Know This:

Friends, you're more than welcome to come to our Halloween party, but you'd better be prepared to work for your treats.

Sweeping the doormat = One pumpkin muffin or one juice box/string cheese combo.

Vacuuming the rug = Two funsize Crunch bars or half a bagel with pumpkin pie cream cheese.

Now get to work.

Buy Me That: Caramel Apple Headband

EAT MY HEAD!

Yummers.

EEEEEEEEEEAT IT!

A Venn Diagram In Which All Three Parts Feature My Image

1.  You know what's stupid?  Grating your thumb into a bloody nub while attempting to break down some Parmesan and constantly stir a pot of risotto at the same time.

2.  You know what's badass?  Not risking ruining the risotto by leaving the stove to go upstairs to get a Band-Aid and instead improvising a bandage using only a paper towel and a rubber band.

Thumb's up, MacGyver-style.

3.  What's stupid AND badass?  Dying of lockjaw because you're too chicken to have ever gotten a Tetanus shot and grated your thumb and made your own filthy kitchen bandage in order to ensure a perfect plate of risotto.

It was really delicious.

And that image in the Venn Diagram I mentioned earlier.  It's this one, obviously.

Eat This: Sweet Potato and Pepper Soup

"Eat me!," says the soup.  You'd do well to listen to it.

I've made this recipe so often over the years that SLB and I now just call it The Soup.  In an attempt to scare off this cold I made an extra potent batch today in the hopes that the Vitamin C from the peppers, Vitamin A from the sweet potatoes, and heat from the chipotles would nuke the virus out of my system.  Whether or not it has done so remains to be seen, but after a hot bowl of this soup I do feel at least 15% more human.  So, if you've got a bad case of boogers and/or cooties, I recommend that you gather these ingredients and make a pot of this soup for yourself.

What you need:
*2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped into about 1 inch dice (You're going to blend this soup later, so chopping doesn't need to be precise)
*1 yellow onion, chopped
*2 bell peppers (I like red and/or yellow for color contrast), seeded and chopped
*Hot peppers (In the past I've used 2 jalapenos seeded and diced, but here I used 1 chipotle in adobo sauce)
*48 oz of chicken or vegetable stock (give or take)
*About 2 cups of corn kernels (fresh is best, thawed frozen is second-best, drained canned is third-best)
*The juice of about .25 lime
*Salt and pepper to taste
*Olive oil
*Sour cream or plain yogurt, chopped cilantro, chopped green onion (optional, but awesome)

What to do:


*Sautee the peppers and onions in a splash of olive oil with a dash of salt over medium-low heat for about 5 minutes or until the vegetables start to sweat.  They shouldn't brown, but rather begin to melt together and release their juices to make a yummy veggie liquor.

*When the peppers and onions have softened and mingled, add the sweet potatoes and stock.  Bring to a boil and then reduce to low.  Cover and simmer for 25 minutes.

*Remove the pot from the heat and blend the soup.  If using an immersion blender, you can go for it right away.  If you're blending the soup in batches in a conventional blender, let it cool for about 10 minutes before you do so.  If you try to blend the soup while it's still boiling hot you run the risk of hot, steaming soup exploding from your blender carafe onto every surface in the kitchen (ceiling included!) and scalding the living daylights out of your arm.  Or so I hear.  I'm way too fly to have experienced that kind of buffoonery myself.

*When the soup is velvety smooth add your corn, a healthy squeeze of lime, and salt and pepper to taste.

*Serve immediately with sour cream or yogurt, chopped cilantro, and chopped green onion.  Voila!  Delicious!

Health in a bowl, I tell ya.

IT'S LIKE THEY KNOW ME!

I was just posting a comment on Auntie Spotter's website for Sarah Potter Photography and this - THIS! - was my secret comment-posting code:

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  Don't mind if I do!

Friends, that secret code says "fartme."  FARTME!  FART!  ME!  It truly is a season of miracles, large and small, and this is proof of that! 

This is going to be a good day.

And because my mom's been after me to post new photos of Livy, here you go!  Now stop nagging me, woman!

Oma giving Livy her first haircut after Thanksgiving dinner.  (If your kitchen doesn't look like this after a holiday meal, then you're not eating well.)

Showing of her bangs at the Portage Bay Cafe

Saying cheese while eating cheese - so meta.

