Diane’s microwave is pretty smart. I’ve been fascinated with it from the day we bought it when we moved into this house 7 years ago. In the last two years, since I finally retired, I’ve had opportunities to explore the various settings which cover pretty much any form of cooking one might want to do. Before I retired I really didn’t have time to figure it out so relied on Diane to figure out all the possibilities. Being a very clever person, and more of a techie than she’s comfortable to admit, she is well versed in it’s possibilities. Mainly, I use the settings that allow me to reheat ‘stuff’, like “one meal”, or “one cup of coffee”, things like that. Simple settings.

Sometimes I dare to just set it for a certain amount of time, like I’ve done for hotdogs since day one. Usually I just stuff the hotdog in the bun, set it for 25 seconds, and it comes out perfect. That length of time is perfect to heat up the hotdog without turning the bun into an overly chewy mess.

Diane doesn’t like her hotdog heated up in the bun. Instead, she does the hotdog first, then puts it in a bun, covers it with cheese, and sticks it back in the micro for 10-15 seconds. If that isn’t bad enough, when she takes it out she puts ketchup on it. That should be illegal. You should have to put mustard on all hotdogs. Ketchup is just wrong in so many ways. Ketchup is for steaks and shrimp.

I digress … sorry …

Today after church we took Diane’s mom, Jean, to Zhen’s, formerly the Lucky Inn, for one of their incredibly huge meals. Diane had a craving. Like normal, each plate is enough to feed three people. All of us ate sparingly, boxed the rest, then returned to our house to digest all of it and wait for the post-Chinese-food-hunger-pangs to set in. The ride home took us to downtown St. Helens, by the river where we discovered Lydia, and her friend Ravyn, calmly avoiding what they described as a “creepy guy” down by the gazeebo. Odd to find her this far from home. Lydia said they were waiting for another one of their friends, but he was late.

Once home, Diane and Mom watched the ‘Red Widow’ pilot which was saved to the DVR. I already watched it during one or more session of American Idol, or one of many different shows from HGTV which are also captured on the DVR.

Since it was a two-hour episode, the Chinese food had plenty of time to clear the upper reaches of our digestive tracts, making room for something new and tasty. I suggested hotdogs which was a unanimous choice. So, I removed a new package of Hebrew National hotdogs (7 to a pack) from the referigerator, and a new package of buns from the bread drawer (8 to a pack), and set about the task of figuring out how to heat them up.

At this point, I must point out that both Diane and I refer to the various settings on the micro as “buttons”, like those commonly found on a smart phone. They are all menu items in memory, but you have to “push” a button on the screen to activate it. We have popcorn buttons, the aforementioned coffee button, the meal button, the melt cheese button, etc. So, it may not be a surprise to you that, after deciding to see about cooking the hotdogs, I stumbled across a “two weenie” button.

To me, that was just phenominal! Diane’s microwave has a two weenie button! Who knew?

It took me some time to digest that discovery. I think she secretly knew about it but was keeping it secret from me. She denied it, however, when I accused her of doing that. Can’t say I blame her because I would have denied it, too. I mean, c’mon! A two weenie button. Who would’ve believed that? But, I never would have found if without her help. Oddly, it is under the “Meat” menu which I find odd because everyone knows hotdogs aren’t meat. They may look like meat, but they really aren’t.

Jennie, Cedric, Lydia, and Jeran stopped by after we finished our weenies so Jen could get the booster seat to use for her niece, Lexie, whom she babysits. Jennie loves babies. Given half a chance, she would have had 15 kids. It’s all about the smell, I’m told. The clean baby smell, not the dirty one.

Moving on, spring is over until next week. After two days of glorious sunshine and dry weather the moisture has returned. To combat that I’ve made yesterday’s picture of Panzee my wall paper so that I, like Ruth, can see what better times will look like. I think spring will return in a week or so.

Panzee and Ozzie alerted to a strange noise a few minutes ago on the back porch. I got up to look and blinded a lone raccoon when I hit the floods. It was pilfering the outside cat dish which I had failed to bring inside. It ignored me until I rapped on the window, then it ran down the steps. I gave it a five second head start then let Panzee out. After I was sure the raccoon was safely over the fence, I let little yappy Ozzie joing the chase.

It was a delightful end to a day filled with exciting events and new discoveries.