Yes, it is.

Tonight, 'grand' is defined by homemade vegetable tempura. Yes indeed, there is nothing like taking a perfectly good whole food - like a carrot, broccoli or mushroom - and rendering it absolutely nutritionally useless by dipping the poor thing into a nice slightly thick batter and dropping it into a pan full of searing hot oil - leaving it in just long enough to soak up as much of the stuff as possible while it turns a nice golden brown.

See - isn't life grand????

There were a few not-so-grand moments in the day, but not many. I found out today that when I last saw my favorite aunt (on Christmas Day), she was waiting to find out how serious the cancer they found during surgery was was and how much treatment she was going to have. My mother decided not to tell me this fact until today because she didn't know how to tell me and she felt that she couldn't talk about it. It did make me mad - I mean, when was she going to tell me? Twenty minutes before the funeral?? Sheesh. Turns out, my aunt had a break - the cancer was contained in a smooth, round tumor and the doctor is sure that he got every last bit of it. She won't even need to take the treatments. They will monitor the situation every three months for a while but they are confident that she is cancer free.

Another reason life is grand - Bruce Campbell. I found a copy of Evil Dead for ten bucks at the truck stop in Franklin, Ky. I want to have an Evil Dead marathon and watch all three movies in a row but I settled for only having the first one and watching it at 3 a.m. I don't know which of the demons is my favorite - the one possessing the artist (what was her name?) or the one possessing Linda. What I do know is that I can honestly sit here and tell you that if someone I loved dearly was sitting in a doorway laughing demonically and wanting to kill me - I would not just stand there and say, "Shut up Linda!!"