I get the Allrecipes.com daily digest email and today's suggested entrée is Beef Stroganoff.

Hmmmm....we like Beef Stroganoff, and looky here!  The "prep" time is a mere 15 minutes, with the cook time being only 30 minutes.  Why, I can have this bad boy on the table in under an hour!  Right?

Ha.  Ha ha.  That recipe is so cheating.  Check out these ingredients:

2 onions, finely chopped
8 oz. mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 lb. beef loin steak, cut into thin strips

Pardonnez-moi, but those three ingredients require a significant amount of time in their own right, but does the recipe make allowance for the chopping, slicing and cutting?  It does not.  Between chopping those onions (though admittedly if you use a food processor or a Pampered Chef chopper it won't take near as long), prepping and slicing the mushrooms (and I don't care what the fancy-schmancy cooks say, my mushrooms get washed, by jingo), and thinly slicing that pound of beef, you've added a minimum of 30 - 45 minutes to that published 15 minute prep time. 

This sort of thing trips me up regularly. 

Our friend Vika, who was our translator on our adoption trip, kindly did a search for the interview Alex had in Vladivostok. Unfortunately, she has not had any luck with it thus far. BUT......! She did find this news article complete with photos, including four with Alex in them:

How cool is that, eh? Alex, if your band would like to see all of them, just go here and click on the link under the small photo.

If you're dying to read the article, go to Google's translate page, select Russian -> English (BETA) at the "Translate a web page" option, and put in the URL. It's not perfect, but it's fairly comprehensible. This was nice: "Indeed, the opening arrived famous orchestra 'Far East Edition' 7th Fleet. These professional musicians naval spoken at many sites throughout the western Pacific.
"

There. Y'all are famous.

It's simply astonishing how often people set events in motion without having a clue what they're doing; most frequently this is due to having no understanding of how other people, or organizations, react to various stimuli.

Case in point is a rabbi up in the Seattle area who wrote to the Sea-Tac airport, demanding a big menorah be put up alongside the airport's traditional Christmas trees, and threatening to sue if it wasn't done.

Who all thinks there's a menorah gracing the Sea-Tac airport?  Who thinks the airport now looks about as festive as it normally does in March?

Bingo.  Instead of erecting the menorah, the airports yanked the trees, which any buffoon should have seen coming.  Except the rabbi and his attorney, of course.  They are exhibiting Shock and Bewilderment at the airport's unreasonable response to their perfectly reasonable request.

Seattle airport removes Christmas trees

What the rabbi doesn't get is there's nothing overtly Christian about Christmas trees.  Vast numbers of unChristian households regularly deck their halls with them, hang stockings, string lights outside, etc.  It's hard to imagine anyone but a Jew displaying a menorah, though.  Had the Seattle airport had a nativity scene up, well, then the rabbi would have had a legitimate gripe.  As it was, though, he should have just piped down if he truly did not prefer to see the trees removed unless his menorah was put up.

Don't know if this is what the dining room looks like on the Dallas or not, but the ex-submariner's blog, The Stupid Shall Be Punished, has a small photo of one, along with telling of a prank or two that would occur. 

"Truthiness"?   That's supposed to be a word?

Apparently Merriam-Webster conducted a survey to find out what one word sums up the year 2006, and "truthiness" won, 5 to 1.

Truthiness?  

It was first used in November of '05 by a comedian, Stephen Colbert, of whom I'd not heard until working on that interconnected-word puzzle a few months ago.  Since it has presumably leapt into the public lexicon to the point it's the 2006 Merriam-Webster Word of the Year, it's really rather astonishing how much influence these comedians have nowadays.

Personally, I'm not sure that's a good thing.

...around to various multichild events such as birthday parties, etc. I'd take a leaf from the book of a mother at Meredith's party this afternoon.  Tell me THIS isn't a clever notion?  She had had made at an office supply store a badge or pin or whatever you'd call it that had on the top line her name plus "mother of", then on the line under it the names of her two children.

I thought that was awfully clever.  

This afternoon was Meredith's birthday party, celebrating her turning five years old on the 19th, and Elaine had put in a lot of effort creating a marvelous "princess" themed party.  Entering the den from the living room, one was greeted with:

The castle doors were through open for the visiting princesses and princes.  When I arrived, there was a spirited game of "Princess, Princess, Frog" going on, followed by a dancing game, where the dancers froze in place when the music paused:

As you can see, there was even a visiting princess present to guide the activities.  British accent and everything.  Here's Hal taking a video picture of his little princess, with his original princess, Elaine, looking on:

As too often happens with children's parties, the activities and games sped by much more quickly than expected.  Surely the pinata will take a fair amount of time, though. 

Good plan.  No cigar.  See the ribbons dangling down from the bottom of the pinata?  The theory is each child will have a turn selecting a ribbon and pulling it, hoping it is the one that will release the trap door.  That was the theory.  What actually happened was they got virtually all the ribbons in their hands at the same time and yanked hard. 

Whole thing took maybe ten...fifteen seconds?  It was really pretty funny.  At least the goodie scramble took a while.  After that the children went outside to play in the castle bounce house for a bit, then it was time for the cake:

It was a terrific party for a terrific little girl....Auntie Anne's Princess Meredith. 

They seem to be running out of animation objects.  Case in point is one of their newest, which just showed up this morning in a regular communication from them:

Animation Factory....for all your sheep-on-a-scooter needs. 

   'Tis accomplished!

The big ol' box o' goodies destined for Japan is at the post office, probably sitting in the back somewhere, but the point is that it's On Its Way so far as I'm concerned.  

Whoo-HOOOO!!!