Olivelle – and Mental Taste Testing.
There is a magical store in Bozeman, Montana called Olivelle. Olivelle was started 20 years ago by a mom and daughter who started with a love of high quality olive oil and vinegar and kept expanding from there. They now offer over 150 of their own products and every time I go there, I leave […]
The Cows Really Do Come Home.
Recently, thanks to my sister Coleen, I have completely fallen in love with a children’s book entitled I’ll Love You Till the Cows Come Home and the follow up, I’ll Love You Till the Crocodiles Smile. They are arguably two of the cutest and most clever children’s books I’ve ever read. And yes, I know […]
Todd’s Nine Tips.
A few months ago, my brilliant cousin Todd sat in on a call at my request to offer some insight to a struggling friend who was starting out in a similar line of work to his. He had so many good tips for them and I quickly jotted them all down. I revisited his suggestions […]
Purple and Yellow.
Several months ago on a zoom call, my friend Susie pointed out that purple and yellow flowers often grow next to each other. I am not even a little bit of a gardener, and I had no idea. But once I knew, I started to notice it everywhere. And I got curious. Apparently, in nature, […]
Gluten, Gas, and Growth.
There are at least a dozen reasons why I don’t make bread. The first is that it’s hard. I recently had a friend (she knows who she is) tell me that she spent over a year learning how to make sourdough bread that she was happy about. Over a YEAR. I do have one dinner […]
The Goldilocks Zone and the Trouble with “Just Right”
We’re officially in that in-between season where the thermostat keeps switching between heat and A/C. Our house lives between a small Fahrenheit temperature window of 65–70 degrees. Amazingly, because of how we can set things on our thermostat, if the house gets below 65, the heat pops on. And the A/C does the same as […]
Nicknames – and the shape of connection.
The family that lived across the street from us included six little blonde girls, several of whom liked to come play at our house. My dad quickly realized he would not be keeping all their real names straight so he took to calling them all Fred – Big Fred, Medium Fred, Little Fred, Littler Fred, […]
Trader Joe’s tote bags – and the shape of things.
Trader Joe’s has turned a cheap grocery tote bag into a mini cultural event. Do you know this? I had no idea until last year at about this time when my friend Marisa started talking about what colors she was missing. What? Trader Joe’s has sold reusable bags for years. Canvas totes, insulated bags, and […]
A different way of looking.
“Early on the morning of 30 January 1990, George Cohon, president of McDonald’sCanada, left his hotel room and drove to Pushkin Square in Moscow. Nervous about the international press that would be covering the opening of the first McDonald’s in this nation and anxious to make the opening perfect, he arrived to see the streets […]
A matter of timing.
When I worked as a high school teacher and then a counselor, I sometimes helped student athletes fill out their NCAA eligibility profiles. One section always stood out to me: Have you ever been paid in any way to play your sport? Typical NCAA amateurism questions included things like: They were not kidding around. The […]
