I would have added the kitchen sink, but it wouldn't fit.

Quiche has turned out to be the nuclear option in my ongoing battle to finish everything in my veggie box. Can't figure out what it is? Put it in the quiche. Can't figure out how it's supposed to be cooked? Steam it and put it in the quiche. Don't have a lot of time or energy? Quiche.

If it can be coarsely chopped, it's suitable for the quiche.

But, you say, what about all of those veggies that you don't have the mature palate to appreciate?

That's where the jalapenos come in. And then a bit of cottage cheese to calm the jalapenos. And feta cheese on top to make it taste really good. And if there's any space left, that's where the egg and milk mixture goes.

Real men may not eat quiche, but any lazy person with a veggie box probably does...

The Possessions of Jeff

No, this isn't going to be another post on religion -- Jeff's sometimes a little weird, but I've never actually seen his head spin around.

No, this is the post in which I make fun of my brother because he claims he can't figure out the whole "apostrophe s" thing. It's not hard. In fact, there are examples all around us if you know where to look.

Here are a few from my morning walk:

(This picture has nothing to do with grammar; I'm just setting the scene here.)



Here we have the swim school of Morley. I don't know who Morley is. But there's only one of him (or her), because it is Morley plus 's.



There is only one Jim, and here is his store:



This is the tricky one. There are multiple physicians, and they all own a building (or at least they did when this sign was put up originally). Since physicians's would be hard to say, it's just physicians'. Of course, they would never name a building like that now, but back then people could apparently learn the grammar rules without falling apart.



And now, the test:

There are multiple overalls, but they don't own anything, so they don't get an apostrophe. But Levi Strauss & Co are lording their overalls over y'all, so they get the apostrophe.


Is it all clear now? If not, Liam may have to explain it to you in a few years.

The skull from Jim's Store thanks you for your time:

Holy Obligation, Batman!

The sucky thing about being born on November 1st in a Catholic (okay, at least my mom is) household is that November 1st is All Saints' Day, which is a "holy day of obligation", otherwise known as a "let's make Theresa be bored in church every year on her birthday, ha ha ha" day.

It would have been much better had I been born on November 2nd because a) yeah, not a "holy crap you're obligated to park your butt in church" day, and b) it would coincide with the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration. Sure, I'm not from Mexico, but still... If I can't pick and choose what cultural traditions to rip off, what kind of American would I be?

I was thinking about this today as I walked by Jim's Store since still he has a bunch of small ceramic skull figurines in the window display. (Okay, so it's been a week since Day of the Dead, but who's counting?)

I like the idea of going to a graveyard to say hello to the dead. But then I started thinking about how this would work in my own life, and I ran into trouble.

First off, I have absolutely no idea where any of my relatives are buried. I could narrow it down to the state, but after that I'd have to just start guessing.

So I'd have to pick somebody else's relatives to say hello to, which is okay, but then I started thinking -- I don't know these people, what if I don't even like them? I mean, the chances of that are pretty good, because there are a lot of people I don't like. And they aren't even, you know, dead.

And a lot of dead people are really old, or at least they were before they died. They'd probably want to talk about all their medical problems. Who wants to hear a bunch of old people talking about their ailments? The only reason to listen to other people blab about their ill health is so you can talk about your own much more fascinating problems. Let's face it, it would be hard to one-up the dead people when talking about medical problems because they died from whatever was wrong with them. It's like a freaking coup-fourré.

So ultimately I've decided to just keep my birthday where it is and just un-obligate myself. I think it will just work out better this way.

You're All Fired!

At work we've finally hit the stage of the current release at which point I want to fire everyone I work with. This happens to varying degrees every time we put out a release, so I try not to do anything irrevocable, but sometimes that's harder than others.

(For the record, I also have days when I think I'm a complete screw-up and should be fired as well. I try not to yell at myself while I'm in the cubicle at work.)

If one more person tells me they don't have anything to work on, I may give in to my impulses and snarl and ask them if they've tried to run the product lately. It's not like we're lacking in things to work on. Surely anyone can see that if you can't hit any button at all without an error popping up, it's not finished yet.

