Last night Steve made moose meatloaf for dinner and tried to serve it to me practically raw, because the recipe said it would be done by thenand if thatÂs what the recipe says, it is not for us to dispute. My first impulse was to be annoyed, but then I rejoiced, because as of Friday, such a thing will no longer be possible. Oh sure, weÂll still eat moose meatloaf (and like it), but on Friday weÂre getting a new oven range that features an integral meat thermometer, so internal temps are indisputably displayed and I donÂt have to deal with his over-reliance on written instructions when cooking. (Theoretically.) When we moved in nearly four years ago, Steve and I agreed that the range would be replaced as soon as practical. There's nothing wrong with it, per se: Plenty of people like glass-topped electric stoves, and I've managed to work around the oven's consistent imprecision. There's probably some kind of recalibration dial I could adjust... but solving this would only force me to keep it longer... So when Steve was surprised with a generous performance bonus, we decided to put most in our retirement savings but to splurge on a new range. Giddy at the prospect, I called my neighbor to discuss where to donate our old appliance. She knows the contempt I have for it so we danced a happy jig together and she asked what our timetable looked like. "Well, a normal couple would have one in a week or so, but I'm married to Steve so he'll have to research everything on line, examine the inventory of every appliance-selling establishment in a 50 mile radius while nearly disassembling each in the showroom, read product reviews, think about it, and then re-visit every store to find the best price. *sigh* Might take months..." "Whereas if you had your way, you'd just make it yourself!" she retorted, knowingly. (Touché.) To my astonishment, we found it in only five shopping trips supplemented by on line research. Our new oven(s)/stove gets installed on Friday! It has bells and whistles, but mostly I look forward to cooking with gas (on top) again. I think IÂm going to break it in by cooking duck. ThatÂll mess it up in a hurry and make it match everything else around here.

When I was a wee youngun my dad would collect old radio shows on his reel to reel hi-fi stereo system. We lived overseas (Tokyo) and never got around to buying a converter for our TV so those shows were our major source of entertainment. I moved back stateside while in highschool just about the time that Trivial Persuit was invented. I failed miserably at television trivia but knew all the characters on old radio. After years of maintaining his collection and painstakingly transfering them from reel to reel to cassette tape and now to digital cd's its gonna kill him to know that they are available for free on the internet. My favorite was Throckmorton P. Gilderslieve (however it is spelled).

well shoot, meant to put this on the conversation board.... I goofed, sorry!

I love #6. I'll get out my handcuffs and polish them right up. Thanks Minnie. There are some good hints in there, as well as some funny ones. Leslie