley: No Woman No Cry (live)
Bob Marley: Three Little Birds
Bob Marley: Redemption Song
Bob Marley vs. Funkstar De Luxe (remix): Sun Is Shining
Coldplay: Don't Panic
Coldplay: Speed of Sound
Cure: Friday I'm in Love
Daft Punk: Harder Better Faster Stronger
The Darkness: I Believe In a Thing Called Love
DMX Crew: Good Time Girl
Doves: M62 Song
Dykehouse: Map Ref 41 degrees North, 93 degrees West
Elbow: Asleep in the Back
Handsome Boy Modeling School: I've Been Thinking
Handsome Boy Modeling School: Breakdown
Handsome Boy Modeling School: The Truth
Handsome Boy Modeling School: Sunshine
The Irresistable Force: Natural Frequency
Jack Johnson: Sitting, Waiting, Wishing
Jay-Jay Johanson: I Want Some Fun
Jeff Buckley: Hallelujah
Keane: This is the Last Time
Larry Karpenko: Lighthouse
Maroon 5: This Love
Paul Weller: Wild Wood
Phoenix: Everything is Everything
Phoenix: If I Ever Feel Better
Ray and Christian: Play On (Featuring the Jungle Brothers)
REM: Nightswimming
Richard Ashcroft: Song for the Lovers
Squarepusher: A Journey to Reedham (7 a.m. mix)
TMBG: Meet James Ensor
TMBG: Ana Ng
TMBG: Dr. Worm
TMBG: Yeh Yeh
Tiga: Hot in Here
Tilly and the Wall: Fell Down the Stairs
Tilly and the Wall: Bessa
Tom McRae: Draw Down the Stars
Travis: Why Does It Always Rain on Me?
U2: Beautiful Day
The Vines: Get Free
The Vines: I'm Only Sleeping (cover)
Ween: Ocean Man
Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Maps
Zero 7: Destiny

That seems like kind of a long list (especially since it's fairly incomplete), but I guess that when you have an hour commute each way and then live by yourself for six months, you have a lot of time to play whatever music you want to. In my case, I guess this leads to playing a few songs over and over and over again.

Say "YES" to your off button!

After sitting in our staff meeting where the same person's cell phone rings every single week, I have to say that I admire the Packers coach and his tough line-drawing on this issue. Now that everyone, even grannies, have had cell phones for at least a year or two, it's inexcusable that people are still forgetting to turn them off when they go into church, to the symphony, to an art gallery, to class, and yes, even to meetings. But I still reserve a special kind of evil eye for the people who not only "forget" to turn their cell phones off but actually answer them in those same situations, thereby prolonging the interruption.

Although some people may offer up the defense of "It could be an emergency!" I have never heard anyone answer and say, "What?! Dad's in the hospital?!" and then immediately get up and leave. It's always, "Oh hey, yeah, I'm at the Opry. What are you up to? What? I can't hear you over this music! Sure, I'll speak up!"

I can't wait for those cell phone signal jammers to be legalized here in the US.

Stop Sign Guidelines

If you're like me, you often find yourself pulling away from a stop sign wondering, "Did I actually stop long enough just then? Or was that a 'rolling stop'?" (This concern over rolling stops should not be confused with Tennessee residents who live in our apartment complex who seem completely oblivious to stop signs. Even a rolling stop is better than no stop at all.) This "was that a full and complete stop?" question is especially front-of-mind when I happen to notice that I have a cop car right behind me as I'm pulling away from the stop sign. Yikes!

A few years ago, I saw a "bit" about full and complete stops on Comedy Central's spoof cop show Reno 911. Whenever I am sitting at a stop sign, this scene from the show plays itself out in my head. One of the officers is teaching a traffic school class for delinquent drivers and is reviewing various traffic laws. His guideline for pausing appropriately at a stop sign was that you should say aloud, "One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four TO THE FLOOR!" Although I don't often do the one-two-three counting part, it is rare for me to pull away from a stop sign without saying, "Four to the floor!" Whee!

Sunday Morning Breakfast Sandwiches

Here's what we're having for breakfast this morning. It's a classic recipe, easy to make, and very delicious. Let me know if you ever get around to trying it and how the whole microwaved egg thing goes for you. It seems more scary than it actually is, but if you stir your eggs up too vigorously, they can get pretty tall once your microwave them.

Stuff you will need:
-1 egg
-2 pieces of bread (English muffin, bagels, or sliced)
-1 slice of cheese (preferrably not American)
-3 pieces of bacon (we use veggie bacon)
-1 sausage pattie (we use veggie sausage)
-mayo (if you're using a dry bread, like we do)
-garlic salt
-pepper
-seasoned salt
-1 coffee mug, buttered on the inside (use a baggie, dip in margarine, then smear the inside of the mug)
-1 extra baggie to go over the top of the mug when you microwave it

