2002-11-25 -

Blandness

What a frustrating weekend of football this was. Too many good players played bad games for me to derive any real enjoyment out of it. Couldn't Kurt Warner at least have sucked, so that I could get some enjoyment out of the lameness?

I spent the first part of the weekend totally crashed out. I didn't sleep a whole lot, but I barely roused myself from the couch at all. On Sunday my parents had Julie's parents over for dinner, though, and I had to conserve my energy.

That dinner went well. I'll be terribly interested to see if Julie's parents feel that they've gained insight into my true nature by seeing the harmless but esthetically loathsome circumstances of my childhood. I also hope nobody thought it was overly rude of me to bring a bottle of hot sauce to dinner so that I could stand to eat my Mom's pork tenderloin. I can enjoy a well-seasoned pork chop, but her marinated tenderloin adds new depth and character to the concept of blandness.

She actually admitted that nobody in her family ever cooked very well. I'm still baffled by that concept. I don't claim to be a great cook- Julie clearly does better work than I do- but I cook quite a few things that I like. More importantly, when I do cook, I don't half-ass it. If you buy the cheapest ingredients and satisfy your need for a balanced diet by boiling some random frozen stuff and serving it as a side, then yes, people will dislike your food. Buy some decent stuff, experiment a little, mix it up a little, and while people may not line up at your door to like the spoon, you won't be subject to the ridicule of your offspring.

Hmmm. Perhaps that entire argument would carry more force with my mother if there was any real chance she'd escape the ridicule of her offspring. She may have correctly discerned that since I'm not going to let her off the hook, there's just no point sweating it now. That would display a rather disturbing degree of subtlety for her, though.

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