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Well, this has been a weird Holiday Season for me so far. My brother got in to a car wreck so I went to Cincinnati for a few days to help out, etc. Upon arriving home yesterday,  I was perusing my local papers to see what if anything had happened while my back was turned, and came upon this very festive holiday greeting from the local septic tank pumper. My heart was instantly warmed because after all… how cold hearted would you have to be to not find yourself moved, at this time of year, by the emotional story of the little septic boy . Read more

My first two nominees: Read more

Bob Dylan has a new Christmas album out. Here is a link. Click on this:(  I’ll Be Home for Christmas) and let’s listen to him sing “I’ll be Home for Christmas” together as I tell you the heartwarming story of what Bob’s version of the song means to me. Read more

Perhaps you have also been fretting over the health care reform bill in its many and mysterious myriad mutations. I started out excited, especially about the public option and the idea of presenting a counter-punch  to those miserable insurance company behemoths,  their continually rising rates and their hideous unknowable opt-outs for pre-existing conditions etc. Then the public option started to blink on and off like a bunch of quantum dots and  the rest of the bill became more or less incomprehensible. So I decided to stop following the ongoing debate too closely.It was becoming too upsetting. Read more

The place was never an institution of higher learning or anything but lately they started posting signs indicating they are selling additional services. Tonight I bothered to read the signs more closely. I don’t know what Hydrolipo Sculpting, Carboxy Therapy or Lymph Drainage are… But Mesotherapy for FACT REDUCTION? Sorry. I don’t want to seem judgmental.But judging from the looks of things around there, I doubt that its a good idea. Read more

Its the happ-happ-happiest time of the year for me. This is the time of the year where  all my union memberships finally pay off each time Fed Ex shows up unannounced in my driveway  to bestow upon me unexpected ‘for your consideration’ movie screeners. And generally the movies are all the ones I already put on my netflix queue;  the weird or smart indie films that were well reviewed and had light attendance. Yes, each screener comes complete with  an accompanying threatening message which sometimes go so far as to ask you to destroy the screener after you have partook. These warnings seem to get increasingly dire every year. I will not be surprised to get one this year that asks me to kill myself after I am done enjoying the film. But know what? It will be a small sacrifice to make considering how much I love getting these darn things delivered unasked for, for free. And last year this approach paid off for Slumdog Millionaire in spades. I don’t know how many people saw it before the free screeners went out. I know I didn’t. But I was instantly riveted by my free screener . In fact you can probably use that as a standard of comparison as to whether or not you agree with my taste/and/or recommendations. Some people had complaints with that movie. I watched it twice in a row and loved it. Read more

This is a page on which I hope you, the person who knows an annoying narcissist, will contribute a little something. I am seeking a collection of great memorable quotes by the narcissist in your life. I want the quote that makes your head spin and your mouth hang open with its egomaniacal cluelessness; The quote that you fish out to tell your uncomprehending friends at dinner parties in order to better describe the problem you have had with this person. Read more

I just got home from a week in Ohio and Indiana though it will take me a few more days before the driving, flying and attending family functions actually goes in to remission.  But as I sit here going through my e mails, trying to regain the focus required to resume and also finish writing my book , I can not help but be pre-occupied by the following: Read more

I’ve always wondered why enterprising American businessmen and women have permitted the decorations to slag off entirely between Halloween and Christmas when there are a clear cut number of weeks when people could be inspired to buy a whole other set of lights, ornaments and figurines for Thanksgiving. Especially now that we are in a recession and new environmentally harmless industries are needed. Meanwhile, over the years the Halloween train has been getting longer and longer.  The level of art direction ,the sophistication of the Halloween lights, (in a tony purple and orange) and the addition of an endless pantheon of new and much more frighteningly real looking scary figures and weird substances to hang in the yard  has been clearly increasing. Some catalogs I browse even sell Halloween ornaments and trees. Now that’s the American ingenuity I grew up with! Read more

