Hmm. Autumn is officially here. I love the Fall — the perfect time to harvest pumpkins and play with them. Make them into spooky works of art to decorate your front porch. Bake them into rich, warm (and sometimes chilly) sides, meals and desserts. Now that I live in an area with clearly delineated seasons,…
Well, I’ve had a month of bat-free days, and yet I still check under my tires when I leave work. It’s strange how so small an incident can impact your life for a long time. I still remember the first time I tried to rescue an animal. It was an obviously sick seagull hanging out…
I had a unique experience the other day. Approaching my car, leaving from work, I saw what I thought was an ornate rock or giant seed of some sort under the rear passenger tire of my Explorer. I thought that it would probably be a bad idea to just backup over it, so I went…
Leonardo da Vinci wrote: “Every obstacle is destroyed through vigor.” I don’t believe you need to expend energy destroying every obstacle in your path. Sometimes you should be like water and flow around the obstacle. There are often more paths to your goal. If one path is obstructed, sometimes it is wiser to find another…
Why is that when all a person has tried is a pumpkin pie, this same person professes to dislike pumpkins? Have they considered that it might be something else about the pie they don’t like? Or possibly that the combination of pumpkin with cinnamon is what they object to? Maybe, if they gave pumpkins a…
I saw my first live firefly last night. It was really cool. I had always imagined that the light they blinked would be greenish yellow, like that glow-in-the-dark paint. But it is not — it is bright fire orange yellow. For the short while that they were blinking their lights, it was like Christmas outside….
When it comes to recipes, I cannot leave well enough alone. No matter how fervently and genuinely I vow to follow a recipe, no dish leaves my kitchen prepared as instructed. This, I believe, is why my quest for the perfect flan was doomed to repeated failure at the start. Once upon a time, I…
I listen to a lot of radio, and therefore, a lot of radio commercials. My current favorite is for Cingular. A young man seeks the secret of happiness from a “master on the mountain.” It turns out that the secret to happiness is switching to the Cingular Nation plan and never standing on the left…
In the song “She Bangs” — made famous by William Hung (poor Ricky Martin) — there is a couple of lines that go: She moves like a moth But she stings like a bee I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to be described as moving like a moth. All the moths I’ve…
There is a song that includes the following lyrics: In the midst of the sailing ships We sink our lips Into the ones we love Who have to say good-bye My question is, how does one “sink” one’s lips into someone? Unless, perhaps, you are a geriatric vampire who forgot to wear your dentures.