Yardwork in November

I can't think of much clever to say, so why don't you listen to this fine song by an old friend of Uncle Damon's and look at my adorable family frolicking in the autumn leaves before they were covered in snow.

Leaves are fun!

No, Daddy!  Leaf me alone, you rake!

How about you get me instead...

then we practice our stunts...

 

finish up with a celebatory snuggle...

 

and go inside for a hearty serving of Mom's miraculous mac-n-cheese?

I like Actual Tigers.  I like autumn.  I like my family.  I love my mac-n-cheese.  The end!

The Casserole Project: Southwestern Veggie Bake

Hello, friends!  It's been a while since my first installment of The Casserole Project, so new readers should start here to see what this is all about.

My niece's funeral in June reinvigorated my interest in TCP, but apparently not my interest in writing about it so I'm getting to this months after the fact.  After the service during which our family all cried until they were dry we sat down to a church lunch in the most traditional sense of the concept.  While it didn't take place in a cinderblock basement, it did feature loving church ladies moving amongst us in a warm hush delivering hugs, pats on the back, and compassionate commands to enjoy the meal they'd prepared for us.  It largely consisted of traditional casseroles in disposable foil pans or simmering in crockpots.  I can't remember them specifically, except for my favorite that had seen a generous inclusion of jarred enchilada sauce and sliced black olives, the only things that set it apart from its brethren.  They were exactly what you'd imagine at a church supper - warm masses of carbohydrates and chopped chicken or canned tuna held in fatty suspension by canned, condensed soup and/or shredded mild cheese - and they were exactly what we needed to heal enough to get through the day.  After crying so hard during the service, I was starving, and those casseroles were truly a balm for my troubled soul.  If ever an embrace could be delivered gustatorily or nutritonally, it would be through a casserole lovingly pepared by devout hands for the benefit of wounded strangers.

And it was with this in mind that I decided to revisit Best of Country Casseroles and revive TCP using my bookgroup as guinea pigs.  Because one of us is a vegetarian, my options were limited to meatless dishes.  And because SLB is a caring gentleman who values my friendships even when I don't, my options were limited to the Southwestern Veggie Bake.  While I was pondering aloud whether I should make the Fish Stick Supper, a Microwave Tuna Casserole, or the Black Bean Nacho Bake (ingredients: macaroni, black beans, nacho cheese soup, milk, tortilla chips, and cheddar), SLB sternly reminded me that my bookgroup consists of friends who I want to speak to me again and that it's not nice to force others to eat shit because I think it's funny.  So, seeing as the Southwestern Veggie Bake was my only option that did not feature canned soup but did feature actual spices, it's what was for dinner.

Project-continuing, friend-keeping dinner

Here's the recipe as originally written:

Southwestern Veggie Bake

3 medium carrots, sliced

2 celery ribs, chopped

1 small onion, chopped

2 to 3 teaspoons chili powder

1 teaspoon ground cumin

.25 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

.5 cup milk

1 can (16 ounces) kidney beans, rinsed and drained

1 can (15 ounces) black beans, rinsed and drained

1 can (14.5 ounces) diced tomatoes, undrained

1 can (4 ounces) chopped green chilies

1 tube (11.5 ounces) refrigerated corn bread twists

In a large skillet, saute the carrots, celery, onion and seasonings in butter until vegetables are crisp-tender.  Stir in flour until blended.  Gradually add the milk.  Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened and bubbly.  Remove from the heat; add beans, corn, tomatoes, and chilies.  Spoon into an ungreased 13 x 9 x 2 inch baking dish.  Separate corn bread twists; weave a lattice crust over filling.  Bake, uncovered, at 350 for 20 - 25 minutes or until corn bread is done.  Yield: 8 servings.

Now, although Julie Zeager from Kent, Ohio's narrative promises that "refrigerated corn bread twists create an appealing lattice top on this zippy main dish," after visits to 3 different supermakerts in search of the damned things proved fruitless, I subbed refrigerated tube-biscuits for the tube-twists.  The only downside to this would be that it dictates serving sizes in an unpleasant way, which can cause your delicate lady bookgroup friends to act shy and apologetic for their appetites.  Eat up, ladies!  There ain't no shame in eating two biscuits' worth of Southwest Veggie Bake!

