A vibrant, humming corporate office is off to another productive and early start. The coffee’s long since been brewed by a caring administrative assistant, and calls and e-mails are flying back and forth. Everyone’s looking especially crisp today – there’s an important lunch meeting with a client who we really need on board with the [...]

I love Craigslist. I’ve bought and sold, obtained jobs (including this job) and tried to get rid of my cat. If you knew her, you’d want to get rid of her too. “Gray cat. Excellent mouser. Needs a country home.” Translation: my cat keeps bringing snakes into my house and doesn’t use the litterbox. Craigslist [...]

Vogue, Vanity Fair, Allure, Glamour, InStyle….you name it, I read it. I’m fascinated by fashion, the models, the celebrities, the advertisements for things I can’t afford. But my addiction was compounded years ago when I discovered tabloids (People Magazine and US Weekly are my preference, but I’ll stoop to OK! or Life&Style if I really [...]

Beautiful, tragic and powerful, Ida Mae Martinez, 78, died January 19, 2010, in Baltimore, Md. She was born Ida Mae St. Laurent in New London, Conn., in 1931. Her mother was a prostitute and she never knew her father, so she resided with guardians (and became Ida Mae Selenkow) until her teenage years, running away [...]

I was working on something else this morning, but Bean, my 5 year-old, made me scrap it. In the general rush of me getting out of the house this morning, Bean asked if she had school today. “No, honey,” replied her dad. “Today is Martin Luther King Day.” She then launched into her understanding of the [...]

It wasn’t an unhealthy obsession – just a strange one.  I had never watched a morning news show before.  Rarely did I wake before ten am as a college student.  Rarely did I do anything after waking besides stumble out of bed, sort of get dressed, and eat a banana on the way to school.  [...]

I had some friends in a difficult situation. It went like this: Young-ish boy meets younger girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Girl has boy’s baby. They work in retail. No college. No money. So they fight. They fight a lot. Boy has temper, but girl is passive-aggressive and has secret demons. Girl hits boy. [...]

Note: to my UK or UK-savvy friends – prepare for “duh” cultural assessment by naive American. Had to do research for this. I first heard about Lady Sovereign, oddly, on NPR. I was half-listening when I heard the phrase “Lady Sovereign is the female, British Eminem.” In fact she gets pissed off at this comparison, but [...]

I love my neighborhood. It’s historic, ethnically diverse and close to downtown, with lovely churches and a park with a playground. I don’t always love the random people that wander through my neighborhood, especially since a bunch of nearby low-income housing was recently demolished to build a single A baseball stadium. Worse… use of tax money… [...]

My sister got me books for Christmas. While the gift of a book can go either way (ONGZ best book evah!!!) or (you must hate me if you thought I’d enjoy this), she done good, I tell you what. The 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner was under the tree (I didn’t get to it until the [...]