Wednesday Round-Up
Yesterday I had a quickie post prepared but then blogger went wonky and later I got caught up in this work project which, put briefly, involves hundreds of pages of old documents and no search tools other than my eyes.

Now I have a bunch of items and will lump them all together.

1. Yesterday's Oregonian had an article headline: "Van Halen, others to be inducted in Hall of Fame." Others being R.E.M., Patti Smith, The Ronettes and Grandmaster Flash. I'm a huge Van Halen fan even though they've been a complete trainwreck for the past 20 years. But come on. R.E.M. and Patti Smith, "others"?

2. Yesterday afternoon the news reported that we were going to be having snow this morning. I packed up a box of work (see item on hundreds of pages, above) I could do at home, just in case I couldn't get to the office.

As usual, when I go to bed with reports of snow, the first thing I do when I wake up is peek out the window. As usual, nothing.

I turned on the TV and they had brave reporters up in the hills with a few snowflakes floating around their heads pointing to a nearby patch of dirt with a thin sheen of what could possibly, with great imagination, be characterized as accumulation. They made sure I knew to dress warmly and wear a coat.

As I got in the car there was a slight drizzle and some wind. A radio station reported snow downtown. I'm here now and all I have to report is that the clock on my desk needs a new battery. I have yet to see a snowflake, unless snowflake means rain.

They say the cold air is coming so maybe this will all change. I'll report back with proper hysteria then.

3. Last time I was in Trader Joe's I bought this Korean BBQ style beef thing because it looked like something Bob could use to make his lunch. I'm not a big beef eater and very rarely cook it. Last night I was cobbling together odds and ends for dinner and thought that, at least for Bob, the beef would round out the meal nicely.

Dinner was ready and the meat resting on the cutting board when he came through the door. He looked at it suspiciously and said, "What is that?" I told him it was the Korean beef thing and he leapt in the air and said, "Cool!" and then tore his coat off, washed his hands and was ready with his plate in about 15 seconds. He made a sandwich with the leftovers after dinner talking about how great it was going to be.

The secret to happiness in our household: beef.

4. For the old office I enrolled in some sort of IRS program online. I can't even remember because I only did it one time. They just sent me a notice that my PIN is about to expire and I need to renew it. If I no longer need the PIN I need to logon and deactivate it. Why? If I let it expire, won't it be deactivated? [This is where Bob would chide me for applying plogic to the IRS. ]

5. This is a quote from an article in today's Dining Out section of the NYT.

"But most Americans spend no more than three minutes shopping for breakfast … . "

When I first read that I was speechless, but now that I type it out, I realize the rocket scientist from the "food industry research firm" who said it was referring to people who shop for their breakfast on the go. There's something here about McD's v. S…ucks. Don't people know you can buy yogurt and bananas at the market and bring them to work? I've eaten one Egg McMuffin in the last 20 years and it wasn't pretty. I can't imagine eating like that every day.