And so it begins

Jacob is about 9.5 months old, and except for family and the occasional short visit, we really haven't entertained anybody since he was born. Actually, now that I think about it, that entertainment embargo began a couple of months before he was born, since The Lovely Missus wasn't in the best of health in the latter stages of her pregnancy. But we're biting the bullet and having some ridiculously friendly and nice neighbors over tonight. I've fully warned them that Jacob is actually a tiny superhero, and can turn from babbling, diabetic-coma-causing cutesy baby into The Vomit Volcano in a nanosecond. (The backstory is that his home planet, Pukeulus, was in danger of collapsing in on itself and becoming a black hole because of the accumulated mass of vomit, so his real parents put him on a teeny rocket that landed outside the IHOP near our house. I'd just finished off a Rooty Tooty, Fresh & Fruity breakfast and was waddling to the car, so I brought him home, unaware of the clothes destruction he was capable of causing. I'm the Mindy to his Mork. On the plus side, our three dogs always follow him around, hoping they'll have something interesting to eat off the floor. A paper towel can't hold a candle to three Pekingese tongues when it comes to cleaning regurgitated gack out of a hardwood floor slat.)

Not only are the neighbors ridiculously friendly and nice, but they're also the owners of a French Bulldog that'll make you want to reach through your monitor and pinch him.


Look at that nose, people. Seriously, shouldn't it be illegal for anything on this earth to be that cute? Shouldn't he have to wear a mask, so that you could be warned that the face you're about to see could kill you dead of cuteness? And he's as lovable as he is cute, too.

So tonight, we're going to have friends over for the first time since a few months BB (before baby), and we're going to have Bogey, Penelope, Brutus, and Humphrey all together in the same house. Go big or go home, I always say. Rip that Band-Aid off. Jump in the icy river. Overuse weak metaphors.

I'm cooking gumbo, since the only recipe I have makes enough for a lumberjack convention, and I hate halving recipes to make just enough for the familial unit. I'm pretty much a slapdash kind of dude (our family crest says "Ut Bonus Satis," Latin for "Eh, that's good enough") except for a few things, and recipes are one of them. I loves me some Paula Deen, mainly because she believes a pound of butter needs more butter, but she makes my facial tic act up when she says to "add a little flour" or "stir in just enough cinnamon" or some such. And, while the wannabe-engineer in me says that halving or quartering a recipe is perfectly acceptable, I still have trouble doing it.

The gumbo recipe is pretty killer stuff, if I do say so myself. Plus, I get to use a honkin' big, heavy, cast-iron Dutch oven, which I love. Makes me feel like a rugged outdoorsman, although real rugged outdoorsmen don't get all squicky when their Internet connection winks out, and I'm fairly sure they eschew microwave caramel popcorn, too.

Don't forget that you can follow all my madcap escapades on Twitter now. And a special thanks to the two new followers! Yee-haw!

Until Monday, this is Les Nesman saying good day, and may the good news be yours.