Directions:
-Cook the bacon and sausage first (we make ours in the oven, rather than fry it up or microwave it)
-While the bacon and sausage is cooking, start "buttering your mugs" (sounds more risque than it really is -- hee, hee!)
-Crack one egg into each buttered mug
-Sprinkle garlic salt, pepper, and seasoned salt on top of each egg (the amount is up to you -- we tend to sprinkle liberally)
-Stir egg and seasoning enthusiastically
-Cover mug with baggie so that it appears that your mug is now wearing a plastic hat (pull baggie down over handle, at least, or it will fly off during the microwaving process)
-Bacon and sausage should be done by now, so remove them from their cooking process (whatever that may be)
-Put your bread in for its initial toasting (our toaster takes two rounds to get dark enough, but if yours does not, then you will have to adjust my toasting instructions)
-When your bread pops up, put your egg in the microwave for one minute
-Put your toast down for its final toasting
-When your egg is done, pop up your toast
-Spread mayo on your bread if it's a dry, dense bread (no mayo needed if you're using bagels or English muffins)
-Break bacon slices in half and put three halves on each slice of bread
-Put cheese slice on one piece of bread, on top of the bacon
-Put sausage pattie on one slice of bread
-Put cooked egg on top of sausage pattie
-Put other slice of bread (with bacon) on top, completing sandwich
-Microwave whole sandwich for 15-25 seconds to melt the cheese

Enjoy!

Guess who's turning 35?

It's not me! It's Leslie Rollins (that guy I live with)! He celebrates the big 3-5 today! He's a little bit bigger now than he was in this photo above, but just as full of activity!

If you would like to send him well-wishes, just drop them into the comments section below. I'll make sure that he reads them when he gets home tonight.

Happy, happy birthday, Les!

Overheard at the last Preds game...

"I am so sick of these bell bottom jeans! I can't wait for that fold & roll style to come back in!"

Of course, I was all about the old "fold & roll" back in high school (yes, even the guys were doing it!), but personally feel now that jeans with a little flare at the cuff are more flattering overall. I don't want to go back to folding and rolling, living the life of a peg-legged, oversized-shirtted, big-haired girl! It's just not me anymore!

And so I have chosen a new motto-of-the-day: "Just say NO to fo' and ro'!" I admit that not everyone is going to understand what my motto means and, as a result, it probably won't do much to stem the tide of retro fashion. But it's fun to say aloud at least (really, try it)!

Considering that I couldn't even find a photo of the fold and roll style on the internet, I'd say the fad is not knocking on door . . . yet. But when it does arrive, can stirrup pants be far behind?

Something I won't be wearing this winter...

Well, I know that I've gloated (especially to my Michigan friends) about the nice Nashville weather in the past, but I just can't resist gloating again. I got the new Land's End catalog in the mail today and, as I looked at the back cover advertising New Extreme Squall Boots, I just couldn't help thinking, "Well, that's something I won't be wearing this winter!" Yes, the thought of a mild winter still brings a smile to my face, even after experiencing one first-hand last year. It just doesn't get old!

But now that I've said that, we'll probably have the snowiest winter on record and I'll be out there in my flip-flops with blue toes and icy toenails. The Farmer's Almanac does provide me with some comfort (or a false sense of security), however, predicting a fairly mild winter for Tennessee. Yippee!

Meet George Jetson

People who have read my post about our washer and dryer will know that I can get a little excited about technology, especially things that make life easier around the house. People who have read my post about "things that dry other things" will know that I am always hoping someone will invent something cool, even if there's not an urgent need for it.

So I was delighted today when my husband sent me a link to the following article from Wired magazine about a research team from MIT called the Counter Intelligence Group (it's a pun, and you'll see why soon -- hee, hee!) and their research regarding ways to make working in the kitchen (See! Get the pun! Counter!) more high-tech. Fridge cameras, smart cabinets, recipes displayed on the counters, and reusable dishes. It blows the mind.

If you are easily amazed like I am, you will love this article! Enjoy!

Ready to Eat (oh, I'm ready!)

I recently discovered some great ready to eat Indian food from MTR Foods, so I thought I would share (the information, rather than the actual food -- however, if you come over in a few moments, I'll have some cooked for you) with those of you who enjoy Indian food, like I do. I bought about three different kinds of MTR curries at a local international foods store (the one in the Farmer's Market, for those of you who live in Nashville), and they have all tasted great! In my opinion, they are a great improvement over frozen versions of curry because they have a lot less "chemical" taste. Based on my experience, I would definitely buy these again.

The curry products are shelved in the ready-made food section (in a paperboard box) and the curry comes in a metallic pouch which you can either empty into a dish and microwave or dump into a vat of boiling water and heat up (inside the pouch -- and we all know how fun it is to cook a pouch!). Either way, you have a delicious curry lunch ready to eat in 5 minutes or less.

I am cooking rice at the same time, so my cooking time is a total of ten minutes. Still, that's not bad for a quick lunch at home. Yum!

Inventors, help me out here!

Here are two very practical things that I wish someone would invent:

1. A cordless hair dryer. I have one hair dryer and one curling iron on my bathroom counter and each morning it seems like at least three minutes are spent untangling their cords. Sure I could wrap the cords up each morning so that they don't get tangled with each other or I could put them on opposite ends of the counter, but I would rather just have someone invent a cordless dryer.

2. A dryer lint screen that is easy to clean. I have never experienced an easy to clean lint screen (I use a vacuum to clean mine right now) and it seems that, with all the dryer technological improvements we currently have, it's a major oversight to not also improve the lint screens. Has the world gone mad?!

I just realized that both of these inventions involve drying things in some way. Apparently, I am obsessed with drying. Who knew? Coincidentally, I am also in love with my thirsty towel. It's good at drying, and I respect that. Thanks for creative inventing, Thirsty Towel inventor!

