We would like to add our congratulations to the new family as well! May you enjoy a wonderful, happy life as you all grow together.

I had a baby that size, too. It makes me wonder how big a baby I would have had if I had mingled my DNA with Airport Guy's. . .would we have had the world's biggest headed baby? The thought frightens me.

Wow... They say most of the 8 lbs. 9 ozs. is head, but I don't believe it. I think a good portion is attitude. Because a Mastandrea has to have attitude. Congratulations Jessica and Bazzukajoe.

Someone better send me some pictures soon so I can post 'em.

Circumstances make it hard to blog this week -- Christmas is always joyous, but was visited this year by a great sadness. I drove down to Staten Island to attend the wake last night -- it was all so horribly tragic. I won't blog too much on it because it seems so tacky, but for anyone who reads this and wonders why all is so quiet I'll just say we lost a cousin -- someone who was young and whom we all knew and whom we all loved.

So that's why there hasn't been much activity online in the last few days. But let me also add this: there better be something on this blog by the end of today. Something announcing the arrival of (yikes! could it be?) another Mastandrea.

The world pauses mid-spin.

This has been some crazy time these holidays -- so much to do and so little time to do it all. Vito finally landed his reindeer in Tuckahoe at about 2 a.m., and we sat at the kitchen table for some time after that drinking port and miscommunicating. Then to bed, unable to fall asleep for some time (and I had been fighting sleep, a bitter battle, just a few hours earlier -- not wanting Vito to have to ring the doorbell upon his arrival). So for most of today I had that special combination of grogginess and wracked-nerves that can only mean the Christmas is upon us.

Santa Claus was good to me: I got a ship in a bottle, a cast-iron hibachi grill, and King Kong mutandes that roar.

The stockings aren't hung (no chimney) and no children are nestled snug in their beds. . .even the cat is out in the drizzling rain doing his kitty cat thing. . .if he is asleep in the barn he is dreaming of mice stirring in a big pot of kitty chow.

We are still cooking here. . .I got a very late start on the lasagna. . .so it is in the oven at 12:30 in the AM on Christmas morning. . .and I am way past ready for sleep! However late the start was, it was a true joy to have my new Kitchen Aid mixer and attachments! I made about 250 mini meatballs for the meatball lasagna. The mixer mixed all 6 pounds of meat up with the bread crumbs, spices and eggs in just a jiffy! I mixed up the four pounds of ricotta and filling ingredients in a snap and used the attachments to shred cheese, knead the pasta dough and will use it again in the morning to put together the ingredients for the cheesecake.

Our presents were opened as they were received (the joy of being an adult! no one tells you to wait until Christmas) especially when I got to go along with Joe to outfit the kitchen with a new Crockpot, coffee pot with coffee grinder, silicone spatulas and hot pads, as well as a new set of dishes and a French bread pan that won't fit in our tiny oven (sad sad moment there, but we have lots of them over that oven!) After seventeen years together nearly everything we both brought to the relationship was dead or dying, so it was a fantastic, wonderful thing for Joe to devote his teaching $$ to re-outfitting the kitchen and making cooking and eating together a pleasure again!

The present that was going to go on Joe's breakfast plate didn't even get wrapped since he was going to go buy it himself while we were finishing up our shopping Saturday morning . . . for the last four Fridays when he got off work, he had a present in his Christmas stocking . . .(Santa was very confused by the weird weather in Nebraska, you see) . . .but none of the presents were the DVD of the Cream reunion that he had asked me to get him . . .and last Friday there was an Eric Clapton DVD in the stocking leading to his mild disappointment which spurred the desire to purchase the DVD . . .so I had to confess that I had planned it that way. . .so much for me trying to be sneaky! ha ha ha

May everyone in the Dish have as wonderful a Christmas as we are having this year and enjoy each other's company, fantastic food and enough good cheer to last throughout the year!

So I'm sitting here, with everyone else tucked up in their beds, watching TV and wiating for Santa. The strange part: around here Santa wear a postal uniform. And he carries an Odd Job sack.

