Little things mean a lot. Seriously.

The last 24 hours have been AMAZING around here, with a steady stream of UPS and FedEx deliveries after my late-night online shopping spree a few days ago. The best stuff so far: my new kitchen trash can from Wal-Mart and the custom 44¢ postage stamps I ordered from Zazzle.com.

The best trash can EVER. It’s made by Hefty, has a cool push-button pop-up lid and uses standard 13-gallon kitchen bags ... and it’s also the biggest kitchen can I’ve ever seen. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. (The can I had before was a silly stainless steel thing from Bed, Bath and Beyond with a useless shape that didn’t hold very much.) You can order this Hefty kitchen can in tan, white or black (mine is tan), and I paid $13 with FREE SHIPPING. However, the white and black ones cost 50¢ more. I can’t explain why.

Custom 44¢ postage stamps. Even more thrilling than my new kitchen trash can are the custom stamps that came today from Zazzle.com. Are these adorable, or what? I got so excited that I stuffed and stamped our Christmas and Hanukkah cards six months early. (I had them printed a few months ago. I’ve always been an over-achiever.)

This was actually a comforting and useful activity on the hottest day of the year. It was 101° today; the humidity was 60% and made it feel more like 110°. NO WAY AM I GOING ANYWHERE IN THIS KIND OF HEAT. You can’t park the car outside, because when you get back in you could wind up with third-degree burns from the seat belt and steering wheel.

Incidentally, let me know if y’all ever want custom postage stamps for a special event ... such as wedding invitations, an anniversary or birthday party, baby announcements or just something with your logo on it. I can design them for you and order them. Postage comes in three sizes and a lot of different denominations. Just send me an email for details, and thank for you reading this. Try to keep cool. Consider watermelon.

Guilty pleasures.

I’ll begin by wishing everybody a happy and healthy Bastille Day. Celebrate the holiday in true Howdygram style ... get yourself an order of French fries and watch “A Tale of Two Cities” (the incredibly wonderful 1935 version with Ronald Colman) on TCM. Viva la France, y’all.

And now for my favorite guilty pleasure. I sincerely hope nobody is going to laugh at me about this, but a couple of months ago I got hooked on Bravo TV’s “Real Housewives of New Jersey.” I am without excuse and can’t figure out why I bother to watch, because these women are superficial, loud, Italian “Joisey” showoffs with obnoxious children, all living in gated mansions with the biggest furniture I’ve ever seen in my life. They have silicone boobs, voluminous hair extensions, wear four-inch heels around the house and go to daily nail appointments to make sure they always look their very best at the strip mall. (The entire state of New Jersey is one gigantic strip mall.) Last week they all got into a brawl at a country club fashion show and chased each other through the parking lot. It was great.

Theresa, second from the left, has a Neanderthal hairline and four hairy daughters who look exactly like her. The two on the right, Dina and Caroline, are sisters. The others apparently have no particular relationship to each other except for one common thread: everybody HATES the one in the middle, Danielle, who causes way too much trouble and always seems to be whining to a lawyer or the police about one exaggerated crisis or another. She’s actually pissed off so many people that she goes everywhere now with a bodyguard and thinks everybody wants to kill her. (She may be right.)

The show airs on Monday nights, so stay tuned for a Howdygram synopsis of each new episode. Thank you for reading this.

Remembering Herb.

I’ve got some time on my hands because Sam is working late tonight so I thought I’d put together another post ... this time about my dad. July 12 marked eight years since he passed away; yesterday would’ve been his 90th birthday. This terrific photo was taken in 1943 when dad was in the Army Air Force and stationed in London.

Dad was a truly memorable character with sparkling gray eyes and a dry sense of humor. In addition, he ...

• was obsessed about classical music and played the clarinet in a fine arts quartet;
• had a HUGE extended family of first and second cousins, most of whom were a lot older than him (his mother was the youngest of nine children);
• learned to drive a car when he was 12 years old;
• played in the Lakeview High School marching band and performed for President Franklin Roosevelt when he visited Chicago in 1934;
• spent the summer of 1965 harvesting tart cherries from a tree in our back yard and filled the freezer with his own homemade cherry strudel and pies;
• loved family road trips and taught me to read maps when I was seven;
• adored Laurel and Hardy movies and could recite Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First?” routine word-for-word; and
• blasted his stereo before breakfast on Sunday mornings, particularly Richard Rodgers’ “Victory at Sea” and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Greatest Hits. (On national holidays we were treated to John Philip Sousa.)

It’s interesting how the memories get clearer with each passing year ... I can even remember the sound of his voice. And I miss him more than ever.

Shopping at midnight and news you can use.