Reason #21 to go in late to work

We recently got an iMac and my husband has set the clock to actually speak the time aloud on the hour. The computer says, "It's 2 o'clock" to the tune of Big Ben's Westminster chime, which you can listen to on this page.

I think this is so cool that I usually try to hear it twice each morning -- once at 7:00 and again at 8:00. Of course, this makes me late for work.

Obviously, I could get up an hour earlier to listen to it at 6:00 and 7:00 a.m., but then I would be missing out on an extra 30 minutes of sleep. And that's just crazy!

My Friend Sam's New Blog

My friend Sam started a blog about a month ago and, as it's always difficult to have people find your blog among the thousands of other blogs out in the blogosphere, I thought I would post a link to it here.

Sam (formally Samantha) is an Ann Arborite (since I used to work in Ann Arbor, I know quite a few of those Ann Arbor dwellers) who knows much more about books, music, and movies than I do. She also knows about "cool stuff" that I would never have stumbled upon if not for her "head's up" to me, like KnockKnock (some of the coolest stationery around), for example.

Pop on over to her blog and post comments if you get a chance. It's more fun to blog when you get some sort of response (speaking from experience, of course).

How To Sneak Up on Somone

My husband wishes the Wallendas would read this article about quiet walking. It kind of made us wonder how loud we might sound to our downstairs neighbors (if we had any). I can tell you that we do not employ quiet walking techniques, even though we generally don't stomp around either.

The Falling Wallendas

I would like to introduce you to a group of very special people in our lives -- our upstairs neighbors, The Falling Wallendas. Many of you may have heard of The Flying Wallendas, the famous high-wire circus family. Living in the apartment above us we are "fortunate" to have their less-talented cousins. At least, that seems to be the most logical explanation for all of the thumps and bumps we hear coming through our ceiling at all hours of the day and night -- they are hard at work, practicing something, but not succeeding. Or at least that is what we tell ourselves because we can't think of any other reason for that much sustained activity and noise.

Their daily activities include: a lot of running from one end of the apartment to another (pummel horse or parallel bar gymnastics?), some yelling and crying (trainer instructions followed by a gymnist's disappointment at a failed routine?), some stomping around in high heels on the linoleum in the kitchen (the circus ringmistress, directing the acts?), rhythmic pounding on the floor (some sort of percussion section?), and a daily cheesy theme song which is usually played around 2:30 in the afternoon at varying volumes (loud, then soft, then really loud, then normal, all before the end of the song). There is just no way that any group of people could create this much ruckus during the course of their normal lives.

The noise usually begins around 6:00 a.m. (even on weekends) with a loud thump directly above our bed. We assume this is an eager gymnist, hopping out of bed to begin his or her morning practice. The practice sessions seem to continue throughout the day, with a few breaks around lunch time or in the late afternoon. Activity resumes in earnest around dinnertime, and often lasts well into the early hours of the morning. Because the schedule seems too exhausting for one person, we are assuming that the Wallendas practice in shifts, allowing everyone an opportunity to hone their skills on the various gymnastic equipment they must have installed upstairs.

Visitors to our apartment have added their own perspectives to our neighbors' activities, including:

"It sounds like they just dropped their machine-gun and it is spraying bullets around their apartment."

"I think they've added a couple of ponies to their act."

"They must have very high ceilings up there because it sounds like someone is doing a free-fall and their parachute didn't open."

"I believe a 500-pound man just fell off the top bunk."

Next Wallendas post: Gifts the Wallendas have left for us on our balcony.

Ann Arbor Blogs I'm Enjoying

Hello to all my Ann Arbor friends! This post is for you! I don't know how it happened, but I stumbled upon a couple of Ann Arbor blogs last weekend and I have been enjoying them ever since. I thought I would post them here so that you could (possibly) enjoy them as well. Or really, really hate them.

The first blog is called I Arbored Ann. It is very limited in scope, focusing on the real estate development of Main Street and State Street, yet I found it interesting to see what's leaving town, what's coming to town, and what's moving to another part of town, since I know the Ann Arbor area so well. The blogger is anti-chain store, so the posts are "slanted" in that direction, but his/her comments are very funny and anyone with a biting sense of humor should enjoy reading through this blog, even if they're 100% in love with Ann Arbor. While the blogger seems to be taking a "neighborhood watch for the anti-establishment" approach to this blog, I found it entertaining and enlightening. If nothing else, it's a great place to find out what's coming to town restaurant-wise.

Suds and Soliloquies seems to tread a nice line between local news and national news, seriousness and humor (not always a given in a politically-aware Ann Arborite!). I felt like Dave (the author) represents Ann Arbor residents well, and reading his blog is the next closest thing to having lunch with an Ann Arborite in the flesh.

Lastly, if you're at all disenchanted with Ann Arbor, please check out Ann Arbor is Overrated. It's not all negativity and it's frequently updated with well-written posts. This blog also includes links to lots of other Michigan blogs in case you're interested in pursuing this futher.

Happy blog reading. But don't forget to come back and see me once in a while, too!

Who has an accent? Not me!

A woman at work told me that I have a Michigan accent ("You sound just like my relatives from Michigan!"). She seemed very surprised at my crestfallen reaction to that statement ("No, that's a good thing!" she assured me). After 12 years of making fun of the way Michiganders talk ("Would you like a paper or plastic beg?"), I guess it finally has rubbed off on me! That's what I get for marrying a Michigan boy and then living in Michigan for 12 years!

