Pardon Me While I Bask

It's a funny old life, says Doctor Who.

I've always felt a bit -- behind in life. Taking the best part of a decade to finish your bachelor's degree will do that I suppose. And Doug? Damn! This guy...

I can't even... 

Everything he's done for me. Everything he still does for me. Everything he's postponed, sacrificed, suffered, and endured. This guy has earned a little luxury.

Form of, WATER!!

(If you get that joke, I love you.)

In classic Doug and Misty fashion, we worked out a week in Florida on the cheap. Specifically, we spent six nights camping on St. George Island.

Home sweet campsite

Florida was completely awesome, but this post isn't about that. See, a crazy thing happened, like, the minute we got home. Well, I guess not completely crazy. We were planning to buy a car this summer. We weren't planning to buy a car, today.

Mostly, we never dreamed we'd find...

Why, that's a grown-up car!

Meet our (cough) Mercedez-Benz E320. Doug hasn't quit grinning since we left the showroom. He's talked about wanting a Benz for about as long as I can remember. I'm so tickled for him.

(Well, I'm a little tickled for me too. World championship haggling trophy? You bet.)

Spare a thought for our '96 Chevy Beretta, which has served us admirably for nearly 10 years. Tomorrow it will go on to the great salvage yard in the sky, which is to say, the chop shop down the block. *Tear*

P.S. I promise this whole summer of blogging won't be so, "Wooo! Check us out!" Just, probably the next couple of weeks. Then it's back to plain old cooking.

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Summer Bloggin

 Well!

I had a whole big idea for a  post, and then Blogger freaked out at the exact worst possible moment. So I'm going for the titillating teaser instead.

Doug and I set out for St George Island, Florida tomorrow! We're super, duper, triple stoked.

Yep, we's a-going camping. On the beach. It's either going to be amazing or insufferable, but either way? Epic.

Did I mention campfire cooking? On the beach? I oughta get at least a half a summer's worth of posts out of that...

Okay now seriously, bedtime. Because tomorrow I'll be vacationing. On the beach!

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Off to the SEC

Doug has been like a kid waiting for Santa the last 2 weeks.

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Thanks, Commando!

What a wonderful surprise. I love getting packages! And the "Taste the Rainbow" gags are endless.

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It was my damn birthday

But Doug's the one who scored. A work promotion AND these: tickets to the SEC Championship tournament.

He can't stop grinning, & neither can I.

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Who and What

My students are supposed to be writing introductory posts, laying out who they are and what their blogs will be about. Fair is fair. So who am I? And what is Popcorn on a Skillet all about?

I am Living the Dream. I know. Only a jerk would say so. What can I tell you? Happily married suburban schoolteacher, no kids... Life's a party.

Okay that last bit's a lie. I teach, coach, sleep, repeat. I love my job, though. So life feels like a party.

Rather than drag out the old why-I-started-Popcorn yarn, I want to recall how I named this blog. Why and how did I choose Popcorn on a Skillet?

I knew I was starting a cooking blog, so I Googled "food metaphors" and found a few lists. I browsed, and copy/pasted expressions I thought were catchy, or appetizing, or whatever...

"Busier than popcorn on a skillet" stuck out to me. I love the visual. And even better - it's old-fashioned. I imagine my students wondering, what does popcorn have to do with a skillet?

I've always planned to replace that banner across the top with my own custom photo. I have popcorn in the house. I have skillets. One of these days I've really got to make that happen.

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A Question for my Yankee Confederates

 I know I promised to talk about food media, but frozen Atlanta occupied my mind this week.

Doug captured this Monday, the winter (choke, gag) wonderland stage. This snow gave way to sleet, which fell for another day. The combined effect buried the jewel of the South in three inches of ice.

The Associated Press seems critical of the city's response, though they acknowledge winter storms, followed by extended sub-freezing temperatures, don't happen all that often here.

The AJC carried the positive spin that, economically, the storm didn't devastate the city. Now, tell that to the people stranded on 285 for a day. And that priceless quotation, "I live in Metro Atlanta, not Bangladesh."

This Fox station in Sacramento takes a tone. A "light dusting of snow" overwhelmed the city's "8 snowplows."

I myself appreciated a snow day, but a snow week?

In these parts, a snowstorm means one morning's crummy commute. Whatever falls overnight melts away by noon. So I don't mean to be flip when I observe the city's response has amounted to, let the Lord handle it.

The main road at the end of my subdivision (choke, gag) stayed frozen until yesterday afternoon, when the temperature finally climbed.

It was worse than Peoria.

Worse than Peoria.

At last, my question: Did Atlanta-cicle even hit your radar? Is the rest of the country laughing at us, the way I'm laughing at us inside?

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Snow Day

I've worked at a breakneck pace to get ready to for the supposed start of the semester today. But instead of printing syllabi, meeting students, and all that jazz, I'm on house arrest.

Oh we tried to get out, but I guess I forgot we live in a place where nobody's heard of a salt truck. Doug made it to the end of the driveway, before spinning wheels put an end to his endeavor. I'm so glad we have food in the house!

Anyway, I've been struggling to build a new identity for this blog. Not that anyone who reads this thing would have noticed. Teaching evening classes hasn't lent itself well to the fresh-from-scratch cooking lifestyle I was recounting here. No kids means no cutesy-pukesy pictures, and I don't feel like my days and nights of Wii and whiskey make for very compelling reading.

But I have an idea I'm going to try. I'm teaching a class in media, culture, and society this spring, and I'm making my students keep blogs to track their term projects. The idea is to try and keep everybody on track, by requiring weekly think-throughs of their term project topics.

For my term project, I'm going to check out some media representations of food and eating. I'm hoping a bit of solidarity will motivate me to keep up with this blog, the way NaBlo helped me out in November.

So... Ideas...

• Food, Inc.
• Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution (assuming I can get it on Netflix)
• One of Michael Pollan's books
• Some TV commercials -- like, Happy Meal ads versus healthy eating PSA's
• OMG! Real Food Has Curves! I love Mark and Bruce's blog. Time to get their book!

I'd love to hear suggestions from y'all -- especially on which Pollan book I should read. I'll admit, I kind of despise that guy. His NYTimes editorials reek of smug superiority. Raging douchebaggery, in fact.

Can I type that word on a site I'll let my students read? Surprise, kids. Teacher's got a colorful vocabulary.

I'll be back... No seriously. I totally will.

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