Our friend Stacie recently moved to the Dallas area. I picked up the phone one weekend right after she moved there and had a conversation that went something like this. Stacie: "Hey, what's on NBC in your house right now?"

There's a new restaurant a handful of blocks away from our house that we've been visiting very regularly since it opened. I really wanted to be able to pan Byronz Bistro. Just based on the location, the look of the building, and how long they took to renovate the building, I expected high prices, average food, and overworked, unattentive staff. I guess I'm a pessimist.

The biggest question that I always have while watching the Oscar broadcast is, how do they phase out celebrities that no longer make the A-list? On Sunday, for example, there was old Jack Nicholson, sitting front and center for the whole broadcast, and then being the presenter for the Best Picture award. Has he been an A-lister so long that he has tenure?

Jim Holt's billboards are everywhere in this city, and I do mean everywhere. On at least one route that I can take on my 5 mile commute to work, I can see this photo on two bus stop benches and on one large billboard. I've even seen this image pop up during the pre-preview advertisements at the movies.

I was just recently talking about all of those ghost shows on late night cable TV. I had been watching one about a bar that was haunted by a former bartender who had blown out his brains with a shotgun in the back room. It was one of those shows where actors play the parts, and then they switch over to the actual people for little interview segments.

Our largest and most festive Mardi Gras parade is almost certainly the Spanish Town parade. It's also the most rowdy and raunchy. I saw in a local magazine that they were cordoning off some of the route for "family viewing." I thought it was amusing.

Well, winter finally arrived to Baton Rouge this weekend. By winter, I mean that on Saturday, there were only a handful of hours during the middle of the day where it was warm enough to wear shorts, and even then, only because the hatred of long pants outweighs the discomfort of cold legs in my book.

This description of a very short exchange is longer than the actual post.

Overall, I get too much email. I went back to a regular week from last October and counted the messages in my various email accounts.

They say that Superbowl Sunday is the biggest day of the year for wife-beatings. There's simply no reason for that. It's easy to come to a common agreement if you just try a little bit. For example,

There's a plague going around Baton Rouge's sports bars, and no one even seems to care. The problem is waffle fries. By my count, Walk Ons, Pluckers, and Champs have all chosen waffle fries over real fries on their menu. Now, I know that the only purpose of fries is to act as the shovel, to get ketchup or cheese, or if you're really brave, chili and jalapenos into your gullet.

Last Summer, I noticed an odd new mole on my shoulder. It was skinny, and it stuck up enough that you could wiggle it back and forth. When Summer ended, I started wearing a shirt more often, and since it was at the base of my neck where I couldn't see, I forgot all about it. Heck, it might have gone away altogether.