I wonder how long I will live here in Nashville before I have a tint of a Southern accent to other people I meet outside of Nashville? I don't think it will ever turn into a full-blown accent because it would sound too fakey to me. If I even say "Y'all" now, all sorts of alarm bells go off in my head -- "You're not a Southerner! You can't say that word!" On the other hand, it is a little odd to keep seeing people's surprised faces when they ask us where we are from and we answer, "We live here in Nashville." It makes me want to develop a little twang just to blend in. Makes me think that I need to take the accent lessons Garrison Keillor talked about on his show the other weekend. To listen to the accents sketch yourself, click here, and then listen to Segment 2 (if you're not a big GK fan, this segment is right at the beginning of the recording, so you don't have to listen to anything else to get to it).

When I first moved here, it sounded like everyone had a Southern accent to me, but now I only notice the most obvious of accents. My submersion has begun!

Fall is (not) in the air

My Michigan biological clock is deceiving me. It's late September, so I wake up thinking, "Today I'll wear long sleeves, maybe even a sweater." As I'm getting ready in the morning, I check the weather channel to find that it's going to be 91 degrees. What a surprise!

Although it does get cooler in the evenings now than it did during the full heat of the summer (there have been a couple of evenings when we actually wore jackets), it is still nearly just as hot during the day as it was during official "summer."

This is taking some getting used to on my part and I wonder how long it will be before my biological clock adjusts (will it ever)? Thank goodness I don't live somewhere where it never gets cold (like Florida or LA). I would be in a continual state of season-change anticipation.

Blogging Distractions

If someone had told me five months ago that my blogging would come to a screeching halt during the fall/winter months because of sports, I would have told them that they were on crack.

Yet, here we are, a couple of weeks into the football season and a week into the hockey pre-season, and that is exactly what has happened. I'm watching multiple football games on Sunday, attending multiple hockey games and fan events weekly, and updating my fantasy rosters daily. How can I get anything else done, I ask you?

We went to our first hockey game last night and are convinced that our seats are some of the best in the rink. We could see everything, but didn't feel like we were miles from the ice. We gave ourselves congratulatory handshakes for sitting in nearly every available seat during select-a-seat and picking the best location. We also sit by a lot of season ticket holders so we have long-time hockey fans around us which proves helpful when you didn't happen to see what the penalty call was or didn't catch the name of a player as he skated by.

So, for those of you who are wondering where I have been over the last month, wonder no more. I'm watching a game!

Fantasy Football Update

People, this is the face of a girl who just added a third QB to her fantasy football line-up. As you can see, I'm excited and kind of nervous, wondering if cutting my extra kicker to add a third QB was a good idea. It seemed a little over the top, but when your two other QBs are injured (McNabb & Roethlisberger), a girl's gotta make a Plan B.

I know we're only starting Week 2 right now, but I am totally hooked! I have made nearly daily changes to my line-up and have even had dreams about editing my roster online. I lost Week 1, but I'm feeling good about Week 2. Here goes nothing!

Is this what moving feels like?

I asked Les the other day if he felt like it had sunk in for him yet that we have actually moved -- our old house belongs to another person, we live 8 hours away from where we used to live, a couple states separate us from all of our Michigan family and friends, we are the people who have accents to the locals, etc. He and I both agreed that our brains hadn't fully absorbed the information yet.

We had been talking about one of our favorite little movie theatres in the Detroit area, the Redford Theatre (Please go check it out sometime if you are in Detroit; it's fabulous! If nothing else, at least attend the Three Stooges Festival!). In our minds, we just hadn't been to the Reford for a while, but we could still go at any time. There was no "grieving" feeling that we had left this wonderful place behind forever and would probably never go there again. It just seems like we haven't gotten around to going there recently.

And I wondered if this was what moving feels like forever -- you just haven't seen someone in a while, or you haven't been to that restaurant for a few months, or the weather has been so oddly sunny lately. Or is there a period of time a year down the road where you finally realize that a certain experience has come to an end and life will never be that way again, and you feel sad or relieved or stressed?

I'm sure that it is different for everyone. I have known people who were really torn up about leaving a house or a town, and agonized about their decision for months before making a move. I have never felt that way myself. Partly because I am always excited about the possibilities that lay ahead, and partly because I know that, if I really wanted to, I could always go back to what I have left behind. So far, however, I've always chosen moving forward to moving back.

Gee, Your Sweat Smells Terrific!

We spent a lot of time at various state and metro parks over Labor Day weekend, in part because it was too expensive to drive around seeing things through the windows of our air conditioned car (which is what we were doing when it was 95+ on the weekends and we were sick of spending time in yet another mall). We did have to drive to the parks, which kind of defeated our "save gas!" plan for the long weekend; however, we used only a little more than a quarter tank of gas over the past four days, so I'm pretty pleased overall. Thanks to Nashville's sprawl-free "lots to do in a little area" planning for this! Remember, we moved here from Detroit -- Land of the Free (Sprawl).

This weekend ended up being a little bit hotter than the meteorologists were predicting, and I found myself breaking into a very unladylike sweat on more than one instance during our hikes around the park (especially those "strenuous" trails at Radnor Lake!). Although I did not officially check, I am sure that I smelled more like sweat and less like my Glacier Fresh deodorant as the day progressed.

