In your *face*, Emily Post

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In the childhood homes of both myself and my bride, reading at the dinner table was stricly verboten. Something about it being contrary to the accepted laws of society to bury your face in a book while eating. Even if you were at a really, really good part. I never understood it: these were the same people (my father, the surgeon & my mother, the nurse) who thought it acceptable to sandwich their blow-by-blow on today's tricky colonostomy around their requests to pass the stroganoff. Today, my bride and I delight in using the fruit of our loins as the centerpiece in our revenge against our parents. That's pretty much the reason you have kids, after all. See this, Mom? *We* taught her to do this! And contrary to all of your warnings, civilization as we know it did not crumble. Ha!
Note: that's really her book. There're no pictures in it, but she loves carrying it around and looking at it. Unless she's been hiding a copy of Hooked on Phonics, I'm pretty sure she's not actually reading it. But that's not what we tell the other parents at her nursery school.
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I owe it all to Bert

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This week I made chili. To understand the importance of this, you have to realize a couple of things. I am incapable of making a small amount of chili. Or even a large amount. I always make exactly One Pot Full. Which is sort of odd, considering I have nothing resembling a consistent recipe or process for my chili making. But it always ends up lasting about a week or two, which is good, because, like fine wine, it gets better with age. Unlike fine wine, however, it contains enough spice to make it hurt on the way out. Chili is supposed to contain chilis, by God. Fortunately, our critter has apparently come equipped with a cast iron stomach. She'll eat anything. She seems to consider spice a challenge - declaring "it's spicy!" while reaching for another spoonful. Anyway, back to the chili. The only consistent thing in my chili is the mix of meat - half ground beef, half pork sausage - the same kind you eat for breakfast (and make the gravy of biscuits & gravy with - it's not breakfast if there's no gravy!). I learned this little trick while working as a 'chef' (I use that term loosely) at Waffle House. Bert's Chili - served over hashbrowns or grits at every Waffle House around the world - consists largely of hamburger patties, sausage patties, onions, and a bag of secret Bert's secret spice blend. Along with that I sometimes add beans, tomatoes, or the random frozen what-have-you, along with whatever whole or dried chilis I have a full supply of. Whatever it takes to make exactly One Pot Full. I'm not sure why I'm reporting my chili-making here, other than it only seems to happen once every other year or so, meaning that it takes me as long to make chili as it does for NASA to send a remote controlled camcorder on wheels to Mars, so it's a Grady Event. In completely unrelated news, I've managed to fix much of the remaining bits of the 'Groove, including the comment function. I had to delete over 3,000 old comments, mostly creative spam. Along with 'Texas Holdem' and 'Casinos Online,''Fleshlight' left over 200 comments alone. But we're once again a generally family-friendly website. So comment as you feel the need.
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