There’s something really satisfying about shopping online. You can do it in the middle of the night when nobody’s looking, you can be barefoot and don’t have to wear a bra, you never have to fight for a parking spot, and if you pick the right websites you won’t even have to pay SALES TAX.

My sleeping patterrn has been a little out of whack for the last few days so I’ve been amusing myself with middle-of-the-night shopping sprees. Purchases to date have included:

• Room sprays and electric air freshener refills from Yankee Candle
• Return address labels and a custom tee shirt for Sam from Vista Print
• Four sheets of custom 44¢ postage from Zazzle.com
• The DVD “Dinner at Eight” from Amazon.com
• Epson inkjet cartridges with free overnight shipping
• Fantastic wrinkle-free sheets and a kitchen trash can from Wal-Mart
• A replacement filter for my refrigerator ice maker from FiltersFast.com

Incidentally, you should definitely check out the shopping possibilities on Wal-Mart’s website. Those wrinkle-free sheets are extremely inexpensive, really live up to their name and they’re soft as silk. I already have two sets and just bought a third. Plus almost everything they sell ships for only 97¢ ... even my new trash can.

One more thing. In case you’re wondering what the hell is “custom 44¢ postage,” this is basically a sheet of 20 postage stamps with your own custom artwork instead of a picture of the Liberty Bell or the state flowers of New England. I never bothered ordering custom postage before because it’s sort of a pricey product that usually sells for twice the face value of the postage (which covers the cost of customizing the artwork). But right now Zazzle.com has them on sale at HALF PRICE since there’s another postage increase on the way and they’re trying to unload some inventory. So I created my own artwork and ordered four sheets of stamps in various designs. They’re so cute you could pee in your pants!

Do you like to follow tales of political corruption, extortion and shakedowns? If so, the Howdygram strongly recommends the Chicago Tribune’s website for news from the ongoing criminal trial of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich in Federal court. Two recent photos of Blagojevich appear below in case you don’t remember what this yahoo looks like.

Thank you for reading this and have a nice day. You might want to think about ordering a pizza or something.

Will the real Paula Deen please stand up?

I used to really like TV cooking shows, but not so much any more. The chefs are all a bunch of self-absorbed celebrities who think they’re big hoo-hahs. Eventually Emeril even had a pumped-up studio audience and a LIVE BAND, like he was Johnny Carson or something.

One of the most unwatchable TV chefs these days is Paula Deen, who has FOUR DIFFERENT COOKING SHOWS on the Food Network. She’s a sixty-something southern belle with an irritating, cackling laugh, voluminous diamonds on every finger, a tidal wave of dyed silver hair and the whitest veneers modern dentistry ever invented. Take a look at her before-and-after pictures from 2009 following a plastic surgery transformation and some intense Photoshop airbrushing. (Oy.)

Paula’s worst feature, however, is her RECIPES, and for this she earns the Howdygram’s latest Einstein Award. Everything this woman cooks is an artery-clogging monstrosity with wads of butter the size of a small child. To prove my point, here’s a video clip from one of her recent programs. I suggest you watch this with a shot of Pepto Bismol nearby.


In case you weren’t paying close attention to the video, Paula’s favorite heart attack sandwich is an oversized burger, a fried egg and three strips of bacon between TWO GLAZED DOUGNUTS.

Thank you for your attention. Don’t forget to floss.

Things that are really important.

I’ve been on a quest to find a new Chinese restaurant that delivers ever since I had a fight with an employee from King China Restaurant in Garland. I’d been ordering from them once a week for almost TWO YEARS and never had a problem, but when I called two weeks ago to complain that my Szechwan scallops tasted spoiled they send this weird guy who barely speaks English to my house to ARGUE WITH ME. He was still squatting on the doorstep with his face in my container of food when I slammed the door. Since then I’ve tried ordering from Skillman Wok, May China and China City in Garland, but in all three cases the food was only average. Actually, Skillman Wok was BELOW average because nobody likes runny chow mein, and China City screwed up my soup and sent the wrong kind. I’ve also ordered from Chan’s, but they only have one thing on the menu that I like (Pan Fried Noodles with Shrimp) which can get pretty damn boring. And the last time I ordered they threw in way too much baby corn. (I hate baby corn.)

To tell you the truth, I’ve always lamented that my favorite local Chinese restaurant, Chi’s Wok, was dine-in or carryout ONLY, because eating there is depressing (three tables, no ambiance and zero air-conditioning) and carry-out is a pain because they’re squeezed into a little strip mall at the busiest intersection in Mesquite and you have to fight for parking with a laundromat and a convenience store. And then, like a gift from heaven, this morning’s mail delivered some incredible news, right there on the inside cover of our weekly Mesquite “ad pages” flyer: CHI’S WOK NOW OFFERS HOME DELIVERY. Even better, delivery is FREE, they actually have their entire menu on a website, and the restaurant is under NEW MANAGEMENT. I’m so excited I could beat myself up with joy. Aside from the thrill of free delivery and an online menu, the new management part is excellent because the former owner was a crab who’d actually refuse to make Shrimp Egg Foo Young if he wasn’t in the mood.