During the course of our hike, we passed nine or ten people headed the opposite direction. Although I am not known for my heightened sense of smell and am not the type of person who sniffs at other people as they walk by, I couldn't help but noticed that at least five or six of them smelled fantastic (a few smelled neutral and one smelled kind of sweaty) as they walked by, tricking my nose into believing that we had just wandered into a field of wildflowers or that we were walking among freshly laundered sheets, drying in the sunshine-infused summer breeze.

I will be the first to admit that I am not really "up" on the latest perfume brands or body sprays. Although I have smelled a few that I've liked over the years, in general I feel that many of them are too heady for everyday enjoyment, and make you smell as if you're going to the clubs to get lucky rather than out for a summer stroll through the woods. What I smelled on these woodsy paths, however, seemed as natural as a flower or a moss or a wind off the lake. It was remarkable.

I don't know their secret. Is it something they spray on before heading out, something they wash their hair with, something infused into their clothes in some way? I have to find out what it is, and plan to take a poll of the good-smellees the next time I'm hiking through the woods. Scent-challenged People of the World, I am on the case.

A Tale of Two Restaurants: Intro

One of our biggest struggles since coming to Nashville has been finding good ethnic food. I think that Detroit and Ann Arbor have much greater diversity of both population and restaurant types and, as a result, we got accustomed to having so many great ethnic restaurants to choose from that eating out became an exercise in intellectual debate as we each presented the compelling reasons why the other person should agree to visit our favorite eating establishment.

Being vegetarians here in Nashville makes things even more complicated, it seems. I never even heard of "Meat & 3" as a restaurant category before I moved here, and there's quite a number of options within that genre represented in our fair city. Granted, a vegetarian can eat something (grilled cheese, salad, side veggies, baked potato, etc.) almost anywhere, but when you have a choice of where you go out (rather than tagging along with a group of carnivores), you prefer to go to a restaurant where you have a wide range of choices rather than a feeling of desperation as you scan the menu. Instead of going to 25 different restaurants to try their one vegetarian item, we'd rather have a handful of restaurants to visit where we aim to taste the variety of vegetarian options the menu.

Since I think there may be some people in the same boat that we're in, I thought I would post my reviews of various restaurants we've visited in case anyone else finds our research useful. For the sake of comparison, we'll go to two restaurants of similar genre and do a contrast between the two.

If, after reading these posts, you really want to tell me about some great ethnic (or straight-up vegetarian) restaurants you love in Nashville, please post a comment.

Sudoku Hurts My Brain

A few weeks ago, Les brought home a book of puzzles called "sudoku." "Sudoku" is a shortened version of a Japanese phrase meaning "only single numbers allowed," and the puzzles are basically about trying to figure out how to place numbers on a grid. It's hard to explain it in writing, but if you click the link above you can see what the puzzles look like and understand the basic principles. The easy versions are simple enough for almost anyone to do, and if you like math or numbers (even though there is no addition or subtraction involved), you'll especially enjoy these puzzles, I think. I personally have found working on sudoku appealing as a stress-reliever at the end of the day since I have to spend so much time focusing on the numbers that I can't think about my supposed "problems."

Apparently, The Times of London has been printing these puzzles since late 2004, so I feel like I am coming late to the party, but if Les didn't bring this book home, I don't think I would have heard of sudoku even yet, so I think it's still fairly underground outside of major metropolitan areas.

So, for those of you who don't live in Tokyo, London, or New York City, and who want to be on the cutting edge of the latest puzzle fads (Anyone? I realize this has a pretty niche appeal...), start carrying around sudoku books and solve the puzzles during your breaks. If you really want to go crazy, use a pen instead of a pencil.

I Just Learned...

I just did some googling and learned what a "Circassian Beauty" is. A fixture in side/freak shows in the 19th century (and probably first shown in PT Barnum's "American Museum"), a Circassian Beauty was advertised as a woman of purest Caucasian stock, a woman of intense beauty and pale skin, traded in slave markets of Constantinople (or is it Istanbul?) and prized by Turkish harem-holding sultans. Incidentally, they also had very large, teased-out hair. You can see a photo of one here, and read more details as well. It is often interesting to see what used to be considered "beautiful" and "titillating" to people of a bygone era. In fact, that is one of the reasons I am most drawn to reading historical fiction -- being able to learn more about what life used to be like in a different time.

I read about Circassian Beauties in Mark Graham's book The Black Maria, a mystery of Old Philadelphia. Although I am not that enthusiastic about the novel overall (there were about four or five severe plot twists at the end of the book, so the story seemed ridiculous by the time I got to the last page), Graham did paint a very vivid and enthralling picture of the Centennial Exhibition (like a World's Fair) in Philadelphia in 1876, and certainly made me want to see some photos of the grandeur he depicts in the book. There is actually quite a bit of information on the Centennial Exhibition here, for those who are interested.

The other thing I had to look up online after reading this book was a "prismoidal railroad." Although I couldn't find a photo of it, the prismoidal railroad is apparently a wooden precursor to our modern monorail.

Land Between the Lakes

I was in charge of our activity schedule this weekend and, after paging through a couple of books about "Things to do in Tennessee," I decided that we really should drive up to Land Between the Lakes and check it out.

It's about a two-hour drive from our house through some very rural parts of TN, but I thought it was well worth the trip. There are some great hiking trails and lots of cool wildlife to look at, including elk and bison! Les took the photo above of bison crossing the road at twilight (artsy!). Those bison are pretty large when they're standing next to your car, especially if you're driving a little Ford Focus. I felt like we could have been trampled in our car by those hairy beasts!