We did lots of cooking today, and then lots of eating. Guido deep-fried a turkey and I got a taste of that -- good stuff. Then some baccala upstairs.

I baked some focaccia today, but I wasn't too satisfied with how it came out. I have another portion of dough still in the refrigerator, so I'll give it one more try tomorrow. And I'll attempt to document my attempt on Pugliese Table (but of course I didn't measure everything, so there's no replicating my work anyway).

I don't have a living will or a healthcare proxy or any of the useful stuff a lawyer would normally advise for a client (that figures). Furthermore, I know a blog-post is a poor and legally-insufficient replacement for any of those but at this moment I would like to make this clear: If I'm ever in a situation where I'm stuck to the train tracks because my balls are frozen to the rails, just shoot me. Or let the train roll over me. Because even if I was set free, I'd never live it down.

Ellie and I have ended the mock Lemoncello experiment. Actually, Mother Nature took care of it for us. The alcohol must have eaten through the stopper on the spigot near the bottom of the sun tea jar. Despite the recipe saying to use a sun tea jar all stoppers must not be created equal. Much of the concoction had leaked out and we weren't too confident about drinking anything fortified by stopper particles.

So what are we out? Vodka, lemon rind and sugar. Oh, yeah, a sun tea jar. If we try again we will use an all-glass jar.

To console ourselves we opened the Orangecello. It is satisfying but I prefer the Lemoncello. Ellie wants to try the creamsicle recipe.

When you leave New York you can end up uttering this famous line from Goodfellas: And that's the hardest part. Today everything is different; there's no action... have to wait around like everyone else. Can't even get decent food - right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I'm an average nobody... get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.

As the transit union threatened its strike over the last few weeks I cheerfully predicted that it was a bluff and that no strike would actually occur.

That's just a small example of the general reliability of my predictions.

Anyway, the subway strike won't affect me directly -- the Metro-North is still running. For now. So in a little bit I'll head into Grand Central and make my regular walk to the west-side.

What I won't do today is get lunch from the cart on the corner -- the one with the big sign that says "Halal Meats." I've made this vow before, mainly because the quality of her food always seemed... suspect. But her cart is right there on the corner, across 7th Ave from my building. It's so close! And the weather is so cold! So I went there yesterday and got the chicken on the rice, with the white sauce, a little hot sauce, and the lettuce on the side.

It tasted... ok. But for the rest of the day I felt blech-o.

Yo, it's cold! Just stopped off at Andre's Shop of Spine -- got crunched but good. Had a sip of Christmas cheer, and then back out to the freeze. Lots of home have lights strung up in Queens -- I noticed that as I stared out the window of the train (going into Astoria from midtown) and the bus (heading to the Triboro Bridge to get to 125th Street station to get home). It was nice to see.

Did those people drink vermouth as they decorated their homes?

I think not.

Last night we took the boys to the Bronx Zoo to see the Christmas Lights. It was Alane's idea to go there. I wasn't so sure I wanted to go.

"Zoo? We're not animali."*

It was nice, but very cold. Or at least it felt very cold -- I'm not sure it was much below freezing, but to my untrained limbs it may as well have been in the teens.

The boys liked it -- especially when we got up close and personal with a pacing tiger.

*Now Steve's got me making reflexive Goodfellas quotes. The bastard.

I knew Airport Guy would say that. . .ha ha ha

Lemme get this straight.

Vito sends you a "be careful who's around when you open it" video and you don't forward it to me?

I just located and resolved an issue that was preventing me from seeing my e-mails. This allowed me to review, finally, about two weeks worth of personal messages -- including one from Vito that contained a link to a special multimedia clip. "Special" in a Vito sort of way. I should know by now that if Vito is sending me something I should be very wary -- especially if he warns me to make sure no one is around when I view it. And when he tells me to make sure the speakers are on.

Maybe I never should have fixed that e-mail problem...

For the record I didn't know how much the Proscuitto di Parma would cost. Al I knew was that Ellie wanted a thre-eights inch thick slice so that we could make cubes. With the wide end in the slicer it turned out to be a big slab.

