I’ve been using the shreddy stuff out of my shredder to pack boxes with. It’s recycleable, something I’d have to throw out or compost myself, and since I have a huge backlog of old manuscript paged, a nearly-endless resource. I packed the black Chamba pot I sent to my cousin Elizabeth in shredded credit card offers, and it arrived safe and sound. So sorry all my friends and family out there — you’re going to have to contend with paper shreds. Not as bad as styrofoam peanuts, but kind of a pain, I know …
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The past few years I’ve been giving people food presents — we all have so much stuff in our lives, so why do we need more little objects? Particularly for those folks on our lists who we love, and to whom we want to give a little something, but who aren’t family or the kind of friends we buy big presents for — you know, the folks you’d buy a candle or bath products of something like that. Last year I did really swanky Christmas baskets for my family members — cookies, chocolates, some jam I made, cheese, a little…
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No matter how much French and Italian food I might cook the rest of the year, for me, Christmas is all about English Food (well, and German — I did grow up in the Midwest after all). I don’t understand people who have turkey for Christmas — people! you just had a turkey! Branch out! (And in our family, ham was for Easter, not Christmas. Every family has it’s holiday food rules and that was just one of ours.) No, Christmas in our family was always beef — either a whole filet for a crowd (boring, even when done as…
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There was a terrific little piece on Zen Habits last week, Faith in Humanity: How to Bring People Closer, and Restore Kindness. I read it right after I’d come back from paying my local utilities bill — there never seems any point to paying that bill by mail since the office is just down on the other side of town. So, once a month, I drive down, hand my check through the drive up window, chat with the lady who always puts dog cookies in with my receipt, and drive off with a little smile and with two dogs happily…
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My beloved cousin Elizabeth had a big milestone birthday last summer, and I just sent her a present a couple of weeks ago. She’s one of my favorite people on the planet, she has fabulous taste, and she’s not really into “stuff” — so it took me months to find something I thought she’d genuinely like and that I could afford. I bought her one of these fabulous black Chamba clay pots — it’s lovely, useful, handmade — all the kinds of things that make Elizabeth happy. Plus, it’s fun to get an unexpected present. But I can’t exactly do…
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The last few months I’ve gotten into a writing rhythm that has really been working for me. I’ve been doing a blog post every day during the week, and weekends have been devoted to my new book. When I decided to get serious about the blog and to write on a regular basis, it was really to bring this little blog back to life. It never occurred to me that the discipline of taking care of the blog would bleed over into my creative work and prove a boon to that, but it has. Because I’ve written something of my…
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Winter has arrived — after a lovely day yesterday — all snowflakes falling gently from a sky out of which no gale-force winds blew (a perennial winter problem here) — this morning dawned frozen and cold. Three below outside. I’m certainly glad I blocked the dog door with that very-swanky piece of styrofoam I cut to fit last winter — because even with the 2-foot square hole in my back door blocked off, it’s chilly in my house this morning. And poor Jacques, who is staying with me for the week while the MH drives the Famous Author to Arizona,…
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Bonnie over at Ethicurean picked up this correction that the WSJ ran this morning on the money that Wade Dokken has paid Alice Waters to endorse his Ameya Preserve. I don’t have much more to add to the several items I’ve already written about Alice Waters and the Ameya Preserve. Ameya’s advertising and marketing claims to be green are entirely unsupported. That Alice Waters is drinking Wade Dokken’s koolaid is disappointing, but at this point, not a surprise. In addition, business owners who are struggling and looking to improve their marketing and customer support may consider checking out here how…
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My DSL is on the fritz — something in the lines apparently, the tech support guy from my ISP (shout out to Bridgeband, they’re great and have terrific support) says it’s in the wires. We think it has something to do with the windstorms we’ve been having. Which means I’m waiting on Qwest. Which is a drag. So I’m ducking out a couple of times a day to the library or one of the coffee houses in town where there’s a wireless connection, but for the most part, I’m back in the pre-internet world. Which is sort of interesting. You…
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While Sushi Nozawa was the culinary highlight not just of my trip to LA, but perhaps of my entire gustatory existence, there was more food fun to be had during my visit to LA. On Wednesday I went over to Brentwood to have dinner with my oldest college friend and his wife and year-old baby. They were hosting a couple, also with a little munchkin, who were visiting from France and they took over the cooking duties. Now my old friend Matt grew up to be kind of a big deal studio executive, and so people bring him really really…