In mid- to late-September, the elk apparently start getting territorial (annual rut season) and you can hear them trumpeting and see them clashing their racks. If you were ever thinking about visiting LBL, a month from now is a great time to do it!

You mean WE represent "the hipsters"?!

We went to the Ernest Tubb Midnight Jamboree last night. This is our fourth visit to the ETMJ in two months because it's free (and we're in money-saving mode right now) and because it's consistently a great show with really talented musicians and a great variety of country music. We wondered aloud as we were driving home last night why we never see any "hipsters" at the Jamboree. Could it be that WE represent the hipster crowd? We're not really very hip (the loss of "coolness" is a blog topic I've had on the back burner for a while), so that was a scary thought to the two of us. The audience is comprised of retirees, tourists, and a smattering of people between the ages of 10 and 30. But it seems like there are very few college students or late-20s/early-30s "cool people" in attendance at these shows.

I wonder if everyone is out attending more-traditional Saturday night venues (bars, clubs, etc.) or if people just don't know about the ETMJ because it's so far out of the way of everything else, out by the Opryland Hotel.

If you have never been to the Midnight Jamboree, give it a try one of the Saturday nights when you're tired of the bar scene or sick of standing in a smoky venue, waiting for the band to set up. It runs from midnight to about 1:15 a.m., is free of charge, and is a nice snapshot of the roots of country music. Be sure to wear your Converse sneakers, funky glasses, mod hairdos, and retro t-shirts so that I recognize you for the hipster you are!

Fantasy Football Fever

Well, everyone, I am now among the ranks who are enjoying Fantasy Football Fever. I have never played Fantasy Football before, but my friend Jason twisted my arm into joining his league this year. Our league includes maybe one stereotypical jock, so at least I'm not going to be swimming in testosterone during this football season, and probably won't hear too many, "You're doing really good . . . for a girl!" comments either.

I'd like to believe that I'm going to "pull a Lisa Simpson" in that episode where she and Homer bonded over watching football (she was using her smarts to research the teams' stats and would tell him who to bet on), and really get into managing my team so that I can insure a few wins this season. In reality, I'll probably let everything just go on auto-pilot and hope for the best, checking my rankings every couple of months, and getting annoyed that I'm not winning more games. The great thing about Fantasy Football (or so I'm told) is that this is an okay approach to participating in a league. I'm going for it (the laissez-faire attitude, that is)!

The "theme" of our league is Star Wars, but since "Tatooweenie" was already taken, I chose a regional theme for my team instead. My team name is "Deb's Dixie Darlins" -- "We put three D's in DDDefense!" Although my name is not Deb (as most of you know), my friend Jason calls me "Debbie" because I bought a cool bike in college and it came with a personalized plate that said "Debbie" on it. Viola! The nickname is born!

If anything exciting happens during this Fantasy Football season, I'll let you know.

Season Ticket Holders

Yes, folks, it is a dream come true! After ten years of hard-core hockey fan-ship, we are at last official season ticket holders! We could not be more excited! (Note all the exclamation marks!)

I have to admit that we're not really "Predators fans," however. Not that we don't like the the Predators, because we do, but we're bigger fans of the Detroit Redwings -- our home team during our years of hockey addiction. When the Red Wings come for a visit this year, we're probably going to wear our Red Wings jerseys to the games. But for the rest of the games, we can wholeheartedly support the Predators -- our new home team.

Although we are big Wings fans, the bad thing about the Red Wings is that they're so popular (what with their recent Stanley Cup wins and all) so it's difficult and expensive to ever see them live. In addition, we lived over an hour from the Joe Louis Arena, so it was quite a time commitment to go to a game, especially on a weeknight. We attended two Red Wings games in "Hockeytown," but were never able to get season tickets to the games because they were either not available or so expensive that they were out of our price range. And adding an extra two hours of driving to a three-hour night at the arena was pretty unappealing. When we moved to Nashville, one of our first realizations was, "If hockey teams ever end their strike, I bet we could actually get season tickets!" In addition, we live less than 15 minutes from the Gaylord Entertainment Center, so the drive time is nil. Like clockwork, the strike ended, the Predators lowered their season ticket prices, and suddenly we were official season ticket holders!

We went to the arena tonight to select our seats. Based on your history with the Predators organization (how many years you have been a season ticket holder or how soon you put your deposit down for seats this year), you get to be the first, middle, or last group of people to go in and pick seats. Our select-a-seat time was 7:00 p.m., and we felt like there were still a lot of seats left to choose from when we got to the arena. We had a certain section in mind because one of the Predators employees had suggested it to us when we visited the arena for fan appreciation day -- the 313 to 319 section of seats is at the 300-level price range but actually at the same height as the 200-level bowl. In other words, you get closer seats for a less expensive price.

We sat in seats all over the arena, and ended up selecting the following location: section 314, row B, seats 7 & 8. You can check out our seats on the seat chart here. The Preds attack twice on our end, which will be great!

We tried out two seats in row 1 & 2, right behind the Pred's bench. We almost lost our heads and got them because they were such great seats! But, in the end, logic prevailed when we realized that one of those seats was the same price as two of our seats. Maybe next year...

