In one window, we turned on ABC TV. In another, we had www.time.gov running. The TV was 2 seconds behind the official time. Heather mocked me, but the way I see it, if you're going to celebrate an arbitrary second in time, you might as well celebrate the correct arbitrary second in time.

Then the TV started playing Auld Lange Syne and I said (in my worst Scottish accent, which is about the same as my best Scottish accent), "Ach, it's Robbie Burns's Greatest Hit!"

Well, it was funny at the time.

Had a few families over today. The main theme was "stuffed" --- twice-baked potatoes, stuffed mushrooms (from The Vegetarian Epicure), deviled eggs --- along with crudite, french onion soup (from The Kosher Palette), mini pizza slices for the kids, and for dessert I made Molten Chocolate Babycakes (from The New York Times). By the end, "stuffed" described us as well as the food.

It's been far too long since I've fully participated in planning our entertaining --- inviting the guests, planning the menu, doing a significant amount of the cooking. There are few things as gratifying as preparing a meal from scratch for friends.

[Public post, but meaningless to you if you're not in the NPL]

Is it my imagination, or has Crax been running a lot more flats "WNFR" than Sax did? Personally, I don't usually care for these, because (1) they don't feel quite fair to me -- if you don't catch what the flattist had in mind, there's often not enough to go on, and (2) they often feel like the flattist wussed out. ("Yeah, it was an amusing enough base to want to send it in, but not enough that I felt I could be bothered to write a couple of lines of doggerel.")

Certainly there are times when a base is so inspired and extraordinary that it deserves this kind of treatment --- Xemu's #42 from Nov. 2004 was elegant.

How do others feel?