I'm not sure I could pick Giada or Nigella out of a lineup but I somehow feel that I'd agree with Frylock and Brandi.

John, I don't know where you got the idea that I'm organized. It must have been the vermouth.

Thanks Alane for the compliment on The Table. Please post recipes. . .pretty soon I will have used up my whole bag of tricks and will be posting how to make peanut butter and mortadella sandwiches.

In the discussion of Giada vs Nigella. . .Giada and my crazy next door neighbor could be twins so I can't handle watching it. . .would be throwing the cast iron skillet at the TV. . .and I haven't any idea who Nigella is. . .so I guess I get a "time out" under The Table for having no clue.

Joe is having veal parmigiana for supper and I am having Spaghetti alla Carbonara di Parma Arrabbiata thanks to Joe's generosity. Proscuitto di Parma is $23 a pound now. If I had known that when he called me on the cell phone to tell me he had driven all over Omaha and finally found it, I would have said, 'skip it!' I have divided the slab up in to 5 meal sized portions: glad the recipe only calls for 1/4 pound! I am spoiled rotten, aren't I?

And thanks to the family for the Christmas cards and the huge surprise it contained (Joe doesn't tell me anything, obviously! He just comes home and collapses after his ten and twelve hour days.) I would send out cards to the rest of the family in the Dish, but Airport Guy is a bit tied up with work and hasn't updated the database I use to mail merge into Publisher to make labels. (It's the only program that lets me add my own images to the labels.) Okay, so Emily Post would bust a gasket over using the computer to address the cards, but that is what being a geek is all about, right? And it makes the post office happy.

I would happily live somewhere I never saw snow again. Tarka, our snow dog, would be unhappy, but I would be thrilled. If you ever saw me jogging in the snow it would be the end of the world as we know it. . .So enjoy that balmy weather in Florida for me, too, please.

Isn't there anybody who knows what Christmas is all about?

Did Mojo outdo Linus?

Today I will tell many tales of Mojo:

1. Today after a very long wait, the Nerf Night Hoops thing we got from saving the backs of boxes came. Mojo was and is in his glory. (I should have wrapped it as a Christmas gift.) I attached the hoop to the bunk bed and he's shooting his heart out. He just came in to tell me to come watch him play and that all the "high seats" were filled but he saved me a seat down front.

2. The other day we drove by a house on the way to school and the people had installed a putting green -- not just one hole, but three. So we talked about it. A couple of days ago we drove by and the putting green was snow covered, but the flags were still present. I said to Mojo, who would be kooky enough to golf in the snow -- the ball is the same color as the snow. Without batting an eye he said, BazzukaJoe and Frylock.

3. Today Mojo's teacher stopped me after school. This is usually an indication that some behavioral problem has ensued and must be addressed. She said let me tell to you what your son said. I immediately thought she was gonna say, "Hey, this isn't college" . . . something that John says and that Mojo likes to quote at random. However, she said that they were discussing Christmas and she asked if anyone knew why they had Christmas. She said that all the kids said it was to get presents from Santa. She said it looked like Mojo wasn't even paying attention. She said to the class, "No, does anyone know why we really have Christmas?" And she said that out of the blue Mojo says, "To celebrate God's son's birthday." She said tears welled up in her eyes -- I then told her that before she decided to put him in line for Popehood like his namesake she should realize why he knew that. One Sunday, like all Sundays, Mojo was exclaiming his dislike of going to Church. I said well then you must not like Christmas and getting gifts because the reason we have Christmas is to celebrate God's son Jesus' birthday.

I just want to say on another note, that the other blog -- I will not mangle the spelling -- looks terrific.