Today reminds me that universal stupidity is pretty much a constant, though, because today is the day we "fall back". The whole idea of daylight savings time is just asinine. It was stupid when if was first instituted, and it's even more so now. What really gets me, though, is that not only do we screw around with the time twice a year, we can't even all agree about when (or even if) it is supposed to happen. To figure out the time you have to know the date, and what country and timezone you are in. That just makes no sense. It offends my (German) sense of order.

Anyhow, my computers have one time, the oven and alarm clock have another, and the car radio has something completely random since I never reset the clock after Jeff and I made our abortive attempt to put in the HD radio. (I usually get home from work around "2:20", unless I'm running late and it's closer to "3:30" -- this really cuts down my anxiety about getting to work on time in the morning, though.) Any day now I'll put the new radio in and set the time. Really.

In the meantime, seriously, you're all fired.

If Only I Could Harness Their Energy For Good...

Apparently the little people in my house were bored today. When I got home

• The box of Diet Coke (from a 12-pack, with three cans still in the box) had been transported from the counter to the middle of the kitchen floor.
• The week's mail was all over the kitchen floor.
• There was a ziploc bag of dog dental treats shoved inside the Diet Coke box. (The last time I saw those dog treats they were in the drawer, but they disappeared about three months ago. I have no idea where they have been for the last few months.)
• There were lettuce leaves strewn on the floor. (Confession time: that was me. I dropped the open tupperware with my dinner salad this morning. I was hoping the dogs would eat it. I guess not.)
• The broom was knocked over.
• Three empty tupperware containers were on the floor.
• The pink elephant was sitting on top of the broom.

Obviously the pink elephant comes to life when I am gone, and today it made a mess but I came home before it finished cleaning up.

What other explanation could there be?

Trick or Whatever...

Well, another Halloween has come and gone, and once again I'm left not very impressed with the youth of today.

Back in the day we put some effort into trick-or-treating. We wore costumes that we (or our parents) made. We figured out who was giving out the best candy and planned routes to maximize our efforts. We knew to avoid the houses that gave out raisins, or worse, pomegranates. There were even kids who got rides out to Huntington Harbor, where legend had it that at least one house gave out silver dollars instead of candy, and the rest gave out full-size chocolate bars.

Those were the days when my parents' careful tally of the number of kids coming to the door climbed above two hundred.

Nowadays I get just a few kids, half of whom either can't remember or can't be bothered to say "Trick or treat". And after the first half hour or so (when it's the little kids with parents in tow), at least half of the kids coming to the door have no costume at all. Come on. How hard is it to at least throw a sheet over your head?

These kids today... They don't deserve my candy.

Chill Out!

The other day as I settled down to work in my living room dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, slippers, a sweatshirt, the warm hat JJ knitted, my parka with the hood pulled up, and a fleece blanket wrapped around my legs, I thought to myself: Self, perhaps it's time to winterize the house.

Actually, my first thought was that I should buy myself a pair of fingerless gloves, but then I thought about winterizing the house.

People who live in horrible places with real weather have big lists of things they need to do, from putting up storm windows to checking the insulation around the doors. My list is a little more basic than that:

• Close the sliding glass door that opens onto the screened-in cat porch. Check.

• Close the kitchen window. Check.

• Close the bedroom window. I ran into some trouble there because in the months since I last closed the window (some time in Spring), the jasmine has meandered up that wall and around the window, and now I can't get the window shut. But I shut it most of the way and added another thing to my list...

• Cut back the jasmine that is growing up the side of the house.

• Close the bathroom window. Again, I haven't touched it in the last six months (which gives you some idea of how secure my house is) and the casement arm had rusted in the open position. I put some oil on it, and I'll try again this weekend.

• Convince the dogs to sleep on the bed. Working on it...

• Change the filter in the heater so when I finally cave in and turn on the central heat the house doesn't smell like burning dust.

See the hardships I have to endure!