April 2009

Utterly Deadly Pecan Pie

April 30, 2009

OMG! Have you seen Mary’s Carmelized Banana Tarts over at Simply Forties? To die for! Mary’s spectacular performance reminds me that I’ve promised, off and on, to put up my mother’s recipe for pecan pie, the one that used to dissolve my father. I think she got it from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s Cross Creek Cookery, which came out in [...]

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Moments of Fame

April 30, 2009

This is going to be the Flattened Corgi Edition. Early this morning I took Cassie to walk the valley trail between Shaw Butte and North Mountain, part of a large desert preserve, and just about frazzled the poor li’l thing. Fortunately we took plenty of water, enough to soak her head and ears as well [...]

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Zillowing around Phoenix

April 29, 2009

Having perused today’s doom-and-gloom piece in the Times to the effect that property values in my neck of the woods have dropped 50 percent in the past three years, I was moved to visit Zillow by way of checking up on the current value of my real estate empire. Lo! Zillow’s estimate of my house’s [...]

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Life at the Funny Farm: This and that

April 28, 2009

What a lovely quiet day here at the Funny Farm, as far away from the Great Desert University as one can get. Cassie and I hung out for an hour or so at the park, one of the nicest neighborhood parks in the city. I’ll try to remember to take the camera tomorrow. Weekday mornings [...]

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Layoff: The emotional journey

April 27, 2009

Over at A Gai Shan Life, Revanche (one of our favorite readers & writers) reports that the predicted layoffs have struck her company and she also is about to join the ranks of the unemployed. We should have quite the campsite, all of us laid-off bloggers dwelling together under the Seventh Avenue Overpass. I propose [...]

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Five ways to deal with stress

April 26, 2009

Ever have one of those moments when the sky is collapsing on your head at the same time your cat, your dog, your boss, each of your friends, your family members, your banker, a lawyer or two, three doctors, and various functionaries of the police force would like your undivided attention? It’s been kind of [...]

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