I truly empathize with your 17 degree temperatures...after all this morning I had to wear a long sleeve shirt because temperatures here dipped all the way down to about 60...luckily now its back up to 72 so I'm okay. For the record, Brandi agreed that Ghiada was way sexier than Nigella....okay maybe she didnt use the word sexy...but she did think she was better looking. Nigella is British, they have no place in the kitchen. But the one thing we did agree upon was a desire to see either Ghiada or Nigella air an episode where they soak in a bathtub full of broccoli rabe (Dr. Freud could probably explain this)

The Weather Channel (via Yahoo) says it's about 17 degrees in the NYC area. In a little more than an hour I'll pile on layers of sweat-clothes to go out jogging -- an activity I find unpleasant even in fair weather. Maybe I need better music to keep me moving. Perhaps the new Rammstein can inspire me. I'll load that to my mp3 player.

I had Steve and Brandi on an IM chat the other day; Steve and I got locked into a pretty typical argument... It wasn't Jets vs. Giants; it wasn't Yankees vs. Red Sox. We were arguing Giada vs. Nigella.

Brandi wondered why we talk so much about food.

Community Service Santa? Minimum Wage Santa? Stressed-out Santa?

Cookie went and saw Santa yesterday. Santa asked him what he wanted and he looked stumped. Mind you he tells me he wants everything. He finally says, a microscope. Santa says, "oh, you like looking at the stars?". Wow...

Our front window now has lights; our Christmas tree is decorated. It has been a productive weekend.

It sounds like you had a very good start to the Feast of Seven Porks. All you would have needed is a few cold cuts for antipasto to go with the Vermouth and you would have been there pre-Christmas Eve. We will have to check out your rub as I believe that is usually the beginnings of a great meal.

I caved in and purchased a single strand of lights which I hung on the trellis in the living room, thus foregoing the annual Cursing of the Lights by hanging them right out of the box. Perhaps if we had Vermouth the light stringing would go better? I am truly impressed that the wreath was hung with care and not hospital care. That takes talent!

You would not have sullied The Table with your post :-) I hope we have such a good time that the table cloth is stained with gravy and a few meatballs escaping from forks. (Ozark Hillbillies talk with their hands, too!) Post anything you like there.

Sadly, Airport Guy doesn't cook very often. He is an excellent cook when he has time and energy for it. He did, however, take me to Ruby Tuesday's for lunch yesterday and brought home Panera's bagels and cream cheese for breakfast. He also made a special trip in to Omaha to find pancetta, proscuitto and smoked provolone plus an eggplant spread for crusty Italian bread. Our bread starter did not ferment. It formed a crust of black mold, forcing us to throw in the towel (and the bowl)quite literally when the garbage men came on Friday. The basement has a mold problem which apparently has now migrated upstairs. Yikes!

If he still had time to cook, he would make our anniversary dish: hot dogs, sauerkraut and Asti Spumanti Zonin which we would eat on a blanket by the fireplace at our favorite log cabin.

Time to stir the gravy. Bon Appetito!

My new winter clothing keeps me pretty warm in the wintry winds. Unfortunately, I get the sense that the new headgear makes me look a little too much like Moltar -- Spaceghost's studio engineer.

I think that means Cookie is Brak. And we already know for sure that Mojo is Zorak.

My brother Joe-maha seems to be very organized in his tasks and projects. The rest of us... we tend to wing it when we have something that needs to be done. We really need to reach beyond ourselves to contribute meaningfully to a blog dedicated to actual recipes -- a fixed set of ingredients added in more or less exact measures, combined and prepared according to some sort of plan.

So as I review yesterday's holiday prep festivities, I ask myself: what did we do to that pork to make it so good?

To not sully geekette's new food blog, I will herewith memorialize the process:

Holiday Christmas Lights

3 lbs pork rib deboned (rib without rib)
6 thick-sliced pork chops
2 lb sweet Italian sausage
1 large bottle Cinzano sweet red vermouth
Pigmans Rub-a-Dub Beef and Rib Rub
8-10 strings of outdoor Christmas lights

Preparation time: pretty much all year. Guido and I used to get into the Christmas spirit by driving off to the Galleria Mall in White Plains to shop for gifts and grouse at life, but gone are the days where we can pull off spur-of-the-moment seasonal adventures. On this particular project, we got started shopping at about noon and we were eating by about 6 p.m.

