Watching your team lose can be a bitter pill to swallow. It's not every year your team makes it to the Super Bowl, and of course you want them to win. So when they don't, you just feel, well, blah.

I guess truth in advertising can be a touchy subject. My syrup bottle doesn't talk to me, no teddy bear giggles in my laundry room, I've never seen twins share a pack of gum, and my margarine certainly doesn't try to insist it's butter. Then there's Minute Rice, if by "minute" one means "five minutes or so." Hmm, speaking of rice...

How pathetic. I finally post something after a couple months, and this is the best I can come up with? Game screenshots? Yep.

Growing up, whenever someone asked where the name Itzoe came from, the general response was "It's French. It used to be spelled Itzoet and pronounced Ee-sway" but the reality is no one really knew. Back in the Nineties my brother started doing geneological research. He was able to trace family back to Europe, but not to specific locations. However, a couple years ago, we found the town of Itzehoe, Germany. Having heard stories of non-English-speaking turn-of-the-century immigrants from Europe being assigned new names based on either their native land or whatever word the immigration official picked out from their native tongue, Itzehoe seems the best (and at this point only) candidate thus far. Summary: we're probably German. To boot, much of my wife's family is also German.

This was submitted by Joe, but let me be clear this is a wrong number, although I'll concede it's possible its a prank call. But if not, the level of insensitivity is staggering.

Once again we procrastinated regarding our jack-o-lantern, but not content to procrastinate as in Halloweens past, we waited until Halloween day to carve that gourd. Nothing gets you in the spirit of Halloween like driving around town hoping to God to find a store or produce stand that still has pumpkins in stock. Nada. Well, mostly. There was one stand that still had a few. By the way, all the carving kits were sold out too. I had to use a dull steak knife. Does it show?

I've finally gotten the site to the point where I can add and edit posts without having to do so directly in the database. What a pain that is. And now that I have the ability, maybe I'll finally get around to writing about our trip to Nashville. But not today. Today is all about White Steamer.

I feel even more behind than usual. Not so much because I haven't posted anything for a couple weeks but because I've actually had things to post and never got around to it. To make up for lost time, I'll start with something a little older: our hiking adventure.

There's really no delicate way to put any of this, but it's a major medical development in my life, so I felt it bears exploiting explaining. Yes, I've had chronic diarrhea for quite some time, and I finally got around to doing something about it.

Okay, we don't really live in the ghetto, per se, but it's about as close as one gets in this part of the state. Having said that, one of the few perks is the sheer entertainment value our less-than-educated denizens provide. Living on the corner next to a major thoroughfare means we're privy to a high degree of police activity. The accompanying picture is the best of series of photos I took of a car pulled over Friday night, it's occupants patted down, but eventually sent on their way.