Here are some food pictures from their new website ...

If this is making you hungry, get over here within the next 45 minutes because I’m getting ready to place an order as soon as I finish this post. Bring some extra napkins, and thank you for reading this.

A collection of unrelated, miscellaneous news.

There’s been so much going on around here today I almost don’t know where to start. First, at 11 this morning the three Mexican tornadoes showed up to clean our house, our landscapers mowed the front and back yards and Schwan’s delivered our frozen food order. And then ... Sam walked in with several sacks of groceries from Wal-Mart, including bagels, bananas and what appeared to be a lifetime supply of Coke Zero in two-liter bottles. Altogether this was so damn exciting I almost couldn’t contain myself.

In other news ... big storms are on the way. A tropical weather system in the Gulf is producing several waves of thunderstorms and torrential rain and all of them are headed straight for the Dallas area. The first line of storms should be here by 7 p.m. According to news reports we’re expecting up to three inches of rain per hour. Naturally, I’ll believe it when I see it. There’s usually a huge difference between the forecast and reality. (Translation: everybody who works at Weather.com is a pathological liar.)

Here’s a follow-up story to my June 27 restaurant review of CiCi’s Pizza. According to the Howdygram’s visitor statistics, the next day (June 28) someone at CiCi’s executive offices visited my blog and read the article! Sam and I assume they’ve got a specialized search service that prowls the Internet looking for anything that mentions their corporate name. Well ... mazel tov and welcome to our friends at CiCi’s Pizza. Please forgive us if we never go anywhere near your food again. And last but not least, on Tuesday morning I had an eye doctor appointment. My prescription changed slightly so I decided to order a new pair of glasses, which will be ready sometime next week. Although I’m sure most of you already know this, eyeglasses are TOO DAMN EXPENSIVE. Even with vision insurance coverage they’re costing me $198. I told Sam it’s probably to our advantage to drop the coverage altogether. We’re paying $240 a year for family coverage ... but I only saved $200 on my glasses and eye exam, and Sam doesn’t wear glasses at all. This is NOT a bargain. Thank you for reading this.

Always take advantage of a golden opportunity.

Happy Fifth of July to those of you who think today is a big hoo-hah because the banks are closed and there’s no mail delivery. Sam and I didn’t really have any specific plans so we decided this might be a fine time to liquidate some old jewelry for cash. I wouldn’t joke about this. In case you’ve been living in a cave, gold prices are at an all-time high right now, which means there are lots of good reasons not to clog up your jewelry box with stuff you don’t need. I hauled out several pieces I haven’t worn in at least 25 years (a cocktail ring, two gold chains and several pendants with 14K mountings and semi-precious stones); Sam contributed the wedding ring from his first marriage. We made a list of three gold and diamond merchants in the Dallas area and headed for the freeway.

Actually, there isn’t much of a story at this point. We accepted an offer from the first place we visited, walked out 15 minutes later with nearly $500 cash, ate a couple of burgers at Scotty P’s and then enjoyed a nice drive in Preston Hollow (our favorite upscale Dallas neighborhood) before heading home. That’s it. Except I should also add that I plan to use part of my jewelry money on Saturday to buy us a first-rate dinner at Lefty’s Lobster and Chowder House. We LOVE Lefty’s.

One more thing. Please do NOT be tempted to use any of those “mail us your old jewelry” scams you see on late-night TV. They have to be a bunch of crooks, and it’s definitely not smart to mail a sack of valuables to people you don’t know. Instead, search online for a few reputable local merchants who buy scrap gold and estate jewelry, read the customer reviews on Google and and then drop in to get a price.

This was your Howdygram public service announcement for July. Thank you for paying attention.

Things to do on the Fourth of July.

First, this is a great day to THROW SOMETHING FUN ON THE GRILL. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have any hamburgers hanging around. Get creative. Consider grilled eggs, grilled raisins or grilled rice. Seriously.

Second, CLEAN THE GRILL after you’ve tried suggestion number one and order Chinese food for dinner.

Third, stand in the living room window and SUPERVISE YOUR SPOUSE PICKING WEEDS. That’s basically what I’ve been doing for the last hour except for a short bathroom break.