The first step is to get the grill heated. This is probably the first point at which a real barbecue specialist would throw his hands up and storm off, saying I don't know what I'm doing. Well, I don't. I have a grill that generally has two setting: "cold" and "reactor core." Pre-heating is still a good idea, so I let it go hot while I get everything else in order.

It is my experience that the best way to get everything else in order is to drink vermouth -- lots of it. So I pour some out for us. And I apply the rub to the rib-slab and the pork chops.

Migrating outside, I stick the vermouth bottle and the drinking glasses into the snow-pile that sits like a high-hat atop my patio table. I take the big bowl of pig to the grill and start arranging... Because that's another built-in limitation of mine: my grill is small. So I arrange the pork chops to sit on their sides (bone-down, so they get the brunt of any direct heat). The rib-slab can only go broadside down, taking up pretty much the other half of the grill surface.

Then I need to tinker with my equipment. The adjustment knobs on the front of the grill are pretty much useless, so I have to squat in front of the unit, reach my hand onto the tank valve and tilt my face into the inferno to see my progress. I turn down the propane as low as it will go without going out... Then I close the lid and walk to the front of the house to dis-entangle strings of lights with Guido and his brother Julio.

The next step is to drink the rest of the vermouth and hang the lights onto the hedges. An even more impressive ritual is the raising of the giant wreath -- with one person on the front walk and the other in the upstairs window hoisting it up on a rope and affixing it to the window-jamb. What makes it impressive is that we usually leave this task for last (after we've had most or all of the vermouth) and no one has yet fallen to their death in a tangle of rope and wreath.

Every 30 minutes or so I checked on the pork. At one point the flame went out, so I re-did the adjustment ritual -- not well either because 20 minutes later I saw lots of smoke which meant I had a flare up and a fat fire. I got that taken care of, re-arranged the meat, re-adjusted the heat, and we were back on track. Everything was browning so nicely. After about two hours of this, I turned the rib-slab and noticed that a strip of meat pulled off and stuck to the tongs -- seeing the meat fall off so easily let me know I was in the zone. I tasted it.

Whoa.

Then I piled everything up onto the side to make room for the sausage. So the last half-hour was on a higher heat, at least on one side -- but still not the heat I'd normally use to sear and cook on a normal grilling day.

I think the entire cooking time was a little over two and a half hours -- and again, a barbecue pro would scoff at that. Real barbecue needs much more time, and smoke, and whatever else.

Yeah, yeah, I know. But this was a workingman's meal!

I still need to put lights into my front window. I'll do that tonight.

It looks like a great time was had by all. Hope you are all enjoying warming up with a nice cup of cocoa and the boneless ribs. We had Italian Roast Beast Sandwiches. Tomorrow the wine and pan drippings form the base for our tomato sauce.

We lit 'em up. And we got lit in the process. Guido and I drove the boys to Stew Leonard's to get Christmas trees, pork chops, boneless ribs (ribs without the ribs?) and Italian sausage. Pig and pine. Then we took it all back to start the grill, open the vermouth bottle, and start hanging Christmas lights.

Mission accomplished: the lights are one. The trees are still strapped to the top of the car, though -- it got cold out there fast. So I still have some outdoor work to do, at least to get those things off the roof and down to the end of the driveway (three trees: one for me, one for Guido, and one for Guido's mom upstairs).

After all that vermouth, I need some sleep.

Tomorrow should be mostly sunny with temperatures in the low to mid 30s. Perfect for slow-grilling pork and sipping vermouth. And hanging Christmas lights outside.

Hopefully, when the lights are hung and the food is ready, no one will have to stand over us and tell us that our that our table has a lot of caca.

Steve, did Uncle Joe make any hand gestures as he made that observation? Heh, heh.

