at breakfast

C- The chicken was a metaphor!

in passing, while doing something else

C - Robert Preston is as French as Vaclav Havel, but nobody seemed to care.

J - Well, Julie Andrews wasn't French either.

C - But they explained that.

J - If I was a gay Englishman in the depression, I'd be in Paris too.

it's a small hydrometer for determining the specific gravity of urine

Suggestions for ironymaiden:
1. air-mindedness
2. air-minded
3. arrondissement
4. illuminated
5. Amerindian
6. in-residence
7. Indo-Iranian
8. ironicalness
9. urinometer
10. unmerited

from Merriam-Webster Online...shut up, Dave.