spaghetti the beautiful and talented alisa does most of the cooking. it's one of her talents. i make pizza or stromboli or sausages or pasta once in a while. but i don't cook much. why not? am i some sort of sexist? heh. maybe. or maybe i just kinda suck at cooking. for example, last night alisa was busy playing homework nazi. and i got hungry. so i started making dinner. spaghetti. everything's ready, i say. except... crap. i burned it. yeah okay i know that sounds like a joke. and you're probably sitting there grinning our giggling or both. how on earth dos one burn spaghetti? obviously, one can let all the water boil away. but i didn't do that. i used a "too small" pot with "too little" water. i don't think too clearly when i'm hungry. usually i break the spaghetti in half and drop it in the "too small" pot with "too little" water. and everything works just fine. this time i decided to make like a pro. like i said, i was hungry and not thinking clearly. so i stood the full length pasta on end in a nice column in the middle of the "too small" pot with "too little" water. gave it a quarter twist and let go. voila! the spaghetti was spread out perfectly in a really pretty 3d geometric pattern. smiling, pleased with myself, i went on to the next thing to do. sniff sniff. what's that burning smell? uh oh. one of the spaghetti ends was black and smoking. weird. oh. it's the heat from the gas flame coming up around the "too small" pot with "too little" water. oddly, it only set one of the sticks on fire. now remember, i was hungry. and not thinking too clearly. or fast. so i started to smoosh the spaghetti sticks down into the pot. they were almost flexible enough. i noticed all of them were discoloring. i removed the burned one. but figured the rest would be a-okay. and for the last time i re-iterate. I WAS HUNGRY AND NOT THINKING CLEARLY, OKAY? so anywho, when it was "done" i drained it and threw it away before anyone noticed. i wasn't hungry enough to eat that. sorry dinner's not ready, i called. why not? i burned it. you burned the spaghetti? yep. the family, bless them, was polite enough to not ask any more questions at that time. though i did eventually have to promise to write this blog. anywho, take two. the rest of the family was willing to wait another 15 minutes for the not-burned spaghetti. cooked in a not-"too small" pot with not-"too little" water.  ¶ 8:00 AM