Cookie should be coming home from school soon. He had his "Holiday Boutique" today where he could buy gifts for our family. I can hardly wait to see what he picked for all of us. He was suppose to get Mojo a gift but this morning Mojo got in trouble and we were threatening to have zero gifts for him--Cookie said he would buy himself a gift and share it with Mojo. I remember that I attended one of those as a youth and bought my dad soap on a rope. I never heard the end of it--indeed if I asked my dad about Christmas gifts from me that would be the first one mentioned.

Continuing with the Christmas theme, today I went to the mailbox and it was awesome. All of our mail was Christmas cards--not one bill or piece of junk mail. We received the Spumoni South card and it was most impressive. Everyone looked great. I must particularly compliment Jessica--pregnancy agrees with her. She definitely has the pregnancy glow. Vinny and Marie look wonderful.

I'm glad to hear that I am not the only one that encounters freaks that must write corrections in library books. The other day I was reading a library book and on one of the pages someone had crossed out one preposition and inserted what they thought to be the proper one. It bothered me during the rest of my reading. I'm not even certain the correction was correct.

It has been quite awhile since I've attended a Christmas party or any other party for that matter where puke played such a starring role. And for it to be a couple activity is even more astounding.

Is it just the way I read it? Or did Steve's weekend partying seem to be unnaturally drenched in... puke?

A site dedicated to food? How could I not like it? Sign me up. And sign up Steve -- maybe he'll finally describe the exactly what you have to do to the chicken to create orange soup (hint: no citrus fruit involved).

Got up this morning and the radio announced that the temperature was 23 degrees. That's going to sound balmy to some, but I had to go out into that freeze to do my morning run. So I suited up with two sweatshirts, two pants, snowboarding gloves, and my brand new balaclava.

I was well-protected. But I still hate jogging. Blasted Never Mind the Bollocks on my mp3 player. That helps.

John, I am asking for your blessing on a second blog where we can all post recipes. . .The Pugliese Table.

I would like you all to participate, if you wish, in posting recipes. My email address is posted here as an image to foil spam robots, but please contact me if you would like to join.

I'm always a little uncomfortable discussing the little priviliges my family and I enjoy having a celebrity family member because I feel like a loudmouth braggart...but on this particular occasion I feel an obligation to publicly give Broadway Joe the love and respect he deserves for Saturday night's charity party. I think I can speak for everyone in my family, when I say it makes me unbelievably proud to have a cousin who represents the greatest celebrity of all...the one who shows his greatest acts of love and human kindness when the TV cameras are off and the paparazzi are a million miles away...and oh yeah, Holy Shit can he throw a friggin party.

Alright so with that I'll give you a basic rundown of a Broadway Joe party, start with a huge MGM Studios Soundstage, add a dance floor, a concert stage, lighting rigs, fifty tables, three open bars, and a metric ton of chicken marsala. Add Wayne Brady, DJ Ice, an impromptu live set by Debbie Gibson, followed by a live set by Joey "Solo Like Justin" Fatone, and then a live set by Janine Fatone...all backed by an excellent house band out of South Carolina. All were the opening act for a full concert by Boyz to Men. These were the most normal things that I can recall seeing. Now for the fun stuff: a list of unusual sights:
1. Big Vin once again getting kissed on the mouth by a complete stranger, only this young lady also gave him a winning raffle ticket....well and possibly a fever sore.
2. Joey Fatone singing back-up for Debbie Gibson...well for one night only.
3. A pair of male fashionistas overly anxious to join Vin in the rest room.
4. My Uncle Joe suffering post traumatic stress syndrome , after having to kiss a woman with a hairlip.
5. A couple neatly and discreetly filling every glass and bowl at their table with vomit...inspiring my Uncle Joe to tell them "wow, your table has an awful lot of caca".
6. Fireman Pete dropping an explosive mehtane bomb from his ass on the dancefloor....before returning to his table to fill up those empty glasses with yak.
7. A member of Boyz to Men slow dancing with my Aunt Phyllis to the song "Mama"...we all assume he must be exhibiting the Sicilian genes regarding skin tone.
This list can probably go on and on.

