Do the Yak

A confluence of old friends in new situations... last weekend we went to a resort in the Berkshires where there was a reunion of some of Ben's old friends (more on that below). In the past two weeks, I've gotten pinged via LinkedIn by several old friends from grad school and my days as a reporter/editor for a twice-weekly paper in Connecticut (still the most fun and stimulating job I've ever had). One of them was still in the newspaper industry until quite recently, when he quit for reasons I'm unclear on, but general disgust with the job and industry had to have played a part. So I was thinking of trying to engineer a reunion of some of these old friends and was about to call C., whose house has always been a natural gathering point, when she called me first -- not to plan a reunion per se, but to tell me that the wife of another of these old friends (not one of the people who got in touch with me) had just died of cancer. He too is planning to quit his long-time job ...

Note: Results not typical. Don't try this at home. Usually my job is slow-paced and stress-free, which is fine except when it crosses over into full boredom mode, but yesterday was not one of those days. 6:30 -- Wake up, take shower. Return to bedroom to find a listless Becky sporting a fever of 101.6. Quickly negotiate with ben for me to go to work for crucial early meeting, then return home by 12:25 so he can go to work to attend HIS crucial 1:00 meeting. 7:45 -- See Sarah off on the school bus, then zip to work in a brisk 45 minutes. 8:45 -- Attend crucial meeting, return to desk and fire off memo about throwing together a quick insert into an already-printed booklet that's about to be mailed but has just become obsolete in one fairly important detail. 9:30 -- Attend another important meeting on a totally different but important topic. 10:00 -- Huddle with uber-boss at her computer, making last-minute changes to a press release, then frantically gather some stats for a compl...

I guess this blogging thing has started to affect my brain, because I’ve jumped another blogger bandwagon. What the hell, like I tell myself about the rest of this drivel, at least my kids will have something to know me by, assuming the North Koreans don’t nuke the Internet. My herbs and spices are in alphabetical order. I cut the ends off bay leaves so they’ll fit in my jars. I love starch, dairy foods and melted cheese (not raw). Fettuccine alfredo is almost ideal. My favorite food in the universe is Pizzeria Uno deep-dish cheese and tomato pizza. I can’t stand stupid people who don’t care that they’re stupid. I converted to Judaism in 1998 even though I’m an atheist (my rabbi said it was OK). I love Macs and deplore Windows. I especially enjoy desktop publishing. I am a huge Boston Red Sox fan. I’ve watched the Oscars every year since about 1978. One year I had to watch it in my father’s car on a little TV that ran off the cigarette lighter because our power was out. When I was 10,...

I may not be the handiest person when it comes to major home improvement projects, but I like to think of myself as practical in terms of minor problem-solving, seeing what needs to be done and then figuring out some (usually half-assed) way to do it. But even Ben was amazed at my latest solution. See, here's the problem: I finally found a granola bar that I like, but it has one downside: it's very crunchy and creates a cloud of crumbs whenever I eat one. Also I like a chewy texture better anyway from a mouth-feel standpoint. Whattodo? I was in Linen, Bath and Beyond (my favorite kind of store because it's all about storing and organizing and Putting Things Into Other Things) and I saw something I'd never come across before: a small oval-shaped piece of terracotta that's intended to soften up brown sugar that had dried out and turned into a rock. You soak this thingy in water for a while, then put it in an airtight container with the sugar. The container achieves hy...