“Yellow” Wiggle Greg set to leave group

Greg Page, the "yellow Wiggle," announced his plans to leave the group today. He has recently been diagnosed with a chronic condition called orthostatic intolerance, and wants to spend time concentrating on his health and his family. "It means that I’ll no longer be able to sing and dance as I want to,
and as a result I’ve decided to stop performing with The Wiggles…I’ll miss being a part of The Wiggles very much, but this is the right
decision because it will allow me to focus on managing my health."

God knows I’ve made fun of the Wiggles over the years, but my Grace absolutely loves them, and their show makes her happy.

We’ll miss you and your yellow shirt, Greg. Good luck, mate.

Welcome to my nightmare

What’s going on in this photo, you ask? Oh, just a special type of hell I like to call "Taking the Christmas Photo."

Introducing The Scranton Branch

I was going to wait until Thursday to do this, but my patience is gone.

Introducing my latest project, The Scranton Branch! If you’re one of my nine regular readers, you know that I’m a born-and-raised Scranton Boy. You may also know that I’m a huge fan of NBC’s The Office. Today, I’m combining the two into one big, happy fan site, The Scranton Branch. You’ll find news, reviews, commentary, a fan forum, calendar of Office-related events and more, all from a "Scrantonian’s perspective." I hope you like it, as I sure enjoyed putting it all together.

I’ve got to give a special tip of the hat to Brian at Life in the Office. He let me spout on about Scranton on his blog for about a year now, and it sure was fun. I wish him continued success and am very grateful for the time (and bandwidth) he shared with me.

So, on to The Scranton Branch! Let’s talk about The Office, Scranton and exactly where in Wilkes-Barre Dwight’s farm might be.

MacGourmet and a Daddy Daze giveaway

Recently, I asked you all to please share with me any recipes you have that your kids will actually eat. My Grace eats just enough to keep her body functioning. Of course, I never put more than $10 worth of gas (1/4 tank) into my car at a time, so I guess I know where she gets it from. I got some great suggestions, and I intend to make a series of posts here at Daddy Daze based on each recipe. Basically, I’ll cook one and serve it up, then rate it on ease of preparation as well as eat-ability (which is a brand new word that I just made up).

Until then, I’ve got to keep them organized. Who sent in each recipe, what ingredients I’ll need to buy, what Grace’s reaction was, overall rating and so on. How will I do it? With MacGourmet.

When I first wrote about MacGourmet at The Unofficial Apple Weblog last year, I had been using a home-brewed Filemaker Pro recipe database. That changed almost immediately. This application is very nice to use. It does what you’d expect, in that you can store, categorize, search and quickly reference any recipe you enter. But it does so much you would’t expect as well. You can create "relationships" between dishes or between recipes and wine. It’s smart enough to generate and print out shopping lists for you based on what you’d like to cook. You can even publish your favorite recipes to the web for sharing with your friends and family!

Choose the "chef view" of any recipe and it’s displayed in huge text that you can easily read from anywhere in your kitchen, or opt to print onto note cards, full size paper, etc. with ease. It’s really great, I’m telling you.

Now for the good part. I have a free copy to give away! Not only that, but this giveaway also includes a free upgrade to version 2.0, which will include a myriad of wonderful improvements. Cool!

All you’ve got to do is leave a comment in this post, and on Dec. 1 I’ll pop all entries into a database and have a script select one at random. Note that MacGourmet requires Mac OS X v10.3 or later, and is a $24.95 value. Good luck!

Reviewing “The Office”

If you’re a fan, then you’ve noticed that the last two episodes of "The Office" were stellar. If you’re a Scrantonian (like me), you probably know that last week’s episode especially was chock-full of fantastic and hysterically funny accurate references to life in The Electric City.

I offer my perspective as the "Scranton Insider" over at Life in the Office. Check it out.

How to keep a guinea pig alive for 144 hours

Recently, we played host to Boomer, my daughter’s preschool mascot. I learned a few things about guinea pigs last week, including their ability to both cause AND dispel nightmares. You can read more here.

Sugar cookie

Christmas cookies already? You betcha.

Breakfast

Blogging Baby (BB) is asking the question: What do your kids eat for breakfast? According to this article, a decent starter should consist of both protien and fiber. My kids pretty much eat oatmeal and some fruit for breakfast, occasionally followed by yogurt (depending on how hungry they are). I always have my McCann’s Oats and a banana, so I guess I give them what I eat. I hated oatmeal when I was younger, but it definitely tastes better than it used to (though my McCann’s isn’t going to win any prizes for taste).

Grace drinks orange juice and William has whole milk (OJ gives him a wicked diaper rash). Breakfast is probably the time that they both eat the most.

The article at BB notes that the AM menu differs greatly from culture to culture. So, I’ll ask you: What do your kids eat for breakfast, and is your answer dictated in anyway buy your culture or upbringing?

Dora, you cheeky monkey!!!

D-D-D-D-D Dora! D-D-D-D-D Dora! Dora!

Let’s Go!

Jump in!

Vamonos!

You can lead the way!

Hey, hey!

Just a quick note. I will not be buying Grace anything that looks like that and requires batteries for Christmas. I mean…seriously.

[found at Blogging Baby]

Attn: Foodies

Here’s another post that has nothing to do with fatherhood. I know, I know, I have another blog for that type of thing, but no one reads it. Anyway, here we go.

My friend Scott lives in Philly and has produced (along with his rather cute co-host Marisa) a quite good video podcast about food and the city of brotherly love. In this inaugural edition, they make their own sushi. Check it out, it’s pretty cool.

Of course, all this has made me feel guilty for not having made a new podcast of my own in months. Oh, well.