The other day, a woman I know came up to me and said, “Do you think your sister could give me a quote for re-doing my living room?”  I stared at her for a minute, uncomprehending.  All of my siblings are tax accountants or some variation thereof.  “Um.  What?” “Isn’t she an interior designer?” “No. ” …

My friend Marilyn over at Simmer Till Done is getting ready for her daughter’s Bat Mitvah and has been in a fever of baking and crafting for the past couple of weeks.  I ran into her at the coffee shop the other morning, where she taught me the secret of putting lists on pink paper so you can find…

I usually skate over typos in books (Columbia for Colombia, for example) although as I’ve mentioned before sometimes these things pull me out of a story.  But this week, I ran across a typo made repeatedly in a book that just made me laugh (not the response the writer was hoping for, I am sure.):  “He…

The other day I was at the coffee shop when the train delivering newsprint to the newspaper plant next door rolled in.  It let out a long low whistle that sounded something like a foghorn.  The barista remarked, “That always reminds me of the call to arm in Lord of the Rings.”   Which prompted…