Somebody else has figured out how to make a fortune. The folks at Snapshirts will spider your blog or website and make a wordcloud on the fly. For a modest fee ($18 for a custom built T) they'll put the cloud on your back. Sweeeet.

Malo was mortified. He had spent too much time and hard earned cash on culinary school to be shunted from one half-assed operation to another. His first gig in Baltimore was an organic restaurant that was as flightless as its namesake. "Puffins" had a staff of stoners and work-release cons could never keep it in the air and the restaurant tumbled to the ground in a heap of tofu and "...seared ahi tuna ($17) consisted of two beautifully charred filets sitting atop a peppery Southwestern risotto studded with asparagus, red pepper, chives, pimiento, and green onion..."

Quick stints in a Holiday Inn, an up-scale deli, a doughnut shop with aspirations of grandeur, and an Alaskan cruise ship called Amistad left Malo bone weary and racked as a riblet.
Burned out, he took a job pushing security systems in Baltimore City. A growth industry if ever there was one.
Two years in, and desperate to get back to his true calling, Malo answered an ad for a sous chef at a Johns Hopkins University eatery. The CAFÉ AZAFRÁN had a menu to die for (e.g.):
"...a Mediterranean wrap of hummus, baby spinach, artichoke hearts, Kalamata olives, goat cheese on a pesto tortilla".

Finally a gig with legs.
I asked where it was. He said he wasn't real sure, only that it had a huge telescope in the lobby.
"You don't mean you're cookin' at the Space Telescope Science Institute, do you?"
"Yeah, I think that's it, why?", he asked.
"Nothin', really... that's way cool, I'm excited for you, man."

As I hung up I had a vision of the congressionally orphaned Hubble Space Telescope tumbling into the sea, dragging with it a nouveau cuisine eatery and my friend, Malo.
Shhhhh... don't say a word. Remember what the Ramones said, "Ignorance is bliss, just look at you."

chef hubble comedy

Earlier this week we were teased with an inch dusting, but today fierce winds will push dunes of snow against our front door. How could I ignore such a clear cut message.

I'll cloister inside, spin smoothies, rip the wrapper from Halo2 and get killed over and over again by a 9 year old. I'll woodshed some soca and help my daughter with a new website creation, "Ranch Good Days" in Colorado.

Santa screwed the pooch this past Christmas and forgot to bring my eight year old

a Digital Blue Camera
I have to hand it to the old guy 'cause when he realized his mistake he sent out an elf, dressed in brown like a UPS man, to hand carry the gift to our doorstep.
This was Eli's first movie, starring my foot..