the best, jerry. the BEST!

Every time I have ever tried to make banana bread according to any recipe, it has always ended up burned on top and doughy in the center. Every single time. I had given up.

But I accidentally let 3 bananas get too ripe last week and I couldn't bear to toss them out. So I tried a recipe in my new church cookbook and, figuring it would fail anyway, decided to make a few modifications for taste... like making the sugar half white and half brown, and adding cranberries.

I am happy to report that it was PERFECT. And if any of you people would ever COME TO NASHVILLE, you could have a slice.

"he's a good boy."

I'm fascinated by the ways that family dynamics and crime are related, both before and after a crime takes place. I'm also intrigued by the way police handle (or don't) particular crimes. If I had taken those Social Deviance and Criminal Justice classes a year earlier than I did, I would have gone on to pick up a minor in CJ... but now I just get my fix via Law & Order. Anyway, my mother recently shared this story with me about her coworker in Orange, Texas, who was the victim of a theft. And of inept policemen. And of an enabling father.

The school nurse came home to find her house had been robbed. After the police arrived (40 minutes later and she lives within spitting distance of the department), they asked her if anything was missing. She had waited for them across the street at a neighbor's house in case the robbers were still inside, so she said she didn't know, but hadn't been upstairs. One officer asked her if she wanted them to wait while she went upstairs and checked. The other officer tapped the first and softly said, "We're the ones with the guns. We need to go up and check."

All of her jewelry had been taken. The neighbor had noticed two teens in the nurse's back yard that afternoon and asked what they were doing. They told her they wanted to talk to her about a fight at school but would come back later since she wasn't home. So the neighbor (who later couldn't identify the kids at all) at least knew to tell what she had seen. The nurse happened to have a friend who was an Army Special Forces soldier. He told her he would ask around at the high school and he'd tell her who had done it... which he successfully did. He got the third guy, who had been the lookout, to rat out the two who had actually taken the jewelry. Those two had some of it on them at school that day, so the nurse got back some of her stuff.

The school nurse and the judge handling her case attend the same church. After the boys were arrested, the father of one approached the nurse at her church one morning (unaware of who she was) and asked if Judge Campbell was there. She hadn't seen him. The father said, "I need to find him because they're gonna make my son wear an electronic ankle bracelet and he won't stay where he's supposed to so then they'll put him in jail. So I need to tell the judge not to make him wear the bracelet."

The nurse said, "Do you know who I am? Your son broke into MY house and stole MY jewelry!" The dad asked if she had gotten it back and she told him several pieces were still missing. He described one piece and she said it wasn't hers. He said, "Hmm, that must have been from one of the other houses."

So, the victim is supposed to secure the crime scene, do their own investigation, and assist the criminal's family in lessening the punishment?

They were probably the same two officers who responded to our house in Orange after a break-in/vandalism and proceeded to handle fingerprint-rich evidence without wearing gloves. They had zero intentions of finding the vandals.

*no doubt, what the father would say about his son. have you ever noticed on the news when we're looking for an identified criminal, the family gets on tv to say, "he's a good boy... he's just... he's always been a good boy."

quack *cough* quack

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — The duck would not die.

Wildlife officials said the feathered Lazarus had been shot by a hunter and put into his refrigerator for two days. That's when the hunter's wife opened the door and the duck lifted his head, giving her a scare.

The man's wife "was going to check on the refrigerator because it hadn't been working right and when she opened the door, it looked up at her," said Laina Whipple, a receptionist at Killearn Animal Hospital. "She freaked out and told the daughter to take it to the hospital right then and there."

The hospital's staff had the daughter take the 1-pound female ring-neck to Goose Creek Wildlife Sanctuary, where it has been treated since Tuesday for wounds to its wing and leg.

Sanctuary veterinarian David Hale said it has about a 75 percent chance of survival, but probably will not ever be well enough to be released back into the wild.

He said the duck, which has a low metabolism, could have survived in a big enough refrigerator, especially if the door was opened and closed several times.

if everyone loved and nobody lied*

when i hear stories of character failure on a grand scale, i always wonder how the situation deteriorated to that point. i mean, i figure cheating husbands don't start with sex with a stranger. they start with emails or phone calls or something "small" like that. students who swipe the professor's exam answers and pass them around before their crucial college final have probably been cheating since that "just this once" time in eighth grade. and the 15 year old kid in my town who got caught at a crackhouse by his mother, got mad and took off, stole a car, fatally shot the security guard who tried to stop him from stealing some sneakers from a store, then shot two other people in the mall parking lot... well, he must have gotten his start stealing pacifiers from other babies.

lately i've heard more examples than i can stand where people told 'little white lies' that brought some benefit to them while 'no one got hurt.' and in all the cases that come to mind, the situations were told in a way that glorified the liar for having gotten away with something.

so far, i understand that it is okay to be dishonest to strangers because we won't see them again, okay to steal in one way or another from a person or a business because the world owes us something, okay to withhold information from a significant other because you'd be in trouble for it if they knew, okay to lie to a coworker when it makes you look better, and on and on.

there are a few rules to this game, though. like how we always get to be the liar, not the one who is lied to. and how we always get to be the one who is stealing a little something, not the person or business who is stolen from. and how we shouldn't be punished when we get caught cheating on a spouse because we had a good reason. and how we shouldn't be punished when we get caught cheating in school because we deserve a good grade.

i know that every kid who steals candy in second grade isn't going to grow up to steal cars. or a million dollars from his employees' retirement accounts. we have all done stupid things over the years which we knew were wrong and which we regretted.

but it concerns me when i hear grownups congratulating each other for having deceived someone and gotten away with it. why do grownups perpetuate the things we punish children for? because there is usually an, "i know it was wrong, but..." tossed in, which clearly makes everything okay.

stand up for integrity in the everyday things. so what if you lose a friend or two over it.

* "if everyone cared" by nickelback

multiple choice

this is a picture of:

a) my carpet after i left furniture in one place for too long.

b) my carpet after aliens made a crop cir... square.

c) my carpet after being patched after my puppy chewed a hole through it, the carpet pad, and the concrete beneath.

let me give you a hint: my puppy had concrete dust caked on her otherwise-adorable face when i found her.

anyone up for a swim?

A few of my readers may be familiar with the bridge(s) over the Atchafalaya River in Louisiana. You know, that boring eighteen mile stretch of side-by-side concrete that spans the stagnant swamp that lies beneath a perpetually humid, gray, cloudy sky? I always desperately tried to be asleep for that part of the drive between Texas and Tennessee as a kid.

Aaaaanyway, as my parents crossed this bridge on the way home from their Christmas trip to Nashville, they noticed emergency vehicles filtering through both directions of traffic. Then they noticed a car screech to a stop in the inside lane on the opposite side. (Each direction has its own bridge.) Dad, trying to drive but trying to figure out what was happening, glanced at his lane then back over to the scene... just in time to see the guy who had jumped from the edge as he dropped between the bridges to the swamp below.

Turns out, he had kidnapped his estranged wife and her two children. They were in the car, apparently unharmed. I guess he weighed his impending capture against death by fall, drowning, aligator, or submerged tree stump and decided to take his chances with the jump. That was Thursday and he still hasn't been seen. Although, suspiciously, his truck is now missing. (No one thought to go secure his vehicle after he disappeared?)

Apparently another criminal jumped to his (temporary) freedom along the bridge fairly recently too. He was found hiding in a hollowed-out cypress tree after swimming two miles to get there.

Gross. I mean, I hope they catch him and all. But, have you SEEN this water?

*the pics were copied from the acadiana paper and some louisiana roadways website that i don't remember.