Monthly Archives: February 2011

My squeeze-tube of Neutrogena moisturizer appears to have become dry and brittle with age, and today developed a crack. I can think of a couple of ways that they could avoid this problem in future products, but I worry that … Continue reading →

We spent the afternoon at Vintages, a custom winery near by brother’s place in Colorado. Their business model is simple and beautiful: bring your own grapes or buy from them, and they will ferment them for you, then provide equipment … Continue reading →

We spent the morning at the Mall of America, on the way to the airport for our flight from MN to CO. I can confirm the the mall does indeed enclose an indoor amusement park, complete with a number of … Continue reading →

We spent the past two days on a hyper-accelerated tour of Minneapolis orchestrated by one of my mother’s sisters. I’m sure we haven’t seen all the sights, but we’ve sure seen more than a few. My main motivation to make … Continue reading →

I spent Saturday with my grandparents in New Hampshire. On Saturday I enjoyed the traditional awful New England snow and gale force gusts on Mt. Cranmore. The uneven ice-crusted surface brought back many fond childhood memories. In the evening we … Continue reading →

Dear Amazon, You sent me a single bicycle tire in a box the size of my entire kitchen. I ordered a whole bunch of other stuff from you at the same time, but you shipped each item separately. Waste not, … Continue reading →

I bumped into a friend on the sidewalk on Friday, an American who had just gotten back from several months in Cairo. She was full of amazing stories, like running away from a police column while two men performed streetside … Continue reading →

At the start of the twentieth century, the forward march of civilization was embodied by the industry of food science. Perhaps no one encapsulates the era better than John Thompson Dorrance, graduate of MIT and inventor of Campbell’s tomato soup. … Continue reading →

Massachusetts is the Bay State. Pennsylvania is the Keystone State. Kentucky is the Bluegrass State. Virginia is the only one that seems to have remembered that it’s a commonwealth.

For the third Sunday in a row, I chipped out my car from behind the latest accumulation of ice, in order to buy some groceries. This time I had some help from sun and rain; it was just a few … Continue reading →