msquixotic's Profile

@rucy: I'm pretty sure I saw a tray like that at West Elm last spring, but I'm not sure if they still carry it.

Sausage cheese balls.

Not so much daring as daft. As noted by pretty much everyone above, spraying utensils with toxic compounds is beyond stupid, and the end result looks beyond cheap.

LOVE the red door. Wish I could paint my door, but that's not so much an option in my apartment. Boo.

The clearest memories I have of my paternal grandfather, who died when I was 3, involve his library: two rooms with walls just lined with books and records, floor to ceiling. It was a wonderous place to a little girl who was obsessed with reading. When my grandmother sold the house, the my father and his siblings divided up the books they wanted and the rest (including my great-grandparents' law library) got donated to various libraries. While I didn't ask for anything out of the library at the time (I was 10 or so), I regret that now. It feels like I missed an opportunity to keep that piece of my history. I know my father will one day pass the books he kept on to my sister and to me, but the loss of the opportunity to keep something personal (and the loss of the legal books, since I'm now a lawyer myself) saddens me a bit.

When one of my uncles died, my aunt passed his Nero Wolfe collection on to me. That collection is one of my most cherished possessions, not just because of my love for the books (which are fabulous, every time I read them), but for the connection to someone I loved who is now gone.

Which is all a round about way of saying that books can be very emotional things (as evidenced by the rather spirited discussion here). For those of us who have that very personal connection with our collection, it feels like a personal attack when someone derides books as clutter. And comments like "you know, they have these things called libraries," or "you really can't find another copy of A Tale of Two Cities" rankle not just because of the snide tone, but because the speaker/writer so clearly feels free to judge us even though they neither know nor understand us.

My books are a lot like Rob's records in High Fidelity. They're more than just the information they contain-as a collection, they tell the story of me.

I don't want to get into whether the books=clutter meme is some sign of anti-intellectualism, the evils of TV (which I also love, perhaps unhealthily), consumerism, the downfall of civilization as we know it, etc. We all have crap we could stand to be rid of (she said, staring at the ever growing collection of papers that need to be shredded and recycled). But a little less judgment about what strangers keep, toss, or give away would be a good thing.

That said, it does physically pain me to hear/ read about books being thrown out. Can't they be passed on to a new home instead of being sent to a landfill? That's not said to judge those who throw books out wholesale--just a gentle reminder that that there are Goodwills and libraries (local, school, prison, bookmobiles) that might be willing to take some of your unwanted books off your hands, especially in a time when limited budgets restrict what new materials can be purchased.

In the middle of winter, there's something comforting about a big pot of sauce simmering. But, in all honestly, there's some pretty good jarred sauce out there, and after a long day, it just makes my life easier. I'm in love with Classico's Spicy Tomato Basil right now.

While not the sort of "bad recipe" the article means, Alton Brown's baking book has a brownie recipe that calls for "tk" water. No idea what that's supposed to mean. A useless recipe is about as frustrating as a disaster of a recipe, but at least it's less wasteful.

If you a) use the right filters on the box (changing them regularly); b) scoop regularly (once or twice a day) and c) add some baking soda to the litter, odor shouldn't be an issue.

Bed risers seem the simplest way to go--they're meant to do exactly what you want, you don't risk doing damage to the piece by fooling around with the legs, and it's not permanent (important if you move to a place with an island and you want to take the dresser back to being a dresser).

The third ingredient in this stuff is propylene glycol, which, while used as a solvent in food and pharmaceuticals, is also a major component in certain anti-freezes. Can't see myself voluntarily consuming that stuff.