We are going to commit ourselves to being super hockey fans this year and attending all of the home games. It's quite a commitment because there are a lot of them, but we're going to try to "do this up right" this year in case this is our only year as season ticket holders (it is a lot of money, after all).

See you at the arena!

Pop CD Pet Peeve

I was just looking for the new Coldplay CD on my shelf and couldn't find it. Why? Because the spine is printed green on black, making it very difficult to read. I had to pull multiple CDs off the rack before I found it and by then I was annoyed.

If you're making really inaccessible artsy music, I could see that you might not care very much about the readability of your CD spine. Who cares if the three people who buy your CD can find it later. It's not like anyone would want to listen to your CD more than once anyway.

But if you're a popular band with a whole marketing team designing your cover and creating a "brand" to keep your band "front of mind" for as many people as possible, you'd think that finding your CD among a rackful of other competitors' CDs would be a high priority, wouldn't you?

Simultaneously, two thoughts occur to me:

1. A story I read long ago about zookeepers hiding lions' food so that the lions have to "work for it," making their environment more stimulating as a result, thereby leading to greater lion happiness. Maybe locating your belongings is "hunting" for modern-day humans and I should be thanking Coldplay's marketing team for making my environment more stimulating.

2. If the CD had been easy to find, I never would have blogged about it.

Maybe those high-paid marketing people know what they're doing after all.

Garbage Art

This morning, Les and I were planning to head over to Cheekwood Botanical Gardens for their studio art session (something came up and we didn't make it). We were going to be able to make our own art out of garbage (yes, I realize this would be easy to do at home, but it would have been fun to see what other people were making).

When I told Les about this plan, he said, "Do you throw it away afterwards?'

I thought this was a great philosophical question and started laughing.

I found out afterwards that it was merely a practical question. We have a very crowded apartment and he couldn't think of a spot for one more piece of art.

Tupperware Beware!

I don't mean to be an alarmist, but I really think that Tupperware is out to get me. I've been suspicious of it for some time, but I feel that its true intentions have only become more clear now that we've moved into our new apartment.

Let me break it down for you. The other night, I had just put away the clean dishes and was rinsing the dirties to start another load when I heard a small thunder-thud in the cabinet above my head. Something moved in -- you guessed it -- the very same Tupperware cabinet which you see in the photo above. Having been in the kitchen to hear this container-shift I had two choices: (1) pretend I didn't hear anything and hope that my husband would be the next sucker to open the cupboard, or (2) take one for the team and set things right before someone (else) got hurt.

I would never confess here that I finished rinsing the dishes, closed the dishwasher, dried my hands, and left the kitchen without another glance at the Tupperware lair. That is a tale for whispered confidences with perfect strangers and anonymous late-night phone calls. Instead, I'm here to tell the story of what really happened when I opened that cupboard above the sink.

Things fell out. At my head. With such orchestrated precision that I was unable to appropriately shield myself from the plastic barrage. Or rather, I made the mistake of trying to catch everything before it hit the floor.

Here is what transpired exactly. Initially, well . . . nothing. When I cautiously opened the first of the cupboard doors, everything appeared at least temporarily unshiftable. Maybe it was nothing after all, I thought. Some lids rustling against each other, a few bowls nestling more deeply into larger bowls, nothing to worry about here. This apparent lack of impending doom, of course, fed my false sense of security, setting me up for "the surprise behind door number two."

I recall now that I quite carelessly opened the other cupboard door -- a fool's move, I admit -- and was immediately greeted by an airborne Tupperware bowl, sans lid. I caught it in my left hand, simultaneously glimpsing a larger square container plummeting towards the floor. I dove for it, successfully snatching it out of the air. I felt triumphant. The worst was over. All was quiet, and a container in each hand, I stood up straight, looking into the cupboard to see where exactly I could re-stow these two errant food-holders.

And here is where the aforementioned "orchestrated precision" comes in: with a few miniscule shifts into the gaps once filled by the two containers I held in my hands, the entire top layer of the cabinet tumbled forward en masse upon me. With both hands full (as the Tupperware King knew they would be), there was nothing I could do to catch any of the tumbling tops and bottoms, and so I instinctively did what no sane person would do in the same circumstance. I stuck my face up to the cabinet and stopped a falling bowl with the bridge of my nose. It was my bad luck that it happened to be the only metal one in the collection.

I have never been punched in the face, but if it's anything like having a metal bowl rim smashed into the bridge of your nose, I hope I never am able to check that treat off my "Things To Not Do" list. My eyes started watering and lost focus, I felt dizzy, and I was convinced that my nose was broken or was at least going to start gushing blood at any second.

When my nose showed no outward reaction to this severe trauma, I ran into the bathroom and rushed to the mirror, convinced I would find a purple-yellow-green bruise spreading quickly across my face like a vivid sunset. Nope. No bruise, no scratch, no cut, no protruding bones. Just a whole lot of nothing. It still hurt, certainly, but you don't get much sympathy for something no one can see. I didn't even bother to mention it to my husband at this point. What was he going to say other than, "Well, at least you were unscathed. And the Tupperware can be re-washed. No harm done."

The bridge of my nose hurt for the next week, not that anyone would know it to look at me and my perfectly normal-pink sniffer. And that was the insult to injury which I'm sure will keep the Tupperware in fits of giggles for a long time to come.

The moral of this story: Keep your Tupperware in a low cabinet. It's not too good at jumping up. But wear steel-toed shoes and shin-guards just in case.