This dish is an unmitigated, unironic success.  It's basically a chili that's been thickened with a roux, and the combination of butter, flour, milk, and cumin renders it somewhat reminiscent of a shamelessly American butter chicken on the finish.  It really is a decent dish separate from, rather than because of, The Casserole Project.  My 13 x 9 x 2 inch baking dish was licked clean by the night's end.  So was my 8 x 8 x 2 baking dish after I made it a DOUBLE CASSEROLE NIGHT by whipping up a batch of what we call Old Cold Pancake.

Two - TWO! - casseroles for the price of one!

This recipe is adapted from a back issue of Real Simple and so can't technically count toward The Casserole Project.  It is so in the spirit of the project, though, that I felt no compunction in including Old Cold Pancake in this particular menu.  After all, it's an ad hoc cobbler, which is generally the dessert equivalent of a casserole, and the recipe includes pancake mix, which is generally the baking goods equivalent of canned, condensed soup.  Thus, SVB + OCP = TCP BFF's.

To make Old Cold Pancake (so named because of the inclusion of pancake mix and for SLB's sick prediliction for eating it from the fridge the next day), follow this recipe:

Butter for greasing your 8 x 8 x 2 dish

2 or 3 cups of stone fruit and/or berries, frozen and thawed are fine.  (I think I used nectarines and blueberries here.)

2 tablespoons confectioners sugar

2 cups pancake mix

1 cup whole milk

2 large eggs

Whipped cream and/or maple syrup

Heat oven to 375.  Butter your baking dish.  Add the fruit and confectioners sugar to the dish and toss.  In a large bowl combine the pancake mix, milk, and eggs until no lumps remain.  Do not overmix!  Bake about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Remove from oven and let cool for 5 minutes.  Serve with whipped cream as a dessert for bookgroup or maple syrup as a dish for brunch with Uncle Damon and Aunt Katie.  Voila!  You are a genius!

So geometric.  So modern.  So delicious.

Buy Me That: Cake and Cupcake Stands from Whitney Smith Pottery

Dig if you will the picture of a birthday cake for a family member.  Special, isn't it?  Certainly, for as long as it takes you to digest it and render it something I'd laugh at.  Memorable?  Not for long.  But a birthday cake sitting on this little lovely is a thing of beauty to behold every year you break out the family's traditional celebratory cake stand by Whitney Smith Pottery.

There's nothing sadder than an empty cake stand.

Or imagine the gleam in your little one's eye as you serve him or her a special candle-bedecked birthday cupcake on this darling little ceramic confection.

Also suitable for a birthday morning muffin, if you're the stingy, joyless type.

One of the things I'm enjoying most about being a parent is the creation of family traditions, and I think the special celebration cake plate and/or cupcake plate is going to become one of them.  I want Olivia (and, because he's a sentimental ladyman, SLB) to experience a thrill of anticipation and the warmth of nostalgia invoked by something special and familiar at each birthday.  Other holidays come with their own festive family artifacts (ornaments, menorahs, pumpkins, turkey costumes, etc.), so why not birthdays?  Besides, if cake is good and accessories are good, then cake accessories are just what each birthday requires to be spectacular.

Golden Birthday, Golden Showers

Olivia turned 13 months on the 13th, and we celebrated this marvelous Golden Birthday without even realizing it!  I had arbitrarily decided that we were going to have a Fun Day that day and then realized a couple of days later that it had been a milestone day all on its own without my designation.  What luck!  What fun!  What adorableness!

First, we went to Me & Moms to buy Olivia her first pair of practical, wearable shoes.  Of course she had shoes before this, but he had the kind of ridiculous shoes that eager baby shower attendants buy in anticipation of tiny baby girl feet.  So, they're cute (I'm talking to you, Dickensian patent-leather dress boots!), but they're not good for actual play time.  I intended to be efficient, frugal, and pragmatic on this errand, but instead I went nuts.  Livy now owns 3 pairs of shoes from the consignment rack (black Mary Janes, red Keds, and black Vans-type sneakers) and then two pair of brand-spanking-new Robeez.  It makes sense to go wildly over budget if you're getting a deal, right?  Right?  And, hey, can I sell you a bridge when I'm finished buying these here fancy shoes...?