And — most appropriately — fourth, WATCH MY FAVORITE INDEPENDENCE DAY MOVIES: 1776 and Yankee Doodle Dandy. You’re definitely in luck here because both are scheduled this afternoon on TCM. Sam and I are particularly nuts about 1776, the former Broadway hit musical that also happens to be inspirational, historically accurate, cleverly written and full of excellent songs. Take a look at the movie trailer and then check your local listings for the exact time to watch.

From all of us at the Howydgram, have a terrific holiday, don’t blow up any fingers and look out for low-flying flags. Thank you for reading this.

We got our kicks on Route 66.

Sam and I are back home after a three-day trip to Oklahoma. I’ll pause for a moment if you want to sing a few bars. The lyrics are posted below. (Nobody’s listening. Go ahead.)

Oklahoma!
Where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain,
And the wavin’ wheat can sure smell sweet
When the wind comes right behind the rain.
Oklahoma, ev’ry night my honey lamb and I,
Sit alone and talk and watch a hawk
Makin’ lazy circles in the sky.
We know we belong to the land,
And the land we belong to is grand,
And when we say yeeow! Yip-i-o-i-ay!
We’re only sayin’
You’re doin’ fine, Oklahoma!
Oklahoma, OK!

Anyhow, we decided to skip the Arbuckle Mountains and Turner Falls (see my post from June 18) and take a drive instead along historic Route 66 from Tulsa westbound to Yukon, about 30 miles past Oklahoma City. The “mother road” (as it’s known by nostalgia buffs) winds through teeny towns, rolling hills and farmland ... most still dotted with remnants of the past: tacky motels with “tourist cabins,” little diners, souvenir stands, hilarious points of interest and vintage gas stations.

The food on our trip ranged from terrible to terrific, beginning with a nightmare of unrecognizeable pseudo-Asian crap at Golden China buffet in Denton, Texas, and ending with barbecue nirvana at Bad Brad’s in Yukon, Oklahoma, where everything was a perfect 10 — from the smoked meat and homemade sauce to the beer-battered onion rings and attractive plastic silverware. At other times we also ate Clif bars, Tic Tacs, Wheat Thins, a couple of bananas and a fine dinner at Lottinville’s Wood-Fire Grille in Oklahoma City, where they’ve got the friendliest servers on the planet.

We got home yesterday just two hours ahead of some mighty heavy rain from Hurricane Alex in the Gulf of Mexico, which apparently will continue through tomorrow night. (No complaints. We were in a drought situation here.) Our plans for the Fourth of July weekend include a few good movies on TV, my homemade potato salad and our standard ration of afternoon naps.

How about you? Anything exciting happening at YOUR house? I think we’re available on the fourth for a barbecue. I can bring olives and napkins. Thank you.

An all-day celebration of Sam.

Light the skyrockets and Roman candles ... everybody’s favorite cowpoke is officially 51 years old today. I think Sam looks totally terrific for a dude starting his second half-century. Please don’t tell him I said this, but his birthday suit is still a perfect fit and it’s my #1 favorite outfit.

This year my birthday gifts to Sam are a homemade card (I’m world-famous for my homemade cards) and a new leather executive chair for his desk at home. He’s got a week of vacation beginning today so we’ll kick it off with a trip to Office Depot and then go somewhere for lunch.

If you want to help Sam celebrate you can send him a nice happy birthday email. He likes email. He also likes money, raisins, pulling weeds, long drives in the country, Humphrey Bogart movies and Mexican food. But email will be fine for the time being. Thank you.

Where's Auntie Em when you need her?

Howdy. I’m sitting here watching a bunch of ominous black clouds roll in from the west and I sure wish Sam was home. He loves thunderstorms even more than I do (if that’s possible), and it’s a family tradition to sit in the garage with the door open and watch the lightning. This time, though, Sam is at work, and it’s no fun to sit in the garage by myself. Plus I wouldn’t want the neighbors to think I'm weird or anything.

Here’s the approaching storm as it looked on Weather.com about five minutes ago. I’ve highlighted Mesquite with a bright red star on the right side of the map.

There’s actually no other news to report, except this morning I finished redesigning a client’s website. It turned out GREAT, and she’s thrilled to pieces. You can check it out here. Incidentally ... don’t forget to tell your friends that I design websites, okay? You can send them to OvationCreative.com for all the details. Thank you for reading this.

I think I'd rather eat Haitian mud cookies.

To begin, let’s be clear about one thing: it’s been more than two and half years since Sam and I ate at Cici’s Pizza. The only reason I finally decided to write this review is because on my way home from Pep Boys yesterday morning I drove past Cici’s Pizza on Galloway and there were customers lined up around the building waiting for the doors to open. Under the circumstances, I feel it’s my public duty to warn the good citizens of Howdygramland that you should avoid eating this slop at all costs.

