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“How long would you microwave this for?” my son asks, holding a bowl of refried beans and chopped chicken.

“I’d start out with a minute,” I say.

“A minute?!”

“Yeah. Is that too much?”

“It’s too little.”

“Well, I’d rather start out by undercooking the food a little bit because I can always cook it some more, whereas once I’ve fried it into a flaming gob, I don’t have any recourse.”

“You’re weak,” he says.

“Okay, do it your way, Volcano Joe.”

• RT @capricecrane: "Twitter" was the most used word of 2009. Numbers two and three were "I'm" and "broke." #
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  http://j.mp/cthirsh #
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• RT @capricecrane: I don't know how your car got dented. Maybe it's God saying you shouldn't have cut me off for that parking space. Or me. #
• RT @diablocody: Eating a gingerbread house for breakfast. A new low. #
• RT @capricecrane: According to Billboard: "Nickelback: 'Band of the decade.'" That's all. Enjoy the apocalypse. #
• RT @TheOnion: "Why do all the girls I like think of me as just a friend? And why isn't there a term to describe that relationship?" -Plato #

My dad is of the opinion that cats are “smarter” than dogs. Not coincidentally, he and my mom own a couple of cats, one of which was sitting next to his chair at Thanksgiving dinner.

Dad decided to share some turkey with the cat. He stood up with a piece of turkey, showed it to the cat, than walked out to the kitchen and dropped it in the cat’s food dish. When he returned to his chair, the cat was still sitting there. Never moved.

“That is one stupid cat,” I said.

“Well, he’s three-quarters blind,” my dad said, although he didn’t say how he could possibly know that.

“If my dog was here, he would have jumped up and eaten your whole dinner the second you left the room.”

• RT @MOCAlosangeles: MOCA ? YOU! Complimentary Museum Admission | SUNDAY, NOV 15–FRIDAY, NOV 20 | more info at http://bit.ly/46urQb #
• If Jimmy cracks corn, and no one cares, why does he keep doing it? #
• No hell, no dignity, no hope. Have a great day! #
• My wife's in LA at the Thai markets. She'll bring back those little coconut pancakes. I love coconut pancakes! #

Special prix fixe menus from participating restaurants:

• $20 Dinner Menus
• $30 Dinner Menus
• $40 Dinner Menus

You can’t go wrong with Orange Hill or Anaheim White House, in this reviewer’s opinion . . .

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• RT @OCWeekly: We round up our top five favorite things to eat at Disneyland: What'd we miss? http://bit.ly/15dKgE #

• @ReporterHaley Love the food at Lucille's. And they make a very good mint julep… in reply to ReporterHaley #
• RT @capricecrane: I was trying to make exercising fun but apparently after a certain age its no longer "appropriate" to play Ding Dong Ditch #

“There are no microwave instructions,” my son says, looking over a frozen pizza box.

I say, “You want microwave instructions? Put it in the oven and turn it on. Aren’t those pretty much the microwave instructions for anything?”

• "Clean and sober Andy Dick ready to invade O.C." http://bit.ly/lGfMb #bottomstoriesoftheday #
• CPK now lists calories on the menus. Suicide! Even the salads are over 1000! #
• RT @diablocody: Intrigued by full-service "dental spa." Tired of making separate trips for tooth bleaching and anal bleaching. #

As reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition yesterday, the British-commissioned survey, which took its findings from 55 studies made in the past 50 years, claims that eating organic food “will make no important difference to a persons overall health.”

— OC Weekly

This will come as a blow to the idiots standing in line at Whole Foods to pay 10 dollars for a slice of cheese . . .

We’re dropping our 15-year-old son off at LAX. He’s flying to Australia for a couple weeks to visit his cousins.

He’s explaining his theory of international cuisine, which is that there’s not going to be any Mexican food in Australia because there are no Mexicans in Australia. On the other hand, they probably have New Zealand food that those of us in the States have never heard about.

“That’s why it’s important to travel,” I say, “so you can learn about things like that. Or you could just stay home and watch the Travel Channel.”

