America's Next Top Model

This is Winchell's portfolio shot. If we ever become show biz parents, this is the shot we'll put in her portfolio. This picture was taken a couple of years ago when one of my reporters needed a dog model for a story she was doing on how students do homework. The idea for the photo was to take several shots of a kid getting distracted doing his homework, by TV, by sports, by video games, and in the last panel, he's reduced to telling his teacher that the dog ate it. We failed at getting Winchell to take a bite of the homework. Maybe if we'd smeared it with peanut butter we'd have had better luck. In any case, I think it was pretty good we managed to get her to sit in the chair and stay there for the time it took to take this photo.

After the photographer was done, she leaped from the chair and made a run for the door of the studio. She didn't get far; the studio's in the basement of the newspaper building. She did get some treats for being such a good model. I believe we gave her the leftover chips in the bag.

Welcome!

The first couple of postings will be very basic, since I'm doing this at work and haven't yet figured out all the buttons. Man, I hope I don't accidentally delete something important on my desktop...

This is a blog for our friends and family who are interested in following our adventures - or lack of them. Since John is in classes or in front of a computer all day and I yell at people and sit in front of a computer all day, we're not exactly world explorers. But with all this time staring at a flat screen, we might as well make it work for us.

A word on the blog title. It was originally going to be named after Winchell, whom I adopted from the local animal shelter about six years ago. She was named after Walter Winchell, the 1930s gossip columnist. The similarity ends there, since the original Winchell was not a great guy. He had fascistic tendencies and was kind of a dick to his daughter. In this he bears no relation to the dog, although she does tend to do whatever she feels like. Mostly I just thought his name suited her. She could have easily been named Murrow.

But I couldn't figure out a configuration of Winchell's name that sounded good, so I went for John's and my other mutual fondness: cheese. We both love tasting cheeses. Since neither of us drinks much, we figured becoming cheese snobs was probably cheaper, albeit kind of ironic, since neither of us can tolerate dairy without dietary aids. Although with the price of gourmet cheese at Whole Foods, that may not be much of a problem much longer - do you know how much good Uneikaas from the Netherlands costs these days? Too much to buy every week, that's for sure.

Our purpose for the blog is to find a way to document what goes on in our lives for the edification of our friends and family, many of whom call us in vain (or call John, mostly), only to get voicemail. That's because we're stressed-out people most days, and frankly, I have a hard time even hearing my phone ring, let alone getting to it in time to pick it up. Also, it's a way to get all those photos off the damn camera. Thanksgiving 2007 is still in the bowels of the Canon; we'll get it off someday.