I had a revelation whilst reading a recipe suggestion from my friend Jeannie today. Midwestern recipes seem to always involve spraying a pan with Pam and sprinkling Durkee Fried Onions. We’ve been revamping our eating as you might guess to make things a bit more family friendly. Suggestions for dinners have been very “bake and…
Category: Old Friends
For the Love of Linda Wolfe
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Linda Wolfe and I are in the same boat. We feel lonely. You can get married, once or lots of times (23 in Linda’s case), and still feel lonely. Sure you might have a built-in partner who is around a lot, but never cures the echoes inside of each of us. I don’t feel “bad”…
Host Hugh Jackman Wins Me Over
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…And Other Highlights of Oscars 2009 The reviews of those “dastardly-long” and “always self-serving” Academy Awards shows are here, and as usual the preeminently cranky Alessandra Stanley from the New York Times managed to pass on the her “kind of fun” review. Sigh… I continue to wonder why someone with no joie de vivre is…
But No One Got Me a Snuggie
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My 39th Birthday, Condensed As most of you know by now, I LOVE birthday month. I am having a great birthday this year. Here are some of the highlights! My parents called me at 6 a.m. and sang “happy birthday” in unison. They also (I am sure this wasn’t planned) both said “Happy birthday dear…
Planning Oscar
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Well, it is that time of year again. The Nominations are out and I have, as of this moment, 23 days to get two big things done. 1. Come up with a quirky theme/invite for the annual Oscar party. 2. See about 9,000 films in an effort to, this year, FINALLY, win my own ballot…
When Friends Disappear
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Or, the Christmas Card That Ate My Friends It’s that time of year again– the time when I start fuming about Christmas cards. I love sending Christmas cards. Sure it’s time-consuming and tedious, but there is just something about putting together a good card with some fun photos and remembering your friends and family at…
American Things I Love: Stacy and Bryan
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Or, The Continuing Saga of the Toast Rack In a new series I am offering, English Things I Miss, I recently I opined about the great mystery of the toast rack. A mainstay of the British Bed and Breakfast, I found this piece of kitchenware a great and strange object. It is one of the…
Home, Here and There
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Whenever I stop myself from trying too hard and whenever I look and see what it is I am searching for, it Is almost certainly the long, wide flat spaces of home, the first. It is easy enough to reason away life in the mid-hinterlands. How can I ever get the culture or the speed…
English Things I Miss, Part 1: The Toast Rack
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Here’s a new, non-regular segment for you that perhaps will help me cope with the grieving process of no longer living in London: English Things I Miss, subtitle, Though Not Necessarily So Much That I Would Move Back to the God-Forsaken Land of Clouds and Complaining. First English Thing I Miss: The Toast Rack It…
Pumpkin Carving Party– Here!
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Colin and I are carving our pumpkins tonight on Hilltop. I bought them from the little farm around the corner from us. They didn’t grow them there (their crop got whacked by the hailstorm in August too), but got them from Hamden up the road. I am going through all the motions of my favorite…
Danny Wallace’s Cup of Tea
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Dear Danny, I just wanted to send you a note to tell you that I was thinking about you. I’ve got the kettle on and it happens that way. Whenever I go to make my second cup of tea (especially on a cloudy day), I think of your “another cup of tea and biscuits” moments…
Post Script from Elizabethtown
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There are two green metal boxes in my attic. I am not sure, but I think there were once used for gun cartridges. They are Canadian military issue. They don’t hold anything deadly anymore. Just old love letters, none of mine. It’s early, grey morning. I’ve made tea, and now it’s cooling on the counter.…
Dead to Me – Abandon Blog!
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My Lover, My Backhoe There is something AWFUL about an abandoned blog on my Google Reader. I click and click and click on “hopeful curmudgeon” and it is always February 26, 2008. Hopeless is more like it! My own version of Groundhog Day! I wonder what happens when people stop blogging? Did they: Fall in…
A Wopat Affair
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Last night, I went to see A Catered Affair at the Thomas Kerr Theatre on Broadway. This was a fluke: one of the board members where I work called and said she had spare tickets for that evening, so I was off on the train to the city a few hours later. Tom Wopat was…
Where My Thoughts Escaping
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I am running back today, to London, for a quick breath. I am looking for my feet and for my friends. For the tiny space of quiet in the corners, and the for the push of the people against my shoulders. I am ready for the dampness and ready for the attention I need to…
