2008!

Dang writer's strike. It's messed up my blogging too! That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it. But I decided to cross the picket line and write regardless, and you know why?

Because you shouldn't picket a scab!!!

Seriously, I don't know why that joke hasn't made the Tonight Show or something yet. Probably because of the strike.

Yes, it's been awhile since I wrote. Starting back up has nothing to do with New Year's resolutions, since I don't make those. Much like the 16 lbs I want to lose by July. That's just a goal, decided on shortly after January 1st. Said goal would be helped if I didn't pick up ready-to-bake brownies at the store, but why make it easy? Incidentally, if you want to limit the number of brownies you eat, try baking them on a pan that was not completely washed after baking garlic bread. Mmmm, chocolate and garlic! It'll stop you dead in your tracks!

After returning from our midwinter vacation recently, we spent some time in that favorite post-vacation pasttime: Here, Eat This Since It's Gone Bad. (This is closely related to the pre-vacation event: Here, Eat This Before It Goes Bad. It's much more edgy and unpredictable, though.) So I've learned that month-old microwave bacon is not so much bad as odd, curling in random patterns after cooking, as if it thought maybe it had escaped the Microwaves of Doom after all and was looking forward to setting up a 401K and maybe investing in some real estate in the fridge. Most items in Tupperware were toast, although not literally. Toast would have probably been okay. I mean, if it was green and furry, we didn't even try; we do have standards. But the milk held out for a week past expiration, and the eggs (three weeks past) cooked up just fine. I still hold that David wasted his time in asking me to smell an egg to see if it was all right. The only way to tell is just to go for it and see if the salmonella kicks in after the usual incubation period.

Sean wants to learn to cook, so tonight will be making a white sauce on the way to making Fettucini Alfredo with chicken for the chicken-eaters and broccoli for the vegetarians. I'm normally anti-Alfredo since I'd like to live another several decades without a triple bypass, but the kids like it, and I just have to hope their arteries are less congested. I just won't tell him that normally my Alfredo sauce is out of a jar!