Cici’s is basically a chain of poorly-conceived and miserably-executed pizza buffet restaurants with no ambiance and exceptionally cheap prices. The day we were there our local Cici’s in Mesquite was populated by several hundred bussed-in middle schoolers loading up on free Mountain Dew refills. The pizza itself was a nightmare of extraordinarily terrible toppings on rubbery, previously-frozen dough and included such house specialties as Macaroni & Cheese Pizza, Japapeño Pineapple Pizza, Sloppy Joe Pizza, Hamburger Helper Pizza and Alpo Double-Cheese Surprise. If any of this makes you nauseous there are other meal options as well, like tubs of room-temperature Chef Boyardee pastas and cinnamon churros that walked over from Taco Bell across the street.

Pictured above is a platter of Cici’s finest, including Alpo Double-Cheese Surprise and (on the bottom) Macaroni & Cheese Pizza. The other two pizzas on the plate refused to give me their names without an attorney present, and I couldn’t get the Hamburger Helper Pizza to pose for me.

Bottom line: rather than eating at Cici’s I strongly recommend that you stay home and consider peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or a bowl of cereal. Thank you for reading this. RATING: F.

Nerdlike activities abound.

Sam is still in Houston. I know this for sure because he calls every 27½ minutes to tell me that’s where he is and that he misses me and wants to come home. The coming home part will probably happen tomorrow unless the clients delay their project and he has to stay an extra day. Either way, I’m keeping busy with a pile of design projects, occasional naps and lots of visitors for a quiet Wednesday. My maid service (a team of three Mexican tornadoes armed with mops and Lysol) shows up this morning for an hour and a half, my Schwan’s delivery guy arrives at 12:30 with most of this week’s frozen food order, and at 2:30 a technician from Time Warner Cable drops in to reboot our cable box because we lost some of our high-definition channels last week. Apparently they upgraded their software to accommodate new channels and in the process there was an outage for a whole crowd of customers in Mesquite. And at 4:45, the very moment I decide to watch a movie and take my very first nap of the day, the Schwan’s guy comes back with my missing bag of Buffalo Chicken Egg Rolls.

Hot tip. The most incredible TV show on earth in HD is “Deadliest Catch” on the Discovery Channel. You can see EVERY SINGLE DROP OF WATER in EVERY 30-FOOT WAVE on the Bering Sea. Check it out.

Incidentally, I think Sam is secretly having a good time in Houston. Yesterday he had a chance to explore Galveston Island and today before work he spent a few hours at the Houston Museum of Printing History. Initially I thought I’d poke some fun at this until I checked out their website and realized it’s actually an interesting place for a couple of nerds like Sam and me. He’s got three decades of experience in commercial and financial printing, and I’ve been fascinated with print and type since I was eight years old and my cousin Bobby taught me how to use a manual typewriter. I was hooked for life. In case you’re interested, my top typing speed back in the 1980s was 125 w.p.m. on an IBM Selectric. I even burned out two Selectric motors when I worked at the Chicago Board of Trade and actually made them SMOKE.

See? I told you I was a nerd.

Sometimes I even forget to eat.

On Tuesday Sam went to Houston on business for a few days. This time he decided to drive (it’s a four-hour trip) so he could spend a day on Galveston Island looking for tarballs. I don’t think he found any, but I warned him to steer clear of Gulf seafood and greasy birds just in case. While he’s gone I’ve been working on a variety of client projects, including a new website and redesigning a complex five-page blog. I get so intense that I totally forget to eat, take pills, throw laundry in the dryer and empty my bladder until it’s almost too late. Since it’s already past midnight I think it might be a good idea to grab yesterday’s lunch before it’s time for bed.

For your possible interest here are a couple of new family photos. The one on top is mom with my sister Robin on Mother’s Day. I think mom looks absolutely amazing at almost 90 years old. She gets her hair and nails done every week and even hinted recently that she has a BOYFRIEND at her nursing home. (Oy.) The other photo is my brother-in-law Ron and his grandson Tyler, who just turned two on June 18. I have no idea where Tyler got that little mop of curly red hair, but he’s the cutest kid I’ve ever seen. (I’d say that even if he wasn’t a relative.)

 Thank you for reading this. Seriously.

Celebrating our dads.

First of all, happy Father’s Day to all you dads out there in Howdygramland. We hope you have a terrific day no matter how you choose to celebrate ... whether you’re shlepping somewhere to a brunch, watching the U.S. Open on TV or just pulling weeds in the back yard. Sam and I are a little at loose ends on Father’s Day because both of us are dad-less now. Sam’s dad (Ben) passed away only one year ago; mine (Herb) died in 2002.