I also wanted to briefly mention something I saw the Friday night before Joe's party. For openers I found myself wandering the downtown bar scene with a coupla Maryland college girls Id never met before...courtesy of my sisters ex-boss who offered them with my cell number. So out of curiosity and desire for a little fun I met the girls...and drank alot..... and watched a small Spanish man have a fistfight with a pale foreign Hot Dog Vendor. Doesn't everybody LOVE the Hot Dog Vendor? Especcially when youre starving at 4am and hes still happily serving. Who hits the Hot Dog Vendor? Isn't that like hitting a priest? Scariest part was when one of my inebriated female cohorts tried to referee the fight and nearly got an uppercut. A little while later she also tried to stop a stupendously drunk man from wrestling a chalk restaurant sign...she gave him a flying butt block to which he responded by putting her in an abdominal stretch... even later she helped a rotund puking Spanish woman who was too drunk to walk. She was drunk...but she was still civic minded. However all her Good Samaritan acts were almost for naught when she tried to steal a few traffic signs and a an aware parking attendant threatened to arrest. But anyway more about that another day...its time for me to leave.

One other thing we have to link the video footage of Three Mastandreas in A Clearwater Aquarium (or as is heard the sewage plant with fish). G'night

The Bawls have arrived well chilled. Thank you very much. You will forgive us if we stick to the hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps until we thaw.

Tomorrow will be another record-setting day for autumn in Nebraska. Twenty below wind chills. Even Santa will be off his game if it doesn't warm up to freezing by Christmas!

I couldn't tell if Geekette was creating those intriguing illustrations... Yes, indeed, keep 'em coming.

Right now I'm calming my nerves with a (second) glass of twny port.

With any luck, they stoking their nerves in Nebraska right now with a tall chilly bottle of Bawls.

Y'know, were all still waiting for the Thanksgiving report from Spumoni. Where's Steve? He's patetic.

Thank you! That is close enough for me! As far as I am concerned you vindicated the author. . .I did a search on Google and waded through thousands of entries before I posted. . . .Frustrated and cold, I soothed the type A obsession with a glass of Paisano last night, but I still walked the floor until after 2 AM. from the joys of having sciatic radiculopathy and spinal stenosis. . .to which you can relate, I know.
I am off in the 1 degree weather to seek out bird food for our seed-flinging cockatiels . . .love and joy and all that jazz to each of you this holiday season. . .

e-post script: It's a little late to be asking, but I hope you don't mind the little images I draw and post.

So I took down my handy-dandy micro-print Oxford English Dictionary (2d ed.) and was surprised to find that the word "rat" in all its variations takes up about two whole pages.

There on page 1,512 (yeah, really) I found the noun form of the slang, there defined as: "A police informer; an informer in a prison." It proceeds to give examples of early usage, the first being dated 1902.

More on point, the verb form appears on the next page and is defined as: "To desert one's party, side, or cause, esp. in politics; to go over as a deserter; to turn traitor. Also, in Criminals' slang, to inform." An instance dated 1812 includes the construction "ratted upon."

And finally, there's this: "With on. To default on; to let (someone) down; to behave disloyaly towards; [snip] to inform on." For this, they quote instances that appear as early as 1932.

All that, and still nothing on the specific phrase "rat out." Sorry.

I am on a quest
to find the origin of the phrase, "ratted out." Why? Because of my obsession with reading and my disgust with people who deface public property (library books) with corrections and other self-righteous commentary thus totally pulling me out of the story when I would otherwise have noted the error and moved on with the story.

In this case, I am reading a crime story placed in the nineteen-thirties in which a character has 'ratted out' one of their own gangland mobsters. A reader has penned in a comment that the phrase "ratted out" was not created at the time the story is set.

Literary anachrochronism might be noteworthy in great works by Shakespeare and those of his ilk, but I do not enjoy being ripped out of a story by such trivial nit-picking. But now that I have, I want to know just when the phrase, "ratted out" came in to usage. And yes, I would really like to vindicate the author, not the self-appointed critic because I read to escape from my type A personality, not to feed it's obsessions.

