Scarlet Letters

Ah, the blessed relaxation of a holiday vacation. Or so I hear. Jimmy's off work until January 6, damn him; except he volunteered for an overtime shift next weekend because we could use the cash. Ian's off school until January 2. No fair. Me? I'm on duty at the newspaper today. At least I got a late start, since I thought I had a night meeting and it's cancelled. After work, I'll finish the tins of yummies for our friends, then Jimmy and I will go out to deliver them. I also have to make dinner, since we ate out WAY too much over the weekend and now I'm afraid of our bank account. I also need to find time to get over the river and retrieve the box of photos that I brainlessly left at a signing. I've been searching for it, because it has all my photo stock and my Christmas cards, which I'd planned to, y'know, mail. Meanwhile the box of bookplates has vanished, of course, since they have to go out this week for the first round of Kickstarter ince...

Oh beloved son of mine... I suppose I can understand that multiple bowls of cereal are not enough for a gargantuan like yourself. This is why I end up buying multiple Sam's Club boxes of cereal per week and never seem to get any cereal myself, and why we go through six gallons of milk a week. And apparently all the remaining French bread. I hope it was yummy. But then you pulled out the frozen bowtie pasta broccoli alfredo and chomped on that for a while - without heating it up. You might have put the rest back in the freezer, by the way. I am not the maid. And then you felt like a soda, so you got out the ice cube tray - and cracked it in half. Another item for the shopping list. How, exactly, did you manage that? But it boggles my mind that you also apparently ate an entire 19-ounce bag of cheese tortellini. I hope you at least heated it up. I was planning to make up a scratch alfredo sauce for that tortellini. Back onto the shopping list. Remind me to teach you how to...

I've either made the smartest financial move of my life, or the second-stupidest. The stupidest financial decision I ever made was to get student loans. Young people, learn from me. Student loans of the modern era are not your parents' student loans, easily paid off five years after graduation. My student loans were bought and sold three times within six months of my graduation, all without my consent and folding the interest in as principal. Ah, the nineties. They ended up with Sallie Mae, which jacked the interest to the skies and demanded half my salary until I ended up borrowing even more money just to stave them off until I could make a deal with the U.S. Department of Education to consolidate them into an amount roughly three times what I originally borrowed. Since then, my loans have hovered over my head as an impossible debt that I cannot hope to pay off unless that Mega-Millions ticket pays off tomorrow or someone doubles my salary. It also destroyed my credit, as ...

There's no way to properly discuss ten formative books in a Facebook post. Books have been far too much of an influence in my life for that. But after the fifth or sixth time I'm tagged on a meme, even I start to notice. Trying to choose only ten books is... difficult. I started reading at age three, or so I'm told, and haven't stopped since. I don't consume books at the rate I did as a young person, mostly because I'm old and tired and after a few pages I fall asleep. It's also much more slow going reading a nonfiction book on history or philosophy than the paperback novels I devoured as a youngster. But if there's a good mystery on my nightstand, it'll be consumed posthaste. Here's my books, in no particular order, with honorable mentions: 1. Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. I discovered this book about the time Nancy Drew was losing her appeal for me. As much as I adored Nancy and her titian-haired adventures, she was always g...