It’s interesting how your memories evolve after you lose a parent. In the eight years since my father died I’ve started remembering a lot of very small incidents, like playing Peter Pan when I was four years old and dad would “fly me to bed”. We also danced to Rosemary Clooney records and watched Cubs games on TV, the latter because I mostly loved the commercials (my favorite was the Hamm’s bear) and Ernie Banks.

Dad was a great teacher. He taught me to recognize (and name) every automobile logo by the time I was three so I’d identify all the parked cars whenever we walked around the block. I guess everybody thought I was a baby genius, shrieking “STUDEBAKER!” from my stroller, but I know I made dad proud. He also taught me to order fried rice with a Chinese accent when I was two, turning me into a runaway sensation at the Golden Pheasant restaurant. (If you ever wonder where I got my strange sense of humor, now you know.)

So Happy Father’s Day. Go make some memories!

My favorite guilt-free dessert.

As a diabetic and perpetual dieter I’m always on the lookout for a decent homemade dessert. I’ve tried making pumpkin pie with 1,548 packets of Equal, but it’s not the same as the real thing and you have to wash down the aftertaste with half a quart of Coke Zero. This rice pudding recipe, however, which was invented by yours truly, is the real deal and my all-time favorite. As a bonus it’s also extremely easy to make and you don’t have to wait very long to dig in.

• 3 pkgs.* Jello sugar-free instant vanilla pudding mix
• 6 cups cold nonfat milk
• 1½ cups cooked white rice at room temperature
• ½ cup raisins
• cinnamon to taste

Prepare vanilla pudding in a large bowl according to package directions, then stir in the cooked rice and raisins and refrigerate for 15 minutes. Sprinkle cinnamon on each individual serving. *These are regular-size packages of pudding mix that require 2 cups of milk each for preparation.

This recipe actually makes enough to serve six people or you can keep it all for yourself if nobody else wants any. That’s the case in MY house because Sam doesn’t like rice pudding. Thank you for reading this.

Miscellaneous stuff on a Friday.

First of all, Sam and I celebrated another milestone yesterday! After breakfast at Scrambles (see photo below), our favorite local greasy spoon, we drove around the cattle ranches in Sunnyvale for a few minutes until the odometer on our 2001 Saturn coupe hit 100,000 miles. This was a very large deal, to be sure, but not nearly as much fun as big odometer changes in decades past when it was analog instead of digital and the numbers actually took several seconds to roll over from nines to zeroes. Digital rollovers are so damn fast I was afraid we’d run into a steer trying to watch the odometer. (We didn’t.)

While I’m on the subject of vehicles, has anybody ever seen a Nissan Cube? I spotted one yesterday for the first time on my way to AAA to pick up a 2010 Oklahoma tour book (details to follow). While I seriously hope I’m not offending any of my Howdygram readers, this thing has to be the ugliest car on the road and reminds me of a plastic toy from a Disney Pixar movie. The driver looked like Buzz Lightyear.

Sam has a week of vacation time coming up so we’re planning a three- or four-day driving trip into Oklahoma, maybe somewhere around the Arbuckle Mountains and Turner Falls. This might not sound very exciting to YOU, but we really love road trips and it almost doesn’t matter where we go or what we do, as long as we’re in the car making up songs and eating pretzels. I’ll post pictures when we get back, so stay tuned. In the meantime, don’t forget to floss.

Fat-free, self-contained Fried Eggs-in-the-Shell.

I’ve been making this simple recipe for years with occasional unintentional variations, but the results are always the same. Please feel free to try this one for yourself.

• 1 nice Calphalon saucepan
• 6 cups cold water
• 6 jumbo eggs
• My Cousin Vinny on DVD
• 1 leather sofa

Carefully place your six eggs into the saucepan, add water, and place on the stove on medium heat. Make a vague mental note to check the eggs in about 30 minutes, then lie down on the sofa and accidentally fall asleep watching My Cousin Vinny for an hour and a half until you practically melt your 10-pound hard-anodized Calphalon pot. You won’t ever need a timer for any of this because the smell of sizzling eggshells will eventually wake you up ... guaranteed. Then just plunge the eggs into cold running water for 10 minutes and refrigerate. Once these little orbs of white lava cool off you can use them like normal hard-boiled eggs.

I’m going to use some of mine to make a bowl of salmon salad this afternoon. (Salmon salad is a lot like tuna salad except I don’t have any tuna.) It’s very good on crackers or a bagel. Thank you for reading this.

Things that can scare your husband.

