First of all, this is worth (another) watch:

Second, here’s a video I took from Canal Street about an hour after the game. Be warned that I had been drinking for about 10 hours at that point, and that I know I drop at least one F-bomb. And it doesn’t come close to doing justice to what it was like there, but hopefully, if you’re interested, you might get some sense of it.

Canal St. After the NFC Championship Gamee from ben schultz on Vimeo.

Canal Street, 1/24/2010, about an hour after the New Orleans Saints won their first NFC Championship.

I also have a couple of short videos from before the game on Sunday posted over here. And if you’ve really got some time to kill, check the other video galleries from that page. Other than “2004,” they’ve all got new stuff posted.

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I have to admit, the Saints conference championship has been very moving to me. I’m surprised to find myself a lot more affected than when LSU won either of their football championships. Perhaps, in my mind, the Tigers were always a good team that would one day find their way back, while the Saints seemed to anyone to be one of those franchises destined to muddle through in mediocrity.

Being in the city after the game Sunday night was amazing. It’s possible that there’s never been a single city at a single point in time that was so collectively happy. Maybe a lot of cities were that happy when the Nazis finally surrendered, but then again, there were a lot of grieving parents in that mix. As I posted to Facebook, the Greeks weren’t that happy to have beaten the Trojans (although I think I put the Spartans. I doubt those were the same people, but that doesn’t really matter.)

Even with more printings, it’s impossible to find a copy of Monday’s Times-Picayune. People are already selling them for $25.

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If I were a betting man, I would say that I have a photograph of the worst example of burnt food in a microwave oven that you’ve ever seen. If you can’t stand the suspense, scroll to the bottom of the post to see it for yourself.

Last Saturday, we had a few people over to watch the Saints game. We ate buffalo wings and white beans during the day.

Culinary aside: I (incorrectly) predicted that after a day of eating wings, beans, and drinking, that Mrs. theskinnyonbenny would have horrible complaints about my flatulence the next day. I thought for sure that she would screech that I needed to see a doctor about the unnatural churnings of my body. But it turns out that it wasn’t too bad.

V didn’t go hungry throughout the day, but he wasn’t much on hot wings and white beans either. So in the evening, Mrs. theskinnyonbenny popped some leftover macaroni into the microwave for him and set the time.

Both she and our friend Lisa heard the microwave beep a few minutes later, and they assumed that it was finished. In the course of three minutes, V was running wild in a different part of the house, so they went outside to drink, leaving the food in the microwave for when his little brain got back around to the request.

Some number of minutes later, Mel went into the kitchen and discovered smoke pouring out of the microwave. She roused me from a half-drunk full, content laziness on the couch by yelling, “YOUR KITCHEN IS ON FIRE!!!”

I went in, opened the microwave door, and was immediately engulfed by smoke. It wasn’t just normal smoke — it burnt the eyes and lungs most horribly. Perhaps it isn’t funny, but I had to chuckle at Mel’s frantic attempts to herd the unherdable children out of the kitchen. They were running wild, wondering what all the commotion was about. Somehow, I noticed that there was still another 47 minutes to go on the microwave timer.

While I was fumbling with trying to get the trash can over to the microwave, she snagged a potholder and had the smoldering mess out the back door in record time. But by then, the smoke had filled the kitchen, and filled the ceiling area upstairs.

Six days later, the smell is almost — but not quite — gone.

So on to the picture…

You will notice that there isn’t much of the tupperware left. Nothing was thrown away. Any missing tupperware is melted into the burnt macaroni.

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Sunday night, I went outside to feed Blossom, and as I reached for her bowl, I stepped in a pile of dog poo.

I hit a big pile, and my foot landed on it so squarely that it sunk down into the poo, surrounding the bottom edge of the shoe, and threatening to suck it off of my foot as I tried to raise my leg.

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I know that it’s been exceptionally cold everywhere, and you don’t want to read a post about how the puddles were actually frozen when I went outside to see how Lily was getting into the yard next door. And I can handle the cold. I’ll bundle up and go out in the upper thirties, no problem.

But I learn to cope. I don’t have gloves, but I have a reasonably warm coat, and with the hood up, hat, scarf, sweatshirt, and two sets of pants, It’s warm enough.

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Baton Rouge actually closed schools today because it’s really, really cold. No snow. No ice. It’s just butt-cold.

I believe the official statement read, “East Baton Rouge Parish Schools will be closed tomorrow due to the fact that it’s supposed to be too damned cold to get out of bed.”

It is cold though. It’s still in the low to mid 30’s at 1:00. It was 26 when I went out in my drawers to get the paper. That was painful. I won’t be going outside again if I can help it.

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I am hereby making the following three New Year’s resolutions:

1. Finish giving my songs star rankings

This is a chore that I’ve been working on for since some time in 1995. I’m down to about 900 songs left to rank in a 17,000 song library. And I’ve done this by listening to each and every song. I no longer listen to them alphabetically — at some point, Itunes threw me a curve by starting to ignore “The” and “A” at the beginning of song titles, and it screwed up my list. At the same time, I was getting deep enough into the list that every time I added a new album, I had three of the songs from that album automatically sorted to the top.

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Vanya’s class did some little gift for the teacher’s birthday, and she sent an email with this photo telling us all thank you.

Do you see Vanya in this pic? (Don’t scroll down — that’s cheating.)

He’s not the kid in blue next to the teacher.

Look again.

Okay, go ahead and scroll down.

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