I've moved up in the world when it comes to my oatmeal for breakfast. I've written here before about starting most days with Quaker Oats instant oatmeal. Even a noncook like me can follow the instructions and move the little brown envelope through mixing and microwave to table. I love the stuff and even keep it in my desk drawer at the office.

But these days, I'm greeting the sunrise and my "to do" list with a bowl of oatmeal made from the slow cook steel cut oats Quaker product.

"How so," you ask, probably knowing that the slow cook method requires about 45 minutes simmering on low on the top of the stove. The 45-minute figure comes from my wife, Deb, who says that the 25-30 minutes on the instructions aren't long enough.

Well, Deb has found a way for me to have this healthy gourmet style breakfast without the wait. In the daylight hours she cooks up a huge batch of the slow cook steel cut oatmeal. Once the oatmeal is cooked she ladles a single serving size in a clump onto a waxed paper covered cookie sheet. Into the freezer goes the concoction until the clumps are frozen. Then the frozen single size servings go into a freezer bag for future consumption.

The frozen oatmeal clumps look like sea sponges made of maple sugar. They get some of that color from the brown sugar Deb stirs in once the cooking is complete. At the health food store where I occasionally eat, the steel cut oats oatmeal is $3 a bowl. I'm thinking commercial kitchen - a conveyor line - slow cooked to freezer bag profits!

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When it's bill paying time I'm apt to put our Internet bill from Fairnet in Monticello toward the bottom of the pile. That's because it and the mortgage are the only bills that come without a return envelope.

I've yet to get comfortable with paying bills online. I know it's a matter of time. And I know that these missing return envelopes are subtle ways of getting me to reconsider.

Speaking of bill paying, my Discover Card moved by due date from the 15th to the 11th. If they told me in advance, it was ala small print. Had I not noticed the change and paid on the normal date my 13.24% interest rate would have "reached back" into time on my balance.

I think it's an odd profit model to look to late fees and exorbitant interest rates to generate your profit.

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The power of the apology is made mighty clear when it is withheld. Indiana's own David Letterman sure looks a little shorter to me after his inability to apologize to Sarah Palin and daughters for a raunchy late-night joke.

Save sorry Dave, and don't do it again.

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We do the Delphi to Chicago back and forth a lot. When traffic behaves it's about a two-hour drive. The drive gets a lot shorter thanks to the Delphi and Monticello libraries where we borrow books on tape, although most are now on CD.

There is a long list of classic novels I've not read. But Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is no longer one of them. I got the 10-disk set and listened to it recently. I would have never read the book but the listening was easy.

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If you have not checked out the new Internet search engine - time's a wasting. It's called bing.com and they have some real clever commercials introducing the product.

Who knows, perhaps you will soon see Deb's Frozen Oatmeal advertised on bing.com.

"Buy it by the clump."