'round here at the end of the year

Heard around the Java household:

Twitch, yelling, as he walks past my office: "After I take a wiz!"

Superman, yelling from the kitchen: "TMI!"

If I carried my camera with me, I would have a couple of pictures to share. The first would be the huge display in the grocery store, many feet of shelf space, of all manner of Valentine goodies. I saw that sight on December 29th. I was disgusted.

The second picture would be an old (probably Ford) station wagon from the '70s, a light brown original paint job that was probably marketed as "bronze" or something. It wouldn't have been significant if not for the wide rims.

It pulled up to the convenience store where we were getting gasoline, parked beside the store, and two Bubbas got out. Driver Bubba was tall, used to be skinny but was carrying around his waist a spare tire bigger than what was on these rims. He was graying, with a long beard down to the second button of his red flannel shirt. Passenger Bubba was younger, bedecked in camouflage. They seemed the type to drive an old pick-up truck, but the old station wagon wasn't out of place. The rims, though, were just wrong on so many levels.

Here's the thing. Rims only look good on a very narrow category of cars. Unfortunately, I have seen these rims on a much wider variety of vehicles than they have any business adorning. Is it a Southern thing? Or do those of you in other parts of the world also see these travesties of auto accessorizing?

I have been trying to gather cheap and easy recipes for Twitch. He lives in an apartment with three other guys. The only meal plan the school offers is lunch three days a week, so he's on his own for everything else. He has a small income and horrible budgeting skills. We've been working on this. I've been drilling good sense into his head (for years, actually) and he's been steadily ignoring it. I could go on and on about that, but I won't. Back on topic, his meals and food budget: I have a recipe for a home made Bi$quik mix, and I went to the Bi$quik website today and got almost a dozen good main dish recipes using the mix. I'll make a large batch of the mix before we take him back to school next week. This afternoon we went shopping, stocked him up with some staples and a few other odds and ends.

One of the recipes I printed off for him today was French bread pizza. I got that recipe out of my head, actually. I recall Stow-fers used to make a frozen French bread pizza that wasn't all that good, IIRC. At the store this afternoon I picked up a loaf of Italian bread ('cause I couldn't find any French bread) and a loaf/flat of ciabatta bread. It's what I could find, folks. This evening we cut the loaves in half lengthwise along the equator, separating the top from the bottom. Superman lightly toasted the bread. He opened a can of prepared spaghetti sauce, I had an shredded Italian cheese mix from the grocery, and we gathered various pizza toppings. Included among the toppings were black olives, sliced mushrooms, pineapple chunks, bacon, kielbasa sausage sliced thin, and maybe something else. I forget. OH, onions! Everyone topped his or her own pizza as desired. We baked the pizzas at 400 F for approximately 15, maybe 20 minutes. I don't know exactly, as Superman did that part. This is what mine looked like. It was very tasty.

****Happy 2010 Everyone! I started this before 8:00 last evening, just after I'd put the pizzas in the oven. I've puttered around a lot since then, and it's now after 2:00 a.m. I watched half an hour of TV, from 11:40 to 12:10. I watched the ball drop in Times Square. I did not see Maddog, but I saw Jennifer Lopez prancing around in something egregious. I'd rather have seen Maddog. I saw some kissing, but it was boy/girl kissing, not boy/boy or girl/girl, so I wasn't impressed. I have my standards, after all.

Enough of my rambling. I'm tired and it's way past time to go to bed. I wish you all a good New Year, today and for the next 364 days as well.