Office Office.

The mutual friend who wanted to introduce us told me her friend was a philosophy grad student and loved jazz, which - I knew nothing about either and had no interest in either, but agreed to be introduced because I always figured you never know. And then when he came walking up the sidewalk the night we met, I realized immediately that 1. she had forgotten to tell me he was hot 2. she had forgotten to tell me he had long hair (which was +1 million points with me). She had also forgotten to tell me he was a musician, brilliant, hilarious, loved cats, and had the same favorite band. I probably would have married him sight unseen had she described him accurately!

Neatorama, I know where Restoration Hardware is if I suddenly decide I need anything ersatz old, massively overpriced, and greige. You don't have to keep telling me.

100%. But I'd better, I was a cheesemonger for five years!

That was wonderful. It had the delightful touch of the bizarre of classic Muppets.

My family has a long-running joke of saying any wrapped gift by which the contents are obvious by its shape is a tennis racket. This started when I was collecting cassettes as a kid in the 80s. "Oh, that's a tennis racket." I have never actually received a tennis racket, though!

These people suck. Not funny.

Cake Wrecks has long since jumped the shark. And I'm entirely convinced that its fans order stunt cakes just to keep the tiresome joke going.

Squash and stuffing and yams are all nice things to have on Thanksgiving. There is really no need to mash them together. I can't imagine it improves any of them in the process. Because we vegetarians couldn't just rise above holiday stupidity...no, no, we have to come up with stuff like this that resembles the omnivores' bad ideas in order to feel like we have something good enough to be an entree. It's tragic, like the least popular kid in the class attempting to ape the style of the most popular. Not that I've ever been in that position. Anyway, c'mon folks, there is enough food available on Thanksgiving that you will get enough to eat. If you *have* to have a vegetarian entree, just make a nice stuffed eggplant or a chickpea curry that everyone can enjoy and be done with it.

I really could have used a disturbing images warning on that second one.

I worked in the stone fruit business in California for a few years. The trouble with fruit salad trees is that the different varieties all have different levels of vigor. Eventually one or two of the varieties out-compete the others, which wither away and stop producing. The better thing to do if you're trying to get the most production out of a small space is multi-planting and rigorous pruning.

I'm 37 and I've been chronically ill for eight years now. To appropriate a bumper sticker, when I look in the mirror there's a healthy person inside me wondering what the hell happened.

I see that now you can buy friends so you can buy friends.

And it's a 'shop, anyway.