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Celeste is napping, Evelin's out for a haircut, I should be cleaning up the basement/preparing to nursery, but instead I want to clear out a few things that I've been meaning to blog for a week or three ...

First off, this article ("Cooking 101: Add 1 Cup of Simplicity") in today's Washington Post makes me sad:

At a conference last December, Stephen W. Sanger, chairman and chief executive of General Mills Inc., noted the sad state of culinary affairs and described the kind of e-mails and calls the company gets asking for cooking advice: the person who didn't have any eggs for baking and asked if a peach would do instead, for example; and the man who railed about the fire that resulted when he thought he was following instructions to grease the bottom of the pan -- the outside of the pan.

Basically, the culinary skillz of Americans are so bad that foodie magazines and cookbooks are cutting back on recipes to add more illustrations of basic food preparation steps. I'm saying it here (so it'll probably come back to haunt me later in life), but I'm going to make sure that Celeste and her sibling know how to cook and, hopefully, enjoy doing so. I'm pretty sure Evelin will back me up on this, and add in her baking knowledge/skillz which far surpass my own.

On a different note, back around Mardi Gras, I mentioned that my grandmother was going to be on "Morning Edition." The segment ended up being bumped for a few days, but it did eventually run; I'm just really late in posting the link: "Katrina's Impact on Elderly Still Resonates."

Again, an long-past media segment that I meant to mention, but didn't The "Great Cookie-Off" at Red Sox Spring Training. Their spring training stats may be less than inspiring, but it's good to see that the Sawx don't need Millar to keep loose. Beth at Cursed to First summed it up best: We officially have the most adorable baseball team in the universe.

Thinking of baseball, I'm less bummed that the U.S. team is out of the World Baseball Classic after the second round than I am about how poorly the Aussies did in the first round, but I am really pulling for a República Dominicana vs. Korea final game. Korea would be unbeaten (they just have to get past Japan this evening) and the Dominicans are pretty much unstoppable. Plus, I want Big Papi to meet up with Seung Yeop Lee (이승엽) to see if there's anyway to get him in Boston. Don't get me wrong: I want Youklis playing first at this point, but if there's a chance to get Lee's bat (and assuming he'd hit in the bigs the way he has in the Classic) I'd be willing to consider some movement in the infield.

And while the U.S. may be out of the Classic, we're headed in to the World Cup with our highest ranking ever (#5), which is amazing for U.S. Soccer. We're in a pool with Italy, Ghana, and the Czech Republic so I'd say it's even odds that we'll make it to the second round this year ... but we'll see ...

Switching gears to languages and linguistics, AKMA had an interesting post two weeks ago about how languages are learned in seminary and the difference between learning to read vs. to decode when it comes to biblical studies.

Continuing with languages, when we went to the Hirschhorn a few weeks ago, I forgot to mention that I finally got to learn more about the Jim Hodges installation that's on the Constitution Avenue side of the building. I've seen it during my commute for a few months now, and have been intrigued by the phrase "Don't Be Afraid" in so many languages, so it was interesting to learn more about Hodges and his work, but I still wonder if the piece should be facing Capitol Hill and/or the White House ... although I doubt that would stop the constant fearmongering.