My dad made broccoli slaw the last time we saw him. It was surprisingly tasty. Not in that "Okay, I can barely tolerate eating this" way, but in the "Hey, coleslaw only crunchier!"

My mother's dad started working in coal mines when he was 12. He smoked non filter cigarettes most of his life. He made his own moonshine. He drank heavily up until he died (including a case of alcohol poisoning at age 80 and an incident where they had to call the police and evacuate his trailer park because he got drunk and started shooting at "rats"). The man ate bacon every morning and loved sausage gravy and biscuits with fried eggs and fried apples.

He lived to be 88 with no cancer, no long hospitalizations and he died with a full head of hair. Go figure.

The Dreaded Brocolli title comes from the fact that when ever the couple went out to eat anywhere (and they were in NY -- this was in the late 80s) the vegetable choice was almost always broccoli.

Yip. You can pretty much bet on it. Or the ever-popular steamed broccoli-cauliflower-carrot melange.

Question: I'm supposed to staple my W-2 forms to my Form 1040A to my Form 8880, right? Not just use a paperclip?

Gotta say, connie, I'm inclined to side with Son #2.

My maternal grandfather smoked a pack a day until he was nearly 80. After grandma died (of lung cancer--she was also a pack a day smoker) he was a widower in a Seniors-only apartment complex. Every other day one of his admiring female neighbors would leave him a plate of cookies or a pie. (The man lurved his pie.) When my aunt asked Grandpa's doctor to read the riot act to him, the doctor said something along the lines of, "The man has bone cancer, prostate cancer, semi-blocked arteries, and God knows what else. Let him have his pie."

Grandpa died at ~83. His last words were, hand to God, "My arm hurts. It's 'cause all the pretty nurses won't stop laying on it." Yeah, it might have been nice for him to see 84, but he was a grownup (and a cut-up) and he wanted his pie.

Why Tom DeLay should be pushed out of an airplane:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said this yesterday about Terri Schiavo: Like other Republican lawmakers championing Schiavo's bill, DeLay often suggests she is alert and potentially treatable. "She talks and she laughs and she expresses likes and discomforts," he said Sunday evening. "It won't take a miracle to help Terri Schiavo. It will only take the medical care and therapy that patients require."

Terri Schiavo doesn't talk. She doesn't have the brain lobes necessary to talk. Her court-appointed guardian ad litem, the guy who isn't in bed with either side, says she's in a persistent vegetative state.

Tom DeLay is lying.

Owen just managed to unscrew his bottle lid and dump four ounces of formula down the front of his shirt. Now he's laughing and sucking on the disconnected nipple and banging the empty bottle on the dog.

Sounds like my kind of boy.

Owen amuses me.