A Baby Announcement!

We have an announcement...no, we're not pregnant...our good friends Bruce & Tina gave birth this morning (well, actually it was just Tina giving birth) to their first child "Nile" (click on his highlighted name to read more and view pics). We wanted to use this forum to wish them our best and look forward to meeting the new edition on our next trip out to Portland.

A Better Grocery Bag

Its usually one of those customary questions one receives when checking out at the local grocery store..."paper or plastic"?

While living in Iowa City, we would always just get the plastic variety, and after unloading our groceries at home, condense all the bags into one single bag, then return it to HyVee for recycling upon our next trip.

After moving to Dallas, and quickly realizing that a similar bag-recycling program was not in order, we figured we'd try to re-use the bags for tasks like transporting lunches, throwing out produce scraps, etc. However we quickly found ourselves inundated with tons of these annoying plastic bags (unable to use them up fast enough), always trying to stuff one more in the bottom cupboard before slamming the door shut to halt the onslaught of the ever-expanding plastic grocery bag mass.

One day we were shopping at Whole Foods when we saw an add for these 80% recycled, strong, re-usable bags, all for the cost of a mere $0.99. (This was much more desirable as compared to the $12 canvas bags). So we decided to kick the plastic bag habit and try storing a couple of these bags in our car trunks, so that they'd be handy come grocery-shopping time.

For the past month we've been using these bags, and have really put them to the load test (i.e. canned goods to the brim) and have yet to have one fail. When checking out at the do-it-yourself automatic lanes, just substitute these bags for the available plastic bags, or just hand them to the baggers at the manual lanes. We've even gone so far as to not put individual produce items in those more annoying clear plastic bags, instead designating one of the 4 reusable bags for just produce.

The purpose of this entry is not to be preachy or come off as though we're complete commune-dwelling hippies, nor that we advocate that you shop at Whole Foods, but rather just to point out an easy adaptation that has worked extremely easily for us (and is less annoying than dealing with plastic bags).

So if you too are tired of slamming the door on the expanding plastic bag mass, or just feel a little guilty by throwing these petroleum-based products in the landfills, then you should really give these a try. If not, you may just be forced to in time...

The Stromboli Debate

Thursday night found both of us apathetic to the idea of doing anything in the kitchen, and with the Democratic debate now in Texas, we figured we'd support Obama by getting our good luck meal...Sal's pizza.

Tonight Chris decided to try something new (a stromboli)...while Emily stuck with the tried and true "Primary Pizza" (aka "The Special"). Chris was much happier with the debate results than he was with his stromboli, while Emily savored her "Special". Chris' disappointment wasn't so much directed at Sal's lack of a tasty artery-clogging cheese, sausage, pepperoni, mushroom wrapped in a giant puff pastry, but more with his preconceived notion that the stromboli might approximate the excellence of the renowned Sam's calzone in Iowa City. His hopes dashed, he still managed to sacrifice himself and finish the stromboli (and Emily's crust from her pizza).

"The Stromboli"

Emily...excited either by her pizza, her wine, or Obama

In any case, it was great to see Obama hold his own against Hillary, putting himself one step closer to clinching the nomination. We just long for the days when Huckabee had Chuck Norris proudly at his side...is it too much to ask for Chuck to endorse McCain? Points we pondered during our acid reflux attack an hour after the debate.

Song of the Day:

Cheesehead Victory

Contrary to what many who may peruse or waste their time on this site may believe, this has not become a blog dedicated exclusively to Barack Obama. Au contrare! There are other things we like to post about on here. That being said, we cannot help but smile tonight over Obama's clear victory in Wiconsin. And though the naysayers said that we were getting our hopes up, they were clearly in error. At any rate, we're happy to go to sleep tonight knowing that we are one step closer to not having to vote for McCain in order to vote against a Hillary presidency. Obama's victory speech (In Texas of all places) can be viewed below (this is starting to seem a bit like Groundhog Day, or the victory rallies in Grant Park of the great 90's Chicago Bulls almost every June).

Trojan Free?

After spending close to $200 to have our computer "professionally quarantined", we learned two important facts:

1) This virus/trojan may not have been eliminated, and
2) We may end up just having to either re-format our system or buy a new computer, neither of which are exciting prospects right now

So for now we're back in action on the net, but this may end up being short-lived, we'll see how things go for the next few weeks.

At any rate, its not all bad news in the Barwacz household, as Obama managed to sweep Hillary yet again. It seems after the resignation of her campaign manager this weekend, and a string of losses, that the momentum may finally be swinging towards Obama. And now there's talk that Texas may be a key deciding state...imagine that! Of course this brings big smiles to our faces.

We're also looking forward to our trip out to Virginia this weekend to check out Charlottesville and some areas southwest of Washington D.C. We'll try to post some pictures and stories upon our return.

We'd love to hear what's going on with some of our readers, so send us some comments, hate mail, whatever.

Song of the day:

Mr. Bean, Babies, and Obama, Oh My!

While our computer is sick (we're working on it) I thought I'd post this video of Mr. Bean going to the dentist...

In other news Bruce & Tina are due to deliver at any time now...we'll link any developments as they happen.

Congrats to Obama for sweeping the primaries this weekend, looks like the Chesapeake primaries will treat him fairly well this tuesday. We'll have some pictures and posts to follow our scouting trip out east in Virginia this weekend.

Our computer is sick!

You may have noticed that we haven't updated our blog site for the past 2 weeks. Why you may ask?...partly because there really hasn't been anything that interesting going on...except for watching the primaries...but also more importantly, we have been ousted from accessing the internet! We pay our bills...so we called Time Warner and asked "what gives?".

As it turns out, someone or something hacked through our WEP-secure (in theory) wireless router, and used our computer to redirect traffic to an identity theft site! Time Warner said that their system detected the virus/spyware and thus prophylactically removed our ability to connect through their network, in an effort to reduce the likelihood of other computers on the network from being infected.

So now we're in the predicament of trying to find a computer service that will somehow clean the virus off our system without having to reformat our system. This whole debacle comes at an untimely juncture as we're looking to book arrangements for our trip next week to Virginia to check out the area and speak with some dentists and look at practices.

So unless a miracle occurs, don't expect any posts in the near-term from us until we can get our computer back in better shape. Of course the other alternative (which Chris strongly advocates) is to just get a new computer (ours is already 5 years ancient). We'll see which option prevails. Until then, we hope that your computing experience will be safer than ours.