How Hot Is It?

Sure, August in Nashville is warm, but it's not as HOT as the hype would have you believe (for instance, June in Florida gives a Nashville August a run for its money). Yet people complain about the weather here as if we were all living in Death Valley at high noon.

I just read this article in the free weekend paper called Nashville Scene. This perfectly describes the current summer vibe down here and the general way that news agencies love to work up the public.

I wonder if living in a relatively temperate climate makes people react more strongly to smaller fluctuations in the weather? Do you think people who live where it is continually hot complain year-round?

Starch + Linen =

"Unfortunately, starching your linen clothes doesn't make them less likely to wrinkle. You just get 'sharper' wrinkles."
-- My friend Sandra, sharing her linen laundry knowledge

Cheap Date Saturday Night

Looking for a night out on Saturday, Les and I wandered up the road a couple of miles to the Grand Ole Opry, planning to buy tickets to see Junior Brown perform. We have always enjoyed Mr. Brown's music and have never seen him live, and it seemed like a great opportunity to see him in Nashville, just a few minutes from our own front door. Coincidentally, we arrived to find Junior doing a free summer concert outside the Opry in between his two evening performances. We got to hear about nine or ten songs by him (including one in Spanish which we'd never heard him sing before, and another that sounded exactly like old surfer music) and decided to save our pennies for a later date when we knew more people on the Opry roster for the evening.

Instead, on a whim, we headed over to the Ernest Tubb Record Shop #2 just across the street to kill some time before going to the Midnight Jamboree at the Texas Troubadour Theatre next door. We couldn't believe our luck . . . country legend Charlie Louvin was the MC for the evening! He put on quite a performance, dancing around the stage, making jokes, and just charming the pants off the audience in general. We were so impressed at the number of performers they rotated on and off the stage that evening -- at least six special guests/groups set up on stage, performed one song, and then tore down during the show -- and the music was of superb quality. Junior Brown, just fresh from closing out the late show at the Opry, even appeared and performed two Ernest Tubb songs with Leon Rhodes, former member of the Texas Troubadours!

It really was something to see how it all happens on the other side of the radio broadcast, and I highly recommend the experience to anyone who can stay up late enough to see it. Interesting to me was the fact that most of the audience was over 55 and seemed to have no problem staying alert for the show. I wondered then if I needed to start taking more supplements.

The whole evening was unplanned and accidental and we had a great time!

Wash and Dry and Wear

Folks, I am happy to report that we actually have a washer and dryer now. As much as I enjoyed hauling clothes to the laundrymat down the street and laundering my clothes in washers used by all kinds of interesting people, there is something about turning a knob or pushing a button and letting the machine do the work while you do something else in your very own place (like blog) with your now lazy afternoon.

Our washer and dryer are kind of fancy-like. They are made by LG (a company we had never heard of before now, which made us very nervous), and these models were recommended to us by "the fantastic Bob" at the Best Buy in Antioch. He has the same pair at home himself, which we felt was a good vote of confidence. When we researched LG equipment online, it also seemed like you got a lot of extras for the same or less amount of money. That's what reeled me in, even before Bob made his expert suggestion.

Our washer has many settings and combinations of settings to choose from, uses at least 50% less water than a top-loading washer because the clothes get dunked into the water at the bottom of the drum (indeed, if you are sitting in front of the washer watching it work -- not that I would know from experience -- you can hardly see any water at all), it has a water heater inside it that can heat tap water if your hot water heater runs out, it dispenses the soap and fabric softener (which I started using now, but still don't understand what it does) when it knows it's the best time to do so, and it spins at 1200 rpms so that your clothes come out feeling nearly dry. It also has plastic rollers inside the drum to make the clothes move around better.

The dryer can "sensor dry clothes" so that your things never get over-dried, and has lots of different settings, just like the washer does. Most useful to us has been the "ultra low heat" setting which allows us to dry all those clothes we would otherwise be hanging up from door jams around the apartment, afraid of them shrinking in the high-heat dryers of the laundrymat. And the few things we do hang from the doorjams now dry in a few hours instead of the former two days, thanks to the high rpm spin thing!

I am very enamored with these new gadgets, as you can tell, and cannot do a load of laundry without exclaiming, "Les, I really love this washer and dryer!" I think he might be getting a little jealous.

When I was about 12 or 13, my cousin and I were doing some door-to-door evangelising (yeah, yeah, yeah) and when we knocked on the door of one apartment, the young couple insisted that we come in so they could show us their new washer and dryer. At the time, I thought it was really weird that they were so excited about it. Why? Didn't everyone have a washer and dryer in their house? Everyone I knew did. But now, nearly 20 years later, I get it. If you visited my apartment now, I would breathlessly drag you into the laundry area and encourage you to ooooh and aaaahhh over our new washer and dryer, and would probably offer to wash the shirt on your back, just so you could see it in action.

Did I mention that installing a washer and dryer cut my closet size in half, and I still enthuse about them? That's real love, and there's no denying it.

Sitting Pretty, er, I mean, Sitting Real Tough!

We just got a new office chair and it's so comfortable. Les is happily modeling it here, just a few short minutes after we both broke into a sweat attempting to put it together (Pay $50 for assembly? Why? It's much for fun to struggle and swear!). This sure beats the dining room chair with the broken seat we were using previously. Now there are no good excuses for not blogging!