Weeks till I'm back in class: 3.5 Days till I'm back in class: 25 Things I still want to do: a zillion Amount of work I have to do...

All-you-can-eat. Running son won a pair of gift certificates for Sweet Tomatoes restaurant at his 4th of July race. After meditation, he ...

As a result of my new swimming mania, I have reacquainted myself with goggles, which have the virtue of allowing you to swim with your eyes ...

First of all, this is a holiday not celebrated the world around, not even by Mormons. For instance, my daughter, born and raised in Utah, n...

I have been small-batch jam-making now for a couple of weeks. Basically, this means buying some of whatever fruit's in season and prese...

Last night we saw Heart of the Game , a documentary about a girls' high school basketball team in Seattle. We came in a little late, bu...

This aggressive heat will not stand, man.

I. There's nothing wrong with plot ( "Comment," Middlebrow) . Listen, you don't have to tell me. I love plot. One of my ...

Last week, I checked out a short stack of novels from the library, each of which was satisfying in its own way. One of them, a detective no...

College daughter decides to get a tattoo. Some of Teen Boy Squad get jobs and wear snappy work outfits to go to the jobs. We decide to let o...

Today, I fulfilled one of the items in my summer master plan: I swam laps outdoors at the West Jordan pool. And here's how good it was...

There may be too many animals at the megastore, especially if you include teenagers. That's partly because it's summer, and there a...

After a certain amount of reflection, I have a short list of items I would like to overthrow: the song "I'm Proud to Be an American...

I was driving my college daughter to work (she is a Membership Champion at Sam's Club--there are so many things to say about that little...

Here is how Betty likes to spend part of her day. Bruiser soaks up tile-floor-coolness. Healthy Eating Report : My son told me today that h...

. . . on my son's GameBoy FIFA 2006! They totally skunked Italy. In other news, we planted strawberries and sundry herbs, mulched the w...

At the Long Beach Aquarium. This idea somehow never gets old. The historian classes up the boat. He comes dancing upon the water,/ Cortez, C...

To begin with, I wish I could report to you that, post-cruise, my nerve endings are all smoothed out, that I am stress-free and ready for re...

Here are two bits of information that I think will be of interest to various readers: (1) In today's NYTimes, in a brief profile of Wil...

This is either (a) a picture of a Jim Carrey movie being shown on a faraway screen, or (b) a window into the hell that is trans-atlantic tra...