Young McFadden had a farm, E-I-E-I-O

...and on that farm he had a bean plant, E-I-E-I-O.

Last Friday, Eric and I planted some beans in an old chocolate milk carton, and as of this morning, they were already this tall!  They're in a milk carton because, although you can't tell from the picture, we planted them up against the side of the carton where a flap is cut so we can open up and watch them sprout, the roots going down and the shoot coming up; there's plastic wrap taped on to hold the dirt in when you're looking in the "window."

And the kids really do wear other clothes than these flag shirts; it just seems that every time I take a photo of them for the blog happens to be a day they're in them.

Baseball Tonight

Up late watching all the extra-inning games with playoff implications.  And to think, a month ago, all the sportswriters were bemoaning the fact that the playoff races were all but wrapped up and there wouldn't be any drama in September!

Lazy blog posts this week; I'll try to do better tomorrow.

Browncoats vs. speech codes

Take my love, take my land 
Take me where I cannot stand 
I don't care, I'm still free 
You can't take the sky from me 
Take me out to the black 
Tell them I ain't comin' back 
Burn the land and boil the sea 
You can't take the sky from me 
There's no place I can be 
Since I found Serenity 
But you can't take the sky from me...

Wonder why?

Whooo!

Rangers clinch tonight, thanks to the Angels' loss in Oakland!  Going to buy my AL West championship shirt tomorrow, if I can find one.  When you're a fan of a team that's not one of the usual suspects, you have to buy your memorabilia when you can because you never know when you'll get another chance.  I'm very glad to have bought my Wake Forest Orange Bowl T-shirt from 2007 because the Deacons aren't going to be back in a BCS bowl for a long time.

"Person of Interest" (Spoilers!)

We watched the pilot tonight because I have plenty of residual good will for Jim Caviezel after "Frequency" ($7.19 at Amazon at this writing?  If you don't have it, buy it; it rocks.) and "The Count of Monte Cristo" (Bears very little resemblance to the book, which is beyond excellent, yet the movie somehow manages to be excellent on its own terms.).  Tommy almost talked me out of it ("We can just wait for the DVDs!"), but I tuned in anyway.  Honestly, with "24" off the air, we have our weekly viewing pared down to just "Chuck" (which is in its last season itself) and "Castle" (about which a separate blog post soon), and we hate to muddy up our schedule with any more "must-see" shows.

I thought it was pretty good, but I don't much trust my own judgment in situations like this.  I tend to let my affection for an actor bleed into my opinion of a show; it took outside intervention from Leslie to break it to me that, despite my "Frasier"-based loyalty to Kelsey Grammer, "Back to You" wasn't a good show.  Pilots tend to have a weak "A-plot" due to the amount of time they have to spend setting up the premise (My one quibble with "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" was the two-dimensionality of the love interest, but once I got to the end and realized it wasn't an episode but an origin story, it all made sense;  the love interest in an origin story is supposed to be paper-thin.), but I was pleased to see that the supposed victim turned out to be the perp instead of the damsel in distress.  And I got my Jack Bauer fix from the scene where the lackey thinks he's about to kill Jim Caviezel's character and Caviezel laughs and tells him not to worry, he's going to let him live before turning the tables on him.  For now, they've got me willing to tune in again next week.

That's Mr. Engale to you

Eric: I know a bird; it's called a night ... thingy.
Me: A night bird?
Eric: It's a bird; it's called "night-", but I don't know its last name.
Me: Nightingale?
Eric: Night Engale.  That's it.