Fortunately its cold enough in here to force me to return to the sofa, the blanket and the relative warmth of the summer of 1932 and the days of mobsters, Prohibition and the Untouchables. . . .but if anyone stumbles upon the answer, the portion of my brain still ruminating on the phrase, "ratted out" thanks you in advance for sharing it with me.

It's too cold in Nebraska for human life to exist, but here we are. . . .The old furnace in this house can't keep up with the wind blowing through the windows and even with the thermostat set on 60, it is running nearly constantly (and there isn't even any heat vent in this room!). . .tonight the thermometer will be in the single digits again, so we huddle in sweats and even have gloves on while surfing the web. . .(making typing a challenge). . .internally we are warmed by the knowledge that winter isn't even here yet. . .wait, that's not right. . .it's single digits and it's not winter? that thought is bone-chilling, not heart-warming! What on earth are we doing out on this prairie? We what? we did. . .yes, we did. . .we both moved here of our own free will. . .what were we thinking? Yet we have stayed on more than a decade and a half. . . .

The delightfully awful movie Eurotrip was on last night, and this time I succeeded in getting Alane out of bed to come see the Bratislava scene. It still makes me laugh -- and it made me have a strange dream about Castle 1526 as I slept... In the dream workers came with me to the apartment and did analysis on peeling paint and plaster scraped from the ceiling. The worker informed me that in the scrapings he had detected the fecal material of "turpentine ants" and that such ants would do great damage to any wooden furniture in the room. I told him not to worry because there wasn't much wood contained in any of that furniture.

Well, except for that teeter-totter board they keep balanced under the couch cushions... But I didn't remember that until I woke up.

So if last night was my turn to tell bedtime stories, and instead I let the boys watch I, Robot (or, as Cookie called it today, I Am Robot), does the movie count as a bedtime story? Do I have to tell the story tonight? Can I find another R-rated movie to let them watch with me? Or does that only keep me on the hook for stories tomorrow night?

We'll need a ruling on this soon -- it's already past their bedtime, and they're here in the living room running Sonic through a casino, looking for something.

Hell, when we were in school teachers would sometimes get lazy and show movies -- and they never had to make up the class-time!

Cookie stayed up late with me to watch I, Robot, which just ended. Alane tapped out before the movie even started. Halfway through, Mojo bailed out and put himself to bed -- Cookie and I had the big cushion on the living room floor and we spread ourselves out. At some point during the last half hour, Cookie closed his little eyes and checked out for the night.

I like Bazzukajoe's baby pictures -- I can see the resemblance.

Frylock reported last night that he found a secret Jacques Cousteau archive tape in the trunk of his car... The episode that ended his career.

This is Ellexa. It is estimated she is now nearly 8 pounds. The rumor is that she will be popping soon. We await the verdict on thursday. If you look close you can see her face. Or head. Thats the whole shot. Vin finds this amusing. So John I assume you explained the appropriate time for a pressed ham to mojo. There is a time and place for everything.

Momentarily, I will leave my office to get on the subway. I will take a downtown train to an elevated station in Bratislava. I will then walk the short distance to the Castle 1526.

Perhaps I should get myself a small bottle of Cinzano... Just in case I burn my arm on the steam pipe.

Artichokes seven ways is an easy task. . .a quick search of just cooking.com recipes presents 55 recipes. . . none for dessert. . .however, a quick search of Google shows an artichoke recipe book with a dessert recipe. . .I'd say that would be a challenge even for the most inventive chef!

I have been watching it snow for several hours; now I am watching the flashing lights of the snow plows in the shopping mall parking lot light up our house like Christmas. . .I suppose I should enjoy it even if it is 3 AM and I have not been to sleep yet. . .because they are about all the holiday lighting going on in this house because of the wild cat. . .

Even our double coated dog had good sense and came in today out of the cold and snow while the wild cat stayed out an extra hour and came in chilled to the bone. I do wonder whether he will venture out when it is daylight and the snow could swallow him up rather than just dust his toes. I know I am staying in if possible!