At The Creation Museum in Kentucky, a place where a little information goes a long way because, well, that’s what they make available and also you know… its God’s will. And because that’s the premise of the museum– to offer the creationist view of the world. On the plus side, it was art directed by someone from Universal studios so its got some very nice animatronics. Read more

I am going to Ohio and  Indiana this week to visit my relatives and those of  the boyfriend with whom I cohabit. I might write something during the week. Or I might not. Meanwhile I thought I would respond to this odd question I got earlier today and also offer a beet salad recipe. Read more

So…I have been purposefully staying off Twitter and the rest of the social networks because I felt like they would be a distraction from the stuff I want to get done.  Plus I am kind of a competitive person. If I was on Twitter, I said  to myself, I said I said,  I would start to think I had better start writing more one liners for Twitter. I would be thinking, all day long, “Oh God, I haven’t written anything new on Twitter in four hours.” And “Look! Laura’s got a new Twit. I’d better think of something.” and “Oh shit. They’ve ALL got new twits. And I’m still sitting here not writing!” And  I’d start fretting about it . And that is nerve wracking and time consuming. And I am trying to finish a book. And in order to finish a book, I need hundreds of hours of time wasted on nothing. Because writing a book is very hard.At least to me it is. I waste a lot of time pulling out my hair and conducting pointless google searches before I get down to business. Read more

I was trying to figure out what to write here. I always think I should be weighing in on topics of importance. Like how much I am for the public option, or how much I hate the Sarah Palin/Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh edge of the Republican party. Etc. Etc. Instead, here is what I spent a lot of the morning fretting about: Mariah Carey and her transformation from theoretically gorgeous and glamorous to theoretically “hideous” and “dowdy” in her new role in the theoretically fabulous new movie “Precious.” Of course, I haven’t seen the movie yet so I can’t speak to its quality. The clips on-line certainly look compelling. But in a big feature article in today’s L.A. Times Mariah tells us that, to create the character of “a dowdy welfare caseworker”,the “drab but deeply empathetic soul” named Ms. Weiss she had to “lose all vanity.” Read more

One nice thing about getting older is that you find out that some of your friends have become very successful. And it helps you get over being bitter and vengeful to learn that they  have done some nice things with their money. The Sam Simon Foundation is an example of that. Sam is one of the creators of some obscure cartoon show called The Simpsons. Apparently its done pretty well for itself over the years and consequently so has Sam. He is the only person I will ever know who owns a RODIN!! But just as impressive, he started a big dog rescue complete with free spay and neuter trucks. They get dogs out of the pound and train them to work with the deaf. Difficult to believe when you have dogs like mine who act challenged by concepts like “Stay”. But apparently it is possible for dogs to alert people when the phone rings etc. Read more

Okay, its not exactly the same as being on ‘Dancing with the Stars’, but its a kind of an achievement. If you define ‘achievement’ as something that  can also be accomplished by  even malingerers and people in prison. Read more

Let’s say you’re a person who doesn’t buy the magazines at the grocery check out because you are the one in a million who doesn’t care who Jennifer Aniston is dating. You know you should care but you just can’t help it. You can’t find it in your heart to care. Plus their damn diets don’t work. And the “Fifty New Ways to turn HIM on” always turn out to be about taking a bubble bath surrounded by aromatherapy candles. How much more  about Lindsay do you really need to know?. She’s barely out of her teens. You have her whole life memorized. Read more

First, I want to thank all the people who wrote to me. That was really fun. A little less fun, but exciting in its own way, was the appearance this past week of reporters in my driveway. I gave the woman from the N.Y. Post a lovely sugar free popsicle and the reception was so good that I tried to do the same for the guy from Manchester, England . Sadly, turned out I had some freezer problems in the interim. The one I offered him had melted and refrozen all over the stick, which I was fine with offering him anyway until his facial expression and the accompanying one of the man I live with  made me re-think the gesture. So he got a diet coke. Read more

It is this: As you can imagine this is a very emotional moment for me because Dave promised me many times that I was the only woman he would ever cheat on. Read more

I am on a blog called Coffee with a Canine. It is here: Read more