How the Snook wishes he could play piano. Yes, I’m serious. Exactly like that.

The baby boom continues! Congrats to Kristen and Mark on their impending second child…

io9 has a whole bunch of new TV promos for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Getting very excited!

Little Rascals
Wow. I think I’ve mentioned before that every now and then I stumble across some cultural touchstone of my childhood that the Snook didn’t experience here in Australia, and it’s always really weird. At some point I became aware that he’d never seen the Little Rascals. The series wasn’t unknown here (Ma Snook knew of it), but it wasn’t shown every day after school like it was in the 80’s for us. On Wednesday, Ma Snook came to Sydney and lent us a DVD entitled “The Best of the Little Rascals.” It was six episodes, and we watched the whole thing tonight. OH MAN, NOSTALGIA. I don’t think I’d seen any of those in probably 20 years at least. The first couple were from when Spanky was still really little, and we both freaked out how much he looks like Penn! (Seriously, Sis. There’s a Halloween costume in the making.) And I remembered so much of them! I think I’d seen every episode. I found myself recalling the obscure kids’ names and knowing what was about to happen. Best of all, it ended with “Hearts are Trumps,” source of my numerous quotes about the He-Man Woman Haters Club. It was so fun.

Also – Spanky’s catchphrase was “Okey-dokey”? Is THAT why I say it all the time?? Seriously, I caught a ton of phrases and inflections from me, my sister, and my brother in there…

And we’re back!
Sorry about the down-time. I assumed there was some sort of server hiccup when the site when down last night, but it turns out that my domain name had expired! The emails go to my old yahoo.com address, which has become such a spam trap that I never saw them. (And Yahoo don’t seem to let you set up forwarding rules.) I tried to renew the domain at Joker.com this morning, but their stupid website kept rejecting my credit card. It appears to have been a problem with their “Verified by Visa” system, as the Snook’s card (which hadn’t been enrolled in VbV) worked just fine. I’m really annoyed at Joker for not responding to any of my help requests. I used them because they were cheap, but obviously there’s a big trade-off in customer service. I think I’ll be transferring my domains elsewhere…

Weekend plans: baked beans and brownies. YUM.

Sewing tutorial: Baby bib with necktie appliqué. That is adorable! I know some little baby boys who might be getting one…

Okay, I know this Star Wars-related question starts off INSANE, what with speculating on midichlorian evolution and whatnot, but some of the answers are awesome.

“Additionally, Anakin Skywalker’s parthenogenetic (or hermaphroditic) birth in combination with his geographic isolation on the backwaters of Tatooine prior to his contact with Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi* suggest the pathogenesis of his particularly impressive Force-sensitivity follows neither a genetic nor physical transmission mechanism…”

I was also interested to learn that in one of the expanded Universe stories, Vader plots to kill the Emperor himself. Cool.

Beef and Cabbage “Stir-fry”
The Snook arrived home tonight to some odd smells. “What are you cooking?” he asked. “It’s kind of hard to describe,” I answered. “I think it’s sort of like homemade Hamburger Helper.” Unfortunately that cultural reference was lost on him. He looked in the pot. “It looks like what my Dad used to call ‘Savoury Mince,'” he said. That’s… pretty accurate, really. Basically, I knew we had cabbage, broccoli, and a bit of celery to use up from the veggie box, so I googled and found this recipe. It looked strange and interesting. It’s basically hamburger mince cooked with rice, some veggies, chicken soup mix(!), and curry powder(!). (I left out the Chinese noodles on top.) It actually turned out really good! We both enjoyed it, and we’ve got plenty left-over for tomorrow. Even with the small bit of rice, I think it probably works out quite low-carb too. I think this could be my new go-to recipe for using up odd bits of veg…

Remember how I told you that my friend Kel was trying to win the chance to throw out the opening pitch at a Cubs game? Well, SHE WON! That’s so frickin’ cool. Thanks to everybody who signed up to the newsletter and helped her out. Her big day is on September 2nd, which is a day game on a Wednesday. I can’t wait to see the photos!