Actually, it’s just ONE thing. I’ve been making Sam the same turkey and pepperjack cheese sandwich on Orowheat Oatnut bread with one teaspoon of mayonnaise every day for six years, but last Wednesday, for whatever reason, I FORGOT TO CUT IT IN HALF. I just wrapped it in wax paper, maneuvered it into a quart-size ziploc bag and sent him to work with a whole sandwich, a bag of baby carrots and a nice yogurt.

I first get wind that something’s amiss when Sam calls a few hours later from work and says, “Is everything okay?” Sure. Why? “Are you feeling all right?” I’m FINE. “Are you mad at me?” Of course not. WHAT’S GOING ON?

“You didn’t cut my sandwich today.”

Wow. If a momentary kitchen misstep is all it takes to propel Sam to doubt my love, my health or my sanity, from this day forward that damn sandwich gets sawed into triangle fourths with ruffled toothpicks and a cloth napkin. Thank you for reading this, and bon appetit.

Sometimes a girl just can't catch a break.

This morning I was whining to Sam that I’m really REALLY sick of doctor appointments. I can’t even keep track of how many I’ve had in the past two years ... countless visits and follow-ups for diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, experimenting with various doses and combinations of medications, nonstop lab tests, plus treatment for a urinary tract infection, ingrown toenails, plantar fasciitis, a botched frontal lobotomy, carpal tunnel syndrome and most recently — of all things — ANEMIA. (Just kidding about the frontal lobotomy.)

I should be careful what I wish for, though, because I LOST A TOOTH while I was eating dinner a little while ago ... so now I have to add DENTIST appointments to my never-ending list of DOCTOR appointments! The tooth in question is actually the crown from my upper right bicuspid, which fell out in one piece, post and all. I had root canal on that tooth two or three decades ago, so at least it doesn’t hurt, but now I’m sure I’ll be faced with the inevitable battle with a dental professional over how to proceed with the restoration. I have my own agenda on this subject for reasons that will remain unwritten for the time being. (If you’re interested in details you can send me an email.)

I think I’ll go gum some carrots. Thank you for reading this.

I swore I'd never do this, but what the hell.

It’s already after midnight, so it’s Monday now. And that means Sam is coming home today! He’s been in California since the Friday before Memorial Day, horsing around in the San Fernando Valley with his mom, his aunts and assorted siblings, friends and acquaintances. To say I’ve missed Sam would be the understatement of the century, because I desperately need somebody to scratch my back, kiss my face and drag out the garbage cans, but not necessarily in that order.

So to prepare for my big sweetie’s return I decide to go to Costco on Sunday morning for a variety of his favorite food products, including organic raspberries, a two-pound package of lox, chicken flautas and a gigantic tub of cashews. Unfortunately, it’s 100° outside with tons of humidity, a hazy sky and probably way too much pollution, and I’m thinking I really shouldn’t get carried away buying too much food in this heat because shlepping through Costco can be exhausting for me, and there’s nobody waiting at home to help unload the trunk and put everything away. As I’m limping into the store with my cane the 18-year-old greeter at the main entrance figures I look pathetic enough for an electric riding shopping cart ... and I decide to do the unthinkable: I SAID YES AND GOT ON.

This was the experience of a lifetime! After a 30-second driving lesson — “push this to go forward, push this to back up” — here I was, Princess Marcy, sitting on my ass in Costco, careening up and down every aisle and maneuvering three-point turns like Mario Andretti at 5 mph. I didn’t hit any people, I didn’t ram into that tower of Windex and I didn’t block traffic. I bought everything on my shopping list and was back in the parking lot 20 minutes later. I can’t wait to do this all over again ... except next time I think I’ll try offering cheap rides to old people and pregnant women. Does $2.25 sound like too much?

Thank you for reading this. Seriously.

Meet the Windy City sleazebags.

Many of you probably know that I grew up in Chicago. Even though I moved away 23 years ago I still love to follow their local news, exposés and scandals because nobody does sleaze quite like the Windy City. Although a lot of this stuff may seem funny from a distance, I’d be a nervous wreck if I still lived in Chicago and my tax dollars were funding any of this corruption.

The latest hoo-hah involves Cook County Board President Todd Stroger, a short-timer/lame duck since losing the February primary. With less than six months left to serve, Stroger has been on a spending spree ... adding aides and assistants (most with six-figure salaries) to his staff despite a county-wide hiring freeze. One new hire was Carla Oglesby as Stroger’s deputy chief of staff at $120,000 a year. Oglesby is highly qualified for a job in county government based on prior experience as a promoter for hip-hop artists.

Immediately after joining Stroger’s staff she weasled 11 lucrative contracts for friends and former co-workers, each in an amount just under $25,000 — the level at which County Board approval is required. One contract for $24,995 went to her own public relations agency. Others were deals for ridiculous projects that were never completed, including $24,995 to a professional basketball promoter for a “composting awareness program” and $24,995 to Wallace “Gator” Bradley, who refers to himself as an “urban translator.”

