Lessons, lately.

We visited the Good Housekeeping Research Institute (Think: Seal of approval on your best blender) and learned that there's a whole lot of testing and people with PhDs in chemistry that go on behind your dry, flaky back. Does your moisturizer claim to keep you soft for 24 hours? Well it damn well better or it ain't getting a sticker.

And then David Granger (Esquire editor) showed up for lunch at Good Housekeeping (the mags are in the Hearst building together). I imagined Esquire putting its large, awesome, feet up on the table and sipping a neat gin while GH wiped the table of any crumbs and smudges. I liked the contrast of editors.

One thing I'm learning this summer: It doesn't matter what magazine--a good editor shares similar skills with other good editors.

Also, I had a chance to see Michael Hastings (his Rolling Stone article catalyzed the firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal) speak in a small (think: 12 people) lunch setting. He says journalism isn't dying. He said it. I believe it. I needed to hear that. Thank you. My favorite quote of his: "I didn't destroy his career. President Obama fired him."

Dosage.

I'm in the daily dose (daily dinosaur), but so is an embroidering of I can kill you with my brain.

Cool.

Also, check out my friend Allie's balloon zombie.

Rawr.

For free in Bryant Park (just give him a smile), a man twisted, squished, and tugged balloons into the shape of my choice: bronto-saurus-Rex.


But my dino smiled back. Not intimidating, dino. So I taught him a lesson in fierce face.

When work gives you beakers...

Make nerd vases.

Oh the streets tell stories.

Midtown. If object soup? If object coup?

13th Street, almost home. Who's happy, Ella or Mama?

In a church pew.

Greenwich. Happy.

I forget.

Empty-the-fridge pasta

You need:

Every vegetable you've got. Sliced.
Garlic. So much. Big chunks. You got no one to kiss. And if you do, they'll understand.
Cheese. Asiago is good.
Leftover tomato sauce.
Olive oil.
Salt.
Peppa. I like a lot.
Pasta.

Just try to tell me you don't want to eat this.

Click for the story of Allie, CJ, a stove, and delicious things.

Stuffed squirrel < Marry me?

Ok. Yes. I have been watching The Bachelorette with my roomies. But at least I cheered for the hunting guy! Click.

spot of tea?

There's a lot to love about London, but the thing I miss most (besides Josie, Simon, and Lois of Mute magazine) is this, refilled 4-6 times a day.

2 things.

1. Can I have a room of my house that looks like this? Or do I have to be four again? Design*Sponge is too good.

2. The winners of the oddball archive photo contest that I helped put together. Who could that honorable mention golfstevelotz be? It was fun to mail out knives to the winners. Do you know if it's illegal to mail a machete? I hope not.

No words. A how-to.

Could I be a cowboy?

Manhattan is a wild frontier. But it isn't the frontier. I don't know if the wild, endless wide-open-space ever really existed in the way we fantasize, but I do know that Western stories and movies are my favorite excuse to be ridiculous, outdoorsy, and cowboy-romantic. I'm reading a collection of western stories and I can't believe how absorbed I've become:

"That's a lot of horse," a man in a white apron said. "It takes a man to ride a stallion."

"I ride him," I said, and walked past them into the bar. The man in the white apron followed me. "I drink tequila," I said.

So then I started thinking. Could I be a cowboy?

I like the wide open plains (That's Haiti and one tough cowgirl, Lizzie.)

I'll eat camp food and get dirty (as long as Herman B Wells is along for the ride).

I enjoy a ride (especially when you get a great local story from a personal Haitian historian).

I can wear a hat.

Nah, I think I'll leave it up to the (dirty, hot, swanky) experts.

Zoo story came out today

Congratulations to Tom French on the release of his latest book, Zoo Story!

Here is the original series of articles from the St. Pete Times.

All of your students are proud of you ... and we are so happy we get a Springsteen-loving, name-brand-water-drinking, creative, energized teacher like you who believes in us!

Fourth of July in Ithaca

sailing on the finger lakes (I forget which finger).


Boating shoes used for boating!

Pickled squash

Two summers ago, I lived in the Smoky mountains and learned how to can vegetables from my garden. My grandma and I made bread and butter pickles, pickled beets, squash, zucchini, okra, dilly beans, and canned blackberries. That carried the yum of summer through winter.

This weekend, I canned squash and onions picked straight from a farm in Maryland. I got the chance to write about it and take a few photos. Click pickles!

Good morning.

Remember, in coffee, "purist" is often just another word for "fascist."

Pardon Jack Johnson

Rarely do I get excited about t-shirts, but this idea is too awesome not to notice.

This 4th of July marks the 100th anniversary of boxer Jack Johnson's victory in the “Fight of the Century,” against Jim Jeffries.

Johnson was the first African-American boxing champion. He was also a man of the ladies. One reporter asked him how he kept up such a constant stream of women, and he replied that he would simply "Eat jellied eels and think distant thoughts."