Our flight out of Buffalo was delayed by gusty winds so we ducked into Anchor Bar at the airport for an order of buffalo wings. The Anchor Bar wings come with five sauce options: mild, medium, hot, spicy bar-b-que or suicidal.

I asked the waitress, “The ’suicidal’ wings — who’s responsible if they result in my actual death?”

“Oh they’re not like that,” she said. “There’s other places in Buffalo that serve wings a lot hotter. Oh my gosh, if you actually died?“

“You could use that in your advertising: ‘A guy actually died eating these wings!’”

“I’ll keep the defibrillator handy.”

We gave the suicidal wings their day in court. We liked them. Like the waitress said, they actually weren’t as hot as the wings I’ve had at some other places, despite the small kernels of red and black pepper that are actually in the sauce and on the wings.

My pulse and respiration may have been slightly elevated but not to a life-threatening level . . .

Yesterday’s team bonding activities included miniature golf, pizza and a midnight screening of Brüno, all within walking distance of the hotel.

After the movie, the kids walked to McDonalds. It was closed. The drive-thru was still open, but they didn’t have a car.

Just then — in an amazing cross-continental coincidence — Eddie, the manager of our local rink in Irvine, pulled into the drive-thru, and the kids got him to buy them all ice cream cones . . .

As I get home from work, my wife greets me with what looks like a leftover, partly eaten Cobb salad . . .

“We went to IHOP,” she says, “and we got this for you.”

“Oh, thanks,” I say. “Thanks for thinking of me.”

Later in the evening I catch up with my son and ask him what he had to eat at IHOP.

“I had a steak omelet and pancakes,” he says.

“That sounds really good. I wanted to thank you for treating me to the half-eaten Cobb salad.”

“Mom said you’d like that,” he says. “And that was pretty much a whole Cobb salad.”

“It looked partly eaten to me.”

“The bacon was partly eaten.”

“That’s the best part of the salad.”

Here’s one of my colleagues in the break room, making a sandwich and pouring a small carton of something down the sink . . .

“What are you pouring out?” I ask.

“Soy milk,” she says. “I didn’t drink it soon enough. I’m wasting the life of a soybean.”

“Wow . . . when you put it that way, it sounds pretty upsetting.”

“It is!” she says. “I’m distraught! That’s why I’m eating.”

• RT @diablocody: I ordered a bunch of Yankee Candles while drunk. Now the house smells of pie and remorse. #
• RT @darthvader: I love national holidays where blowing up a rebel stronghold can easily be considered a spectacular “finale.” #
• Weinerschnitzel: 2 chili dogs plus chili cheese fries for $3. Ain’t that America! #
• RT @diablocody: Ah, the patriotic “flag bikini.” There’s nothing like having a nation’s pride wadded up in your labia. #
• RT @ericmusselman: Abraham Lincoln: “I will prepare, and someday my chance will come.” #

• Office email: "Refrigerators being cleaned out tonight. Please take home anything you'd like to keep." OK. Going to stock up right now… #
• At a s/w demo, a user asks: "What are inheritable user permissions? Does that mean if I die, my permissions go to someone else?" #

Photo by samantha.r

Leftovers from a catered lunch meeting found their way into the break room refrigerator.

I pull out a tin of pasta . . .

“Look,” I say to the woman watching me, “this one has my name right on it! ‘Pesto Pete,’ that’s what they call me.”

“That says ‘Pesto Penne,’” she says.

“Close enough!”

My wife’s in a great mood. She’s just back from grocery shopping at the local Korean market, where fresh produce is sold cheaply.

“Guess how much for these,” she says excitedly, holding up a package of eggs.

“How many are there?”

“Twenty.”

I haven’t bought eggs in years so I have no idea how much they cost. I’m thinking of guessing $1.99 but I don’t want to undershoot the real price and take all the fun out of it for her.

“Two ninety-nine,” I say.

“Ninety-nine cents!” She’s now holding up a small carton of fruit. “How much for these?” she asks.

“What are those?”

“Boysenberries.”

“Ninety-nine cents,” I say, since that was the right answer on the eggs.

“Thirty-three cents! How can they sell this stuff so cheap?”

“They sneak around local farms by night, stealing eggs and boysenberries. It’s the only possible explanation.”