Then, after our shopping spree, we went to play at the botanical gardens near the Ballard Locks.  It's the kind of park folks usually just walk through, so there is usually a lot of space for crawling wildly and chasing each other around trees.  We especially like playing there on the weekdays when it's even more private so that I don't feel so stupid crawling around chasing after Livy and screeching "I'M GONNA GET YOU!" over and over again.

Well, wouldn't you know, but I did get her!  I don't think she minded it.

The stroller didn't mind getting gotten, either.  Livy likes to pay it forward.

Later, after a luxurious afternoon nap, Olivia and I met our friend Breanne for dinner at Bluebird Homemade Ice Cream and Tea Room on Capitol Hill.  No, they don't serve dinner, unless you count a scoop each of peanut butter and jelly ice cream and chocolate pudding ice cream dinner (Theme: "food flavored like other food"), which we do.  Breanne had wanted to meet Livy for a long time, and we tried our hardest to impress her.  First, Olivia welcomed a visit from the poo fairy, which required a trip to the ladies' room for a quick change.  Now, for as charming as this ice cream shop is, it is not built for babies in the least.  Not only did I have to carry Livy in her stroller down some tricky stairs to get to the place (Thanks, gawking hipsters, for not offering to help!), but the bathrooms have no changing tables, no counter space, and filthy, sticky floors.  So, I laid down a couple of sheets of The Stranger, changed her, and returned to the table, where I promptly spilled chocolate ice cream directly onto the sliver of ultimately unsalvagable white tank top peeking out from under my purple shirt.  Then, after our meal and some good slurps off of her sippy cup, I discovered that Livy's shorts were wet.  Now, given her poor cup handling skills I figured that she was just covered in water as I pulled her onto my lap.  Then I felt the familiar warmth of baby pee spreading down my leg.  So, after another trip to the newsprint-covered bathroom floor, Breanne and I hauled the baby and stroller up the stairs, hugged gingerly goodbye, and I rushed Livy home to scrub the transferred ink from her tush and do an emergency load of laundry.  I can't help but think that we impressed Breanne with our wit, charm, and aborbency.

But we put that chaos behind us.  Oh, look, here it is taking a commemorative photo!

So, it was a memorable birthday, even though we didn't remember it at the time.

Eat This: Roasted Asparagus, Yolky Egg, with Cheese, Bread, and Charcuterie

Just because it's summertime is no excuse to avoid the oven, especially when roasted farmer's market asparagus is on the menu.  I highly urge you to make this for yourselves and experience the ease, joy, and deliciousness of a 15 minute meal that transports you immediately to a small sidewalk cafe on a narrow, cobblestoned Parisian street.  Plus, it'll make your pee smell funny.  Win-win!

What you need:
Asparagus
Eggs
Good bread
Good charcuterie
Good cheese
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
A delicious beverage (I like a glass of chilled white or pink wine, and SLB favors a cold beer.  Please yourself on this one, friends.)

What to do with it: 
1.  Preheat the oven to 400
2.  Wash your asparagus and trim off the woody ends.
3.  Put your asparagus on a sheet pan, then toss it with a tablespoon or two of olive oil, a pinch of salt, and a good grinding of pepper.
4.  Pop that tray in the oven for 10 - 15 minutes, depending on the girth and mass of your asparagus, until it's roasted through.
5.  Now, while the asparagus is roasting, slice yourself some delicious bread, cheeses, and meats.  Arrange artfully on your plate or platter.
6.  Then, as your meat and cheese approach room temperature and become their unrefrigerated, flavorful selves and while the asparagus is still roasting away, make yourself a yolky egg of your choosing.  Some like them poached, but I like them sunny side up.  Ideally, your egg will be finished just as the asparagus comes out of the oven, but asparagus can wait for your egg to cook if it has to.  No worries.
7.  Place your egg on top of a healthy serving of asparagus.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Devour with your bread, cheeses, and meats.
8.  Toast yourself for being so continental, even as you eat dinner on the floor in front of a Daily Show rerun.  Aren't you sophisticated?  YES.  Yes, you are.

Pastafarian

Our friend Sandy, whose son Gavyn turned a year old two days before Livy did, told me yesterday that her pediatrician told her to feed Gavyn what she and her husband Mike eat.  Now that the arbitrary marker of one year is past, we can start feeding our babies all the delicacies forbidden during their babyhoods - peanut butter, cows' milk, eggs, strawberries, etc.  I took Sandy's report literally last night, and Livy and I sat down to a lovely meal of pasta and peas in an ad hoc turkey bolognese.  Delicious chaos ensued.

