Category: Daft Musings

Peter and I are avid fans of Gordon Ramsey’s shows, but as I’ve blogged before, the US version is just not the same as the UK version. I think the habit of giving the restaurants tens (or hundreds) of thousands in remodelling and equipment takes away the incentive to knuckle down and follow Ramsey’s advice,…

The year before last, Peter and I did something we’d never done before and went after the post-Thanksgiving sales door buster specials. It’s kind of crazy, goofy fun if you can find a bargain to score. Peter was probably right in describing it as the same sort of experience as going to an all-night science…

As I mentioned in a previous post, the problem with our medical system is that so many people are insured, they have no idea what the real cost of their medical care is. Over a month ago I came down with a bad cough, which my doctor diagnosed as bronchiolitis. She gave me a prescription…

A few weeks ago, we found out our house (or at least one part of it) was being eaten by termites. Year after year, we’ve seen various houses in our neighborhood go under huge circus-like tents for fumigation, but I somehow hoped, that by some magic, we would escape the inevitable termite infestation. So it…

Loretta keeps telling me I should get a Facebook account instead of MySpace, because it’s less annoying. But until today, I hadn’t had an annoying experience with MySpace, since I use it largely to keep track of news from my favorite bands, not as a social networking forum. And I haven’t minded when a band…

One of the many things I didn’t realize came packaged with American parenthood is a mania for pumpkin patches. They were invisible to me before I had Neil, but by the time I had Kelly, especially as she started learning to walk, I couldn’t get to them quickly or frequently enough during the Halloween season….

A few weeks ago, at one of Kelly’s many preschool storytimes, a young boy sneezed without covering his mouth and covered me and Kelly with, um, germs. Kelly escaped the biological onslaught somehow, probably with the magical phrase of admonition: “That was yucky!” I wasn’t so lucky. The next day, I had a sore throat….

This morning we got word that John Simpson, a ComicBase customer who had become a family friend had died. In Spring, when he knew his illness was incurable, he gave Peter a letter to publish upon his death, which Peter did. I didn’t know him as well as Peter did, but Peter’s description of him…

Peter is a big fan of Gordon Ramsey, and has followed his American TV show Hell’s Kitchen, as well as (via BBC America) his UK show, Kitchen Nightmares. So he was understandably delighted to find out Kitchen Nightmares was coming the US, complete with Gordon Ramsey as the kick-ass restaurant consultant. But the first show…

As regular readers know, a few weeks ago, Peter’s VW Golf was caught in the middle of a multiple-car crash on 101. The CHP called Lima Towing, the towing company that has the local government contract to tow the cars to their lot, and told Peter the insurance companies would sort the whole thing out….