But the latest fraud is Carla Oglesby’s $150,000 expenditure to various local bogus companies for “census outreach contracts.” The deals were all awarded to cronies recommended by Oglesby and Eugene Mullins, one of Stroger’s boyhood friends. Two of the census contracts were given to the Chicago rap duo Dude ’N Nem, best known for their single “We Are Going to McDonald’s.” (Stop laughing.) A website for one of Oglesby’s other recommended companies asks job applicants for their modeling experience, measurements and four photographs. The contact for another takes you to nearly-nude photos on a MySpace page.

I need to know why these gangsters are not in jail. I mean, I watch “Cops” all the time and see people getting chased and tackled and arrested on $200 warrants when they forget to pay a TRAFFIC TICKET. How can crooks like Todd Stroger and Carla Oglesby steal from taxpayers and get away with it? THE PEOPLE OF ILLINOIS NEED ANSWERS. Thank you. I’m going to bed now.

Two adorable things.

I watched a terrific film on cable last night. I’ll bet nearly everybody else on the planet has already seen it, but WALL-E is probably the cutest movie I’ve seen in YEARS. The lead character is a little trash compactor (Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-Class) who’s apparently all alone on earth after humans left it too filthy to inhabit and decided to live in outer space. Little WALL-E barely makes any intelligible sounds at all, but you have no problem figuring out what he’s thinking and feeling. Always lonely, he watches a “Hello Dolly” video over and over and over, collects cigarette lighters and has a pet cockroach who lives inside a Twinkie. Disney Pixar did the animation, and it’s really breathtaking. I can’t wait for Sam to come home next week so we can watch it together. Here’s the original theatrical trailer:


And speaking of Sam, he’s the OTHER adorable thing I’m going to write about here. Last night he went shopping with his mom at Trader Joe’s — the best grocery store on earth — and called to give me a detailed, aisle-by-aisle rundown of everything on the shelves so we could reminisce together. Sam knows how much I miss Trader Joe’s. (Every now and then I email their corporate headquarters and ask them to open stores in Dallas. They always write back and act polite, but I think they’re ignoring me.)

Incidentally, I had to cancel my appointment this afternoon with the hand surgeon. I know this will sound idiotic, but I wasn’t feeling well enough to go to the doctor! I guess it was a fatigue thing ... an occasional side effect from some of the medications I take. I just didn’t have the energy or motivation to shlep to Rockwall today in 99° heat, so I’ll reschedule (again). And speaking of hot weather, we’ve got a dangerous heat situation developing this weekend. Temperatures will be 105° here on Saturday, Sunday and Monday but will feel more like 110° with the humidity. If you think I’m leaving the house in weather like that, you’re nuts. I’m going to stay home with a bottle of Coke Zero and redesign Ovation Creative’s logo and website. Thank you for reading this.

Lunching in Calabasas.

News flash ... Sam is still in California. His Aunt Adie emailed some photos she took yesterday at lunch in Calabasas with Sam and his mom. (Those club sandwiches really look good.)

I’ve got an appointment with a hand surgeon this afternoon. I’m hoping we’ll be able to make some definite plans to cure my carpal tunnel problem because my right hand has been basically USELESS since the beginning of March. I can’t hold a toothbrush or a pen, can’t sign my name, blow-dry my hair, dice an onion, push a shopping cart or grip a steering wheel. I know I’ve whined about all this before, but after a round of steroid medication and three months in a surgical wrist brace NOTHING HAS IMPROVED. So my internist referred me to a surgeon, and that’s where I’ll be at 2 p.m. this afternoon. I’ll post again as soon as I know what’s what, okay? (Thank you for your concern. Send presents.)

Some of my favorite places are websites.

Scroll down a little, keep an eye on the right-hand column, and you’ll see a section called Fun Links. Trust me ... you’re definitely missing something if you’ve never checked out any of these web destinations! My favorites are Engrish.com (which I’ve been enjoying for YEARS) and AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com. A sample of the latter appears below. Incidentally, it’s always pleasant to see happy, flabby people enjoying their pets. Do you think they used this shot for their Christmas cards?

In other news, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich’s corruption trial starts Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Chicago. I wish this was being televised! The sleaze and drama factors will be off the charts and it’s bound to be even better than the “Real Housewives of New Jersey” ... which is pretty revolting in case you’ve never seen it. Apparently the government’s evidence against Blagojevich is staggering, but since I won’t be able to watch the courtroom hoo-hah on TV I guess I’ll have to get my daily serving of fresh baloney on the Chicago Tribune’s website. Thank you for reading this.