Can I tell you how cold my inlaws keep their house? So cold, I'm sitting at this desk right now wearing a men's parka. With the hood up. And everything that's not under the parka is still freezing. It's so cold, I couldn't sleep last night because my neck was stiff from huddling under the covers and because the cold air hurt my nostrils. When ( Read more... )

As I've probably mentioned a couple or ten times, I have kind of a Thanksgiving fetish. Some people like Christmas better, but Thanksgiving is my holiday. Mostly it's the simplicity: all you have to do is get together with your family and eat a lot of food and then maybe watch some football, with none of the angst of giftgiving and Advent ( Read more... )

Take it from me: the surest way to lose weight is to get sick of all your clothes being either too big, too small, or just in tatters, and to go out and buy five pairs of pants that fit perfectly. It won't take more than a week before you start dropping significant poundage, enough to make all those new clothes start to sag on you. I'm serious. ( Read more... )

So many good things happened this weekend that I hardly know where to start. ( My weekend )

( Shakedown at the gas station! )

Actress Brooke Shields has a pretty impressive pedigree -- hanging from her family tree are Catherine de Medici and Lucrezia Borgia, Charlemagne and El Cid, William the Conqueror and King Harold II, vanquished by William at the Battle of Hastings.

Shields also descends from five popes, a whole mess of early New England settlers, and the royal houses ( Read more... )

A colleague and I were talking about different fighting styles that couples, families and friends have. ( What's your fighting style? )

Last night I went and bought my ticket for Saturday's Mission of Burma show at the Black Cat. Saturday will be busy: I've got an all-day field trip with my favorite teacher from the Audubon Naturalist Society (Wetland Plant Identification... bug repellent ahoy!), then I'm grilling dinner with Liz, who is putting Stella up for the day in her doggy- ( Read more... )

The Mr. came into town last night for a meeting. We took the opportunity to have our much-delayed dinner at Palena. ( Dinner )

Didn't get the dog. ( Warning: moping ahead )