Cute N' Clever + Failed Chicken

Two stories involving friends of my wife. Names omitted to spare the guilty. :)

Cute n' Clever

One of our many pregnant friends was talking to my wife and said that she didn't want to name her kiddo anything "ordinary". Mike, Jim, Ted, John... oh, no. "Ordinary" names weren't good enough for her little angel. She wanted to come up with something "cute and clever".

Then she told my wife her big idea. She wants to use Dad-In-Law's name, "Tim", along with her dad's name, "Allen".

Yup. "Tim Allen [lastname]".

I may not be the best judge of "cute", but I was pretty underwhelmed. They could have at least reversed the names so as not to invoke elderly celebrity. They could have used "Tyler Steven" and hoped for big lips, or "Chase Chevy" and packed their bags for a vacation. Since neither of them cook, they could even have gone with "Ray Rachael" with an eye to the future.

Speaking of cooking...

Failed Chicken

One of my wife's buddies is a notoriously bad cook. Some folks who are bad at cooking simply refuse to do it. But this dear lady keeps trying, despite all the blackened food (and walls), squawky smoke detectors and grievous injuries. She's also pretty sensitive about it, so those who know her make a point of only speaking about her rare successes.

She had several friends over, and tried to cook a chicken meal for them that she'd done well with before. Unfortunately, the glaze / dressing concoction didn't work out. Once the flames were taken care of, what remained was scorched to the bottom of the pan so fiercely that her husband had to scrape it off with a chisel.

There were tears. Her friends consoled her and eventually calmed her down. They all sat down to eat their 100% unadorned chicken. And then somebody said, ...

"It's OK. At least the salad is really good. Who brought the salad?"

There were more tears. :)