This is the face of gustatory bliss.

Olivia was methodical in her eating strategy:  pasta first, turkey second, peas third.  Aside from an emollient sheen of red sauce and olive oil coating its surface, that tray was licked clean by the end of the meal.

Notice how that smear of bolognese on her forehead is in the exact shape of baby fingers?  That's what happens when you stroke your forehead with delight as you eat pasta with your hands.  You've been warned.

The bath afterward was both necessary and lengthy.  Oil and water don't mix, so even after a good half hour of soaking and scrubbing Livy still smelled like a bad Italian restaurant.  So be it.  She had a good time.

There were far more than 11 herbs and spices left in the tub after I hosed her off...

... to say nothing of one huge, spicy meatball.

Summer of Awesome: San Juan Island Edition

Hey there!

Remember when I wrote my Life List?  Remember when I said I wanted to vacation in Friday Harbor and go whale watching with Livy and SLB?  Well, check and check, mofos, because a few weeks ago SLB took some time off and we journeyed north for an idyllic summer vacation.

After a pretty arduous drive and ferry ride with a teething baby (3 teeth came in during our 4 day vacation) we arrived in Friday Harbor just in time for a stroll around town, a delicious meal with a great view, and this sunset from our condo balcony.

Not bad, Friday Harbor.

Not bad at all.

SLB and I vacationed on San Juan Island once before when I was in college and he was preparing to leave for law school, and I'd stayed there a couple of times as a kid during summers when my dad was working and sailing there.  So we have a history, San Juan Island and I, and I've been eager to share this with Olivia even if she won't remember it.

There's a lot to like there.  For one thing, Roche Harbor literally welcomed SLB with his own dedicated graffiti in once-wet cement.

And, for another thing, people on San Juan Island like their puns and poop jokes.  I was among my people at last!

Yep, that's the B-Yacht'ch.  And the little boat tied to it is the Baby B-Yacht'ch.

I disapprove of the egregiously unnecessary misspelling, but otherwise I heartily approve!

This was on a porta-potty at the alpaca farm we visited.

And, because San Juan Island is a magical place, it offers two of my other favorite things beyond poo jokes: delicious food to eat and cute critters to look at.  Two of the days that we were there we lunched at Pablito's Taqueria, tucked away in a little corner of Friday Harbor.  I particularly enjoyed the goat cheese and greens empanada, coffee-braised pork taco, and the chipotle-rubbed rockfish taco, and SLB fell in love with the yam taco.  We also liked these ladies, who are on a huge poster above the salsa bar.

They may be wearing maribou pumps, but they WILL kick your taco-eating arse.

We also got dinner from Market Chef two nights in a row to eat after Olivia went to bed.  There is a reason why this humble little deli-style eatery is ranked #1 on Trip Advisor's list of Friday Harbor restaurants.  The food is delicious and the service is friendly and warm.  We became particular fans of the macaroni and cheese, barbecued shortribs, crab cakes, roasted vegetables, and beet salad, and their key lime pie is wonderful despite their assertion that they "really don't do desserts."  After wrestling Olivia into her much-hated Pack-n-Play for bed, we were grateful to Market Chef for making dinner for us.

I lost one game by forfeit because I was playing drunkenly and wasn't pleased with my lack of precision and panache.  Otherwise, rest assured that I am still SLB's Scrabblemommy.

Our last dinner on San Juan Island was a special one that miraculously took place outside of our condo.  We got brave and ordered up a babysitter from Island Sitters (Ask for Rina, who 1. was fantastic with Olivia and, 2. will totally talk shit about her friends' trashy tattoos when you stumble home from dinner tipsy and chatty) and enjoyed a lovely meal at Duck Soup Inn.  I had what is easily the most perfectly cooked salmon I've ever encountered in all my years of Northwesty salmon eating.  It was pan seared to perfection - delicately crispy on the outside and silkily yielding just beneath the brittle crust.  This was matched with a luxuriously creamy polenta, roasted corn, and pickled cucumber ribbons, and, oh my friends, what a treat it was.  I will urge you to try any savory dish on the menu, but DO NOT F* AROUND WITH DESSERT.  Go big, go bold, or go home.  SLB's hearty chocolate-banana layer cake was ironically flawless in its rustic imperfection, but my hoity-toity nectarine-buttermilk ice cream was a real disappointment.  This is a homey place, so eat homey, homies.

