21.   A native of Wheeling, W.Va., Corbett spent several lean years in Los Angeles working as a licensed hairdresser.

22.   A lean year for quality free-agent cornerbacks was made leaner after the first week of signings.

23.   After a few lean years, the Browns proved successful, enjoying a boom as an increasing number of companies sought to replace their maintenance crews with outside contractors.

24.   After all the lean years in his roundabout career path, McGrath is still pinching himself a bit, but happily these days.

25.   After five lean years, the bounty is sweet.

26.   After some lean years, he becomes one of the richest and most powerful men on the planet, and his company dominates its field.

27.   Airline unions have long complained that they have pitched in to help in the lean years and have not been invited to the feast in fat years.

28.   All in all, it looks like another lean year in the Big East.

29.   But after some lean years, his company has surged to profitability, and that has Coppa feeling more secure.

30.   But it sleeps with traditional Russian cuisine, the comfort food that saw it through Brezhnev and Gorbachev and, now, the lean years of Boris Yeltsin.