A catalog of the stuff in my apartment
The photo on the holiday card sent out this year by my husband, Frank, and me shows the pair of us at the ancient Greek theater in Taormina, Sicily, where we went in September. The image came out more grainy and low-res than we wanted. It looked better in the digital mock-up when we were […]
When my husband, Frank, and I were in Vietnam in the spring for our annual Big Trip, the theme of the vacation seemed to be Hats ‘n’ Holes. We kept being led into tunnels and caves and such, and we kept donning various types of headgear, such as pith helmets in the caves (presumably to […]
When I was growing up, my family had a World Book encyclopedia set. This print compendium of knowledge was arranged in alphabetical order across 22 volumes bound in red leather. At the time, encyclopedias were a common sight on living room bookshelves and in public libraries. The primary purpose of the books was to give […]
Earlier this year I met a reader of this blog who told me my work reminded him of Erma Bombeck. Since I hardly ever write about my experiences as a harried suburban mom, I assume what the reader meant is that he finds me funny. Or maybe witty, which is what you call a funny […]
These days I really only drink alcohol when I’m out of town. Course, I’m a travel journalist, so my habits hardly qualify me for the Temperance League. And okay, fine, sometimes, even when I’m not out of town, I’ll imbibe at social functions. Fortunately for my liver, I attend as few of those as possible. […]
I’ve been attending Pride parades since the early 2000s. That amounts to a quarter century’s worth of June Sundays spent standing around in the hot sun and squinting at go-go boys on floats. To tell you the truth, I have never exactly found the spectacle riveting. I don’t blame the LGBTQ+ community. Time and again […]
As far as I’m concerned, you can display your books however you like, provided you’re not one of those people who arranges books by color. I hate that. It’s disrespectful to the book and makes you look like the sort of superficial twit who quite literally judges a book by its cover. I’ve divided my […]
The height of my Sondheim fandom coincided with my first couple years of college. Some freshmen do keg stands; others hole up in their dorm rooms with the original cast recording of Anyone Can Whistle. I couldn’t tell you for sure why I was drawn to Stephen Sondheim’s oeuvre specifically. The standard explanation offered by […]
Three people I knew died in the fall—two of them on the very same day. That would be guidebook legend Arthur Frommer, who founded the travel media company I work for, and Kris Vire, my editor at Time Out Chicago back when I was a part-time freelance theater journalist. Because Kris and I came from […]
The front of the holiday card that my husband, Frank, and I sent out this year features three photos of us taken in sites we visited in 2024: the Xochimilco canals of Mexico City, the Santa Ana Volcano in El Salvador, and one of the Gilded Age mansions in Newport, Rhode Island. We should do […]
Indirect Objects 