We didn't just eat on this trip, although that might be hard to believe from the previous paragraphs.  We spent a lot of time during the days wandering the island with Livy and seeking out beautiful views and wildlife.  The views were much easier to capture on film, but we saw and got only a few crappy pictures of DOZENS of orcas, a mama deer and her twin fawns, a harbor seal who splashed us and flirted with us from about a foot off of the dock we were walking on, alpacas at a local alpaca farm, bald eagles, and a camel named Mona who was purchased by a farmer from a petting zoo on Ebay. 

Whales!!!

After a magical and frustrating afternoon on a whale watching tour trying to capture the magesty of a pod of leaping, frolicking Orcas and their babies, it finally dawned on me that whales just don't say cheese.  So be it, whales!  I love you regardless, or maybe because of, the difficulty in photographing you!  Perhaps if you were more reliable about showing off, though, the littlest of our crew might be more impressed.

I tried pumping Livy up with tales of how we were going to be ADVENTURE LADIES! on the boat, but she didn't buy it.  Thanks to SLB for carrying the napping baby while I was an ADVENTURE LADY! by myself.

The alpacas were easier to see and understand, and so they got a better reception from Olivia.

Like big, weird dogs > like big, weird fish

Can we get one, SLB, pleeeeeeeeeeeeease?

And, finally, Livy's biggest highlight from the entire trip was the enormous soaking tub in the condo.  It was big enough for her to swim in, so one night we took an extra-splashy bath.

I think it was Hemingway who said "If you can't end with a pithy line, at least end naked."  Well said, sir. Well said, indeed.

Summer of Awesome: Weaver Edition

Hello, readers, friends, and whiny bitches (*cough*Mom*cough*) who hound me to blog!  I am back from a little vacation, followed by a little staycation (my current favorite portmanteau), followed by some heat-induced malaise, followed by this post.  But all of this, friends, has followed a miraculous visit from our wonderful midwestern-via-east coast friends, the Weavers.

No, not those Weavers

The Weavers are the white buffalo of friendship, couple friends 1) whom both SLB and I love immensely and equally, 2) who love SLB and me immensely and equally, 3) who are fantastic as the individual sums of their parts, and 4) who are even more formidably rad as a team.  They're like the Wonder Twins of friendship, if the Wonder Twins were lawyers and spouses rather than extraterrestrials and twins.

No, not those Weavers, either.

The Weavers bookended their trip to a luxury yurt (a concept so northwesty, it's Canadian) on Vancouver Island with visits to we three kings of awesomeness here in Seattle.  We visited the zoo with Livy and took in a Mariners game (which Mr. Weaver, being from Ohio, quaintly called "The Reds Game" to our delight and derision) on Father's Day, and we exorbitantly paid our mouthy babysitter so that we could enjoy The Metropolitan Grill and The Barking Dog with our friends.  Olivia loved playing peek-a-boo with Mr. Weaver, and she enjoyed the fear in Mrs. Weaver's and my eyes whenever a right-handed batter came up to the plate threatening to wound us with foul balls.  She's a smart kid, and she knows a good Weaver when she sees one.

But those aren't them.

The best night, for me anyway and who the Hell else's opinion matters on this blog?, was their last night with us in Seattle after their return from the great white north.  After all the initial thrill and thrumming excitement of our reunion, it was comforting to find that on night three after a weeklong intermission we fell comfortably and casually into our warm old habits.  Our table at Volterra was like so many other tables in New York, Columbus, and Seattle over the years.  We fondly teased Mr. Weaver about his embarrassingly rightward political leanings, marveled at how Mrs. Weaver is the fastest talker and most creative cusser known to man, and enjoyed SLB's wry one-liners at everyone's expense while I enthusiastically spoke too loudly, clapped too much, and made too many awful jokes.  It wasn't a night out; it was a homecoming regardless of geographic location.  For others, home may be where the heart is.  But for me, home is where the Weavers are.

But not those weavers.