Hey, good lookin'...

My beautiful friend girl-Lauren is such a good cook, and so modest, that she can present an absolutely mouth-watering pan of bar cookies and then actually apologize that she forgot to put the sweetened condensed milk on until the very end and that now they're "not pretty." I made the same mistake Friday night, despite following her recipe (which clearly states the order), and am just glad I got the sweetened condensed milk in the pan (mostly).

Unlike a small minority of my friends who actually think I'm a fairly in-control cook, Lauren and Jon, being my downstairs neighbors, would show up on time for meal invitations, and would thus often catch me in the throes of one disaster or another. Because they are such good friends, however, they would stay, eat, compliment me on the food anyway, and still be up for future invitations.

These days, my downstairs neighbors aren't nearly as pleasant. This evening I returned home to find, predictably, my car blocked in, and, less predictably, spilled beer covering our shared patio, a plastic cup in my bike's bottle-holder, and a Budweiser pitcher hanging off its back rack.

Lauren would leave me cookies, but never nasty beer paraphernalia! I miss my Lincoln neighbors. (L & J are now in California: one more reason to hope I get into Stanford!)