D likes to tell people about my Chinese Meatloaf though I try to remind him that no one else knows what that means. It’s my own personal name for fried rice because my recipe for it really just depends on what’s in the fridge and pantry. Whatever that ends up being simply gets mixed in with the staple fried rice ingredients and voilà, there’s dinner. It’s actually my core style of cooking—“meatloaf style“—that is. It can be used for stir fry, chow mein, omelets, and even spaghetti sauce. There could almost be a cookbook for it; however, that would be completely contrary to the point.

We’re putting a new bathroom in the house that will be located in the basement. To prepare for it, we (and by we, I mean Douglas) had the concrete floor cut open so we could get new drain lines installed. The big holes under the foundation of our house inspired the idea of burying a time capsule in them, something that could house items that could be found decades from now and give the finders a glimpse of people and era that came before them. My original thought was to fit chosen items into a shoe box because I have many of those to spare. However, I was soundly advised…

Murphy came to live with us a year ago. We got him from the Oregon Humane Society when he was approximately 7 months old. He was from a house suspected of cat hoarding. He was tiny…so skinny. Who knows how much he ever got to eat if he had to compete for his food. That would seem to explain why he wouldn’t stop eating every time we fed him. I eventually had to get him a food timer so our neighbor didn’t have to come over twice a day to feed him when we were on vacation. When we got him, he was also pretty timid. In the transition room…